People did not call him Baldy because he had no hair. He shaved his head himself with cheap clippers, leaving uneven patches and bare spots. The nickname came more from the blank, dull look on his face, as if somebody had scooped out whatever good sense he once had. The four of them spent their days in a garage inherited from the Sinton brothers’ father.
There they drank cheap liquor, played cards, and sometimes fixed stolen car stereos to resell. They almost never had money, so they made do with petty extortion—shaking down schoolkids for lunch money and “borrowing” cash from vendors at the flea market. Everybody knew better than to say no or ask for it back.
More than once they had beaten men who tried to stand up to them, and they did it in a way that was ugly, deliberate, and almost cheerful. The local police force consisted of one sheriff’s deputy and two part-time officers who preferred not to tangle with them. Law enforcement understood perfectly well that nothing serious would stick, and going after them for small stuff would only bring more headaches.
People in town feared them and hated them, but mostly they kept quiet. It was the kind of time and place where the law did not do much for ordinary people, so folks either handled problems themselves or endured them. There was no one to complain to, and no real point in trying.
The only thing that kept those men from escalating into something even worse was that they lacked the discipline and organization of real criminals. They were just violent bullies, men for whom cruelty was a pastime and a way to feel powerful. The evening of February 14, 1996, was bitterly cold. The temperature had dropped to well below zero.
An icy wind drove sharp snow across the empty streets, and visibility was poor. Leah left work around seven, wrapped her old shearling coat tighter around herself, adjusted her scarf, and started home by her usual route. She passed through the center of town, by the closed grocery, then past the edge of the industrial strip and across the snowy lot toward her building.
On most nights the walk took about twenty-five minutes at a brisk pace. The Sinton brothers and Baldy had spent that whole day in their garage, steadily working through bottles of hard liquor. By evening they were drunk, though not yet passed out.
They were in that dangerous stage where alcohol loosens the hands and shuts off what little conscience a man has left, while leaving him just steady enough on his feet to do damage. Around seven they decided to head out for a walk, as Gene put it, to get some air and stretch their legs. They were making for the industrial strip, where they could smoke in the relative shelter of an old transformer shed.
Leah was walking fast, head down, bracing herself against the wind. She spotted them when they stepped out from behind an abandoned warehouse about fifty yards ahead. The moment she saw four unsteady silhouettes weaving in her direction, her heart dropped…
