window, getting up out of a chair and walking to the back of the house.  A few seconds later, Don Ficke followed Van Deventer to the back.

Thompson got out of the car and went up the walk.  He was at the front door when Don Ficke came out, in a big hurry.

There was trouble, Ficke told Thompson.  Trouble at Zeigler Furniture.

*

The Presbyterian minister Mickey Fisher was one of the guests at the Van Deventer home.  He was at the buffet table when the phone rang and had a view of the front door when Thompson walked in.  He could also hear Ted Van Deventer on the phone in the dining room.

“Tommy, what’s the matter?”  Van Deventer said.

On the other end of the line was Tommy Zeigler.  Six months later—in a hearsay testimony to which the defense did not object—Van Deventer recalled that Zeigler said, “Ted, I’m hurt,” and asked to speak to Don Ficke.

Van Deventer was a good friend of Zeigler’s and had known him to play practical jokes.

“Are you kidding me?”  Van Deventer said.

“No, hurry,”  Zeigler said, and Van Deventer called for Ficke.

Ficke took the receiver.

“Don, I’ve been shot,”  Zeigler said.

Ficke asked him what had happened, and Zeigler repeated that he had been shot.

“Please hurry,”  Zeigler said.

Ficke ran into Robert Thompson and told him what he knew.  In separate cars they rushed to the store with their emergency lights flashing.

The trip took less than a minute.  On the way, Thompson radioed to the Winter Garden dispatcher that he was en route to the store on Ficke’s authority, and that they should send other units.  The dispatcher logged the call at 9:21.

Two other officers and their cruisers were within a quarter mile of the scene.  Cindy Blalock was in the Tri-City parking lot, escorting TG&Y’s manager as he carried out a bag of cash.  Jimmy Yawn, who had been with Thompson less than an hour before, was at the Winter Garden Inn; Yawn cut through a service station on the corner of Route 50 and Dillard and drove up to the store.

Thompson, Ficke, and Yawn arrived almost simultaneously.  Thompson and Ficke pulled up out  front, so Yawn continued around toward the back, using the driveway along the north side of the building.

Thompson positioned his cruiser so that his headlights and spotlight illuminated the south side of the building, down to where the high fence joined the rear of the building.