The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule Page B

"big boys," and occasional use of a flashy car. There was statewide travel, with all expenses paid.
    Davis and his wife thought highly of Ted. He ate dinner with their family at least once a week, and often babysat for their children. Davis recalls Ted as "smart, aggressive,-exceptionally so, and a believer in the system."
    Despite his work for the Republican Party, Ted managed to keep up a good gradepoint average in his night law classes at U.P.S. He continued to live at Freda and Ernst Rogers's home in the University District in Seattle. Ernst's health was no better, and,|when he had free time, Ted helped to keep the house in rerair.
    There had been great upheavals in Ted's life during 1973, but I had seen him only once during that year-the brief meeting in the Public Safety Building in March. It was that kind of friendship where you touch base with someone rarely, you are pleased to see each other, and they are, at least on the surface, the same people you have always known. 40

THE STRANGER BESIDE ME
    I saw Ted again in December of 1973-again at a Crisis Clinic Christmas party. It was held at a board member's house in the Laurelhurst section in Seattle's north end, and, this time, Ted brought Meg Anders with him, and I met her for the first time.
    In one of those crystalline flashes that float to the surface of memory, I can recall standing in the host's kitchen, talking to Ted and Meg. Someone had placed a giant bowl of fried chicken wings on the counter, and Ted munched on them as we talked.
    Ted had never described Meg to me. I had heard his detailed recollection of Stephanie Brooks's beauty, and I had seen his reaction to the tall, dark-haired woman at last year's party. Meg was nothing like either of them. She seemed very small, very vulnerable, and her long light brown hair overpowered her facial features. Cîearly, she adored Ted, and she clung to him, too shy to mingle.
    I commented that Ted and I had attended the last Crisis Clinic Christmas party together, and her face lit up.
    "Really"! It was you?"
    I nodded. "I didn't have a date, and Ted didn't have a car, so we decided to pool our resources."
    Meg seemed vastly relieved. I was clearly no threat to her, a nice, middle-aged lady with a bunch of kids. I wondered then why he had let her agonize over it for a whole year when he could easily have explained our friendship to her.
    I spent most of that evening talking with Meg because she seemed so intimidated by the mass of strangers milling around us. She was very intelligent and very nice. But her focus of attention was Ted. When he wandered off into the crowd, her eyes followed him; she was trying very hard to be casual, but for her there was no one else there at all. I could understand her feelings only too well. Three months before, I had fallen in love with a man who wasn't free, would never be free, and I could empathize with Meg's insecurity. Still, Ted had been with her for four years, and he seemed devoted to her and to Liane. There seemed a good possibility that they might marry one day. Seeing Meg and Ted together, I assumed that he had given up his fantasy about Stephanie. I could not have been more wrong. Neither Meg nor I knew that Ted had just spent several days with Stephanie Brooks, that he was, in fact, en-

THE STRANGER BESIDE ME
    gaged to Stephanie, and that he was looking forward to seeing her again within a week.
    Ted's life was so carefully compartmentalized that he was able to be one person with one woman, and an entirely different man with another. He moved in many circles, and most of his friends and associates knew nothing of the other areas in his life.
    When I said goodbye to Ted and Meg in December, 1973, I truly didn't expect to see him again; our bond had been through the Crisis Clinic and we were both moving away from that group. I had no way of knowing that Ted Bundy would one day change my life profoundly. It would be almost two years before I heard from Ted again, and, when I