“Hold your fire! He got out a far window down there, all the way on the end.”

The uniformed officer found Lieutenant Paulson first, as Captain Davis had planned.

“Christ! The lieutenant is dead!” the cop said as he knelt beside the body. “Jesus! You never said...“

“Don’t just sit there!” Captain Davis roared. “Call for an ambulance! Move it!”

The cop ran down the main aisle, the fifty dollars in his pocket feeling like blood money. He’d had no idea anyone was going to die! He radioed for an ambulance and the coroner. He tried to throw up, but he could not.

An hour later people still milled around the death scene. An assistant chief, Larry Jansen, kept shaking his head. Paulson had been the chief’s fair-haired boy. Jansen had helped promote him over a dozen older men who had scored higher on the testing.

Davis watched the two cops warily, but they said exactly what they were supposed to. The suspect fled into the warehouse. They didn’t see that he was armed. They blocked off all the escape routes but one. The killer used it after shooting the officer. They had no idea why he dropped his gun. Perhaps the captain had wounded him, maybe hit his arm and the weapon fell. It was too dark in the warehouse to describe the man except by saying he appeared to be black and in his twenties.

Captain Davis sat on a box. He was visibly shaken. He did not have to fake it. He had killed before, but never a cop he had worked with, and not this way. He knew he had to do it, but he was sure he could never do it again. He had paid his damn dues! If the Mafia don wanted more from him, he would have to raise the pay scale to three thousand a week.

Chief Jansen touched the captain’s shoulder.

“Harley, take the rest of the day off. Don’t come in tomorrow, either. I know how this hurts. You’ll get over it. It’ll pass. But don’t rush it. Come on, I’ll drive you to your car.”