into the main store.
The store seemed empty. Joe moved quickly to the freezer, near the meat department. He heard the sharp jangling of keys. The man and the woman were trying to open the front door, fumbling with the keys, trying to find the right one. Joe stared at the backs of the man and woman, sharply defined by the white, fluorescent light shining down on the stillness of the empty market. He backed up toward the swinging door leading into the storeroom. He turned and looked back at the door leading into the parking lot. Doug’s body was stretched in his path. He tried not to look at Doug’s face, but passing the body was the only way out.
Jack Abbot sat quietly with his wife on the patio of his backyard that looked out onto the parking lot area of Fran’s Market, which was separated from his yard by a low wall. While the heat of the day was beginning to draw down, the air itself still wasn’t cool; but Jack knew that as the shadows lengthened into darkness, the air would finally lose its warmth. The lights of Fran’s Market gave off enough glare that the stars were still obscured. But later, after the store closed, the night sky would not be polluted by the lights, unlike the skies above the city of Fresno, only a few miles to the west. Jack leaned back and spoke quietly to his wife, while he waited for the evening quiet to take control of the countryside.
A slightly muffled booming sound resounded from inside the market. Jack was well aware of the usual sounds of the store and his neighborhood. He also knew the sounds of guns. He could tell the signature bellow of a shotgun when he heard it, as it filled the air with its blast so unlike the sharp crack of a pistol. Jack sat forward. Within moments, he heard a second muffled boom. Something was wrong. He knew it. He looked at the old car in the corner of the parking lot. It was empty. The store should be closed. It was after 8:00. Jack ran back into the house and grabbed his shotgun.
Joe Rios backed away from the swinging door that led from the storeroom into the store. The man and the woman were still standing by the front door. Maybe he could make it. He stepped over the legs of Doug White, glancing sideways at Josephine Rocha, lying on the floor. He couldn’t help them now. Nothing could. He threw up the bar that was placed across the back door for security purposes. The sound of the bar as he moved it filled his ears. Joe pushed the door open, not looking back into the store, and he ran as fast as he could.
Jack Abbot came out from his house and moved quickly toward the small retaining wall that bounded his backyard and the parking lot. The door to the storeroom slammed open. A dark figure began to run across the parking lot. It was too dark to see who it was, just that the figure was running and that he was male. He raised his gun and heard himself yell, “Hey,” and then he fired up and in the direction of the running man. He fired almost from the hip, the blast of pellets streaming up into the night sky.
Joe could barely hear the sound of a man’s voice. Maybe it is the man who shot me. He didn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop. He heard the roar of the shotgun. To stop was to die. He just ran headlong into the darkness.
Abbot walked quickly to the rear door of the market. The two young people on the floor lay like tumbled statues in a reflecting pool of blood. He stepped back. He didn’t want to touch them. There was no time. If they were to have any chance it would come only with help. He ran back to the fence and yelled for his wife to call an ambulance and the sheriff.
Jack looked back over his shoulder, pulling his shotgun around in the direction of the store. The bright lights of the storeroom silhouetted a man near the door. The figure moved toward him. Jack squeezed the trigger, feeling his shotgun buck. The man faltered and cried out.
The sound of a shotgun blast filled the air around Jack. It wasn’t muffled like the other ones. He felt the blast hit him from behind. Jack’s knees crumpled.
As Jack fell, he saw a man stagger across the parking lot and get into the old car he had seen earlier. He could hear the sound of the starter grinding as the engine resisted, and then finally it turned over. As Jack sank to the ground, the car moved out of the parking lot, and Jack lost sight of the car, lost sight of everything, as his body fell below the line of the fence.
Joe Rios heard the second shot as he ran, stumbling through the darkness. Fences blocked his way. He pulled himself over, his left arm useless. Dogs were barking. He didn’t want to jump over a fence into a yard with dogs. He could feel nothing except fear of the man who was behind him. Someone had shot at him. Someone was still shooting. Suddenly, he felt the sharp drop before he realized where he had run. The shallow ditch took his footing. He could feel himself falling, losing his balance, his knees coming up against his body as he rolled into the ditch. He could feel himself gasping for air. But he couldn’t stop. He forced himself up. There was a light, a house. He ran toward the light.
The shooter could feel his left foot throbbing. The person who was outside when he came through the storeroom door managed to get off one shot and he unloaded one when the man yelled at him. He heard the sound of the gravel and pavement as the shot went low but he caught something in the foot, probably pellets. He couldn’t tell and he wasn’t going to stop to look. He was sure he had gotten the guy who shot him, but how badly he couldn’t tell. His woman was still in the store. He wasn’t going to go back. It never even occurred to him.
He pulled open the door of the aged Mercury Comet and shoved the keys into the ignition. The starter kept grinding; the engine wouldn’t start. He kept turning the key in frustration; the tired engine coughed, but finally caught. He pushed on the accelerator, feeling the pain in his foot as he shoved it against the floorboard. Gravel shot out from behind the tires as the Comet made a feeble attempt at exerting its long-sapped power against the worn surface of the parking lot. He pushed down on the gas as hard as he could, willing the car to speed up, to carry him out onto the street. Darkness and distance were his only safety now. He needed to get rid of the car in case somebody had seen it. And he had to make a call.
2
“We have a triple …”
Friday, September 5, 1980
8:30 P.M.
Fresno, California
By September, the nights in Fresno can move quickly from the daytime heat of the waning days of summer to the growing evening bite of autumn chill. This happens more quickly than the shortening of the days. When the pager on his belt buzzed, District Attorney Investigator Willie “Bill” Martin grabbed his jacket. He immediately called his supervisor, the chief of homicide in the district attorney’s office, at his home. That was me, Jim Ardaiz; I was the chief of homicide. My given name is actually James, but I only use that in court—more impressive sounding. Before you ask, my name is Basque and it’s pronounced Ar-daiz, with a long “i” and a silent “a.” It rhymes with “lies,” but that’s a defense lawyer joke that I never thought was very funny.
If you don’t know who the Basque people are, then I will tell you that they are the indigenous people who inhabited the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France long before there was a Spain and France. They speak Basque, a language without a Latin root. You hear about them now and then, particularly when certain rebellious Basque factions blow up things or people on either the Spanish or the French side of the border. Anyway, that’s what I am on my father’s side. Besides that, I am a little over six-feet tall and I have green eyes. However, at this particular moment, my attention wasn’t focused on what defense attorneys called me, but on the reason I had received an urgent call from the sheriff’s office.
“What do we have, boss?” It was an affectation Bill cultivated, calling me “boss.” I was his supervisor in title and pay, but we both knew that Bill was the more
