Sonny Marshall wants you to believe heโs just a saxophone player. That would be easier to accept if the San Francisco musician hadnโt disarmed a knife-wielding drunk between sets, helped break open a decades-spanning child-kidnapping conspiracy, repeatedly shown up at crime scenes, gone toe-to-toe with assassins, tracked a fugitive poisoner across continents, and still found time to record albums with the Storm Lake Blues Band.
We caught up with Sonny between rehearsals, which is apparently the only time he isnโt being shot at, stabbed, chased, or lectured by law enforcement.
CRIMESPREE: Your rรฉsumรฉ says saxophonist in a blues band. Police reports suggest amateur detective, martial artist, and trouble magnet. Which version is accurate?
SONNY MARSHALL: Iโm just a musician.
CRIMESPREE: The headlines say otherwise.
SM: They have their narrative. I have mine. I play the sax in a blues band. I own a recording studio. I have opinions about mouthpieces, reed strength, tempo, cheap club soda, and people who clap on beats one and three. Everything else happens when people misbehave.
CRIMESPREE: You have a habit of getting involved. At Cactus Jackโs, a drunk pulls a knife. Instead of waiting for the police, you jump off the stage and take him down. Why not call 911 and stay out of it?
SM: Because the bartender was a good man and was about to bring a small bat to a knife fight. That math doesnโt work. If you have time to call the police, call the police. If somebodyโs about to get cut open in front of you, you move. You can have the philosophical discussion later, preferably over Scotch with all your arteries intact.
CRIMESPREE: Is that instinct why you got involved in the Erin Hightower case?
SM: Erin started as a story a friend told me. He saw a girl in a convenience store in Wyoming, and he was convinced she was Erin Hightower, a Sacramento girl kidnapped seven years earlier. Everybody else heard a long shot. I heard a wrong note.
CRIMESPREE: A wrong note?
SM: In music, when somebody hits a sour note, the audience may not know it, but every musician onstage feels it in his teeth. Fetchโs story had that feeling. A girl reacts to a name she supposedly doesnโt have. A woman hustles her out. A man at a magazine rack plays blocker. A van speeds away. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. To me, it was a wrong note.
CRIMESPREE: You’ve said that mysteries are like music. If you can hear the melody, you can solve the mystery. Explain that.
SM: A mystery is noise until you hear structure. In blues, one note makes a statement, the second creates expectation, and the third tells you where the line wants to go. A case works the same way. One fact is interesting. Two facts create tension. Three facts suggest direction. Pretty soon the notes arenโt random. Theyโre a pattern, a melody. The melody is the story. Beginning, middle, and ending. Who chose the victim? Why that victim? How did they move? What did they hide? What did they think no one would hear? Criminals improvise, too, but most repeat themselves. They have rhythms, habits, favorite chords. If you listen long enough, the case starts playing itself.
CRIMESPREE: That sounds more poetic than procedural.
SM: Thatโs why Kat carries the badge and I carry the sax.
CRIMESPREE: Letโs talk about Kat Hastings. When you met her, she was a Sacramento cold case detective. First impressions?
SM: Blonde, sharp, suspicious, irritated that a musician had wandered into her cold case with a handful of questions and no credentials. Which, to be fair, is a reasonable reaction.
CRIMESPREE: She didnโt trust you?
SM: Kat doesnโt trust easily. Sheโs a cop, and cops spend their professional lives watching people lie with confidence. I had useful information, but I also had some sketchy friends, which makes law enforcement reach for either a warrant or antacids.
CRIMESPREE: You and Kat are now together.
SM: Thatโs the rumor in my home, yes.
CRIMESPREE: What changed?
SM: We crawled through hell together. That accelerates introductions. You learn things about a person when youโre wet, hunted, bleeding, exhausted, and trying to save children who may not know they need saving. Kat is brave in an unglamorous way. Not movie brave. Not hair-blowing-in-the-wind brave. Sheโs the kind of brave that keeps moving when her body has filed a grievance, her brain is screaming for backup, and the sensible option disappeared three days ago.
CRIMESPREE: Youโve also said you were drawn to her passion for justice.
SM: Kat believes justice matters even when itโs inconvenient, slow, underfunded, and buried under procedure. Maybe especially then. She wants the arrest to hold, the conviction to stick, the victim to be more than a headline. One of the reasons I love her.
CRIMESPREE: You said Kat believes justice should be served cold, but you think justice must sometimes be served hot. What did you mean by that?
