Run of Luck

In the predawn darkness of April 1,traffic was sparse on the four-lane US-89, known locally as the Mountain Road on Davis County's east side. For the clerk of an isolated all-night service station and convenience store, the graveyard shift had been long and tedious. But a lone male shopper, wearing a light-colored hoodie, who seemed to be taking an unusual amount of time selecting merchandise, made him more than a little uneasy. Suddenly the young, dark-complexioned customer thrust a gun in the clerk's face and demanded all the cash. It was the would-be bandit's first robbery attempt. Before he could escape with the money, other customers were entering. One customer--an unarmed reserve officer--yelled at him. The clerk produced a weapon. After an exchange of gunfire, the clerk and three customers lay wounded, dead or dying. Close to four miles to the south, a young deputy sheriff, Kory Hovac, sitting drowsily in his car--facing the highway--was alerted by the sheriff's dispatcher and given a vague description of the shooter. Adrenalin, now coursing through his system, fully alerted him. As he drove quickly forward, the beam of his bright headlights illuminated a face in the window of a passing car that caught his attention. After a furious short chase ending in a crash into a freeway bridge pillar, the occupants were captured. Kory had a hard time believing that he, a deputy with less than two years of experience, had actually caught the shooter and his partner in Utah's "e;crime of the decade."e; Had he? Really? Would concrete evidence support everyone's assumptions? He had to be sure