A 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 "crime of the decade." Had he? Really? Would concrete evidence support everyone's assumptions? He had to be sure