“The facts of this case,” Miller noted in her report, “are similar to those of two rape/abductions … being handled by the Ohio State University Police, that occurred in their jurisdiction.”

Nikki Miller and her partner, Officer A. J. Bessell, drove to University Hospital to interview Polly Newton, an auburnhaired girl.

The man who abducted her, Polly said, had told her that he was a member of the Weathermen, but that he also had another identity—as a businessman—and drove a Maserati. After Polly was treated at the hospital, she agreed to accompany Miller and Bessell to search for the place she’d been forced to drive to. But it was getting dark and she was becoming confused. She agreed to try again the following morning.

The Crime Scene Search Unit dusted her car for fingerprints. They found three partial prints with sufficient ridge detail to be used for comparison with any future suspects.

Miller and Bessell drove Polly back to the Detective Bureau to work with the department artist at making a composite drawing. Then Miller asked Polly to look through photographs of white male sex offenders. She studied three trays of mug shots, a hundred to a tray, with no success. At ten that evening, exhausted after seven hours with the police, she stopped.

At ten-fifteen the next morning, detectives of the Assault Squad morning shift picked up Polly Newton and drove her to Delaware County. In the daylight she was able to lead them to the scene of the rape, where they found 9-millimeter bullet casings near the edge of the pond. That, she told one of the detectives, was where the man had fired his gun at some beer bottles he had tossed into the water.

When they returned to headquarters, Nikki Miller had just arrived on duty. She sat Polly in a small room directly opposite the receptionists desk and brought in another tray of mug shots. She left Polly alone and shut the door.

A few minutes later, Eliot Boxerbaum arrived at the Detective Bureau with Donna West, the nurse who had been the second victim. He wanted her to go through the mug shots, too. He and Chief Kleberg had decided to keep the optometry student in reserve for a line-up identification in case the mug-shot evidence didn’t hold up in court.

Nikki Miller sat Donna West at a table in the corridor alongside the filing cabinets and brought her three trays of mug shots. “My God,” she said, “are there that many sex offenders walking the streets?” Boxerbaum and Miller waited nearby as Donna studied face after face. Looking angry and frustrated, she flipped through the photographs. She saw a face she recognized—not the man who’d raped her, but a former classmate, someone she’d seen on the street just the other day. She peeked at the back and saw he’d been arrested for indecent exposure. “Christ,” she mumbled, “you never know.”

Halfway through the tray, Donna hesitated at a picture of a handsome youth with muttonchop whiskers and dull, staring eyes. She jumped up, nearly knocking the chair over. “That’s him! That’s him! I’m positive!”