When a shotgun is fired, the ejected buckshot spreads in an inverted-cone shape from the barrel. The farther away the barrel is from the target, the wider the spread of the pellets. At almost point blank range, there is a very limited spread pattern, but at three or four feet, there is a noticeable spread. Assuming he has the weapon or knows what weapon was used and the kind of ammo, a forensic expert will look at the spread pattern and be able to determine with fair accuracy how far the shooter was from the victim when he fired. The two kids on the floor showed almost no spread. The shooter was probably no more than a foot or two away, and he was likely three or four feet from the kid in the bathroom. For Bryon, well, that was something that we would have to evaluate later. He had fired at Bryon, but he had aimed high. Whatever the precise distance, this guy was so close that he didn’t have to be careful with his aim.
The surviving witness said the gunman was a man, but it had never occurred to us that the shooter wasn’t a man. Maybe it isn’t politically correct, but there are distinct differences in the way women kill and the way men kill. First, women aren’t usually as violent, at least not as violent in the same way as men are. It is pretty unusual to see premeditated violence from a woman. Oh, a woman will kill, but when they do it they usually are really pissed. I mean, a woman will unload a gun if she’s going to shoot you. She’ll keep firing until she hears the click. A man will usually just shoot you. Another thing, a woman is unlikely to kill kids this way. She might kill her own kids, but then she will usually try to kill herself, or else she’s plain crazy. No, this was a guy. Some things you just know.
Bill kept looking around. “No shells.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Kenny, has anybody found any shells?”
Kenny shook his head. “Nope, haven’t seen any. Of course, they could be under the shelves or somewhere around here. But I don’t think there are any.”
That meant one of two things. Either the shooter used a single-shot shotgun and removed the empty shells each time he fired, or he picked up the ejected shells. When you fire a single-shot shotgun, you need to open the shotgun at the breech, remove the expended shell casing, put in a fresh shell, and then close the breech. Most people who fire once will then turn and run. They don’t stand there slowly reloading and placing the empty casing in their pocket. If the shotgun carried multiple shells and they ejected as rounds were fired, the alternative was that the shooter had picked up the ejected shells, which meant he had the presence of mind to pick up a casing, which would have extractor marks on it from the ejection mechanism or a firing pin impression. Either way, this guy was cold-blooded. But people don’t just stand still and let somebody shoot them. Almost always they’ll fight or they’ll try to run. It’s instinctual. But these kids didn’t run. That meant that most likely there was more than one person involved. It also meant that the second person had a gun on them, too. These kids didn’t move. They knew they had no chance. The boy in the bathroom had been conscious enough to tell us a woman was also involved, but if it was the woman in the bathroom, then the shooter left her behind, and no gun had been found on her. Her being in the bathroom, covered with blood, didn’t fit either. It was too soon to tell for sure who she was, but right now I had stopped giving her the benefit of the doubt. None of it made any sense, except for one thing that was clear: This wasn’t just a robbery.
Bill came to the same conclusion almost at the same time as I did. Probably, he came to it before I did. “The woman in the bathroom, the one they have over at the hospital. The first officer on scene finds her in the bathroom where the Rios boy was. She’s covered with blood and screaming hysterically, so she was in there when it happened and she wasn’t shot.” Bill looked over at me, his eyes narrowing. “She’s the second one or at least one of them.”
The lack of shells on the floor and the fact that there were no bloody footprints where the shooter would have walked to pick up the expended shells pretty much told the story. We could look for shells on the floor, and we would look, but we weren’t going to find any. This guy had used a single-shot shotgun. He had methodically pointed the shotgun at each of the kids, pulled the trigger, and then broke the shotgun open, removed the expended shell, put it into his pocket, and reloaded. All the while, a second and maybe a third person held a gun on the remaining kids while the shooter performed his role as executioner. If Rios, the kid who got away, was coherent enough to give us a straight story, then the second person was a woman and we probably already had her under guard. But we hadn’t found a gun on her. If she had wielded a gun, where was it? And, if the shooter took the gun, why did he leave her behind?
It didn’t fit together. Not only were these just kids, and there was no point in shooting them, but most robbers don’t have the stomach for this kind of bloodshed. This was intentional. This had been contemplated before the killer even walked in the door.
Like I said, I had been to Fran’s Market before. I had been in that back room before. I had also talked to Ray and Fran before and I had talked to Bryon before, and now he was lying on that worn floor and his parents were looking to me for answers. Ray and Fran had once stepped up before as citizens. They cooperated with me and law enforcement to help bring a murderer down. They testified when another parent’s child was a victim and now it was their child who was a victim.
Nobody knew that earlier case better than me; I had been the prosecutor, three years away from the job I held now. Now, these same people were depending on me to do something—to make it as much right as something like that could be made right. The memories of that earlier case surrounded me as Bill and I walked around the store. Yes, we both had been to Fran’s Market before and, yes, we both had made promises to Ray and Fran—and to Bryon, their only son, not to worry, we would take care of them. That case, those promises, were now reflected in the faces of Ray and Fran. I could see them still standing in the corner of the parking lot, surrounded by friends, but I felt like they were looking right through me.
They were calling in the promises I had made in that other case when they had trusted me. And they had every right to do so. I couldn’t help thinking back, and I could tell from his silence that Bill was doing the same thing.
3
A Cop’s Worst Nightmare
September 5, 1980
10:00 P.M.
Fresno, California
While the Identification Bureau techs worked inside the storeroom, Bill and I stood outside the door. Kenny left to talk to the boy who had been shot. It was after 11:00 P.M. by the time Kenny got to Valley Medical Center to talk to Rios. The kid was in horrible pain. They were prepping him for surgery but he could still talk. A brave kid, he was talking through a lot of agony, and the condition of his shattered arm had to terrify him. I’m not sure he realized yet how lucky he was to have survived, considering the wound he had suffered.
Ross Kelly had gone with Kenny to talk to the boy. It hadn’t taken Rios long to tell them enough to conclude that the woman who had been found in the store was with the shooter. Now she was in a different part of the same hospital. As Ross listened to the kid, he realized that if the woman in the bathroom had been the one who held the gun, then most likely the gun must still be in the store. “The woman in the bathroom, Connie Barbo, there’s a connection all right.” Kenny’s voice came over the radio confirming Bill’s and my own suspicions. “Ross said her purse was still in the bathroom when our boys found her. He’s guessing that if she was with the shooter, then maybe the gun is still there, probably in the toilet tank. I think we should check it ASAP.”
Over time, a good detective, just like a good street cop, develops instincts, a sort of sixth sense, although sometimes they can’t tell you how they knew someone was carrying a gun or why something didn’t seem right. Kenny immediately got on the radio to the I Bureau techs still processing the scene. The techs were back in the store bathroom within minutes. Sure enough, there was a loaded .38 caliber revolver in the water tank behind the toilet.
Bill and I were still at the scene when they pulled out the gun from the toilet tank. So