Mike pressed his ear against the door again. More talking, footsteps, some kind of commotion. A metallic swinging noise. Something was being opened-a window, or maybe a screen door.

“Open up!” Mike shouted. “Now!”

All he heard in response were footsteps, and they were growing fainter.

Soon they would be gone, whoever they were. The question was whether Mike had the legal right to do anything about it. And it was a question he pondered for, oh, half a second, because there just wasn’t time.

“Freeze!” Mike shouted, kicking the door. The flimsy lock gave and the door swung open. At the back end of the house, he saw two men scurrying through a patio door. One of them was almost instantly out of sight. The other, the man who had opened the door, would be soon. “Freeze! Police!”

Did he have the right to enter the house in pursuit? Oh, hell. Leave it for the lawyers. He raced inside-

And that’s when he saw her, sprawled across a blanket lying on the floor. It didn’t take him two seconds to realize Ernestine Rupert was dead-and had been for some while.

“Stop where you are!” he repeated as he raced toward the back. He unholstered his weapon. “You’re under arrest! Stop or I will shoot!”

He blazed through the back patio door. The sandy-haired man was rapidly descending a series of steps that led to a sunken garage. And from there? Mike could only imagine. He’d be long gone, that much was sure.

Mike leaped off the top of the stairs. He landed on the lawn a split second later, so hard it drove his knees into his chin. It hurt, and his lip was bleeding, but he blocked the pain out of his mind. He scrambled to his feet, raced to the garage, and dived toward the fleeing suspect.

He flew just far enough to tackle the man around the knees. A little lower than he wanted, but it would do. The man tumbled down onto the pavement just outside the garage, banging his head against the back wall.

Ouch. That had to sting.

“You’re under arrest,” Mike said, gasping. He whipped out his handcuffs and grabbed the man’s right arm. Inside the garage, he heard a car engine starting. “Damn. Where is that-?”

The man’s boot came out of nowhere. It blindsided Mike, knocking him sideways and loosening a tooth. The cuffs went jangling to the ground. The suspect crawled out from under him and fled.

Evidently the blow to the head hadn’t been as incapacitating as it looked, Mike realized. Damn, damn, damn. Why had he been so sloppy? He should’ve seen that coming. He scrabbled to his feet, trying to get his bearings, which was no small accomplishment. He loped toward the garage door just in time to see the sandy-haired man dive into the passenger seat. The driver-who matched the description Ben had given of the nephew-peeled out, making it from garage to street in less than a second.

Mike slapped himself on the side of the face twice, hard. If it was going to be a freaking car chase, he was going to need his wits about him. He raced to his car, watching to see which way they were headed. They had a lead of several seconds, he realized as he thrust his key into the ignition. But he also noticed that poor Brucie was driving some crappy boxy foreign car, a Yugo or something. Mike, of course, was driving his trusty silver TransAm.

The odds were evening.

Half a minute later, Mike had them. They were cruising down Memorial, which unfortunately was the busiest street in the city. They were trying to make it to the highway, no doubt. If they could get to I-44, they could get anywhere. Mike didn’t have a license plate number or even a competent description of the car. So he had to make sure that didn’t happen.

He got on his cell phone and requested backup, notifying them that a high-speed chase was in progress. He hated car chases; they were inherently dangerous and ended up harming civilians more often than they captured bad guys. But he wasn’t going to let these two get away. Not with a corpse lying in their living room.

“Get as many black-and-whites out as possible,” he barked. “Kill the stoplights. Try to block off the street before these clowns hurt someone!”

The getaway car’s speed continued to increase. Mike knew it was only a matter of time before they hurt or killed an innocent motorist or pedestrian. He had to bring this to a conclusion. Fast.

He floored it, speeding by two other drivers (one of whom shot him the finger) and rammed Bruce from behind. The little foreign car lurched forward like a billiard ball. But it didn’t stop.

Brucie had to be sweating it now, Mike reasoned. He was probably flooring his accelerator, too, but in his crappy car, the floor came a lot sooner than in Mike’s TransAm. And to think Ben gave him grief about driving a teenager car. What did Ben know? Eternal youth had its advantages.

They made it through the traffic light at Forty-first by a whisker. Mike reached through the driver’s side window and attached his portable siren, turned it on, and rammed Bruce’s car again, this time all the harder. Probably crumpled his bumper a bit in the process, a thought that nearly brought tears to Mike’s eyes. He’d have to petition Chief Blackwell to make good for the repairs. Which meant he’d better bring these two killers in.

He swerved into the right-hand lane, pulled up beside them, and activated the car’s built-in bullhorn. “Police!” he announced, as if they didn’t know that already. “You are under arrest. Pull your vehicle over immediately.”

They did pull over, but not in the manner that Mike intended. Bruce suddenly swerved to the right, broadsiding Mike’s TransAm. Mike cringed as he heard the painful scraping of metal that told him his beloved car had been seriously damaged. He was knocked into the next lane, barely avoiding an elderly woman in a pink Cadillac.

His teeth clenched together. Now you’ve done it, you aunt-murdering little bastard. Now you’ve made me mad. Mike pulled back into the lane beside them, cutting off an oncoming pickup truck. Fortunately the driver didn’t have a rifle in the back, because he looked mad enough to fire it if he had. Mike pulled beside Bruce and slammed him sideways, giving as good as he got and then some. For a moment, Bruce totally lost control of his car. The back end rocked back and forth, threatening to spin out at any moment. Bruce worked the wheel frantically, barely preventing the car from colliding with the neighboring traffic.

“Pull over immediately,” Mike repeated into the bullhorn. “You are under arrest.”

Bruce did not pull over. Instead, he did something Mike wouldn’t have thought possible. He drove faster.

Mike saw they were fast approaching the traffic light at Thirty-first. It was a four-way stop, the light was already yellow, and they were still a good hundred feet away from it.

Don’t do it, you stupid fool, Mike thought as he applied his own brakes.

Bruce chose the other pedal. He poured it on, trying to rocket through the intersection. The light turned red several seconds before he got there, but he kept on blazing through…

He never saw the electric blue pickup until it was on top of him. It plowed over the Yugo like it was a Matchbox toy, smashing the hood, shattering the glass.

My God, Mike thought, looking away. My God, my God.

He punched his cell phone and called headquarters. “We’re going to need an ambulance out here,” he said. “Fast.” But even as he said it, he knew it wouldn’t help. There wasn’t enough left of that car to put on a microscope slide.

Mike banged his fist against the steering wheel, furious. He’d told them to stop, damn it. Why didn’t anyone ever listen to him?

“So Bruce and this Manly Trussell creep were behind the murders?” Ben asked.

“Absolutely.” Mike was hunched over his desk, assiduously engaged in a complex endeavor involving paper, glue, staples, and file folders. “We found more than enough evidence in Bruce’s home to prove he and his pal offed his aunt.”