Trust but Verify

  Zip, its Gone August 2021 Okay, I surrender. Where did July go? I love racing, but I only blinked, and July went adios . Parnelli Jones, where are you? For those of us living at Ft. Nichols on the Llano Estacado of Texas, July was a blur. Everything and everybody were on the bright side, but there wasn’t enough time to catch our breath. The third book in the Border War Series, The Russian, went to the press (three cheers, please). With any luck at all, it will arrive in bookstores, the Internet, and book clubs in winter, 2021-22. Continuing on the bright side, “The Third Dawn” was originally published nearly twenty years ago. A biblical novel on the life of Christ, it was allowed to wither on the vine and out of print several years ago. Now, however, there is a resurgence of interest in religious-based themes in the book market. Accordingly, and with my wife Gwen as editor, we have begun an update of the original manuscript. While the storyline remains unchanged, it was past ...

Haunted by the Past: The Forty Year Cold Case Read more about the case here. Some people don’t get a fair shot at life. I met Donna Marie Smith a couple days after her twentieth birthday. She was dead. That was in 1976. She had been murdered in her own home. Looking back after all these years, I never thought I would have further involvement in her case. I was wrong. Even though I retired as Deputy Chief of the Tucson Police Department in 1983, I was jarred back in time with a phone call in 2016. It was a call from Investigator Calvin Fuller from the Pima County Attorney’s Office. As soon as he said his name, I knew exactly who he was. He worked as an undercover narcotics officer when I was a Lieutenant with the Metropolitan Area Narcotics Squad. I had to chuckle when I heard his voice. “Lalee?” I asked. He was taken aback. “How could you remember my nickname?” he replied. I laughed again. “Because you were one-of-a-kind.” That was when he cau...