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"This is the police," an electronically amplified voice announced. "Drop your weapons and put your hands on your head!"

"Oh, shit!" Matt Payne said.

There was the sound of firearms. First a couple of loud pops, and then the deep booming of a shotgun. There was a moment's silence, and then the sound of breaking glass.

Matt turned and ran and caught up with Mrs. Glover, and put his hands on her shoulders.

"Get on the floor!" he ordered.

She looked at him with terror in her eyes, and let him push her first to her knees and then flat on her stomach.

As he pushed his sweater aside to get at his pistol, and then fumbled to find his badge, he saw her looking at him with shock in her eyes.

There was the sound of another handgun firing twice.

"Motherfucker!" a male voice shouted angrily, and there was another double booming of a shotgun being fired twice. A moment later there was the sound of a car crash.

"Everybody all right?" a voice of authority demanded loudly.

A moment later the same voice, now electronically amplified, went on: "This is the police. It's all over. There is no danger. Please stay right where you are until a police officer tells you what to do."

Matt got to his feet, and holding his badge in front of him walked toward the front of the store.

As he reached the end of the aisle, he called out, "Three six nine, three six nine," and held the badge o

ut as he carefully stepped into the checkout area.

"Who the hell are you?" a lieutenant holding a shotgun in one hand and a portable loudspeaker in the other demanded. He and three other cops in sight were wearing the peculiar uniform, including bulletproof vests, Stakeout wore on the job.

"Payne, East Detectives, sir."

"What are you doing in here?"

"I came in to get milk and eggs," Matt said.

"You see what happened?"

"I didn't see anything," Matt said truthfully.

There were flashing lights, and the sound of dying sirens, and Matt looked through the shattered plate-glass window and saw the first of a line of police vehicles pull up to the door.

The lieutenant made a vague gesture toward the last checkout counter. Matt saw a pair of feet extending into the aisle, and a puddle of blood.

"One there and another outside, in his car," the lieutenant said. "They had their chance to drop their guns and surrender, but they probably thought it would be like the movies. Jesus Christ!"

There was more contempt for the critters he had dropped than compassion, Matt thought.

That's the way it is. Not like the movies, either, where the cops are paralyzed with regret for having had to drop somebody. The bad dreams I have had about my shootings have been about those assholes getting me, not the other way around.

****

Matt looked through the hole where the plate-glass window had been. Three uniforms were in the act of pulling a man from his car. The car-crashing noise he had heard had apparently come when the doer, trying to flee, had crashed into one of the cars parked in the lot.

Matt had twice gone through the interviews conducted by the Homicide shooting team of officers involved in a fatal shooting. He blurted what popped into his mind.

"You'll spend the next six hours in Homicide."

The lieutenant's eyebrows rose.