Jack Ruby claimed that he shot Lee Harvey Oswald on the spur of the moment, for the glory, for Jacqueline's honor, to avenge President Kennedy's death. Ted Clark had believed him. He'd been 14 at the time, and even then had considered himself immune to the popular culture obsessions, like the race to solve Kennedy's death. It seemed everyone had a theory. Clark didn't believe in conspiracy theories. A crazed man of mixed up politics shot the president from the top of the (plant) building, and later, another crazed man, hungry for glory and fame, had shot him. It was cut and dry. He liked this, because it was the way a detective thought. It followed Occam's Razor: All things being equal, the simplest solution is usually the correct one. Connect the dots. A to B, and B to C. It made sense.

Except.

Except, the seduction of a conspiracy theory was just too much, wasn't it? Ah, what better way to knock off the most powerful leader in the free world than to use a whacked nut job that not even the Soviets wanted to help cover up your tracks. And there was the so-called fourth gunshot heard by more than a dozen bystanders. A highly trained sniper hiding behind that grassy knoll? How romantic.

Perhaps because part of him wanted a conspiracy, thirsted for the artistry lacking in a black and white world, he found himself engrossed in the world of the believers, devouring books and articles on the assassination and the various theories. He'd become as obsessed as the crazies, as he thought of them, only his purpose wasn't to uncover the conspiracy, but to disprove the theorists.

Several of these books lined the bookshelf in his office. They served as a reminder to him whenever a case got desperate and he felt the urge to get creative. A case isn't solved by simply coming up with a theory that served all the evidence. A case is solved by hard, dirty, grueling, time-consuming police work. There is no "fourth bullet."

Occam's Razor.