Ralph Innes arrived at the airport the next morning only moments before departure time, looking unkempt and hung over. He grunted at McGuire and avoided any unnecessary conversation. On the first leg of the flight to Palm Springs, Innes slept while McGuire scanned the Boston newspapers, feeling the tension build between himself and the younger man.
During a stopover in Dallas, Innes purchased a cheap paperback adventure novel and immersed himself in it with the silent animosity of a traveller stranded in a place he despised.
When they were aloft again, McGuire read a news magazine, played an old policeman’s game of assigning potential criminal backgrounds to the passengers around him, and stared out the window at the neat and orderly landscape passing six miles below.
“He’s a strange critter. No doubt about it. Kind of guy you want to see fitted for a tailor-made straitjacket, know what I mean?”
Palm Springs Police Captain Richard Bonnar walked behind his desk and gestured for his visitors to sit down.
McGuire and Innes seated themselves in matching teak chairs and scanned Bonnar’s office. The walls were finished in panels of darkly stained wood set between strips of polished chrome. Several large tropical plants thrived in expensive Oriental ceramic pots near a window which opened on an enclosed and landscaped inner courtyard.
It was a room more suited, in McGuire’s opinion, to a lawyer or corporate executive than a captain of detectives. But then, this was Palm Springs, McGuire reminded himself. The mayor is a former nightclub entertainer and the streets carry names of has-been movie stars and golfing ex-presidents.
“How about a lemonade?” Bonnar was standing at the teak sideboard holding a stainless-steel carafe in one hand, a crystal tumbler in the other. McGuire and Innes shook their heads silently. Bonnar filled a glass deftly as he spoke. “Anyway, this Crawford character is more likely to wind up in a mental hospital than a jail when you get him back there. Way I see it.”
He sipped the drink and returned to his desk, speaking as he walked. “I’m not tryin’ to influence your handlin’ of the case, you understand. But if we were to keep him here for charges, I expect a mental examination would reveal him unfit for trial.” He sat in his large tangerine-coloured chair. “And from what I’ve read about his problems back east, it all seems to fit the pattern.”
Bonnar looked from one man to the other through gold-framed glasses. He carried himself with the assurance of someone who met every social occasion, high and low, with confidence. Dense, curly salt-and-pepper hair capped a strong face with straight nose, dark eyes, heavy brows, full lips and square chin. It was a face appropriate for either a captain of industry or a man astride a horse on an open range, herding cattle with his back to the wind.
“Tell us what happened the night he was arrested here,” McGuire asked.
Ralph Innes folded his arms across his chest and stared through the glass wall at the landscaped courtyard.
“It’s all in the report.” Bonnar gestured at the file folder on his desk.
“So let’s hear what’s not in the report,” McGuire said. He smiled as he spoke; it was a universal shorthand between police officers. The report tells me the facts, the request said. Now tell me the truth.
Bonnar nodded and raised his amber-coloured embroidered cowboy boots to a corner of his desk, resting them on a sheaf of papers and straightening the crease in his sand-coloured slacks.
“First thing, we thought it was somebody who’d partied too much,” Bonnar began. His voice carried the soft inflection of a Tennessee country boy. Consonants were slurred, “g”s went astray at the ends of words, and each sentence was spoken with a subtle musicality, a melodic rising and falling in pitch.
Bonnar explained that Crawford had been found in Las Palmas, an older enclave favoured by Hollywood stars when they first began fleeing Los Angeles to the desert air of Palm Springs on weekend escapes in the 1930s. He recited the names of former Las Palmas residents. Alan Ladd. Randolph Scott. Greta Garbo. Peter Lawford. Elvis Presley. Howard Hughes. Ronald Reagan. “Nat King Cole, too,” he added. “No prejudice in Las Palmas. Not against skin colour, I mean. Only barrier to living there was money.”
But Las Palmas was yesterday’s address. Although some Hollywood celebrities still resided there, most preferred villas further south in the Coachella Valley communities of Rancho Mirage or Palm Desert. There, in multi-million-dollar homes enclosed by high fences and protected by security gates, they enjoyed the convenience of golf fairways just beyond their patios and the atmosphere of country club gaiety where everyone had status and no one was uninvited.
The most prosperous of all chose home sites atop the foothills of the San Jacinto mountains forming the western boundary of the valley. Through triple-glazed and bronze-tinted picture windows, this most elite strata of Palm Springs society looked down from the mountaintops across the entire Coachella Valley sprawling in the sun.
