RENO, Nev.–The wind cut through Reno City Plaza like a dull knife, making the candle flames shiver. They stood there anyway—priests, imams, rabbis, monks—murmuring prayers over names that most of the city never knew. Seventy-seven dead. Not in some far-off war, not a catastrophe—just in the slow, grinding death of being poor in a town…

Daniel Tovar came to Stateline on a bus. He was thirty-one and from Pomona, Calif. He arrived on February 8, stepping off an Amtrak bus from Los Angeles—same state. On Saturday afternoon, he fell from the roof of Harvey’s Lake Tahoe. The valet saw him hit the ground. The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office got the…

SPANISH SPRINGS, Nev.–The morning air was crisp, the sun barely clawing its way over the horizon when chaos erupted at an intersection in Spanish Springs. A blue truck, driven either by a fool or a man with a death wish, barreled through a red light at Calle De La Plata, smashing into a gray truck…

Bovines Blissfully Unawait of Their Role CHURCHILL COUNTY, Nev.—The sagebrush state has added another dubious distinction to its résumé, as a local farmhand has earned the honor of being Nevada’s first human case of bird flu. According to the Central Nevada Health District, the unlucky fellow had the misfortune of mingling with dairy cattle of…

The trouble started before the call came in. It always does. At 5:00 p.m. on Monday, February 10, deputies from the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office arrived at a house on Spring Circle. Someone had called in a domestic violence report. Inside, two people had locked themselves in a bedroom. The door closed, and the world…

The morning sun rose crisp and bright, fooling a man into believing things might go his way. Folks around here congratulated themselves on surviving Friday the thirteenth without a hitch. Not me. I’ve learned the hard way that the real trouble starts the next day, and Saturday the fourteenth had a habit of knocking me…

A Bag of Bad Decisions VIRGINIA CITY, Nev.–The desert has never been kind to the reckless or the stupid, and Caleb Harman, 31, of Las Vegas, appears to have been both in spades when he rolled through Storey County in the early hours of February 10 with expired tags, a revoked driver’s license, and enough…

It is a well-known fact that what goes up must come down—unless, of course, it’s the price of gasoline in Nevada, in which case the natural order of the universe takes a holiday. While the rest of the nation enjoys a delightful phenomenon known as lower gas prices, Nevada has boldly refused to partake in…

YERINGTON, Nev. – It was a bad day to be Jason Klipple. The 44-year-old, already branded with the ugly distinction of a Tier 3 sex offender, found himself in the crosshairs of the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office last Friday. Deputies sniffing around a suspicious car like bloodhounds on a hot trail stumbled upon Klipple and…

The bones lay where they had fallen, off Yankee Jims Road, down the embankment, past the reach of careless eyes. They had been there a long time. A woman without a name and no past that anyone could find. She was twenty-one when she disappeared. Halloween night, 1989. Wendy Abrams-Nishikai. That was her name. They…