CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Wednesday, April 22, 1964

Nick Hays sat alone in the press room of the Long Beach Police Department.   He was bored, still coming down from his latest trip to Dallas, where he had covered the strange trial of the mobster who killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Nick had always loved his job as the night cop house reporter for the Long Beach Post. Now it seemed like a comedown from clamoring crowds and cameras, down to dirty linoleum floors and midnight silence.

To stay awake, he pulled a hard-boiled crime novel, “Stop This Man,” from his battered desk’s top drawer, tipped back his chair and hooked his heels over his typewriter. He was deep into the tale of a three-time loser trying to steal a radioactive bar of gold when he heard the familiar voices of two detectives, Theo Knight and Frank Ragen, echoing down the long hallway. Knight and Ragen were exchanging the usual insults with another officer.

“Shit,” Nick thought. They usually wanted to play cards and he just wanted to call the news desk, end his shift and go home. Working the night shift meant constant sleep deprivation. 

Nick ignored Knight when he entered the press room. Without lifting his head from his novel, he watched Knight pull his .38 revolver from its holster and point it out into the hall toward Ragen. Nick was quietly pissed but not surprised. He’d seen many such antics over the last five years, bored cops engaging in fake gunplay.  He turned another page.. From the corner of his eye, he watched as Knight holstered his gun, shed his raincoat and prepared to sit down at a vacant desk.

Ragen burst through the doorway waving his .38. The crack of a gunshot reverberated through the small room.

Nick dropped his book and slumped in his chair.

He felt someone pull him toward the floor. From somewhere far away, he heard Knight scream: “Get an ambulance.” He knew it wouldn’t matter.  He’d been shot through the heart.