The ground under the Buick was wet.

Janik said he parked at 7:15 and never went back out. The storm didn't start until about 7:50. If his car had really been sitting there the whole time, it would have been a roof over that patch of asphalt for the entire half hour of rain, and Aguirre would have found a dry rectangle under it, even two hours later. Instead the pavement under the car was as wet as the empty space beside it. That car pulled in after the rain quit at 8:20, and with a burglary at 8:35, "after" covered a lot of ground.

Ron's note: Every cop who ever worked nights in a rainy town knows this one. Look under the car.

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The receipt said Riverside Hardware sold a saw on May 16 at 1:42 in the afternoon. May 16 was the Sunday of the theft, and as Harry Bernard found out that very morning, Riverside Hardware is closed on Sundays. Nobody bought anything there that day.

But Keith works at Riverside and carries a set of store keys. He let himself into the closed store, rang up a cash sale on the register so the tape would show a saw sold during the hour of the theft, and pocketed the slip. He was so pleased with himself he forgot the one thing every person in Harlan Falls knows about that store.

Ron's note: The date and time on a receipt are only as honest as the person who punched them in.

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The sun sets in the west. Myers said he was driving east on Larch, which runs straight east and west, at a quarter past eight in the evening at the end of June. The setting sun would have been behind him, in his rearview mirror, not in his eyes.

A man who couldn't see well enough to read a license plate wouldn't have to invent a reason. Myers invented one, and picked the wrong direction. When Officer Moody went back, he admitted he'd backed the Olds into the brick post at the end of his own driveway and thought he'd let his neighbor's insurance pay for it.

Ron's note: People who make up a story always put in one detail too many. Usually it's the detail that hangs them.

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Aguirre never told anybody what had been taken, only that something was missing from a floor with more than forty things on it. Amy Tucker knew it was the watch.

Worse, she knew about the initials engraved inside the lid. That lid had stayed closed in the case for twenty-two years, and nobody but Mrs. Hanes and the appraiser knew what was under it. The only way Ms. Tucker could know was if she had held the watch and opened it. It was in the lining of her purse.

Ron's note: We used to call this "knowing too much." You'd be amazed how often a person tells you something only the thief could know, while explaining why they'd never steal it.

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The snow quit at three o'clock in the morning. Mondragon said the robber ran out the back door and across the field at about five. A man running through four inches of fresh snow leaves tracks a blind man could follow. But the back step and the whole field were smooth and untouched, all the way to the woods.

Nobody went out that back door after three a.m. Mondragon emptied the register himself, opened the back door to make it look good, and forgot to look outside first. The money was in his car, under the spare tire.

Ron's note: Snow is the best witness there is. It doesn't forget and it doesn't take sides.

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The glass was on the wrong side of the door.

When you break a windowpane, the pieces fly away from the blow. A burglar standing on the porch and punching out that little pane to reach the lock would have sent nearly all the glass into the kitchen, onto the linoleum. Instead almost all of it was out on the porch boards, with three slivers inside. That pane was broken from inside the house, by somebody who was already in the kitchen.

Mrs. Hoglund had packed up the silver and the jewelry and taken them to her sister's, dumped out her own drawers, and broken the pane on her way out the door. She swore she hadn't touched anything, so she couldn't very well say she'd swept up.

Ron's note: I worked three of these in eleven years. All three times the glass told on them.

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