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Murder at Fran’s Market
Six Years Later
7:30 P.M., Friday, September 5, 1980
Fresno, California
It was almost closing time at the small country store. The last customers had either left or were leaving with what they needed for another day. Fran’s Market was a convenience store for people who wanted life’s necessities and were willing to do without twelve choices for the same product, accompanied by background music. For that, they needed to make the twenty-minute drive into Fresno, the city whose lights were beginning to glow in the distance.
The sun was dropping in the sky, drawing out long shadows across the parking lot. It was after 7:30 in the evening. The dusty, gray-black asphalt in front of Fran’s Market would hold the heat of the day long past the last glimpse of the sun. But at that moment it was still absorbing heat within its graying blackness, emitting small, radiant waves that rippled the air if you looked out toward the road that ran in front of the store.
The dust from the surrounding farmland and from the passage of cars going to and from Sequoia National Park settled on everything in the last days of summer, coating the parking lot, the store, and the nearby road with the thick grime that would stick until the first rains. The rains would not come for at least another month. Any drops of early moisture would only dimple the dust and leave muddy smears baking in the last vestiges of valley heat.
In the parking lot, a thickly muscled man sat in an aging car and pulled a bandanna around his head. During the few days since he had left dimly lit rooms, his fair complexion, unadapted to prolonged exposure to the sun, had quickly taken on a burned ruddy hue. He rubbed the rough stubble on his face, smoothing the heavy mustache that hung over the edges of his mouth, and felt the thin slick of perspiration and body oil. He looked out the car window toward the store. He had parked on the far side of the parking lot, away from the front of the market. His eyes flickered for just a moment on the radiating waves of heat and the brown hills just visible in the distance. It had been a long time since he had been able to look straight out at land that wasn’t surrounded by high walls and concertina wire, and he still felt uncomfortable in open space. It was a feeling experienced by most men who had spent long periods in confinement and then walked out into the world. In fact, it had been little more than a week since he walked out the gate of Folsom Prison and took the bus to Fresno.
He looked over at the woman seated in the rear seat of the burgundy 1962 Mercury Comet. The car ran rough but it was all he had been able to get. The passenger side bucket seat was missing. The woman sitting in the car with him was little more than a stranger, but he had already slept with her. He knew her body better than he knew her. It had been years since he had any woman and she had been willing, more than willing. And now she was with him. It was the way of things as he knew them.
He slid his hand over to the sawed-off shotgun lying on the floorboard where the passenger seat would have been before it had given way to time and neglect. He pushed the weapon into his pants, the rough end of the sawed barrel catching at his clothing. With the cut-down stock, it was almost like a large pistol, but much more deadly. His windbreaker would conceal it as long as he held it with the inside of his arm. The woman also wore a bandanna. She held a small silver pistol nervously in her lap. He nodded at her. “Put the gun in your pocket. Just do what I do, babe. Like we talked about.”
He could tell she was highly agitated by the way her hands were shaking and by how she kept rubbing and scratching at her face. The meth she had taken to calm herself down had only gotten her more worked up, but at least she was still with him. He opened the car door, got out, and waited for the woman to follow him.
They waited until the store appeared to be ready to close. Through the window he could see that some of the lights at different counters had been turned off. Paper signs, advertising prices for sale items, concealed parts of the store interior. That was good. The beer signs were beginning to glow in the lengthening shadows of dusk. He could see people moving around, but he had seen them the night before and he knew they were only store employees, not shoppers. Two of them had helped him when he and the woman had gone in to case the store.
The man paused, adjusted the sawed-off, and glanced around the almost empty parking lot. Good, he thought; it was now nearly empty, with only one car parked in front. The few other cars were over on the far side of the lot, most likely belonging to employees. He would weigh his options when he got inside. He patted his windbreaker, fondling the hard, cylindrical shotgun shell casings in the pocket. There were enough for what he had to do, and for what he might have to do.
The woman came around the car and looked at him. He had a moment’s reflection, not about whether it was right to have brought her, but about whether she would hold up. He hadn’t told her everything that would likely happen. She would find out soon enough. She touched the hard muscles of his arm. He could already feel the tautness of his prison muscles starting to soften. Two weeks ago, all he had to do was lift weights and wait. That and talk to the old man about the market, the safe, and how it would go down. He realized that he hadn’t lifted any weights since he walked out of those steel doors. He pushed that thought aside and grabbed the woman’s arm. “Let’s go.”
He treaded slowly across the hot asphalt, his footsteps picking out the ground like a feral animal; it was the walk of a man used to being around others who would prey on any weakness, and he had learned to show none. With each step he could feel the heat through the thin, rubber soles of his shoes. His senses were heightened; the clarity of the scene made an impression on him: the vividness of the colors, his sense of smell, and the vibrancy of his touch. It was like being hyper alive. He could feel the adrenalin course through him and the rush of a growing sense of power. It had been a long time since he had felt any real power, but now it began to take control; it calmed him and sharpened his senses. In his mind, it was a slow walk, but in reality he was moving more quickly with each step, leaving the woman to hurry behind him. He paused at the door of the store. They would enter together. They needed to appear to be just a shopping couple to those in the store. He opened the glass door and was greeted by a burst of cool air crashing against the outside heat, the bright fluorescent light glowing white on the rows of shelves.
Joe Rios was working his way down the aisles, moving the big dust mop from side to side to pick up the detritus of the day’s business. Ray Schletewitz, the owner, and his wife, Fran, had gone home earlier. Doug White, an eighteen-year old junior college student, was working in the back and “Phina,” Josephine Rocha, a senior in high school, was working near the front counter. Joe wanted to get home, but he had to clean up and then help Bryon, the owner’s son, lock up. When the man and woman walked in, Joe looked up. They were both wearing windbreakers and bandannas, but that fact wasn’t what caught his attention. He had seen them the night before. He hadn’t forgotten the man’s face; it still gave him shivers, but he shrugged it off. When Joe first saw him he noticed the man’s arms, first with envy, and then with a sharp coldness in his stomach which he couldn’t understand. The corded veins and the narrow waist were those of a man who had spent a lot of time pumping iron, a man who held his body like sculptured intimidation. On this night, Joe realized something else—he was thinking that the man looked like he had been in prison or, at least, what Joe thought somebody would look like if he had been in prison, although maybe his reaction was a result of the rough tattoos he had spotted on the man the previous night. The woman was shorter than the man, dark-haired, with an almost pretty face, but one that was hard-edged, like she had seen the underside of life. Her windbreaker hid the slightly full-figure that he remembered from the previous evening. He had felt relief when the couple left the night before and the store had been locked up, but now they were back. Joe looked over his shoulder toward Bryon, who was distracted, performing his closing chores.
The woman looked at Joe. “You got chuck steak? You know, for shish-ka-bob? We want a roast so we can make that.” Rios looked at her blankly. He was no expert, but shish-ka-bob was usually made with lamb. Maybe they just wanted to make some kind of skewered beef,