“He shot up the Piewacket Bar in Lower Frontwater, got away from there—I don’t remember how many people he killed. Then he got into a gas station about three blocks away—while the boys was all holdin’ their peckers and lookin’ stupid at the mess all over the barroom floor—and strangled some old guy who ran the place, with a jumper cable. Beat his wife to death with a big old pair of wire clippers, got another gun from the drawer—a pistol this time—walked out calm as you please and shot a guy and two girls in a car who was pulling up for gas: right through the damn windshield—bip, bip, bip: just like that!”

“And they ain’t caught him?”

“No!” Monty exclaimed. “We can’t fuck around with—”

Somebody turned on a vacuum cleaner with the hose right at my ear. At least that’s what it sounded like.

Hawk hissed, “Jesus …!” and squinted.

Both cops turned.

The flames from that wrecked car must have spired thirty feet.

Inside the Whooooooosh, things crackled, snapped, and popped.

Hawk took a step back and wiped his wrist across his mouth, making another smudge. His face had gone flickering bronze.

“You comin’, Bill …?”

“Man, I gotta wait for the ambulance to see if anybody—”

“You must be kiddin’,” Monty said. Still sitting in the car, he took off his cap, wiped his hair back, then put the cap on again. The light made his face very pink. He looked at the raging car. “Ain’t nothin’ you can do there. Send the clowns on their way and let’s get goin’ after the real action!”

“Oh, man,” Bill said. “I really got this cocksucker’s ass! Three on a bike, no helmets, runnin’ the car there off the road—”

Wind snaked the flames toward us. Under the roaring there was a smell like when you leave bacon in a frying pan and it starts to burn.

“Goddamn it!” Hawk said. “I didn’t run him off the road! He come bouncing over the damn divider and nearly run us down!”

“He says he didn’t do it,” Monty said. “Let ’em go. If you don’t show up, the chief’s gonna have your ass.”

“Shit!” Bill said.

In a television show once, I saw a cop throw his cap on the ground and stamp it. That’s what I thought Bill was going to do. But he didn’t.

Bill jerked the door to his police car open and threw himself in, bumping ass over the seat. The door slammed. Monty’s car had already started. Bill frowned out the window at us, at the flames. For a moment I thought he was going to get back out. Then his car started.

The nigger looked up with his tongue in his cheek, unfolded his arms, and began chuckling.

I looked from the receding police cars back to the fire.