I didn’t remember circling the paragraph four years before and wondered why I had—by the time the follow-up had been published I was off the case. I guessed that at the time I remained interested, whether on or off it, and was curious as to whether the reporter’s source had given her accurate information or was simply hoping the robbers would read the story and panic over the possibility of the cash being traceable. Maybe it would make them hold on to it longer and increase the chance of a full recovery.

Wishful thinking. It didn’t matter now. I folded the clips and put them aside. I thought about the trailer I was in that day when it began. The newspaper stories were just a blueprint, as distant as an aerial view. Like trying to figure out Vietnam in 1967 by watching Walter Cronkite at night. The stories carried none of the confusion, the smell of blood and fear, the searing charge of adrenaline dumping into the pipes like paratroopers going down the ramp of a C-130 over hostile territory, “Go! Go! Go!”

The trailer was parked on Selma. I was talking to Haus, the director, about Angella Benton. I was searching for anything to grab on to. I was obsessed with her hands, and suddenly in that trailer I thought maybe the hands had been part of the staging of the crime scene. Staged by a director. I was pressing Haus, pushing him, wanting to know his whereabouts on the night in question. And then there was a knock and the door opened and everything changed.

“Wolfgang,” a man in a baseball cap said. “The armored truck’s here with the money.”

I looked at Haus.

“What money?”

And then I knew, instinctively, what was about to happen.

I look back at the memory now and see everything in slow motion. I see all the moves, all the details. I came out of the director’s trailer to see the red armored truck in the middle of the street two houses down. The back door was open and a man in uniform inside was handing money satchels to two men on the ground. Two men in suits, one much older than the other, stood nearby watching.

As the money carriers turned toward the house, the side door of a van parked across the street slid open and three armed men in ski masks emerged. Through the open door of the van I saw a fourth behind the wheel. My hand went inside my coat to the gun on my hip but I held it there. The situation was too volatile. Too many people around and in the possible crossfire. I let things go.

The robbers came up behind the money carriers, surprised them and took the satchels without a shot. Then, as they backed into the street toward the van, the inexplicable happened. The cover man not carrying a satchel stopped, spread his stance and leveled his weapon in a two-handed grip. I didn’t get it. What had he seen? Where was the threat? Who had made a move? The gunman opened fire and the older man in the suit, his hands raised and no threat, went down backwards on the street.