San Bernardino

San Bernardino

Everyone hunting him understood the equation. If Christopher Dorner was still alive, he would get the first shot.

Jeremiah MacKay was 35, a large, boisterous, red-haired detective on the major crimes squad of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. He had a wife, an infant son and a 6-year-old stepdaughter. It was hard to find a room in which he was not the loudest man.

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MacKay had been searching Big Bear for days. He had grown up nearby, and knew the mountains well.

A fireman’s son with Irish roots, he liked pints of Guinness, expensive Scotch and wearing a kilt on St. Patrick’s Day. He played the bagpipes in the honor guard at police funerals. In his nearly 15 years on the job, he had seen more cop widows and cop orphans and grieving cop parents than almost anyone.

Out of uniform, he preferred not to mention his job, so people would be themselves. He introduced himself as a salesman for a fictional pickle company, with a dirty pun in the title. “They sell them at Trader Joe’s,” he would say. “A gourmet brand.”

As he hunted for Dorner that week, he received a call from a buddy on the force.

“Whoever finds him is gonna get killed, because he gets to act first,” the friend said. “Whoever opens that door...”

“I’m gonna get him,” MacKay said. “He’s a cop killer.”

Big Bear Lake

Big Bear Lake

Jim and Karen Reynolds were about to find Christopher Dorner.

The couple, married 36 years, lived above the office of the Mountain Vista Resort on Club View Drive, which they ran with their grown daughter.

Jim was 66, a former Navy man and IBM system engineer, tall, lanky, and white-haired, with wild, bushy eyebrows. Karen was 56, a former nurse, small, sweet-faced and bespectacled.

Their resort was a cluster of 1980s-era brown condo units, with maple trees and a towering Ponderosa pine. They were going room to room, stripping sheets and collecting towels, when they came to Room 203.

Five days before, when Dorner’s pickup was discovered up the road, Jim had methodically checked the doors and found this cabin locked. It had been unlocked earlier for repairs, he knew, but he assumed one of his family members had re-locked it.

Now, Jim opened the door and they entered, climbing the red-carpeted stairway. It led upstairs to a living room with an old stone fireplace, a kitchenette and a sliding-glass door that opened onto a snow-covered balcony.

Jim went to the window to examine the curtain rod, which needed repairs. Karen was heading toward the hallway that led to a bedroom, looking for fresh linens.

Dorner emerged from the hallway, pointing a handgun.

Karen recognized him at once. She yelled and ran back down the stairs toward the entrance. She had the door open. She was partway through. She hesitated.

She couldn’t leave her husband. She couldn’t risk leading Dorner to her daughter, who was somewhere on the property. She thought of her own life: If you go out that door, he has to shoot you.

In a moment Dorner was on her, digging his fingers into her forearm.

Upstairs, Jim fumbled for the smartphone in the rubber case on his waist, but couldn’t get it free in time to dial 911. He hid it in the sofa cushions.

Dorner came back up the stairs with Karen and said, “I know you know who I am.”

For the first time, Karen understood the literal truth of the concept of being paralyzed with fear. Share this excerpt

Jim thought they were as good as dead. It was an hour’s drive, at least, to get off the mountain. His only chance of escape was to kill them.

By appearances, Dorner had been there for days. There were trail mix wrappers and containers for ready-to-eat meals. There were footprints on the snow-covered balcony. He had used a towel in the downstairs shower.

Jim thought Dorner looked well-rested, with a couple days’ growth of beard, and composed like a man trained to handle tense situations.

After abandoning his truck, Dorner would have had to walk only a short distance to reach Club View Drive. From there, at a brisk pace, past log cabins and gracious A-frames and porches adorned with antlers and carved wooden bears, he would have made it to their resort in five minutes.

The San Bernardino County sheriff would insist that searchers had checked it, but had found no signs of forced entry, and were not authorized to kick down the door. The Reynoldses said deputies never contacted them to ask permission to go inside.

However it happened, Dorner’s presence had been missed. From the room’s porch window, he could have seen his truck towed into the parking lot of the ski resort across the street.

He could have seen police helicopters landing and taking off, and an army of law enforcement – police, sheriff’s deputies and federal agents – coming and going from the command post. Along with fleets of reporters and cameramen, they would have passed easily within range of his sniper scope.

