“What Happened in Craig” The lack of an ID at the Hill Bar bothered the young Jerry Mackie. His feeling that he’d just seen their skiffman suspect was not — could not be — extinguished. What next? That was up to Capt. Kolivosky.
“Like Bruce Anderson before him, Capt. Kolivosky paused at the end of the partition in the Hill Bar. And like Bruce Anderson, he felt everyone in the room turn their attention toward him. ‘Which guy were you referring to?’ he asked Mackie.
“Mackie looked through the bar and noticed that the guy had moved from the middle of the bar to a spot closer to the front windows. He had moved to a spot, in fact, which gave him a better view of downtown Craig. Mackie gestured toward the twentyish-looking man sitting by himself at the bar — the one with the dirty-blonde hair…
“’The guy’ kept looking back at the troopers, just as he had when Mackie entered the bar the first time. And, like before, everyone else quickly returned to their drinks and conversations. ‘Mackie was right,’ Kolivosky thought. ‘There’s something about this guy.’ To Capt. Kolivosky’s way of thinking, he deserved more attention. The Captain walked into the bar and introduced himself, then asked the young man to step outside.
“’I need to see some identification,’ Kolivosky said as they stood on the gravel path outside the bar.”
Excerpt from “What Happened in Craig,” by Leland E. Hale (copyright 2018)
View from Hill Bar (JT Brown’s @ left center. Note the straight-on street view of downtown Craig; courtesy Beverly Sheakley, 2014)
Downtown Craig in the ’80’s (street view; JT Brown’s right foreground)
Thirty-plus years later, Jerry Mackie remembers that moment as if it were yesterday. What struck him then was the strategic shift by their “person of interest.” To Mackie’s thinking, the guy with the dirty blonde hair had moved to a spot in the Hill Bar that allowed him to keep an eye on the cops. It wasn’t a visual stretch from his perch to, say, JT Brown’s store. From there, he could see the troopers gather to consider their next move, could see them assemble the Casino crew in preparation for their walkthrough in the Hill Bar.
Mackie’s mind sprints to the next thought: when the Casino crew headed toward the Hill Bar, the dirty-blonde surfer dude could see them coming. And he could move to a spot that put him out of the Casino crew’s line-of-sight. The Casino crew hadn’t seen him, Mackie surmises, because he had moved to where they couldn’t see him or, at the very least, didn’t notice him.
Copyright Leland E. Hale (2018). All rights reserved.
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