How the Tractor Was Mowed Down

You have no idea what you've done," the 73-year-old man muttered after he failed to bar the farmhouse door to Renato Cortese, the police officer who had burst through to take him into custody. Cortese brushed off the remark as a typical bad guy's pro forma plea of innocence. He was certain he had his man. The soft-spoken, cigar-smoking cop with a salt-and-pepper beard had been on the hunt for seven years, staring at version after version of sketches of the fugitive. "I'd had dreams about him, of his face, of the capture," he said. When the actual moment arrived, even...