They could see the policeman eyeing the rear window, clearly trying to put the odd damage together with a rear-end collision.

"You all right?" he asked Gabe.

Unseen by the cops, Alison's expression was strongly cautionary.

"I . . . I'm a little shaken up. That's all."

"And that window?"

"Two days ago, while it was parked, vandals probably. I'm getting it fixed tomorrow."

"Want us to call an ambulance? Sometimes the adrenaline from an accident can mask serious injury."

Again the look from her warning Gabe to say nothing about the shooting. What in the hell was going on?

"No, no ambulance," he heard himself say.

"Listen, guys," Alison said to the cops, "do whatever you have to do, but I really do intend to take full responsibility for this, and I really do have to get home. I just finished doing three hours of overtime in the ER at D.C. General and I have to be back for the day shift in just a little while."

"You a doc?"

"Nurse. I know way too much ER medicine to be a doc."

"You got that right," the cop said, and exchanged approving glances with his partner.

Just then the radio in the cruiser crackled out something that sounded urgent. Alison watched benignly as the officer behind the wheel took the call, but Gabe, bewildered as much at her handling the situation as he was at the situation itself, saw the keenness in her eyes and sensed that she was on top of the action, if not well ahead of it.

"Another second and they're gone," she whispered before the conversation was complete.

"Listen," the cop closest to them said. "We gotta go. You sure you're okay, fella?"

"I'm fine . . . fine," Gabe replied. "If you don't have to, there's no need to write this up."

"Okay. Suit yourself. You got an ER nurse there just in case you have any delayed reaction."

"That I do," Gabe said as the cruiser squealed away.

He watched until the taillights had vanished up Twenty-second Street, and then looked down at Alison.

"What? What?" she asked. "The license plate on the killer's three- or four-year-old dark blue Taurus was covered, and with that baseball cap, there was no way whatsoever for me to get a look at his face. And staring down the barrel of a gun, I would strongly doubt that you got any kind of a look at him, either. By the time the police got the story straight from you and made their calls for backup help, the odds that the shooter's still driving around out there would be slim to none. What good would telling them do? There would be hours of interrogation and paperwork, and piles of unwanted publicity—especially given Dr. Ferendelli's disappearance."