A MURDER RUNS THROUGH IT

David Calico

18 July 1938–2 November 2002

In Episode 8 of Season 3 of the show, Better Call Saul, there is a pivotal scene in which the character of Nacho Vargas — a sympathetic bad guy — successfully swaps the nitroglycerin pills that belong to Don Hector — an unsympathetic bad guy — with identical capsules that contain crushed up ibuprofen.

Nacho has gone to great lengths to prepare for this moment — tracking down the capsules needed so that Don Hector does not notice the switch and practicing for hours how he will “drop” the replacement bottle of pills into Don Hector’s coat pocket once he has removed the originals.

The first time I watched the episode, I thought that death by lack of nitroglycerin pills was simply an overused plot device in television fiction, but it turns out that this can even happen in real life.

2026 N. Arkansas Avenue, Wichita, Kansas

At the time of the 1940 census, David, his mother, Mary Elmo (née Newton) Calico, and his father, James Guy Calico, lived with his mother’s parents, David and Alice Newton at 2026 North Arkansas Ave. David’s father, James Calico, is listed as the head of household.

At that moment, in an ordinary house on an ordinary street almost smack dab in the middle of…