the Piedra Bridge, twenty miles outside of the city of Fresno. The two men’s faces were alternately cast blue by the moonlight and black by the shadows as they got out of the vehicle and moved to the truck bed. They pulled at the limp heaviness of the bundled form rendered shapeless by the blankets which wrapped it. Stepping stones wired tightly around the form added to their burden. Grunting at the weight, the men carried the bundle to the edge of the bridge, balancing it on the retaining wall as they looked down at the canal. The water below ran deep and black, sliding along cement banks slick with moss, shimmering as its ripples caught the thin light.
“Push her over, goddamnit. Let’s get this over with. We got to get back to the old man.”
The other man didn’t respond. He slid his end, the feet, over the cement wall of the bridge and let gravity do the rest. They both watched as the body slipped through the air. There was no scream. There was no sound left to be made except the splash of rushing water as it parted and accepted her into its cold embrace.
The men watched for a moment, waiting to see if she might surface. The swirls left by her last journey closed over her. The water resumed its course into the night, now with one more thing to pull along in its current and dissolve into the flotsam carried by its rushing mass.
The sound of tires on gravel receded into the darkness. The night hunters waited silently for the rustle of grass to make them dominant again. Their world was returned to moonlight and the newly stirring sounds of their prey. They were once again the hunters, left with the night. The rabbit stayed silent. It was not its time.
PART
I
MEMORIES PAST
1
Murder at Fran’s Market
Six Years Later
7:30 P.M., Friday, September 5, 1980
Fresno, California
It was almost closing time at the small country store. The last customers had either left or were leaving with what they needed for another day. Fran’s Market was a convenience store for people who wanted life’s necessities and were willing to do without twelve choices for the same product, accompanied by background music. For that, they needed to make the twenty-minute drive into Fresno, the city whose lights were beginning to glow in the distance.
The sun was dropping in the sky, drawing out long shadows across the parking lot. It was after 7:30 in the evening. The dusty, gray-black asphalt in front of Fran’s Market would hold the heat of the day long past the last glimpse of the sun. But at that moment it was still absorbing heat within its graying blackness, emitting small, radiant waves that rippled the air if you looked out toward the road that ran in front of the store.
The dust from the surrounding farmland and from the passage of cars going to and from Sequoia National Park settled on everything in the last days of summer, coating the parking lot, the store, and the nearby road with the thick grime that would stick until the first rains. The rains would not come for at least another month. Any drops of early moisture would only dimple the dust and leave muddy smears baking in the last vestiges of valley heat.
In the parking lot, a thickly muscled man sat in an aging car and pulled a bandanna around his head. During the few days since he had left dimly lit rooms, his fair complexion, unadapted to prolonged exposure to the sun, had quickly taken on a burned ruddy hue. He rubbed the rough stubble on his face, smoothing the heavy mustache that hung over the edges of his mouth, and felt the thin slick of perspiration and body oil. He looked out the car window toward the store. He had parked on the far side of the parking lot, away from the front of the market. His eyes flickered for just a moment on the radiating waves of heat and the brown hills just visible in the distance. It had been a long time since he had been able to look straight out at land that wasn’t surrounded by high walls and concertina wire, and he still felt uncomfortable in open space. It was a feeling experienced by most men who had spent long periods in confinement and then walked out into the world. In fact, it had been little more than a week since he walked out the gate of Folsom Prison and took the bus to Fresno.
He looked over at the woman seated in the rear seat of the burgundy 1962 Mercury Comet. The car ran rough but it was all he had been able to get. The passenger side bucket seat was missing. The woman sitting in the car with him was little more than a stranger, but he had already slept with her. He knew her body better than he knew her. It had been years since he had any woman and she had been willing, more than willing. And now she was with him. It was the way of things as he knew them.
He slid his hand over to the sawed-off shotgun lying on the floorboard where the passenger seat would have been before it had given way to time and neglect. He pushed the weapon into his pants, the rough end of the sawed barrel catching at his clothing. With the cut-down stock, it was almost like a large pistol, but much more deadly. His windbreaker would conceal it as long as he held it with the inside of his arm. The woman also wore a bandanna. She held a small silver pistol nervously in her lap. He nodded at her. “Put the gun in your pocket. Just do what I do, babe. Like we talked about.”
He could tell she was highly agitated by the way her hands were shaking and by how she kept rubbing and scratching at her face. The meth she had taken to calm herself down had only gotten her more worked up, but at least she was still with him. He opened the car door, got out, and waited for the woman to follow him.
They waited until the store appeared to be ready to close. Through the window he could see that some of the lights at different counters had been turned off. Paper signs, advertising prices for sale items, concealed parts of the store interior. That was good. The beer signs were beginning to glow in the lengthening shadows of dusk. He could see people moving around, but he had seen them the night before and he knew they were only store employees, not shoppers. Two of them had helped him when he and the woman had gone in to case the store.
The man paused, adjusted the sawed-off, and glanced around the almost empty parking lot. Good, he thought; it was now nearly empty, with only one car parked in front. The few other cars were over on the far side of the lot, most likely belonging to employees. He would weigh his options when he got inside. He patted his windbreaker, fondling the hard, cylindrical shotgun shell casings in the pocket. There were enough for what he had to do, and for what he might have to do.
The woman came around the car and looked at him. He had a moment’s reflection, not about whether it was right to have brought her, but about whether she would hold up. He hadn’t told her everything that would likely happen. She would find out soon enough. She touched the hard muscles of his arm. He could already feel the tautness of his prison muscles starting to soften. Two weeks ago, all he had to do was lift weights and wait. That and talk to the old man about the market, the safe, and how it would go down. He realized that he hadn’t lifted any weights since he walked out of those steel doors. He pushed that thought aside and grabbed the woman’s arm. “Let’s go.”
He treaded slowly across the hot asphalt, his footsteps picking out the ground like a feral animal; it was the walk of a man used to being around others who would prey on any weakness, and he had learned to show none. With each step he could feel the heat through the thin, rubber soles of his shoes. His senses were heightened; the clarity of the scene made an impression on him: the vividness of the colors, his sense of smell, and the vibrancy of his touch. It was like being hyper alive. He could feel the adrenalin course through him and the rush of a
