TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer Read Online Free PDF Page B

Americans more often kill people they know best than total strangers.
    “That’s been over for some time,” Stephanie’s mother replied. “They’re just friends now.”
    No sooner had Machen gotten off the phone than Communications rang with the news that the Highway Patrol had verified that the yellow automobile at the Hood Franklin off-ramp was registered to Stephanie Marcia Brown.
    Machen drew a mental map. Hood Franklin was some 15 to 20 miles from where the unidentified body had been found.
    Machen told >Biondi, who said he’d make arrangements for a stall at the county crime lab so that the car could be towed in and examined. Machen slipped his jacket on and headed for his car parked out back.
    The detective arrived at the off-ramp a few minutes past 4:00 P.M. after a twenty-minute drive south.
    Stephanie’s two-door 1980 Dodge Colt, California license 2AEF486, was parked on the right-hand side of the off-ramp just off the main highway—about 200 yards before the stop sign at the overpass.
    Machen left his coat and tie in his car and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. He wore on his belt a holstered handgun and a shiny sergeant’s badge. At the trunk of the car, he leaned over and unlatched a plain suitcase. Inside were the tools of the homicide trade, including a flashlight, notebooks, pens, tape recorder, new tape cassettes, magnifying glass, measuring tape, camera and film, and surgical gloves. Popping a new tape in the pocket-sized recorder, he closed the trunk lid and went to work.
    Dictating whatever he saw into the recorder, the first thing Machen noticed was the CHP tag on the Dodge Colt’s radio antenna, dated that morning a little before 10:00 A.M. Circling the vehicle, he didn’t find any body damage other than a slight transfer of dark paint on the left front fender, as if the car had swiped or brushed against something. It looked old.
    The car was parked on the asphalt shoulder, evenly spaced between the dirt shoulder and the white line that marked the right-hand side of the roadway. He noted that the driver had had both the time and foresight to pull over safely, out of the flow of any traffic taking that exit.
    The driver’s side window was down nearly all the way, leaving only about a 1-inch edge of the window showing. Most people did not drive at highway speeds with their window down, particularly at night. It was lowered, Machen thought, as if the driver had rolled it down to speak to someone who was outside.
    Neither car door was locked.
    Careful not to touch anything before the vehicle could be dusted for prints, Machen peered inside. The keys were not in the ignition. He noted the car’s mileage (47,878). The trip odometer showed 31.3 miles.
    In the console between the two front seats were several envelopes and a handwritten note: “E Street, right, liquor store, Pinecove Bottle Shop.” Some loose papers and a plastic cup were on the passenger floorboard. No wallet or purse was in plain view, nor would they be found anywhere in the vehicle when it was more thoroughly checked.
    With a hot wind blowing hard off the open terrain, Machen circled the vehicle again. Widening his search, he looked for footprints and tire tracks in the dirt and any other evidence. Other than several old cigarette butts about 20 yards away and an empty wine bottle that had obviously been out in the elements for a while, he found nothing.
    This was desolate country, patchwork green-and-brown farmland as far as the eye could see. No gas stations or pay phones or overhead lights at or near the off-ramp; only a handful of farmhouses on the distant horizon. In the dead of night, something had happened out here in the middle of nowhere that, it now seemed very likely, had ended up costing a young woman her life. But what? And by whom?
    At 4:47 P.M. , Biondi radioed Machen that the picture of Stephanie Brown had been located and he was dispatching it out to nearby McClellan Air Force Base. It was to be flown