looked out a window to see that Susan, now off the phone, was still at the bank of pay phones.
Then he went out the back door of the restaurant and made his way through the parked cars until he was across the lane from Susan.
He had to call “honey” twice before she saw him crouched low between the fenders of a Dodge and a Ford.
“She’s coming, right away, to pick me up,” Susan said.
The grossly obese young woman, in the act of counting change, looked at Susan curiously, and then even more curiously when she saw Matt.
Matt backed up and retraced his path through the restaurant.
Jack’s car was nowhere in sight, but a row of garbage cans had been placed across the road to block it.
Matt could see curious faces on people wearing cook’s whites looking out from the restaurant’s kitchen; Jack Matthews had obviously shown them his badge and explained what he was doing with the garbage cans.
And, as obviously, he planned to block the lane from the other end.
Matt walked quickly down the front of the restaurant, looking for Matthews’ Chevrolet. He found it and started to walk toward it, when he saw the battered Volkswagen turning into the parking lot.
He walked, as quickly as he could—without appearing to be running, just some guy going to his car—forcing himself not to look again at the Volkswagen, until he was parallel to where Susan stood at the bank of pay phones.
He got there just as the Volkswagen stopped.
Susan went to it and pulled the door open.
Matt ran to the Volkswagen and tried to pull the driver’s door open. He had decided the best way to restrain Jenny Ollwood was to jerk her out of the car and throw her on the ground.
He had solved the problem of having no handcuffs by “forgetting” to return the pair he had borrowed from Lieutenant Deitrich when they had arrested Calhoun. He would put the borrowed set on Jennifer Ollwood.
The Volkswagen driver’s-side door was locked.
“You are under arrest!” he shouted.
Jennifer Ollwood looked up at him, not in fear but fury. “Motherfucking pig!” she screamed.
The Volkswagen raced off.
Matt dropped to his knees to take his pistol from his ankle holster.
There was a burst of carbine fire, seven, eight, ten rounds. Matt looked down the lane.
Chenowith was standing in the center of it, trying to clear a jam.
“Drop the gun!” Jack Matthews shouted.
Chenowith turned to look at him.
Matthews, his issue .357 revolver held in the position prescribed, shot him twice, calmly and deliberately.
Matt, his pistol now in hand, ran after Jennifer’s Volkswagen.
She had apparently decided to ram her way past the garbage cans Matthews had placed in the lane. The one she had hit had wound up under the nose of the Volkswagen. Unsteerable, the Volkswagen had crashed into another parked car. Jennifer Ollwood now had the Volkswagen in reverse, trying to free herself. The Volkswagen’s tires were smoking, but the car was just barely moving.
Matt ran to the Volkswagen, smashed the window with the butt of his pistol, and then aimed it right at Jennifer Ollwood’s face.
She took her hands off the steering wheel, and the sound of the racing engine died.
Matt opened the door and then grabbed Jennifer’s sweater front and jerked her out of the car, tripped her, and threw her on her face on the lane.
She kicked and fought, and he hit her on the side of her head with the butt of his pistol. It didn’t knock her out, but it made her groggy enough so that he could pin her left arm behind her and, with his knee in her back, start to put the handcuffs on.
He heard a female voice say, indignantly, “He didn’t have to do that to her!”
And then he heard a baby start to howl.
He jerked Jennifer to her feet, looked in the back of the Volkswagen, and saw the baby.
Susan can handle the baby.
“My baby!” Jennifer screamed. “Somebody help my baby!”
Matt turned to look at the growing crowd of spectators.
“Nobody go near that car!” he ordered. “I’m a police officer, and I’m going to get someone to take care of the baby!”
“Goddamn cops!” the same indignant female voice muttered.
Matt propelled Jennifer around the corner of the building, back toward the bank of pay phones.
Jack Matthews saw him coming, and stepped into the lane. He held both hands up, as if stopping traffic, and there was a pained look on his face.
Matt saw the obese young woman sitting on the ground, screaming, and after a