9: “The toughest part of a cop’s job …”
Chapter 10: What Happened to Mary Sue?
Chapter 11: A Robbery at Kmart
Chapter 12: Kmart Robbery Aftermath
Chapter 13: Fear Has Its Own Smell
Chapter 14: Like the Scales of a Snake
Chapter 16: “We rob and steal and those who squeal …”
Chapter 17: “If I was guaranteed protection …”
Chapter 18: “He is capable of anything”
Chapter 19: A Gravestone for Mary Sue
Chapter 21: A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
Chapter 22: “Ready for the People”
Chapter 24: “A gnawing coldness …”
Chapter 25: “Body otherwise unremarkable …”
Chapter 26: “The second son …”
Chapter 27: Murder Doesn’t Always Make Sense
Chapter 30: We Had to Get the Shooter
Chapter 31: The Folsom Connection
Chapter 32: Blood Turns to Ice
Chapter 33: “One of my dogs will do it …”
Chapter 34: The End of the Slow Dance
Chapter 35: The Tentacles of the Past
Chapter 36: The Time of Retribution
Author’s Note
This is a true story. The characters are real. The names are real. The events are real. It is not a figment of my or any other’s imagination. It is written from the viewpoint of a person who has been a prosecutor, a trial judge, and an appellate judge over the span of thirty-three years. This case and its participants traveled through almost all of those years. I have written about the effect of that journey on me and many others. It is written from the perspective of one who was there and saw it all.
Prologue
July, 1974
Fresno County, California
The great San Joaquin Valley of California spreads itself out into foothills that rise against its edge. In the heat of summer, the foothills glow golden by day, and by night they shine silver on spring grass dried by the sun. The yellowed blades sway in the summer breeze, their swishing music lost by day to the sounds of birds, rustling leaves, and man’s traffic. It is by night that the symphony of the grass plays out to those who listen as the air moves gently. But on some nights the air lies still. On those nights, there is only silence. On those nights, the only sound is made by the hunters of the darkness.
On that summer night, the air of the great valley barely moved the high grass, which had been dried by the searing daytime heat to the brittleness of straw. A rabbit sat quietly in its burrowed-out hole, waiting to move for forage. The slightest movement would bring the rustle of the grass, breaking the silence, and with it a signal to the predators the rabbit knew were waiting.
The sound of tires on gravel brought the rabbit and nighttime predators to a frozen silence. Even feral minds knew enough to hide themselves from foreign sounds—sounds that might mean death even to those who were accustomed to being the hunter. It was the law of survival. Sometimes the hunter could become the hunted. Eyes meant for the night watched and waited.
The silver moonlight danced off the car