Because the room had an Internet hookup and cable, he could have watched the manhunt unfold live, and learned that the massive effort was dwindling.

“I just want to clear my name,” Dorner told the Reynoldses.

The couple was shaking with fear. Dorner explained that he had spared the San Diego yacht owner, and would spare them too. They were merely means to an end.

Jim thought of mentioning that he had been a Navy man himself. Maybe this would endear him to Dorner, and increase the odds of survival. Then he remembered hearing that Dorner’s stint with the Navy had ended badly.

Jim thought fleetingly of throwing himself on Dorner, maybe distracting him just long enough for his wife to escape. But he doubted she would leave him anyway. And trying to overpower a bigger, younger, stronger man seemed a fool’s errand.

“Do you have a car?” Dorner demanded.

Yes, they said, it was parked in front of the office with a full tank of gas. A purple-maroon Nissan Rogue. He took the key.

Dorner ordered them to kneel on the sofa with their faces against the wall, their ankles crossed and their hands up.

Dorner said he had seen Jim shoveling snow a few days earlier.

“You are good, hard-working people,” he said.

They felt Dorner tightening zip-ties around their wrists. Dorner took Karen’s cellphone out of her jacket pocket. He ordered them to their feet, and told them to go down the hallway toward the bedroom.

Watch: Big Bear couple held captive “Calm down, I’m not going to kill you, let’s go back upstairs.” — Karen Reynolds, recounting what Christopher Dorner said to her

“Don’t look around,” he said. “Look at the ceiling.”

In the bedroom, atop a small dresser, Jim noticed pieces of carrots and a dull-bladed butcher knife from the kitchen. He is going to hack us to death back here, he thought.

Dorner ordered them to lie face-down on the floor, then tightened zip-ties around their feet. Searching Jim’s pockets, Dorner found a Hershey bar and asked if he was a diabetic.

“Yes,” he said.

“Oh s---,” Dorner said.

He put the chocolate between them on the carpet.

He left the room and returned with washcloths to stuff in their mouths. He pulled pillowcases over their heads. He found electrical cords and tied them around their heads, to hold the gags in place. He jerked their heads back.

“Say the alphabet,” Dorner ordered her.

“A...B...C...D...E...F...G...H...I...J...K...” She slurred and mumbled more than necessary, to convey the impression the gag could be no tighter, and Dorner seemed satisfied when she reached “K.”

He pushed them face-down on the carpet. They could hear him packing a bag. He asked calmly if they would be quiet long enough for him to escape.

For the first time, Karen understood the literal truth of the concept of being paralyzed with fear. But she managed to nod.

They heard his footsteps in the hallway. They listened for the thump of the front door closing. Instead, they heard Dorner’s voice, now tinged with panic: “These aren’t car keys!”

It was a keyless car, they explained through their gags. Just push the starter.

Dorner disappeared again.

Karen was terrified that he would run into her daughter, who was on the property, maybe in the laundry room just below. She felt her hands and feet swelling from the zip-ties. She maneuvered her head down to Jim’s hands. His fingers fumbled uselessly as he tried to get the pillowcase off her face.

She scooted and wriggled until her hands were at Jim’s head, and her fingers found purchase and removed his pillowcase. Then he was able to pull off hers.

She rocked back and forth, struggling to her knees and then her feet. She saw the butcher knife on the dresser and got its handle in her teeth. Maybe the edge would cut the zip-ties.

She dialed 911. She got an operator. Dorner is in Big Bear, she said.

She dropped the knife toward Jim, hoping he could grab it. She heard a noise through the door. She kicked the knife against the wall, where it would be hidden behind the door if Dorner returned.

They waited. Dorner did not return. She pushed down on the door handle and hopped into the hallway and into the living room. With her hands still tied behind her back, she grabbed the land-line and tried to dial 911 but couldn’t manage it.

She noticed that Dorner had inexplicably left her smartphone on the coffee table. It was a new phone, and it took awhile to find the speaker-phone button.

She dialed 911. She got an operator. Dorner is in Big Bear, she said. He has our car. It was 12:23 p.m. He had a head start of 15 to 30 minutes.

