That’s when I rushed him.

My primary assignment when I played football at the academy was wide receiver, but I’d filled in enough at defensive back on the scout team to know how to properly tackle. You use your arms. You wrap them up low. With my wrists still handcuffed behind me, textbook technique wasn’t an option.

In truth, that was never the plan.

I slammed my shoulder into his waist, lifting him up and driving him forward — straight into the Cessna’s whirling starboard propeller. Envision a Cuisinart and a raw pot roast, pureed, with the lid off. That’s what Dwayne looked like.

Enough said.

I rolled as the wing passed over me, narrowly avoiding having my legs crushed by the right main landing gear. That I wasn’t shredded with him was, in itself, something of a miracle.

The pilot, a stocky blonde in her late twenties with those oversized aviator shades that are all the rage these days, hurriedly brought the Cessna to a stop. She shut down both engines, jumped out, her windscreen splattered with gore, and came rushing around the nose of the plane as I got to my feet. She gaped at what was left of Dwayne, bent at the waist, and vomited.

“Oh, my God.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Everything’s gonna be OK.”

Frozen with horror, she couldn’t stop staring at the killer’s shredded remains.

“What’s your name, cap’n?”

“… Hailey. It’s Hailey.”

“Hailey, I need you to call 911. Tell them we need paramedics. Think you can do that?”

“My phone’s in the plane.”

“Might be a good idea if you went and got it.”

Transfixed, she forced herself to turn away from the body and returned to the cockpit while I went to check on Marlene.

The receptionist was holding her lower leg with two bloody hands and staring blankly into space, like she’d just been through a war.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, Marlene.”

Slowly, she raised her eyes to mine and thanked me. Then, softly, she began to cry.

I wished I could’ve comforted her, but my hands were still bound behind my back.

Some might wonder what it feels like, deep down, to kill another human being, especially in so gruesome a fashion. The easiest answer is that you typically rationalize your actions. You took out the garbage. Did the world a favor. Payback’s a bitch. In truth, I felt no satisfaction killing Dwayne Anderson, no sense of relief. Only exhaustion.

I sat down on the tarmac beside Marlene.

“Keep applying that pressure, Marlene. Help’s coming. Be here any minute.”

I tried not to think about Savannah and the child I would never know. The sun was out. It felt warm and good on my face. I turned my gaze to the snowcapped mountains to the south and a place called Voodoo Ridge, where my life’s journey had been changed forever. Try as I might, I couldn’t remember what I’d had for breakfast that morning.

Three uniformed sheriff’s deputies were tasked with placing plastic tarps from their patrol vehicles over Dwayne Anderson’s mangled body parts, while a paramedic unit drove Marlene to South Lake Tahoe’s Barton Memorial Hospital. As the cops went about their grisly work, I rubbed circulation back into my newly unhooked wrists, courtesy of Detective Streeter and the universal handcuff key he carried in his pocket.

“We would’ve identified him eventually,” Streeter said. “You just beat us to the punch.”

I’d wanted to believe that he wasn’t merely spouting cop bluster, but there was no denying the fact he would’ve been investigating my homicide as well, had I not gotten lucky.

Woo came walking up from the hangar where the green van was parked, toting dead Dwayne’s .40-caliber Glock, bagged in a plastic Ziploc.

“Found it right where you said it would be,” Woo said.

I said nothing.

Streeter wanted me to drive with him to sheriff’s headquarters, to record chapter and verse everything that had led up to my confrontation with the man who’d killed Savannah, our baby, and Chad Lovejoy. I told him I would.

“You’ve been through hell,” he said. “We can do it later if you want.”

“Now’s as good a time as any. I need to be getting back to Rancho Bonita. My landlady misses me. Wish I could say the same for my cat.”

In the end, the Buddha believed, only three things matter: how much you loved; how gently you lived; and how gracefully you let go of those things not meant for you. Had I loved? Certainly. How much and how well, though, those were questions I wasn’t prepared emotionally to address at that moment. Had I led my life in a gentle manner? Not hardly, but I’d saved lives in the process, and that was a fair trade, in my opinion. The more pressing question was how, if ever, I’d get over losing Savannah. How does one accept that the seminal romantic relationship of your life, with a woman so beautiful, so complete, that you could think of nothing but her day and night, was never meant to be?

I didn’t know.

I doubted I ever would.

Whether Kiddiot was oblivious to how I was getting along emotionally, or was trying to comfort me, I couldn’t say. He lay on my chest giving himself, not me, a bath that went on for easily a half hour. He may have been dumb, but at least he was well groomed.

I leafed through Flying magazine, pulled a copy of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” from my bookshelf but found it too depressing, tried to sleep, did 100 push-ups, scrambled three eggs and ate them watching an infomercial about how to dance your belly away, tried to sleep, took a hot shower, and stared out at the moon. Anything to stop from thinking about how close I’d come to saving Savannah’s life.

If only I’d been more observant when I had initially approached Dwayne Anderson’s van.

In the movies, there’s always that scene. You know the one: where the good guy stands over the bathroom sink, usually stripped to his chiseled waist, leans down to splash cold water on his face, then slowly looks up at himself in the mirror, staring into his own anguish-filled eyes, searching deep down for whatever the hell it is he’s supposed to find in there.

I gave it a shot. I splashed water on my face. I stood looking at myself in the mirror. All I got back was an overpowering realization that I’d succumbed to weakness, to whining, that I’d forgotten how to be a man.

I also noticed I needed a haircut.

It was after 0500 when I finally dozed off. I was awake for good at 0535.

The little bell over the door tinkled. My barber, former light heavyweight contender Primo Zacapa, glanced over, cutting another customer’s hair as I walked into his tiny shop downtown on Cortez Avenue.

“Que pasa, Logan?”

“What’s up, Champ?”

“It’s all good. Have a seat. Be with you momentito.”

At sixty-two, Primo remained every inch the fluid, graceful puncher he’d been back in the day, when he’d gone the distance with WBA legend Pipino Cuevas at the Forum in Los Angeles and lost on a split decision that every bookie on the street said was rigged. I sat down on the worn leather couch opposite his shop’s one barber chair and watched him work: snipping and moving, snipping and moving. The customer, an older man with sad blue eyes, sat under his smock, head tilted forward. He possessed little hair on top, but that which he did have, Primo used to full effect, trimming and layering with such skill that, at least from where I was sitting, you’d have never known the guy was hurting for follicles. When Primo was finished, and the customer had left, he quickly swept up the trimmings with an old broom and a metal dustpan, unfolded a fresh smock from a wicker basket, and ushered me into the old swayback leather chair.

“An oldie but a goodie,” he said, offering me a tattered, twelve-year-old Playboy.