Officers Roy R. (“Tud”) Dick and William L. Teeter had the tac squad that night. That was why the laser-sighted Heckler & Koch MP5, instead of the standard police shotgun, was propped between them. The MP5 was a new weapon. Billy Lee had qualified on it, but Tud had not. He wasn’t interested. Tud had little time for guns, and with good reason: The last time a Longstreet cop had fired a weapon in the line of duty, he’d missed six out of six times and got his own ass shot by his brother-in-law. That was back in ‘71

The two cops were sitting on a side street, talking about the heat and waiting to see if Annie Carlson would get drunk and take one of her patented summer showers. She never pulled the shade on the back bathroom window, and when she came out of the shower, with the white towel wrapped around her hair, and was framed in the lighted square, Tud thought she looked just like some kind of famous painting. He couldn’t tell you which. Billy Lee thought she looked like a potential Playmate of the Month. Which is to say, large.

Tud was sucking on a peach soda when they got the squawk from Lucy down at Dispatch. One second later the black kid ran past the end of the street, lickety-split, just like Lucy said.

“Let’s get him,” Tud said. He dropped the empty pop can on the floor, hit the lights and the siren at the same time, and they took off, leaving Annie Carlson high and dry. The black kid was running parallel to the tracks and was fast coming to the point where the street went left around a bend and the tracks went straight.

“Shit, Billy Lee, he’s gonna get off behind the water tower,” Tud said.

“Stop the car. Stop the fuckin’ car.”

Tud stopped the car, and Billy Lee jumped out with the MP5 and punched up the laser.

“Hold it right there. You hold it right there

” He was screaming as loud as he could.

He put the laser’s red dot in the middle of the black kid’s back. “You hold it, boy

” A sort of greasy, short-breathed excitement got him by the balls when he realized the black kid wasn’t going to stop and Tud said, “Hey, now, Billy Lee

” Billy Lee pulled the trigger, and a burst of nine-millimeter slugs went downrange, and the black kid tumbled ass over teakettle into the weeds.

“Ass over teakettle,” Billy Lee said aloud in the sudden stunning silence.