“People in Las Palmas are concerned about their security, you understand,” Bonnar explained. “Everybody in the valley is. See, once you acquire this kind of affluence, well then, you can afford to spend a wagonload of money protectin’ it.” Bonnar drained his glass of lemonade. Voices passed in the corridor beyond the office, reminding McGuire that he was in a police captain’s office and not discussing investment opportunities with a financial counsellor.
“Most people in Las Palmas, they put up heavy iron gates and fences around their villas.” Bonnar held his empty tumbler to the light and turned it slowly in his hand. “And they all have security systems. Somebody trips the alarm, it rings here and at security service offices all up and down Palm Canyon Drive. So they get themselves two kinds of armed response, public and private.” He frowned at the glass. “My nightmare is that one time we’re liable to have two gangs takin’ pot-shots at each other and they’ll both be good guys.”
“These people over there, in this Las Palmas area, they all celebrities?” It was the first comment Ralph Innes had made since settling in his chair.
Bonnar swivelled in Ralph’s direction. “Not any more. Most of them are folks who finally made enough money in Los Angeles to come out here and join the big boys.” He smiled tightly, the smile of a host greeting unfamiliar guests. “And some movie people who work behind the scenes. Producers, directors, writers, agents. I tell you, some of them have more money than the big-name stars.”
He talks like a public relations man, not like a homicide detective, McGuire reflected. He wondered if the soft Tennessee drawl was genuine or a good ol’ boy affectation, part of a pre-packaged image. “Whose house was Crawford shooting at?” McGuire asked.
“A couple of ’em. There’s a short dead-end street at the end of Vista Chino, it runs right through Las Palmas. This little bitty street is called Via Linda, only has three houses on it. We found him there in the middle of the road with a couple of private security guards sittin’ on him.” Bonnar shrugged and flashed his broadest smile, displaying white and evenly spaced teeth. “That was one time when their good guys beat our good guys.”
One of the home owners on Via Linda, Bonnar explained, had called the security service to report a man screaming obscenities and firing a gun. By the time the first security force arrived, Crawford had emptied his revolver and thrown it through a window into the living room of one of the Via Linda houses.
“When we got him settled here, he went quiet,” Bonnar added. “Wouldn’t say a word to anybody. Not even his lawyer, who filed the usual appeal against extradition. Then, when they lost that one, ol’ Crawford told his lawyer he wanted to go back to Massachusetts. We said we’d drop charges against him here if he’d do just that. Kind of gettin’ him out of our hair and into yours.” Another tight smile. “He bit at that one pretty quick.”
While Bonnar talked, McGuire scanned the contents of Bonnar’s file folder on Crawford, turning pages of arrest reports, citizen complaints, court records and other documents. “Was he drunk?” McGuire asked without looking up.
“No evidence of it,” Bonnar replied. “No drug abuse either. None we could find, anyway. And that kind of surprised me. He was actin’ like some of the people we used to see from further down the valley, come up here full of hell and overdosed on Angel Dust or amphetamines.”
“Why just one security call?” McGuire asked. “He’s in the middle of the street firing his gun all over. Why didn’t more people report it?”
“One family was away. Only the Mexican maid was there. We have no proof, of course, but she’s probably in this country illegally. The last thing she wants is to answer questions from a Palm Springs cop. That’s if she can speak any English at all.”
“How about the other two houses?”
“One is a guy from Los Angeles, ran a business back there, somethin’ to do with health insurance. His name’s in the file, Donald Mercer. Nice fellow. Met him once or twice, social things and all. He alerted his security.”
“The third house?”
“That’s owned by a woman named Vargas. She just moved here last year.” There was a fleeting change in Bonnar’s expression, like a breeze passing over still water. “She’s become prominent on the Palm Springs cultural scene. Quite a woman.”
“Was she home?”
Bonnar nodded. “Said she heard nothin’ until Crawford tossed his gun through her window.”
“Why was he there, on that particular street?” McGuire asked.
“No idea. He won’t talk to us.”
“He just picked this one dead-end street at random?”
“That appears to be the situation.” Bonnar stretched his arms above his head and spoke through a long, lazy yawn. “We found his car a few blocks away. He’d rented it in Las Vegas, day before.”
