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smashed into them midturn, T-­boning them, hard.
    You can go to movie theaters and watch all the computer-­generated mayhem you want, but none of that compares to the real thing—­to the terrible crash followed by the sickening, grinding sound of twisting metal coming to rest. And then, out of the sudden silence that followed the carnage came the haunting sound of not one but two wailing car horns. They sounded like sentinels announcing the end of the world, or at least the end of the world as we knew it.
    By then, Mel and I were both moving, toward the action rather than away from it. There would be other cops in the neighborhood soon, but we were closer than anyone else, and in what would soon turn into a massive traffic jam, we’d get there before anyone else could, too. If the crooks, whose car was closer, managed to exit their vehicle and tried to take off on foot, we’d be able to restrain them.
    Not surprisingly, neither of them—­dumb and dumber—­had been smart enough to wear a seat belt. They had both been ejected from the vehicle. We found them lying on opposite sides of Broad. I located the first one on the north side of the street, lying with his head cracked open like a broken watermelon on the sharp edge of the curb. I didn’t need to check for a pulse to know he was a goner.
    The other guy, the passenger, had slammed full-­tilt into a metal utility vault on the far side of the street. Mel reached him at the same time several passersby did. She knelt briefly and dropped out of sight. When she straightened up, she caught my eye and gave me the thumbs-­down. So that one was dead, too—­no great loss there. Subsequent computer-­generated reconstructions of the collision estimated that the two dunces were doing seventy and still accelerating when they slammed into the turning vehicle. There was no sign that the driver ever touched the brakes.
    Knowing those guys were dead, Mel and I turned our attention toward the other damaged vehicle. It was only then that we realized, with growing horror, that what we were seeing, stalled in the middle of Broad, were the still-­smoking remains of Ross Connors’s Lincoln Town Car.
    Even months later, recalling that horrific scene that changed all our lives was enough to shock me back to real time. I set down my coffee mug and headed for the shower. An hour or so later, when I left Belltown Terrace, I turned right on Second and drove all the way down to Olive and used that to make my way up to Harry’s rehab facility on the far side of Capitol Hill. That’s the official name for that particular neighborhood, but due to all the hospitals based there, locals generally refer to it as Pill Hill.
    In the old days I would have turned right on Broad and over to Fifth to make that trip. Not anymore. For one thing, the city’s traffic engineers have fixed it so Broad no longer goes anywhere useful. Besides, I avoid Denny and Broad as much as possible. That’s where the accident happened. It’s where Ross Connors and his driver, Bill Spade, lost their lives, and it’s also where Harry Ignatius Ball lost both his legs.
    Just glancing up either of those streets is enough to bring back vivid memories of that nightmarish scene. Ross’s aging Lincoln Town Car had been hit so hard that both ­people on the driver’s side of the car—­Bill at the wheel and Ross seated directly behind him—­had died on impact, crushed to death when the stolen Range Rover plowed into the passenger compartment, ending up with the Rover’s front bumper crushed up against the Town-­Car’s drive shaft.
    Momentum from the collision carried the two conjoined vehicles into a nearby light pole with enough force that the pole toppled over. It landed on the roofs of both cars, crumpling metal like so much tissue paper and sending a jagged edge of roof into Harry’s lower thighs, nearly severing his legs.