Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

but the woman and the small children didn’t.
    And how they must have longed to have some stability and to be able to count on where they would be the next year—or even the next month. The pieces of their world continually blew away in the winds of change like so many particles of milkweed or dandelion fluff. Nothing was permanent and they could never know what tomorrow might bring.
    They journeyed toward the Pacific Ocean from their Midwestern roots. In an odd kind of way, the woman named Doris Mae was as defenseless as the pioneer wives who followed their men west in covered wagons 150 years earlier. Some will argue that she made immoral choices, and she did.
    Others will understand that she probably had no one to turn to.

The brothers light grew up in Illinois and they lived by their wits; sometimes they lucked out, but as often as not, they ended up behind bars. Steadily building dubious reputations that made their names well known to lawmen all over the state, what they lacked in brains, they made up for in persistence. George Allen Light was six years older than Larry Max Light and he had a head start in crime, but Larry began young and soon caught up with George. Indeed, some said he surpassed him. Their crimes were the sort that take only modest ingenuity: car theft, strong-arm robbery, assault, burglary. Their faces became familiar behind the walls of the state pens at Joliet and Pontiac and Menard.
    If they were unpopular with police agencies, they were sought out as gang members in the street subculture where aggressive behavior was a badge of honor. In 1959, when he was only nineteen, Larry Light was “rushed” by the gangs as assiduously as any prom queen at a sorority tea.
    He chose one gang and, as a sort of initiation, was sent to “call on” the leaders of the gang he had turned down. The social call soon disintegrated into a brawl. Larry punched out the rival gang leader, but he spun around when someone leapt on his back spitting and scratching. He couldn’t see who it was, so he blindly swung his arm behind him. His fingers activated his switchblade knife, and he stabbed his attacker.
    The grip on his back loosened and the soft moan of a female shocked the tangle of thugs who were still fighting. Larry Light had just fatally stabbed the gang leader’s “old lady.” While the gang members tried to stanch the dying girl’s bleeding, Larry slipped away and ran to the first hiding place he could think of.
    As he hid out, he pondered his problem, which was twofold: He had already seen enough of the inside of reform school and prison walls to last him a lifetime, and he didn’t want to go back. More than that, he knew he was a dead man if the avenging mourners of his victim found him. He wasn’t even twenty yet, and this wasn’t exactly how he’d planned his future.
    Larry’s chances for survival weren’t very good to begin with, and the odds dropped to zero when his brother, George, twenty-five, was questioned by detectives. George was pretty uptight whenever policemen approached him. He’d been into so much heavy stuff that he was afraid he was about to receive what convicts and cops called “the Big Bitch.” In most states, after conviction on three felony charges, repeat offenders could be sent to prison for life as habitual criminals.
    George’s family loyalty was never all that trustworthy before Larry killed the raven-haired young woman, and now he sang like a bird when he was asked who stabbed the gang leader’s girlfriend. In return for his fingering Larry, George benefited from some plea bargaining that would keep him out of prison—at least for the moment.
    George went free, while Larry drew a thirty-five-year sentence for murder and was bused off to Joliet Prison. He was furious over George’s betrayal, and he had plenty of time to think about it as he sat in his cell. His brother had snitched on him to save his own skin. During the endless dark nights at Joliet, Larry made certain promises to himself. It might take a long time, but he vowed that George was going to get what was coming to him for his transgressions. All prisoners detest snitches, and snitching on a man’s own brother broke almost every rule of prison ethics.
     
    George Light’s face was as battered as any prizefighter’s, the results of his propensity to use his fists, especially when he’d been drinking. He was certainly not the answer to an average maiden’s prayer, but fourteen-year-old