McGuire stared out at the enclosed courtyard beyond the massive window. “He flies to Las Vegas, rents a car, shows up here and starts firing a thirty-eight at everything in sight.” McGuire spread his hands in front of him. “Why?”
Bonnar laughed and stood, extending his lean frame to its full height. “Won’t tell us, but he might tell you. Let’s go see him.” He led the way out of his office, McGuire following closely behind, Innes several paces to the rear.
McGuire couldn’t imagine a sharper contrast in architecture than the granite mausoleum lines of Boston Police Headquarters and the airy openness of its Palm Springs counterpart. One was cold and vertical, the other warm and horizontal. Where tarnished brass and cracked marble dominated in Boston, open-grain wood and natural fabrics set the tone in Palm Springs.
Beyond the office area, the three men entered a foyer with wide stairs leading down to the basement lock-up area. At the bottom of the stairs, Bonnar led the way into an interrogation room where a large two-way mirror provided a view from an adjoining observation area. A microphone was installed in the centre of a large, round wooden table to record conversations, and the oversized clock on the wall would be included in videotaped scenes as protection against editing.
Bonnar showed McGuire and Innes the coffee machine just outside the door and left to retrieve Crawford from his cell.
“I could handle police work in a place like this,” McGuire said, when he had settled in a chair at the interrogation table.
Ralph Innes grunted, crossed his legs and stared into a far corner.
“Ralph, what’s chewing your ass anyway?” McGuire demanded.
Innes turned his head slowly and looked at McGuire as though he were a stranger. “You didn’t have to come back, Joe,” he said. There was no anger in his voice. Only sadness.
“Well, it’s too late now,” McGuire said with annoyance. “I’m back and that’s that. Relax, damn it. I’m just putting in time. I’m not interested in screwing your career.”
The other man closed his eyes for a moment and let a small smile pull at the corners of his mouth. “It’s not my career I’m worried about,” he said.
And McGuire knew. He had known it from the expression on Ralph’s face that morning at the airport in Boston.
“I didn’t come back for Janet either,” he said. “So get that out of your head. We had something once and now it’s over.”
Innes continued to look at him, the smile fixed. You’re lying, the expression said.
The door behind McGuire opened and two Palm Springs officers entered the room, dressed in the starched khaki uniforms favoured by southern police forces that always reminded McGuire of Boy Scout troops. Each was holding tightly to one of Bunker Crawford’s arms.
Crawford was taller than McGuire had expected, but even so he looked like a shrunken man. His skin hung loosely in folds from his face and he had less hair than in the police photograph. His eyes were dull and avoided those of the others; they moved, unhurried, from object to object, alighting on the microphone, the clock, the table, an empty corner, never connecting with another face. One of Crawford’s hands shook as though it were palsied.
“You guys okay in here?” Bonnar leaned through the open doorway behind Crawford and the two young police officers, still gripping their prisoner by his upper arms.
McGuire nodded. “Take the cuffs off him,” he instructed. When Crawford was free, McGuire motioned him to sit down and nodded to the two officers, who stepped quietly into the corridor.
A small red light beneath the clock glowed, and McGuire knew someone was in the room beyond the two-way mirror, taping the proceedings.
“Bunker, can I get you a coffee?” McGuire offered.
Crawford shook his head and examined his fingernails.
“Are they treating you all right here?”
A slight nod.
“Bunker, we’re from the Boston Police Department,” McGuire said. He spoke gently. Crawford looked pathetic, his mouth hanging slackly open, his face unshaven. “My name is McGuire, and that’s Sergeant Innes behind you. You don’t have to talk to us without your lawyer present, but we would like to ask you a few questions. . . .”
“Not here.” Crawford’s milky eyes met McGuire’s for the first time.
“Why not?” McGuire asked.
Crawford shook his head quickly.
“We have all the necessary papers for your transfer back to Boston,” McGuire said. “They’re being processed now. Your lawyer knows about them. We just want to talk to you about the night you were arrested.”
Another shake of the head. McGuire asked if Crawford wanted his lawyer present. “No,” the man responded. His head slumped forward. His hand began to shake more violently.
“Then you’ll talk to us?”
Crawford’s eyes flew up to meet McGuire’s. “Not here,” he repeated. This time his voice was higher in pitch and sounded strangled.
McGuire stood and walked quickly to the door, an expression of anger on his face. In the corridor he met Bonnar, leaving the observation room.