SM: Kat believes in warrants, probable cause, chain of custody, evidence, lab work, prosecutors, judges, and arrests that survive appeal. Thatโs cold justice. Controlled. Disciplined. Admissible. It doesnโt feel as satisfying in the moment, but itโs what keeps civilization from becoming a revenge buffet. I respect that. Without people like Kat, every angry man with a weapon starts calling himself justice. I know men like that, but if everybody served justice that way, Katโs paperwork would need its own zip code.
Look, sometimes evil is happening right now. A man is swinging a knife. A child is locked behind a door. A shooter is raising a rifle. A chemist has poisoned the coffee. You donโt convene a grand jury while the match is falling into gasoline. You move. You stop the hand. You break the weapon. You drag the person out of the fire.
Thatโs hot justice. Not revenge. Not punishment. Intervention. Hot justice says: stop the harm before it becomes another body. Then cool it down and let Kat do what Kat does. Hot justice without cold justice becomes vengeance. Cold justice without the courage to act is an autopsy report.
CRIMESPREE: That sounds like a philosophy born out of personal history.
SM: Most philosophies are. The rest come from people with tenure.
CRIMESPREE: Does that attitude make you a white knight?
SM: Whatever. The truth is, I canโt watch innocent people suffer. I especially donโt like watching someone strong prey on someone weak. Something in me goes very still, and then it moves.
CRIMESPREE: Sounds impulsive. Does Kat worry about that?
SM: Kat asks me to be smarter. Thereโs a difference. Sometimes she says it with warmth. Sometimes she says it with the tone of a woman mentally filling out the incident report.
CRIMESPREE: Youโve admitted that you struggle with Oxy because of your knee. How are you doing?
SM: Better than I deserve. The motorcycle wreck left me with a knee that had its own weather system. Oxy made the pain bearable until bearable became necessary. Thatโs the bargain the pills offer: Iโll take away the pain and later send an invoice for your soul.
CRIMESPREE: You seem to use humor as a shield.
SM: Sure. Also a saxophone reed. You blow air through pain, and if youโre lucky, something human comes out.
CRIMESPREE: Youโve comforted enemies, too. I read about a moment when an assassin was dying, and you held her hand.
SM: She would have killed me if sheโd had the chance. Thatโs true. Itโs also true that she was dying alone, far from whoever loved her, if anyone did. People want the world divided neatly into monsters and victims. It rarely cooperates. Most monsters are still human at the end. I donโt know what mercy costs, but I know what it costs to refuse it.
CRIMESPREE: Thatโs a complicated answer from a man who has no problem breaking bones.
SM: I never said I was consistent. I said I play the blues.
CRIMESPREE: What does music give you that justice doesnโt?
SM: Grace. Justice is necessary, but itโs heavy. It has blood on its shoes. Music can carry grief without solving it. The blues doesnโt cure pain. It gives pain a hospital bed.
CRIMESPREE: What do you do for fun when no one is shooting at you?
SM: That question assumes facts not in evidence.
CRIMESPREE: Try anyway.
SM: Iโm just a sax player. I love music. I love playing it. Iโm also a guy who canโt walk past an alley if somebody in it is being threatened. I used to think those were two different men. Theyโre not. The same ears hear the blue note and the cry for help.
CRIMESPREE: Last question. What should readers understand about Sonny Marshall that the headlines miss?
SM: Headlines like impact. Man disarms attacker. Musician helps rescue children. Saxophonist survives poison. Those are loud notes but not the song. The song is quieter. A sister I couldnโt save. A friend who saw a missing girl and needed someone to believe him. A cop who never stopped looking. A child who needed her real name back. A woman I love because she understands why I canโt look away. A band that keeps playing after grief changes the key. Thatโs the melody.
CRIMESPREE: Thanks for talking with us.
SM: Sure. Now Iโve got rehearsal, and band is spiritually wounded when the sax player is late.
CRIMESPREE: Any final advice?
SM: Keep your reed wet, your head on a swivel, and never trust a drummer who says, โLetโs try something.โ Thatโs how twenty-minute solos happen.
Terry R. Bacon is a poet, playwright, and award-winning author of more than a dozen books, including The Elements of Power, Elements of Influence, What People Want, Selling to Major Accounts, and Effective People Skills. He is the co-author of The Shipley Associates Style Guide, Winning Behavior, The Behavioral Advantage, Writing Winning Proposals, and Adaptive Coaching. He wrote most of these books for Lore International Institute, an executive-development consultancy he co-founded and led as President and CEO. He later sold that firm to Korn/Ferry International and has since retired. Executive Excellence magazine named him one of the Top 100 Thinkers on Leadership in the World.
