It was true that she had taken him out to the police range a few times because she had to find time to get in her own practice, so she had let him come and shoot too. She had been prepared to tell anyone who asked that she was doing it because he was a city official, but nobody had asked. This was different. It wasn’t paper targets.

As she tried to force her distracted mind to formulate a refusal that wouldn’t permit a rebuttal, there was a volley of gunfire—three pistol shots, then a series of louder reports that must have come from a rifle. The shots were very close.

She ran to the front of the house and looked out. Two uniformed police officers she recognized as Willenz and Gutierrez were sheltering behind their police car with their pistols drawn. They were under fire from three men, two carrying what looked to her like military-issue rifles and the other armed with a semiautomatic pistol. The shooters had taken a position behind the concrete steps of the bandstand in the park about fifty yards away. In the seconds while she was watching, the three men opened fire on the police car, a barrage that exploded windows, pounded holes through the sheet metal of the doors and roof, and flattened two tires.

She opened the gun cabinet in the den, took out the M4 rifle that she carried in her car trunk at work, inserted a magazine, pulled the charging handle, and went to the corner window at the front of the house. She slid it open and took aim.

The first man rose slightly so his rifle was no longer resting on the bottom concrete step. He held the foregrip in his left hand and rested his elbow on the third step. Her shot went through his head and he collapsed. She adjusted her aim to the second prone rifleman and fired. Her shot was low, but she saw it spark on the surface of the concrete and ricochet upward into the man’s face. He went down.

The man with the pistol had scrambled away and been crouching with his back to the bandstand. When the second man fell, he sprinted across the park, trying to keep his back among the trees. Leah had no shot, so she shut the window and went out the front door. “Willenz! Gutierrez! It’s Hawkins. Are you all right?”

They both waved in her direction, staying low. She ran to their car and crouched by the front wheel. “What happened?”

Gutierrez said, “We were responding to a ‘shots fired’ call. We came around the park, and they opened up on us.”