Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors (47 page)

“I tried the front door handle and found it locked,” he said. “Then I contacted the owner-manager who lives in a downstairs apartment. She came with me back upstairs, carrying her keys.”

Dillon said he opened the door and used only his flashlight as he entered the apartment. He checked the living room and found nothing unusual, and preceded down the hall, calling, “Sue Ann—Sue Ann—”

There was no answer.

He opened the first door to the right of the hall and found a small bedroom—empty. Continuing on down the hall, Dillon checked the main bathroom and found it neat and clean, and also empty.

It had been very still, almost eerie, as Dillon crept quietly down the hallway playing his flashlight over the walls. The only room left was the master bedroom, where he found the door was ajar. Dillon nudged the door with his flashlight, and it swung open.

“There was a king-sized bed there,” he told VandePutte and Fonis. “I could see the spread had red roses on it. She was there in the center of the bed, and the spread and blankets were drawn up under her chin. Her long dark hair spread out over the pillow.

“I said, ‘Sue Ann?’ but she didn’t answer.”

Dillon said he moved closer to the bed and shined his flashlight on the woman. Her eyes were slightly open, her chin tilted up. But she didn’t move, and Dillon touched her nose and cheek. She was cold to the touch. He pulled the covers down to her waist level. A red towel had been draped over her breasts and it seemed to be stained a deeper red in spots.

“That’s when I called for Homicide,” Dillon finished. “While I was waiting, I checked the other rooms again to see if anyone might still be hiding in here—but it was clear.”

VandePutte, Fonis, and Fowler looked at the woman on the bed. Even in death, she was beautiful. They folded the rose-dotted coverlet and blankets down to the foot of the bed. Now they could see that she was completely nude except for the red towel over her breasts.

Sue Ann Baker was a very tall woman, close to six feet, with the figure of a model. She lay in the center of the bed as if someone had positioned her there almost lovingly, her head resting on two fluffed pillows. One hand lay next to her hip, and the other was just under her body. At six feet, even though she was slender, she must have weighed 150 pounds and it would have taken a very strong individual to lift her.

The woman’s legs were spread somewhat—but not in the classic position in which rape victims are often found. She might have been only sleeping. But she was dead, and had been for some time. Rigor mortis was fully established.

The homicide detectives noted a red hand towel under her left knee and a red washcloth next to her right hand. The flowered sheet beneath her body was stained dark reddish brown in spots. A large pool of coagulated blood had seeped over the right side of the mattress when it was still liquid.

Oddly, despite the profusion of blood, the victim’s body was exceptionally clean. Looking closer, the investigators could see faint traceries of pink on her skin, as if someone had washed the blood off.

They removed the red towel that covered her breasts and could see the single wound over her right breast. It appeared to be a puncture wound about an inch long, its edges gaping open. That was all. No other wounds, no signs of defense wounds, no hesitation wounds—just the awful, deep wound in her chest. Because her body had been washed, there wasn’t even any blood on it.

At the foot of the bed, the detectives found a pair of women’s blue jeans; they were inside out, with a pair of panty hose inside. Apparently these had been stripped from the woman’s body either before or after death.

Starting at the front entrance, Sergeant VandePutte photographed everything in the apartment. The living room was lavishly furnished with a gold couch and matching love seat, gold lamps, and a glass-topped coffee table. A floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace almost covered one wall. There were many plants, carefully tended, a TV set, and a stereo with the tape in a cassette still circling, although the sound was turned down.

Like all the rooms, the living room was very clean but slightly cluttered. It looked as if someone might have been sleeping on the larger couch; a pillow and two blankets were tangled on the couch. Ted Fonis pointed out a glass on the end table next to the couch. It was half-full of a yellow liquid. He sniffed it and smelled alcohol. A woman’s red purse rested on the love seat. Its clasp was fastened.

The glass coffee table in front of the larger couch held an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. The top of the glass table seemed smudged. With a flashlight held obliquely, the detectives could make out smears of blood that had been haphazardly wiped up.