Det. Alex Collins had spent the morning searching the woods near the condo, trying to rethink his assumptions about where the fugitive might be. He and his partner were back at the Big Bear station, about to head to lunch, when the radios crackled: Dorner was near Big Bear. He was driving a stolen purple Nissan Rogue.

Collins and his partner grabbed their tactical vests and rifles and jumped into the truck. On his iPhone, Collins Googled “Nissan Rogue” so he could be sure what it looked like.

There were only a few ways off the mountain, and they reasoned that Dorner would not risk California Highway 18, which would take him through town.

They guessed he would try to sneak out the back way, on California Highway 38, toward Redlands.

Yucaipa, Calif.

Yucaipa, Calif.

Deputy Jeremiah MacKay was at his office at the Yucaipa station when he got the word. That morning, detectives had visited his office to seek his help on a drug-related homicide, but the talk had quickly turned to Dorner.

The men knew the mountain, and batted around ideas about where he could be. It seemed outrageous that one man could hold law enforcement hostage like this.

MacKay said what he had been saying all week: “I want to get him.”

He raced up the mountain.

San Bernardino National Forest

San Bernardino National Forest

On Highway 38, near Glass Road, four law enforcement officers — two San Bernardino County deputies and two state Fish and Wildlife wardens — were setting up a checkpoint and laying spike strips.

They noticed a pair of school buses coming down the narrow, winding highway, headed west. The Nissan Rogue was following close behind, as if to guard against the spike strips. Dorner was at the wheel.

The officers jumped into their cars and gave chase. Dorner swerved around the buses and accelerated. In the time it took the pursuing cars to get around the buses, Dorner had vanished.

They guessed that he had hooked a hard right on Glass Road, which twisted downhill through thick, snow-covered forest toward the community of Seven Oaks.

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They raced down, rifles out the window. About a mile down the road, they found the Rogue smashed against a snowbank, the windshield cracked, the air bags deployed. Inside, Dorner had abandoned a package of Quickclot, meant to pour on wounds, and a small arsenal: smoke grenades, tear-gas canisters and a silencer-equipped Remington sniper rifle bearing the word VENGEANCE.

Nearby, on the same road, a 62-year-old man who ran a local Boy Scout camp was driving by in his silver Dodge Ram when Dorner walked out of the trees aiming his assault rifle. The driver parked and raised his hands.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Dorner said. “Just get out.”

Three wardens, stationed down the hill at Seven Oaks, were now racing up Glass Road in two separate trucks, lights flashing and sirens blaring.

They were looking for the purple Nissan, not the stolen Dodge pickup in which Dorner was now hurtling toward them.

Dorner crossed paths with the first warden, who noticed Dorner behind the wheel and radioed a warning to the second truck.

Dorner raised his AR-15 and fired at the second truck, a four-door Chevrolet pickup. Inside were two wardens and a German shepherd, Reno. Bullets struck the windshield. The roof. The driver’s window. The door jamb. Glass shattered on the wardens.

They knew a rule from the academy: Drive through an ambush, then get back into the fight.

One of the wardens, Ben Matias, an ex-Marine, jumped out of the truck, ran to a berm and spotted Dorner taking sharp turns down the hill. He took aim with his .308 assault rifle and emptied a 20-round magazine at the fleeing truck. It disappeared.

Det. Alex Collins, racing to the scene, received calls in quick succession from both his older brothers. Like him, they were San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies hunting for Dorner. They told him the same thing: Be careful. Don’t rush in alone. Wait for us.

With his partner driving, Collins was scanning the woods around Glass Road over the top of his Mini-14 semiautomatic rifle, forest rushing by on both sides. They passed the Fish and Wildlife truck with the blown-out driver’s side window.

They hung a left at the bottom of Glass Road. On the right, at 40700 Seven Oaks Road, stood an empty one-story wood cabin. A stone fireplace rose above its east side. It sat amid a towering forest of white oaks, black oaks and cedar pines.

He’d been running scenarios through his head all week, preparing himself. What if he found Dorner on the road? In a car? In a closet?

Trucks of law officers hurtled past the cabin. Collins and his partner stopped just west of it and climbed out.

They were looking for the stolen truck. Where they found it, they knew, they would find Dorner. But there was no sign of it anywhere around the cabin.

