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remember."
    "I mean, I saw his back when he went after the killer—wait! He had a name on the back of his shirt!"
    The detective leaned forward, his pencil poised over his pad. "What did it say?"
    Beth squeezed her eyes shut. "It was all such a blur, but I think it said 'Sherbert' or something like that that."
    "Sherbert?" the detective said, scribbling. "You're sure?"
    Sandy rubbed a hand over his mouth to hide a smile. "Chrebet," he offered. "I remember now. He was wearing a green-on-white Jets jersey. Number eighty."
    "Christ," the detective muttered, shaking his head as he scratched out a line on his pad with hard, annoyed strokes. "I think we can figure it wasn't Wayne Chrebet."
    "You know him?" Beth said.
    "Wide receiver for the Jets," Sandy replied, then added, "That's a football team."
    "Oh." She seemed to shrink a little. "I hate football."
    "You didn't see his face?" the detective said.
    "No. He had it covered when he turned around." She turned to Sandy. "You didn't see him either?"
    Sandy wet his lips. An idea was forming. Its boldness tied his gut into knots but its potential made him giddy. It meant going out on a limb—far out on a very slim limb. But then, nothing ventured, nothing gained…
    "I saw what you saw," he said.
    "Shit," the detective muttered and slapped his notebook against his thigh. "What was this guy—invisible?"
    "When can we leave?" Beth said. "I want to go home."
    "Soon, miss," the detective said, softening. "Soon as we get names and addresses and statements from all you witnesses, we'll see that you all get home safely."
    As the cop moved off, Sandy leaned close to Beth and whispered, "I'm getting stir crazy. I've got to move around. You'll be okay for a few minutes?" He didn't know why but somehow he felt responsible for her.
    "Sure," she said. "Not like there aren't any cops around."
    "Good point."
    He left her and edged back toward the death car where flashes from the forensic team's cameras kept lighting the interior like welders' arcs. He noticed a cluster of three plainclothesmen and one uniform gathered outside one of the open sets of doors. Farther on, a man wearing latex gloves—from the forensics team, no doubt—examined the killer where he'd fallen through the doorway.
    Sandy needed to be over there, needed to hear what these cops were saying, but he couldn't get his feet to move. One step past that tape and he'd be sent scurrying back with his tail between his legs to stay put with the rest of the survivors. But he wasn't just a survivor, he was the press too, damn it—the people's right to know and all that.
    He tried to remember techniques from that assertiveness training course he'd taken last year but came up blank except for the old bromide about how the worst that could happen was that someone simply would say No .
    But fearing rejection, of all things, seemed more than silly after what he'd just been through.
    Sandy pulled his press card from his wallet and palmed it. A quick glance around showed no one looking his way. He noticed that one of the plainclothes cops was pretty big. Huge, in fact. Choosing an angle of approach that used the big guy's bulk as a shield, Sandy ducked under the yellow tape and sidled up to the foursome, listening, taking mental notes.
    "… like the second shooter knew what he was doing."
    "How you mean?"
    "According to what we're hearing he got the crazy in the shoulders first, then blew him away."
    "Fucking executed him's more like it. But what was he carrying? Nobody can tell us anything about his gun except it was real small."
    "And holds at least four rounds."
    "Not a .22, I can tell you that. Not a .32 either from the size of the crazy's wounds. Guy took his brass with him so we can't use that."
    "The whole thing's weird—including the way he blew away the crazy. I mean, why not just do the head shot and have it done with?"
    "'Cause if you miss that first head shot—and if we're talking about a tiny little barrel, there's a damn good