The kitchen was neat. There were no dirty dishes in the sink, but there was a brown paper bag on the counter containing an empty MacNaughton’s whiskey bottle. A full bottle of the same brand was opened next to it. There was also a steak knife on the counter. When Gary Fowler and Ted Fonis looked in a drawer, they found four more knives—steak knives and a hunting knife. The latter appeared to have bloodstains near the handle. It was more than five inches long, and the blade width appeared to match the wound found in Sue Ann Baker’s breast.

The smaller bedroom wasn’t nearly as neat as the rest of the apartment. There were clothes strewn around on the bed and the floor. Blood spattered the pair of men’s blue jeans on the bed. Peering into the closet, the detectives found a bra with its right cup saturated with blood, along with a bulky knit sweater with bloodstains over the right side.

“She had to have been wearing the sweater, the bra, and probably the jeans in the master bedroom when she was stabbed,” Fowler observed. “The stains look as though they’re in line. And why would anyone undress her after she was dead?”

“Maybe he was sorry. Maybe it was someone who cared about her and didn’t want her found the way she was,” VandePutte guessed.

It looked that way. Sue Ann Baker had been bathed and laid out on the bed like a princess lying in state. With the coverlet pulled up, she appeared to be only sleeping.

They found men’s clothes hanging in closets around the apartment.

Fonis asked the manager if Sue Ann Baker lived with someone, but the woman shook her head.

“She lived alone. She was separated from her husband.”

“What’s his name?”

“I believe it’s Ron—Ron Baker.”

There was no sign of any luggage in the place to indicate a visitor.

Craig VandePutte called Lieutenant Ernie Bisset and the King County chief medical examiner, Dr. Donald Reay, at 10:45
P.M.
, and they responded to the scene. Reay checked the body and confirmed that Sue Ann Baker had been dead for some time. The nether side of her body was striated with the pinkish purple marks of livor mortis, which indicated that she had lain in the bed in the same position for many hours.

Moreover, the room temperature was 65 degrees, and the victim’s body temperature was 65, too.

“I’d say she’s been dead for about twenty-four hours,” ‘Doc’ Reay said. “This, which seems to be the only wound, was caused by a single-edged knife.”

Sue Ann Baker’s fingernails were long and unbroken, perfectly manicured with silver polish. She still wore an expensive watch and rings. The investigators weren’t thinking that robbery had been the motive for her death, and this tended to confirm their first impressions.

They encased her hands in bags in the unlikely event that she had attempted to scratch her killer. Some of his—or her—skin might be found under her nails.

Fowler, Fonis, and VandePutte retraced the path they had made, entering the living room again. Lieutenant Bisset and Dr. Reay and were scrutinizing the large gold couch carefully. The top blanket appeared to have bloodstains. When both blankets were removed, a large bloodstain came into view; it had soaked deep into the couch.

“It looks like she was killed here—or at least stabbed here,” Reay commented.

“That fits with the blood that was wiped off the coffee table,” Fowler agreed.

Sue Ann’s body was removed to await autopsy, but the detectives’ night on the job was far from over. They gathered, labeled, and sealed fifty-one pieces of evidence: bloodstained clothing, bedding, the cassette that had played over and over again on the stereo, the knives, and, strangely, a pair of scissors found in a drawer, and which also appeared to bear bloodstains.

Criminalist Tim Taylor arrived from the Western Washington State Crime Lab to process various areas of the crime scene. He used swabs moistened with distilled water to lift samples of blood. It was essential to determine if they were all the victim’s blood, or if someone else had bled here.

The most important piece of physical evidence would be a killer’s fingerprints in blood or even on the cassette, showing that he or she had been in the apartment at the time Sue Ann was stabbed. It didn’t happen often and the homicide detectives would be very lucky if any of these kinds of prints were not Sue Ann’s.

*   *   *

At 4
A.M.
, Sergeant VandePutte’s crew was finally back in the Homicide Unit’s office, and talking further with Officer Dillon.

Dillon had taken in-depth statements from the couple who managed the apartments.

“The manager and her husband told me that they heard ‘normal’ activity in the Baker apartment all day long on Sunday—October 30—but nothing on the thirty-first,” Dillon said.

Dillon taped their recall of the weekend, and on Halloween.

