The boy was different from the beginning, according to his sister. He never dreamed of being a fireman or a policeman, typical boyhood ambitions of his day. "No, he didn't want to do that," recalls Gatlin. "He wanted to go to Australia and raise mink Have a mink farm, you know?"

When he returned from his second tour of Vietnam, Polsgrove, by then a sergeant, was stationed at Camp Pendleton in Carlsbad, California. He worked long hours as a payroll clerk, according to a news article in the Campbell Citizen. Often he would report to work late at night to catch up when the workload was demanding. Gatlin believes he and some friends also were writing themselves checks under fictitious names.

After one late night of paper-pushing, Polsgrove put onhis gray sweat suit and blue tennis shoes a little before 6 a.m. While his wife, Cindy, prepared breakfast, he went for a jog on the beach.

A fellow beachcomber spotted the tennis shoes and sweat suit, reporting them the next day after a missing person's report went out.

Zhirakarov had been up and had a shower at the Fabre Clinic's Austin Street center the morning of May 3, 2002, according to Farquhar's March 7 letter. However, a clinic nurse hunting down another blood sample later found him "unresponsive" in bed. She quickly called for an ambulance.

Paramedics performed CPR but couldn't reinspire his drug-damaged heart. At Park Plaza Hospital, ER staff went so far as to install a pacemaker, according to Farquhar.

The autopsy report states that Zhirakarov was at the