“What happened to him?” McGuire demanded.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bonnar’s attitude was suddenly distant, almost contemptuous.
“The guy is scared, Bonnar. Somebody’s been intimidating him. It’s written all over his face.”
“That man has not been mistreated in my custody,” he replied in carefully measured tones.
“Who talked to him? Who carried out the interrogations?”
“What the hell . . .” Bonnar turned in a circle as though appealing to someone, but the corridor was empty.
“Who?” McGuire repeated. “You? And who else?”
“Yes, I interrogated him,” Bonnar shot back. “Three times. Twice with Sergeant Lumsden and once with two police constables present. On the two occasions with Sergeant Lumsden, Crawford’s lawyer was right there in the room with him. It’s all in the report, McGuire, if you care to read the damn thing. Dates, times, everything, all signed off.”
“So he was questioned only three times?”
Bonnar began to speak, then turned quickly away.
“What’s up?” McGuire asked.
“There was one other time.” Bonnar walked to the coffee machine, seized a mug emblazoned with the police department’s coat of arms and began to fill it from the carafe.
“Is it in the report?”
Bonnar shook his head and walked back to McGuire, checking the corridor to make certain they were alone. “It’s supposed to be kept confidential,” he said quietly. “Two federal officials were here. Gold eagle badges. Secret Service. Very cool dudes. They said he might have been involved in activities related to national security. They talked to him in there.” Bonnar sipped the coffee and nodded at the entrance to the interrogation room. “Spent maybe an hour with him.”
“Was it taped?”
Bonnar nodded. “They took it with them. Nobody else was present, and they asked that the interrogation not be indicated on records.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know.”
McGuire stared at Bonnar with such intensity that the other man involuntarily took a small step backwards. “You don’t know?” McGuire asked, his voice rising in outrage. “You let two guys walk in here, talk to a prisoner in private and waltz out leaving nothing but footprints on your goddamn carpet?”
“It was all above board,” Bonnar shot back. “Their ID and warrant were authentic. And your own APB said he was wanted for the murder of a federal official. These men were heavyweights, McGuire. There’s a bunch of them around here.” He waved an arm in a sweeping arc. “We’ve got the biggest marine base in the world just over the mountains there at Twentynine Palms. We’ve got missile plants down the road near Riverside and a lot of things happen out in the desert near here that I don’t even want to know about. That means a herd of federal people, and if two Secret Service men show up on official business with paperwork authorizing them to talk to my prisoner, then by God they talk to my prisoner. End of story!”
“Had you met them before?”
“No.”
“Did you record their names and badge numbers?”
“Afraid not.” Bonnar dropped his public relations attitude. “You plan to charge me with official misconduct?”
McGuire ignored the sarcasm. “No,” he sighed. “But I want to interrogate Crawford where he’ll feel comfortable speaking his mind.”
“Choose another office. There are a couple of empty ones down the hall. Close the door and you won’t be bothered. Have him all to yourself, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”
“I’ll do that,” McGuire snapped.
Fifteen minutes later they were settled in a sparsely furnished office with the blinds drawn. Bunker Crawford’s large frame was almost folded in an upholstered chair facing the desk. He sat bent from the waist, his feet pulled under the chair, his arms across his chest, his head lowered, the posture of a man suffering pain and defeat. McGuire leaned against the bare teak desk. Innes stood near the door, his face a mask.
“Feel better in here, Bunker?” McGuire asked.
Crawford shook his head.
“Want to tell us what you’re afraid of?”
Another shake.
“Will you talk to us at all?”
This time a nod.
“But not here.”
Another nod.
“Why?”
Crawford lifted his watery eyes to meet McGuire’s for a moment, then continued upwards to the air vent set in the ceiling.
Footsteps passed in the outer hall. Snippets of conversation crept under the door and through the walls. McGuire held up his hand in an unnecessary gesture for Crawford and Innes to remain silent and walked quietly to the door, motioning Innes to step aside before quickly swinging it open.
A uniformed police officer standing an arm’s length from the door glanced up from his clipboard. He had the pink complexion and pale-blue eyes of a man sensitive to sunlight, and he smiled an orthodontically perfect smile at McGuire, who glared back at him. “Hi there,” the officer said, flipping the top sheet on his clipboard and strolling casually away.