“I saw Ron’s car—that’s her husband—parked up by the Tie-Up Tavern this morning about nine thirty,” the manager’s husband’s voice said.

“It’s a dark green Buick Electra. The tavern’s just down the street from us.”

“So evidently Sue Ann’s husband—this Ron guy—was around and with her at least part of the last couple of days,” Dillon said.

The tape played on. “I think they were together yesterday,” the female half of the management team added. “I saw Sue go out to the car yesterday morning—Sunday—and then go back into her apartment.”

Dillon said that his information indicated that Sue Ann Baker had worked as a bartender at the Rendezvous Restaurant on Second Avenue West, a popular neighborhood spot.

“I guess she was supposed to be at work today,” the woman continued. “And her husband called in this morning and told them she was ill. He said she would call in later in the day—but she never did. They got concerned at the bar when her phone was busy for hours.”

Detectives dumped the contents of Sue Ann’s purse on a sheet of white paper, noting what was inside. Few men know exactly what the women in their lives carry in their handbags, but nothing seemed to be missing. There was the usual jumble of cosmetics, a learner’s permit from the Department of Motor Vehicles that said she could drive but only with a licensed companion on board, a bottle of tranquilizers prescribed for Sue Ann on October 4, a Canadian citizen’s registration card, and a card indicating a doctor’s appointment on November 4.

There were pictures, too. Some of Sue Ann, and others of her and a man who was, presumably her husband. There were four letters whose envelopes bore the return address of Keith William “Ron” Baker, all postmarked Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

Ron had mailed the letters in early October. They must have meant something to the dead woman because she had kept them in her purse for almost four weeks.

In his letters, Ron Baker wrote about his “change of attitude” since he’d arrived in Alaska. He spoke of looking forward with happy expectation to the time he would return to Seattle in the first week of December. He cautioned Sue Ann about drinking too much.

If they were as estranged as the detectives had heard, their relationship was clearly still close. At least it was in Ron Baker’s mind. He’d written about looking forward to their wonderful physical relationship.

The rest of the letters detailed his days as a cook on a crab boat owned by the New England Fish Company. Any job on a crab boat in the far north in midwinter is dangerous. Storms at sea are not uncommon, and many fishermen and crew fear being tossed into the frigid sea, where they could quickly perish of hypothermia or drowning.

But the pay was good. It sounded as though Ron Baker was determined to save his marriage to Sue Ann.

And then, for some reason, Ron didn’t last out the season on the crab boat. He had evidently returned to Seattle a lot sooner than either Sue Ann or he had expected. The management couple had seen his green Buick parked near the apartment and they had seen him, too.

But had they really? Was it possible that Ron Baker was still in Alaska, and the man they saw was someone else who resembled him? The homicide detectives felt they needed corroboration one way or the other on that from other sources.

If Baker had been home, he was missing now. He was certainly the main “person of interest” that they wanted to talk to. A man saying he was Sue Ann’s husband had called the Rendezvous on the morning of the thirty-first saying that she was ill.

Yet Dr. Reay’s determination of time of death indicated that she had likely been dead for hours then.

The investigation was less than a day old when Gary Fowler, Ted Fonis, and Craig VandePutte left the homicide office. A new day was dawning and they had had no sleep, but they would catch a few hours’ nap and then return to work on the case.

On November 1, Gary Fowler sent out a teletype at 8:45
A.M.
requesting that law enforcement departments in the seven western states and Alaska pick up Ron Baker for questioning if he was spotted. His photographs and neighbors’ descriptions indicated that he was a big man, six feet two, and well over two hundred pounds. He had light blue eyes and brown hair. The information on the dark green Buick Electra was included.

The autumn wind blew orange and black remnants of Halloween crepe paper decorations along Seattle streets, and exhausted youngsters who had gone to bed with makeup on their faces woke up to paw through what was left of their treats from the night before.

Finding witnesses during the daytime was usually easier than in the middle of the night. Now Gary Fowler talked to the young woman who occupied the apartment directly next to Sue Ann Baker’s—Gemma Lytle.* Gemma worked as a human resources coordinator in an investment firm.