We talked about wine, work, employers we had in common. He could do small talk but preferred not to. We had maybe six long conversations, total, in the thirteen years I knew him, but it was as easy spending an hour with him as anyone I’ve ever met. We didn’t run into each other all that much. Wickedly intelligent, sharp as a stiletto, as acute as anybody I’ve met since moving to the Northwest. Turns out, Yancy was born and raised in Alaska – about as far as you can get from my old DC Metro. In our conversations, he reminded me a lot of my best friend back in Maryland. I never knew where he was born or grew up but, if someone had asked me to guess, I would have said Maryland or New Jersey or Delaware one of those upper Mid-Atlantic states where black humor and jaded attitude is raised to a fine and funny art. More than most people I’ve met, Yancy had a real gift for finding the common vibe the most direct connection. The Yancy I knew could be a little sarcastic but, really, that may have just been in talking with me. I don’t want to fall into the trap of deifying those we know who have passed on, of erasing their human foibles and casting them as virtual saints. He was a pretty cranky old bastard, sometimes.” If it had been me shot by a total stranger, the more honest of all the people who know me would probably say, “Well, I can see it, I guess. His wife, Jennifer, who had evidently known and encouraged his actions – calling him “the baddest bad-ass shooter in the West” and aiding him in covering up the killing – escaped prosecution and later left the state, divorcing Bowman and changing her name and giving up a quarter-million a year practice as a dentist in an effort to evade responsibility. Bowman tried to commit suicide shortly after the verdict but failed. No one who knew Yancy believed it for a second and, finally, neither did the jury. There was no evidence of anything, any projectile striking Bowman’s car. No shattered glass was found on any nearby Seattle street. No one saw any sort of road rage incident. It was an absurd allegation, obviously a lie intended to seem credible because Yancy sold wine. Later, his lawyers tried to cast Yancy as the villain, claiming that he threw a wine bottle at Bowman after a road rage altercation. He was arrested, charged, and ultimately convicted of murder and is serving 29 years + a month and Washington’s Clallam Bay Correctional Facility. Motivated by God Knows What, Bowman whipped out a handgun and shot Yancy Noll five times through his car window, killing him and sending a monumental shock wave through the normally placid Seattle wine community. After having enrolled in college at 12 and then establishing a boutique robotics engineering firm called Vague Industries in his early 20s, Bowman was considered a prodigy of sorts. On August 31st, 2012, at 7:25 p.m., on an unthreatening corner in North Seattle, a person in a silver BMW convertible – later identified as 29-year-old Thomasdinh “Dinh” Bowman, a young engineer whom Seattle detectives first considered an unlikely suspect – shot and killed my friend Yancy. It is now too late for calling up Yancy and suggesting beers. And yet I cling to that naivete, that optimism because, I’m convinced, that sense that the End is not impending is what makes us capable of living day to day. I’ve had my lesson about that often enough, now, to know better. I was convinced that my affection for Yancy and my good intentions would one day result in picking up the phone and calling to suggest beers or a lunch somewhere. I really ought to call him/her.” And, in the back of our minds, we make that note that tiny mental post-it that says, “Call Yancy.” We do it with the best of intentions and we rarely attach urgency to it because, at heart, we are all only remotely attached to the idea that God, the Universe, whatever consciousness it is Out There that calls the cosmic shots on our fate and destiny might just have other ideas about our futures than we have. But we all have those people in our lives who seem to be on the periphery but whose face, when fleeting by in a stray thought or on a web page, somewhere, cause us to smile and think, “Oh, yeah. We were both in the same business – selling wine and beer – and our paths crossed occasionally. Let me say this first: I didn’t know Yancy Noll very well.
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