They did not know that Dorner had sent it to the bottom of an embankment behind the cabin.

They did not know that he was now inside the cabin, waiting for a target.

Collins was side-stepping along the road, head tilted over his aimed rifle, when he saw a flash. He had the sensation of being punched in the face. A round from Dorner’s assault rifle entered just under his left nostril, crashed through the roof of his mouth, shattered his front teeth, split his tongue and exploded bone as it emerged from his lower right jaw. His face went numb.

The bullets seemed to be coming from a cabin window, but the muffled pop pop pop from Dorner’s silencer made it hard to pinpoint where. Another round struck Collins just below the left kneecap. A round passed through his left forearm. A round struck his chest.

He scrambled behind the back wheel of another cop’s silver Dodge Durango and collapsed. Bullets were flying all around him. Rounds sailed through the truck. Shattered glass from the Dodge fell at his feet.

Dorner seemed to be shooting carefully, whenever he saw an exposed human shape. He was firing at the pavement under the truck, trying to kill with ricochets.

Collins thought: “In seconds, I’ll pass out and die.”

He was choking on his blood and teeth. He was sure the burning in his chest was a high-powered AR-15 round that had pierced his ballistic vest.

He thought: “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

He’d been running scenarios through his head all week, preparing himself. What if he found Dorner on the road? In a car? In a closet? He’d tried to imagine how he would react. And now he was close to death with no idea how it had happened.

Trim and athletic, he ran three miles a day, and he knew how to push through pain. But the pain in his leg was excruciating, and he thought: “If I am going to die, God, let me go now.”

He felt he had let everybody down. He thought of how furious his brothers would be at him.

He had to call his wife. He would spend his last seconds telling her he loved her, and explaining that he wouldn’t be home tonight, that he was sorry he let this happen, sorry for leaving her alone with a brand-new baby.

He reached under his ballistic vest. He kept his iPhone in a jacket pocket over his heart. The phone was shattered. Angrily, he hurled it away.

Seconds passed, and he realized he wasn’t dead yet. He heard yelling and gunfire.

He thought: “Don’t panic. Don’t freak out.”

Collins watched his own blood pooling on the pavement. Then something happened that he did not understand.

He thought of his training at the Sheriff’s Academy, where cops who had been shot spoke of the Will to Live, of never giving up. He thought of the Navy SEAL in one of his favorite books, “Lone Survivor,” who had survived horrific injury in Afghanistan.

He leaned forward on his arm, to allow the blood filling up his throat to pour onto the pavement.

A few feet away, Deputy Jeremiah MacKay had scrambled behind another wheel of the Dodge and was firing at the cabin. A rescue chopper was overhead, and MacKay got on the radio to tell the pilot which structure Dorner was firing from.

“It’s gonna be right from where you’re at now,” MacKay said, his words captured on a dispatch recording. “Right ahead of you — right ahead of you — directly underneath you right now —”

Seconds later, as he tried to direct the helicopter, MacKay lost just enough of his cover to give Dorner a target.

The bullet went in at a high angle, right above MacKay’s ballistic shield, and ricocheted into his chest. He was dead almost instantly.

A few feet away, Collins watched his own blood pooling on the pavement. Then something happened that he did not understand. He turned his head and saw that he was completely exposed to the cabin. The Dodge Durango that had been shielding him had vanished. He saw his rifle in the road, but couldn’t reach it. He waited for a bullet to hit his head.

A hasty rescue attempt had cost him his cover. One cop had intended to drag the shot deputies out of the line of fire, using the Dodge — driven by a second cop — as a moving shield. Amid the fear and pandemonium and flying bullets, the truck was driven off, and the downed deputies left in the road.

They called it the kill zone, a wide-open stretch of road in the direct line of Dorner’s assault rifle, and now Collins and MacKay lay in the middle of it. For perhaps 20 or 30 yards, there were no cars, no trees, no sources of cover at all.

“Shots fired. Officer down....”

“Automatic fire coming in-bound....”

“Officers still down in the kill zone....”

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s SWAT Sgt. John Charbonneau raced up in his truck. In the seat beside him was Det. Justin Musella, who had fought as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan, and who now recognized the faint THWUP THWUP THWUP of silenced high-powered rounds flying from the cabin.