“You really want to take your prisoner out of here?” Bonnar asked. His forehead crinkled in surprise but he was smiling in amusement.
“Damn right,” McGuire responded.
“It’s not necessary.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
Bonnar shook his head in wonder, and returned to his desk. “Your prerogative, Lieutenant,” he said, dropping heavily into his chair. “Although I think it’s a dumb risk. Still, you sign the papers and he’s yours.”
“We’ll take him back to our motel.”
“Where’s that?”
McGuire told him.
“That’s south on Palm Canyon Drive, about two miles from here.” He sneered at McGuire, folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Not much of a place. Most officers who come down here get themselves booked in the Hyatt. They didn’t exactly break the budget for you, did they?”
Ten minutes later Crawford was back in his cell and Bonnar was escorting the two Boston detectives through the public foyer to their rented car. They passed two young drifters waiting sullenly in a corner and an overweight Mexican woman nervously talking to a uniformed police officer with a bored expression who made notes in his wire-bound book. At the counter separating the public area from the inner offices, a young well-dressed man was speaking in what sounded like Spanish to a dark-skinned police officer who kept repeating, “Que? Que?”
“Make a left turn out of the parking lot onto Tahquitz,” Bonnar said when they reached the doorway. “Go down about a mile to Palm Canyon Drive and turn left. Drive about another mile until Palm Canyon makes a sharp left bend and you’ll see your motel straight ahead of you. I’ll have your man ready in an hour. That should give you time to check in, get settled and decide whether you still want him or not. How long will you need him?”
Bonnar stepped aside to permit the well-dressed young man who had been standing at the counter to leave the police station.
McGuire said an hour at the most.
Bonnar pointed his finger at McGuire, jabbing the air as he spoke. “Okay, McGuire,” he warned in a tone that bordered on a threat. “You sign him out and take total responsibility for his well-being. You bring him back here for the night. Then you pick him up again in the morning and you’re out of my hair. Ain’t nobody can say I was sorry to see the backs of you.”
He leaned against the door frame and watched as McGuire and Innes walked down the palm-lined path to their rented car.
They drove several blocks into the afternoon sun before Innes spoke. “This is crap,” he said from the passenger seat, staring out the window at the passing landscape.
“What is?” McGuire pulled the car into the centre lane, ready to turn left onto Palm Canyon Drive, the main business thoroughfare.
“Taking Crawford out of there. What the hell we need that responsibility for?”
“Something is scaring the hell out of him,” McGuire answered, his voice tight. “Whatever it is, we won’t get it with Bonnar around. We’ll take him to the motel, maybe give him a beer and see if he loosens up. Then back in the cell overnight and on the plane in the morning. I’ll stay cuffed to him all the time. What’s the worry?”
“Why not just interrogate him back in Boston?”
“Because something happened here.” McGuire told Innes about the visit from the two Secret Service men. “If they’re hiding anything from us, I want to deal with it here. Not long distance. And not with Bonnar stonewalling us. Let’s get it settled now.”
“Crap,” Innes muttered.
“I don’t like being screwed around with,” McGuire replied. “Never have.”
Innes turned to him, unimpressed. “Not your case, Joe.”
“Wanna bet?”
The motel hadn’t deserved Bonnar’s sneering comment. It was clean and modern, the dark two-storey building, an entire block in length, set well back from the road among thick shrubbery and palm trees. As McGuire wheeled the car into the parking lot, two young children in bathing suits dashed along a pathway clutching towels and plastic toys. Diners were seated at tables near the motel’s restaurant windows overlooking the landscaped grounds leading to Palm Canyon Drive. Birds chattered among flowering bushes flanking the building. Part of a large national chain, the motel boasted all the amenities for vacationing families, including a large swimming pool, sauna, exercise room and playground.
A strange place to bring a murderer, McGuire mused. But then, so is any place. He left Innes to register them at the motel office, and walked quickly around the grounds; his eyes alert for danger signals, ambush points, escape routes, anything that represented risk. Everything seemed normal. The walkways were busy and well lit. There was too much shrubbery and it was too thick, but no location was perfectly safe, perfectly secure. He timed the walk from the car to the building. Fifteen seconds, twenty at the most. On an open pathway in full view of the restaurant.
It would do.
McGuire and Innes were directed to a large and airy room on the second level with two double beds and a sitting area overlooking the pool. Innes stood at the window gazing down at children and their parents splashing in the water or offering their near-naked bodies to the late afternoon sun, while McGuire inspected the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face.
