Clips

Please allow me to introduce you to the work of William Browning, from the Mississippi Delta, covering cops in Casper, Wyoming. Three stories.

Lonely Road: It was midday on a bleak and hard highway when bullets cut the air — cool, thin, Wyoming air.

The first came through the windshield, into his left eye, stopping millimeters from his brain. If there was pain, he doesn’t remember. It’s the sensation of a falling red curtain he talks about.

He slumped right, across the seat. Fumbling, he clutched the radio, screaming to dispatchers, “I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot! Help! Help!”

Then it felt like burning iron thrusting again and again through the flesh of his lower back.

Unable to reach the firearm trapped beneath him, he kicked the man standing over him in the crotch. Then he stepped out of his cruiser and watched him scurry back toward a car.

He steadied near the front bumper, pulled his .357 Magnum from its holster. He shot six times, emptying the gun toward the vehicle speeding away, out of sight.

Alone, he needed to stop the blood falling from his abdomen. He walked toward the trunk where the gauze was and felt his heart pounding, knowing he’d better slow its pace.

Munch, The Drinkingest Man in Casper: He flipped off a truck that nearly hit us both. That’s how I found him.

After searching for months — under bridges, down alleys, near corners of abandoned buildings — I saw him coming through the Natrona County Public Library’s parking lot with his right hand’s middle finger in the air. The truck that almost clipped me almost got him, too.

He looked like I’d been told: short, long beard, longer hair. He seemed younger than I guessed, though. There was bounce in his step. After bringing his finger down, in fact, he fell into a prizefighter-worthy swagger toward a group of men huddled outside the library.

As he shook hands with the men, I parked my pickup and waited. He shared cigarettes and laughs before walking alone to the bus stop at the corner of Second and Beech streets. I followed.

“Excuse me, sir,” I asked. “Are you Mark Pederson?”

“Yeah,” he said as our eyes met.

“Do they call you …”

“Munch,” he cut in. “They call me Munch.”

Craigslist Rape Survivor Rebuilds: Sarah Kostovny is in her living room near the spot where it happened, describing how sometimes, unprovoked and out of nowhere, tears fall from her eyes.

“I’m extremely happy and everything is great in my life,” she says, “but I’m sad. I know those are very contradictory ideas, emotions. But there are times that I will just start bawling uncontrollably, and I have no idea why.”

She and her fiancee have tried to erase reminders. They replaced the carpet stained with her blood. They threw away the knife block that once held the weapon pressed against her throat. Still, memories are triggered.

“Every day she opens her door, she has that fear,” said Betty Greco, the victim-witness coordinator that worked with Kostovny.

One of Kostovny’s dogs sometimes scratches at the spot where it happened. There’s the metal air-conditioning vent she remembers being pulled over. Not far away, the front door’s frame still bears damage from where authorities kicked open the door the rapist locked as he left.

“This,” she says, motioning around her living room, “is my crime scene.”