“Jot,” she said after a minute, “what happened to the driver?”

“I don’t know. He never stopped.”

“Do you know if the cops have him?”

“No. They didn’t say.”

“I’ll ask.”

Musil nodded and was silent.

After a moment Morse said, “He must have lost control of the cab.”

“I don’t know,” Musil said. “He came straight at us.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I thought he sped up. I could hear his engine.”

Morse looked at him. Then looked around at a seeming commotion at the taxi stand down the block. Then she almost incidentally realized that Carmody and Kali were no longer with her and looked around to see where they had gone.

A second later she saw that they had split off from her and were back at the corner intersection, Sergeant Votto moving toward them in a hurry.

Carmody was looking over the painted markings in the crosswalk when Votto came bulling toward him through the aggregate of police and medical first responders. He raised his eyes to the sergeant’s face.

“You going to tell me to play somewhere else again?”

The cop just stood there. He was a couple of inches shorter than Carmody but still over six feet tall and built like a guy who could bench-press three hundred pounds without breaking a sweat.

“The blonde lady asked to go to the ambulance, you got through,” he said. “But this is an active scene. You can’t stand around here.” He nodded past Carmody at Kali, who had drifted toward the curb. “Neither can she.”

Carmody pointed down at a large red X on the blacktop. “Votto, is this where the taxi hit our guy?”

The cop looked at him.

“Yeah.”

Carmody nodded. “There’s another paint mark a good ten, twelve yards over that way,” he said and motioned down the block. “That where he landed?”

“Yeah.”

“So he flew back over the cab’s roof.”

“Yeah.”

Carmody looked at him.

“Anybody else killed?”

“No,” the sergeant said. “We saw quite a few bumps and bruises. But nothing serious. Thank God.”

Votto’s belt radio squawked with overlapping communications. He listened a moment, didn’t hear his code, then turned his attention back to Carmody.

“I’m guessing you’re with Net Force, like the blonde.”

“Uh-huh.”

He gestured toward Kali. “Your friend over there too?”

“Close enough.”

Votto nodded. There was more chatter on his radio. He gave it another perfunctory listen and then phased it out.

“You got a name?”

“Carmody.”

“Look, Carmody,” he said, “I’m not trying to be a hard-on.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

The cop expelled a breath through his mouth.

“Guess you didn’t,” he said. And paused again. “You lose one of your own, it’s tough letting somebody else handle things. But you have to leave it to us.”

Carmody didn’t answer him. After a second, he motioned back down at the ground.