When I reached Monday's paper, I slowed to a dead stop and scanned it page by page. On Monday, August 4, five column inches were devoted to the discovery of the body near the Grayson Quarry in Lompoc. Con Dolan and Stacey Oliphant were both mentioned by name, but there was little to report. The next day, August 5, in a column called "North County Events," I caught the second squib. By then the autopsy had been done and the cause of death was detailed. The same few physical traits were noted-hair and eye color, height and weight-in hopes of identifying the girl. I cranked the reel forward, through Wednesday and Thursday of the same week. Thursday's j paper included a brief follow-up, with the same information I'd read in the initial account. Both gave a brief description of the girl's clothing, detailing the dark blue voile blouse and the daisy-patterned pants.

Neither article specified the color of the pants. I knew from police reports that the daisies were dark blue, a red dot at each center, on a ground of white, but if you relied strictly on this data, it would be natural to assume the daisies were "daisy-colored," as Roxanne Faught had so aptly summed it up. Factoring in her certainty about the tom earlobe, the big feet, the big-boned wrists, and the closely bitten nails, I doubted the girl she'd dealt with was actually our Jane Doe. It was always possible, of course. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously shaky, easily influenced, subject to subtle modification with each telling of the tale. Roxanne had admitted she'd gone back to reread the very clippings I was looking at myself. I didn't wholly discount what she said, but I wondered at its relevance to our investigation. Stacey had hoped to establish a time line, working backward from Roxanne's encounter to Cloris Bargo's sighting of the girl hitchhiking outside Colgate. Now Cloris had recanted and I suspected Roxanne's observations were too tainted to be of use. I fast-forwarded. That same week, on August 9, five people, including film and television actress Sharon Tate, were found slain in a Bel Air home. Two days later, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were discovered murdered in a manner similar to the Tate slayings. I tracked forward again, but there was no further mention of Jane Doe. I jotted a few notes on my index cards and then made copies of the news stories, paid for them at the counter, and returned to my car.