Shattered

record.”
        Hoval hunched over his big desk, dwarfing it, the receiver clenched tightly in one hand, his other hand fisted on the blotter. His knuckles were white and sharp. “No record?”
        “I told you it might be that way,” the technician said, almost as if he enjoyed Hoval's disappointment. “I think this looks more like a nut case with every passing minute.”
        “It's political,” Hoval insisted, his fist opening and closing again and again. “Organized cop killing.”
        “I don't agree.”
        “You got proof otherwise,"' Hoval asked angrily.
        “No,” the technician admitted. “We're still going over the car, but it looks hopeless. We've taken paint samples from every nick and scrape. But who knows if one of them was made by the killer's vehicle? And if one of them was-which one?”
        “You sweep out the cruiser?” Hoval asked.
        “Of course,” the technician said. “We found a few hairs, pubic and otherwise. Nail clippings. Various kinds of mud. Blades of grass. Bits of food. Most of it had no connection with the killer. And even if some of it does-the hair, a couple of torn threads we picked off the door catch-we can't do much with it until we have a suspect to apply it to.”
        “The case won't be solved with lab work,” Hoval agreed.
        “What other leads you have?”
        “We're reconstructing Pulham's shift,” Hoval said. “Starting with the moment he took the squad car out of the garage.”
        “Anything?
        “There are lots of minutes to account for, lots of people to talk with,” Hoval said. “But we'll come up with something.”
        “A nut,” the technician said.
        “You're all wrong about that.” Hoval hung up.
        Twenty years ago Ernie Hoval had become a cop because it was a profession and not just a job; it was work that brought a man a measure of honor and respect. It was hard work, the hours long, the pay only adequate, but it gave you the opportunity to contribute something to your community. The fringe benefits of police work - the gratitude of your neighbors and the respect of your own children-were more important than the salary. At least, that had been true in the past…
        These days, Hoval thought, a cop was nothing more than a target. Everyone was after the police. Blacks, liberals, spics, peaceniks, women's liberationists-all the lunatic fringe reveled in making fools of the police. These days a cop was looked upon, at best, as a buffoon. At worst, he was called a fascist, and he was marked for death by these revolutionary groups that no one but other cops seemed to give a damn about…
        It had all started in 1963, with Kennedy and Dallas. And it had gotten much, much worse through the war. Hoval knew that, although he could not understand why the assassinations and the war had so fundamentally changed so many people. There were other political murders in America 's history, all without profound effect on the nation. And there had been other wars which had, if anything, strengthened our moral fiber. This war had had the opposite effect. He could not say why-except to point out that the communists and other revolutionary forces had long been looking for excuses to act-but he knew it to be true.
        He thought about Pulham, latest victim of these changes, and he fisted both big hands. It was political. Sooner or later they would get the bastards.

----

    WEDNESDAY, 7:00 A.M.- THURSDAY, 7:00 A.M.
        

    Seven
        
        The morning held the threat of rain. Gently undulating fields of tender new wheat shoots touched the far horizons, a green carpet under the low gray ceiling of fast-moving clouds. Here and there on the maddeningly level land, enormous concrete grain elevators thrust up like gigantic lightning rods to test the mettle of the pending storm.
        Colin liked it. He kept pointing to the grain elevators and to the occasional skeletal oil derricks which stood like prison watchtowers in the distance. “It's great, isn't it?”
        “This land's every bit as flat as that back in Indiana and Missouri,” Doyle said.
        “But there's history here.” Today the boy was wearing a red-and-black Frankenstein T-shirt. It had pulled up out of his corduroy trousers, but he paid it no attention now.
        “History?” Doyle asked.
        “Haven't you ever heard of the Old Chisholm Trail? Or the Santa Fe Trail? All the famous Old West towns are