No Regrets

they found Sam hanging from a pipe on the ceiling of their cell. Using his height and agility, he had twisted and knotted his bunk sheets, cinched a loop around his neck, and thrown the material over the top of the pipe.
    Medic One paramedics could not bring him back any more than they had been able to bring back his victim, William Heggie, only three weeks earlier.
    There may well have been more involved than SamJesse’s horror at being locked up. He had once asked the psychic he considered his mentor, “Is it OK if you kill somebody? What happens to you spiritually? Is there a debt against you?” and the answer had been, “Only if you let it be a debt.”
    Sam Jesse may have figured that he owed a debt.
    None of it worked out the way he planned. He believed in survival of the fittest, and it must have been a terrible realization for him to find that he was not among the most fit. He had said the world would end in a very short time.
    For Sam Jesse, it did.

A Very Bad Christmas
    Sometimes I wonder why I have written about so many homicide cases that either happen during the Christmas holidays or come to the end stage of a trial just when the streets outside the courthouse are lined with brightly colored holiday lights. Inadvertently, I happened to select cases for this collection that had Christmas connections, even though I chose them for entirely different reasons and didn’t even notice the season. Maybe there are more homicides during the holidays; someday I’ll check that out. Emotions tend to run too high at Christmas. I think some of us use the holiday as a watershed point to come to decisions: “If my marriage doesn’t get any better by Christmas, I’m going to file for divorce,” or “I just have to have a job by Christmas or I’ll give up.”
    Too often, we expect to relive the same wonderful Christmases we had as children, or, conversely, the memories of a miserable childhood may come rushing back to overwhelm us. There are myriad “triggers” that force us to face recollections of dark things we have successfully buried for years: songs and special food, weather and fragrances, relatives we never see except on holidays (and sometimes wish we didn’t have to), expectations and disappointments. They can all stack up to place an overwhelming burden on our psyches, and we may tend tobelieve we are the only ones who feel sadness when we should be glorying in joy and celebration.
    Maybe it’s not even that complicated. It might be that we simply remember violent tragedies that happen on Christmas because they don’t fit into the holiday spirit, and the glaring headlines become ghastly counterpoints to stories about human kindness, joyous reunions, and happy times.
    The case that follows is one of the most “unholiday” stories I ever came across, as gruesome as a Grimm’s fairy tale. I doubt that anyone who lived near Portland, Oregon, the year it happened will ever forget it either.

 
    Sauvie Island, the largest island in the mighty Columbia River, appears to drift in the river about ten miles west-northwest of Portland, Oregon. Its northern tip juts into Columbia County, but most of it lies within Multnomah County. The large part of Sauvie Island is either farmland or devoted to wildlife refuge, and only about a thousand people live there year-round. There are riverside beaches there, some for family picnics and even some that are “clothing optional.” The island also has miles and miles of flat road for bicyclists. Until a bridge was built in 1950, a small ferry served Sauvie, and even today it is an out-of-the-way spot, virtually unknown to anyone but Oregon residents. In the summer, Sauvie Island is alive with activity, but the shorter days of winter and relentless rain shutter it down as the holidays approach.
    Two days before Christmas, the island was bleak and cold, its brown beach grass and leafless trees grating and rattling in the winter wind. Most people stayed inside by their fireplaces, or, if they had to go out, hurried about their errands with their heads bent against the stormy weather.
    It was the job of two tugboat operators for the State Log Patrol to venture out on the Columbia River and search for logs and driftwood that might foul the engines of boats. That day, as they edged their craft along the east boundaryof the island, one of them suddenly pointed toward the shoreline and cried out, “Oh, my God! Look! Look over there!”
    What looked like a large doll or