“Sergeant, stop! We’re getting shot at!”

They jumped out and opened fire at the cabin. More cops arrived, and raced to find cover behind trucks and trees. Glass fragments flew outward from the cabin as Dorner fired. There was the rustle of a curtain in one of the cabin’s east windows.

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Officers poured in rounds. Dorner’s bullets zipped overhead. They thwacked into trees and pierced the sides of cars. The smell of gunpowder saturated the thin, cold air.

The two downed deputies still lay motionless in the road, and for the men who could see them every second was excruciating. Instinct told them to race out and retrieve their brothers; logic told them this would guarantee their own quick death.

They needed an armored vehicle to provide cover for the rescue, but nobody could say how long it would take to get it there.

Musella sprinted closer toward the cabin, taking cover behind a small, wooden, free-standing game room across the driveway. He tossed a smoke grenade toward Dorner, but it landed in the snow. The smoke churned upward; the wind blew it back toward the officers.

He threw another. This time, the smoke rose and created a wall between the cabin and the downed deputies.

On the west side, SWAT deputies Daniel Rosa and Larry Lopez locked eyes. This was their chance.

Lopez ran into the road first, as officers laid down a barrage of cover fire. He grabbed the first deputy he came to, MacKay, a big man, and dragged him 25 to 50 yards until they were behind a shield of trucks. Breathing hard, he grabbed his rifle and looked at Rosa.

“Your turn,” he said.

Rosa sprinted out to Collins. He grabbed his vest and started dragging.

Tell my brothers I love them, Collins was saying. Tell them I’m sorry I screwed up.

He felt himself being loaded into the back of someone’s pickup truck, and then a blaze of pain as MacKay’s body was loaded on board partly on top of his wounded leg. He saw himself bleeding into a pair of spare boots. He thought: Someone will be mad.

The high-powered round had pierced his ballistic shield and been deflected by the iPhone in his jacket pocket.

He was aware of a gurney beneath him, of men carrying him into a rescue chopper.

Put me on my stomach, he managed to say, or I will choke on my blood.

On the way to Loma Linda Hospital, he clutched his cloth sheriff’s badge in his fist. He did not know why. He was still conscious when the emergency room staff cut off his clothes and boots.

Doctors examined his chest. The high-powered round had pierced his ballistic shield and been deflected by the iPhone in his jacket pocket. It had saved his life.

Around the cabin, after perhaps 10 minutes of furious gunfire, everything slowed down. There were 30 or 40 officers with assault rifles forming a perimeter to ensure that Dorner wouldn’t escape. They passed around fresh ammunition magazines.

A dozen cops were trapped, hunkered behind a row of trucks in front of the cabin. When an armored personnel carrier finally reached them, 45 minutes after the shooting had started, they scrambled inside and got away.

Deputies received word, from the cabin owner, that the property was not occupied, dispelling worries that Dorner might have a hostage. They learned the cabin had a basement.

Was the LAPD so zealous because Dorner had been one of their own? Did they doubt their San Bernardino counterparts could handle the crisis?

A team of LAPD SWAT officers had taken command of a fire helicopter and flown to the mountain. They were deposited on a ridge about a half-mile north of the cabin.

“I’m not sure if they were invited or not, or if anyone’s controlling them,” a sheriff’s deputy said over the radio.

Not only had the helicopter presented another target for Dorner’s rifle, but the local deputies lacked direct radio contact with the LAPD team, which created the possibility of confusion and chaos.

Was the LAPD so zealous because Dorner had been one of their own? Did they doubt their San Bernardino counterparts could handle the crisis? A “miscommunication,” the LAPD called it, a result of bad cellphone and radio coverage in the mountains.

Whatever the reason, San Bernardino County sheriff’s commanders were furious. They ordered the LAPD team not to get any closer.

From the SWAT truck, an amplified voice boomed an order to surrender: You are surrounded. You have no chance of escape.

No response.

They fired canisters of tear gas into the cabin. Still no sign of Dorner.

At 3:45 p.m. a sheriff’s deputy rumbled toward the cabin in an armored tractor and tore into the east wall with an extendable claw. The claw ripped out a door and some windows. A camera mounted on the tractor appeared to show a wall covered in blood.