“You want to eat first, or pick him up right away?” McGuire asked when he emerged, a towel at his face.
“Let’s get it over with,” Innes said.
McGuire tossed the towel onto the nearest bed. “Ralph,” he began. But when the other man turned to look at him coldly, McGuire waved the thought away. “Never mind,” he said, pulling a set of handcuffs from his bag and striding for the door.
I’m not after your woman, McGuire had wanted to say. And I’m not trying to run things on my own either. I just want to get the job done the only way I know how. Which, unfortunately, is either with Ollie Schantz, or with nobody.
The documents were waiting when McGuire and Innes returned to the Palm Springs Police Station. An overweight sergeant inspected the ID provided by McGuire and Innes, watched as they signed a form accepting temporary responsibility for Bunker James Crawford and directed them to drive around to the rear of the building.
Within minutes, Bunker Crawford emerged between the same two officers who had escorted him to the interrogation room. McGuire ordered the handcuffs removed, then slipped one end of his cuffs over Crawford’s right wrist and the other over his own left wrist.
“Let’s go have a beer, Bunker,” he said, leading the prisoner towards their rented car. “You drive, Ralph.”
Emerging at the south end of Palm Canyon Drive, they saw the oversized neon sign of the motel glowing in the early dusk. None of the men spoke during the journey. Crawford sat as far from McGuire as the handcuffs would allow and stared out the window, but he was noticeably less tense, relieved to be leaving the police station. Innes drove slowly, like a taxi driver following a boring and familiar route.
At the motel, Innes pulled into the parking lot and opened the car door for McGuire and Crawford. The restaurant was now crowded with diners who barely noticed the three men approaching along the flagstone walk, about to step into the orange pool of light spilling from the motel’s neon sign. In the shade of early evening, none of the diners could see the handcuffs linking the quiet detective and his slightly bewildered prisoner.
The departure of the sun left behind a tropical softness in the dusk air that slowed pulses and perceptions. McGuire recognized it from his months in the Bahamas. There was no need to rush, no need for excess activity. All would unfold in its own time. You learn that in the tropics. McGuire had learned it, and he had almost learned to apply it. The softness of the air was therapeutic and he was thinking of music as he walked stride for stride with his prisoner, Innes a step behind.
Crawford grunted, the first sound he had made since leaving the police station. The man’s knees collapsed and he seemed to be stumbling, saying something as he fell, almost apologizing.
The music in McGuire’s head, harmony and melody, became sharp and slashing, music no longer.
Something flew by McGuire’s ear, catching the light from the neon sign as it passed. A small stone. Children throwing small stones?
There was a wetness on McGuire’s face. Too late, his instincts, riding the softness of the air and the melody in his mind, began to rouse themselves.
A woman seated at the restaurant window was watching them casually as McGuire began to fall, forced by Crawford’s weight. Her dinner partner had just made her laugh. Attractive, McGuire noticed. And slim. Like Janet.
Innes cursed and shouted. Instinct told McGuire to slip his free hand inside his jacket, and for half a heartbeat he searched for a weapon that wasn’t there.
The second shot struck Innes and he shouted again, one arm flailing the air, the other trying to yank his revolver from its holster.
Crawford was still falling against McGuire and McGuire’s hand was still inside his jacket, clawing across his chest for a phantom shoulder holster. The prisoner’s weight shoved McGuire off balance and blocked his view of Innes.
Another shot. McGuire sensed the bullet strike Crawford, felt Crawford’s body jerk against him even as they struck the ground together, chained like links in a bracelet. McGuire squeezed himself against the grass behind Crawford as more bullets struck the prisoner’s body and Innes screamed in pain and fired, again and again, into the dark shrubbery where the sniper had waited. McGuire tried to burrow below the surface of the ground as the fear solidified within him, like plaster setting.
There were more screams, hysterical sobs and cries of panic. But the shooting ceased. No longer did bullets enter the body of Bunker Crawford, McGuire’s shield of flesh and bone.
McGuire lifted his head and saw traffic gliding past on Palm Canyon Drive, saw Ralph Innes rolling on the grass in agony, saw the gaping hole in Crawford’s skull where the first bullet had shattered bone and scalp and brains, hurling them into the soft evening air like stones tossed by young children.