When they had finished speaking with the principals involved, Captain Robb pulled Lieutenant Maguire into the backseat of his car and asked, "What do you think?"

Maguire said, "Cooley's a good cop. Nash is very solid."

Robb sighed and said carefully, "I know that, Bob. I meant what about this piece of shit we got here, how are we going to play it?"

"Cooley said the perp charged him with the car. Deadly force. He acted to save his life and Nash's."

"That's the story we're going to go with?"

Maguire, like his immediate boss, was a comer in the department and understood the unspoken footnotes that hung from Robb's question. It is difficult to make captain before age fifty, as Robb had, without being able to speak and understand a language that none but other initiates can comprehend. Maguire confidently expected to make captain, too, within the next couple of years, and he was similarly fluent. Wanting another moment to think about it, he deflected with, "Have you called his old man yet?"

"No, I wanted to check the situation out myself and get our ducks in a row. Who's the stiff, by the way?" Robb was not pressing the question, yet.

"Lowlife. Not a citizen," said Maguire. "Got a nice sheet for grand theft and receiving stolen."

"Violence?"

"No, sir, unfortunately not. And the minority thing, of course."

"Yeah. That's the bitch of it. But Nash is solid behind this?"

"Nash will hold up," said Maguire. "Like I said." A pause. "What I think, sir, is that we should let the system work here. We'll do the normal administrative in the department, take their testimony, the four of them, which will all be consistent, like we just heard out there.