The Triggerman Dance

A tragedy creates waves, and waves can carry people away. For those involved, everything changed with those shots, at approxmately 4:45 p.m. on Wednesday, March 22. Rebecca Harris, age 24, a bright, kind-hearted and lovely young woman in the prime of her young adulthood, died almost instantly. Her fiance, Joshua Weinstein of the Orange County, California office of the Federal; Bureau of Investigation, was swept by one wave into a journey of hatred so deep that, according to those who know him, he has yet to fully return. Rebecca's father was carried away by another wave, straight to heart failure three weeks later. The young man in the long leather coat and fedora, a talented if underproductive staff writer for the Journal named John Menden, rode yet another wave outward from Rebecca. He quit his job and floated around the South Pacific for three months until both his money and liver were close to giving out, then returned to move into a batten old trailer way out in the bleak Southern California desert. The security guard with the radio was fired. In fact, his entire company was released from its contract with the Journal—financial waves for financial concerns. The photographer who snapped the now famous picture of Rebecca won an award, then several more. The only living things proximate to the event that remained truly unrippled were the eucalyptus tree and the poppies in the planter near where Rebecca, heart-shot and staggering, then heart-shot again, fell and died in the pouring rain.

Six months came and went.

During this time, the lead agency responsible for the case was the FBI, taking its powers under recent Federal Hate Crimes provisions. They worked in concert with the police and sheriffs and, intermittently, with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Joshua Weinstein took all his vacation time, then an unpaid leave of absence for nearly half a year. He said he was going to Israel, and vanished with hardly a good-bye for anyone.

Five months later he was back, his pallor gone to a ruddy tan, but his eyes still lugubrious and not a little haunted. His Bureau-mate, the dark-haired and strong bodied Sharon Dumars, noted that Joshua spent a lot of his extra time with the Rebecca Harris files before him—a case from which his official participation was forbidden by Bureau policy. But since Joshua spent twelve-hour days on the job, he could easily take an hour here, a few hours there, to venture out into this sacred and unsanctioned ground. Dumars saw that Joshua's own private file—which he carefully locked away each night before he left—was growing in thickness.

Driven by curiosity, she glanced once at his time card to find that Joshua had officially charged no hours at all to his private investigation. The idea crossed her mind that she might be the only one who even knew about it. She certainly wasn't the only one who knew about his long telephone calls, since all Bureau calls were recorded and saved for an unrevealed period of time.

All she knew for sure was that he talked almost inaudibly during certain calls (the longer ones), with his thin shoulder blades hunched up like a vulture's wings, his neck down and his back to her. He would then hang up and swivel his chair around to look at her with a kind of fierce nonchalance before going back to his work. For all Sharon Dumars knew, Josh could have been talking to his mother back in Brooklyn.

Then, on a blazing September morning six months after the death of his betrothed, Joshua Weinstein rang off from one of his near silent telephone conversations, stared blankly for a moment at Dumars, then stood, locked his files and put on his suit coat.

"Come with me," he said.

Following Joshua's lead, Dumars left the building with him failing to sign out or say a word to anyone. Never in her three years with the Bureau had she done anything so bold and so flagrantly against procedure.

CHAPTER 2

Sharon Dumars drove her white Bureau Ford because Weinstein asked her to. They headed in silence out toward Riverside on the 91, then picked up Interstate 15 south to Temecula, then branched southeast on State 79. The highway ran along a green valley rimmed with estates on the left, oaks and pastures to the right, fruit stands and white fences. The stables of a well known Arabian horse ranch passed by on the right.

"Where are we going, Josh?"

"We are going by context."

"What case do I bill this context to?"

"Personal Time."

"There's no case called Personal Time, last I checked."

"Just pay attention, and later, I'll ask you what you think."