Police later surmised this was not blood but the orange-red burst of pepper spray from a gas canister.

At 4:05 p.m., greenish smoke emerged from the cabin. Dorner had popped his own smoke canister, apparently expecting that the SWAT team would be rushing into the house. The smoke would blind them, and give him an advantage.

This meant Dorner was alive. Nobody rushed in.

SWAT command decided to shoot in canisters of CS gas, called burners. Also known as hot gas, or pyrotechnic tear gas, it had a propensity to spark fires.

At 4:20 p.m., from the cabin, there came the sound of a single gunshot . Share this excerpt

Critics would question this decision. Why not just wait Dorner out?

Dorner had shown no willingness to surrender. He had not attempted to communicate with deputies. He was well-armed, and possibly equipped with rations, meaning the standoff could go on indefinitely. His manifesto made it clear he planned to die.

The shadows of the tall pines were lengthening. Every minute represented further risk to the law officers, risk that would multiply when darkness overtook the snowbound mountains. Dorner might possess night-vision goggles that would enable him to find targets.

On their radios, deputies orchestrated the end-game.

“We’re going to go forward with the plan, with the burner....”

Hot gas went in at 4:09 p.m. Flames began to spread. They waited for Dorner; he did not emerge.

“Seven burners deployed, and we have a fire.”

“We have a fire in the front and he might come out the back....”

At 4:20 p.m., from the cabin, there came the sound of a single gunshot.

“No. 4 side fully engulfed....”

A firetruck was told to hang back a couple hundred yards. Ignited by fire, ammunition was exploding inside the cabin.

“This thing’s well-constructed.... I still have ammo popping here....”

“Fully engulfed....”

“More ammo going off....”

“I’m told that there’s basement in that cabin.... I’m going to let that heat burn through that basement.”

“Good call....”

The fire wasn’t spreading to nearby homes or trees. They let it burn.

Live on television, people watched the climax of the Dorner manhunt play out in flames.

At Dorner’s favorite watering hole in Las Vegas, bartenders and customers watched.

At the manhunt command post in Norwalk, an army of cops watched.

At LAPD headquarters, the chief stood with the mayor and watched.

“We got him,” one of them said. “It’s OK. We got him.” Share this excerpt

At a secret hotel room, Dorner’s former training officer, Teresa Evans, watched.

At Grove Community Church in Riverside, where a viewing was underway for Michael Crain, people had been trying to shield his widow Regina from the news, because it had not been confirmed that it was Dorner in the cabin.

But Regina kept asking where her husband’s friends on the SWAT team were, and finally someone told her they were on the mountain.

At 8 p.m. they still had not shown up, and she pleaded with the church to keep the viewing open a little longer. A few minutes later the SWAT team entered, their faces smeared with camouflage paint.

They took turns hugging her.

“We got him,” one of them said. “It’s OK. We got him.”

Michael Crain’s 10-year-old son walked slowly behind his father’s flag-draped casket the next day. He looked tiny among the police pallbearers, his palms pressed against one end of the casket.

A woman from the neighborhood watched the long caravan of police cars pass by, lights flashing. She told her twin granddaughters: “Put your hands over your hearts.”

Regina Crain received the folded American flag from the police chief, and watched as her husband was buried.

Later, she would ask commanders for the badge her husband had worn the night of his death, so she could put it in a place of honor. They were reluctant, and she knew why: a bullet from Dorner’s AR-15 had torn through her husband’s badge, and the shield, on the way to his heart.

Teresa Evans still did not feel safe.

Maybe the dead man in the cabin was a Dorner look-alike, an accomplice. It did not seem crazier than what had already happened.

“What seemed impossible before is no longer impossible,” she said. “My reality is, I’m not really sure what could happen at any time.”

Back home alone, she coped with her nerves by cleaning. She took down the sheets over the windows. She put the furniture back in place. She couldn’t eat.

Even after experts confirmed that the charred body in the basement was Dorner — first by dental records, then by comparing a sample of Dorner’s DNA kept by the Navy to marrow from the femur of the charred corpse — she remained apprehensive. What if someone tried to finish what he started?

What seemed impossible before is no longer impossible.” — LAPD Sgt. Teresa Evans Share this quote

One day, she found that someone had removed her window screen and tried to get inside her house.

Another day, she saw graffiti on a wall near the police station: TERRI EVANS IS A LIAR. On the Web, some people hailed Dorner as a hero and said she deserved whatever she got.

She thought about changing her name, but it would be easy to find the new one in public records. She knew her name would be visible, on her uniform, as long as she wore one.

Not long ago, she drove up the mountain and stared at the blackened hole in the ground where Dorner had died. She badly wanted to talk to the families he had hurt. But she dreaded what they might think. What if they held her responsible for pushing him over the edge?

“I don’t know how people feel about me,” she said. “I don’t know who blames me, and who doesn’t.”

So far, she hasn’t returned to work. Even at the LAPD, she can’t be sure who is her friend.

By his charred corpse, police found the 9-millimeter Glock that Dorner had used to put a single bullet through his temple.

Ballistics analysis matched the gun to the shootings of Keith Lawrence and Monica Quan. The charred AR-15 assault rifle found in the basement was matched to the slayings of Michael Crain and Jeremiah MacKay, and the shootings of Alex Collins and Andrew Tachias.

In Dorner’s wallet, along with a fake police badge, an LAPD business card had survived the cabin fire. On it, he had written the names of two of the police captains who oversaw his Board of Rights. Their addresses were included, and the names of their wives.

For the LAPD’s mistaken shooting of Emma Hernandez and her daughter, Margie Carranza, the newspaper delivery women received a $4-million settlement from the city.

Of the two, Carranza is the more traumatized. She is afraid of police, and afraid to go out at night. When she takes her children to the movies, she sits separately from them.

Her logic is simple. If someone comes with a gun to kill her, she does not want her children to die too.

Alex Collins spent two months in the hospital, an armed deputy standing guard day and night. A conference room was outfitted with a recliner and a baby crib, so Collins’ wife and infant son could stay close.

His wife wondered what would have happened if he had worn his smartphone in his back pocket that day, instead of over his chest. One day, in his hospital room, he and his wife caught a glimpse of the television news. A man was getting Christopher Dorner’s face tattooed on his arm.

Collins underwent 20 surgeries. The roof of his mouth was repaired, his tongue sewn together, his obliterated teeth replaced, his shattered leg embedded with pins. Plastic surgeons erased the mark of the bullet hole under his nose. He learned to stand with a walker, and finally to do without the walker, and now his limp is barely visible.

He returned to police work in September, in the intelligence division. His son will turn 1 in January.

Riverside Police Officer Andrew Tachias lives in constant pain from Dorner’s bullets. He has no movement in his left arm, and little in his right. He has grown reclusive, and has trouble talking about the shooting that took his partner’s life. “He hasn’t healed at all,” his father says.

The cabdriver who helped save Tachias’ life insists he did nothing extraordinary.

“If you are at same place and same time, I believe you are gonna do the same,” says Karam Kaoud, then thinks about it some more and says, “Actually, I don’t know.”

He still drives a cab, only now he hates to be stopped at red lights. He doesn’t want to be a target.

“I don’t defend what Dorner did, but like many in the community, I believe what he said,” a man told Charlie Beck.

The LAPD chief was standing before a crowd in South Los Angeles. The speaker’s sentiment was no surprise. For those who remembered similar community meetings from 20 years ago, what seemed remarkable was the softer tone. No one shouted at the chief; no one cursed him.

“We hire from the human race and we hire the best people we can, and sometimes they make mistakes,” Beck said.

Recently, the LAPD completed its review of Christopher Dorner’s firing. The conclusion was the same. He had told a lie about his training officer, and his badge had been properly stripped.

Randal Quan drove to the Irvine Police Department to meet the chief detective who had worked his daughter’s killing.

He was there not to discuss the case, but because he had requested the jewelry his daughter had been wearing when she was killed. He wanted to bury her in it.

Usually, the transfer of such property took time. There was red tape.

Det. Victoria Hurtado wanted to ensure he received it without delay. She walked to the property room. She removed Monica Quan’s engagement ring, necklace, bracelets and watch from the sealed evidence bags.

The jewelry was caked with blood.

She found a brush and paper towels, and went to the sink. She began cleaning.