MURDER-SUICIDE ENDS WITH BABY BORN IN AMBULANCE

Sherri Brown, 25, and nine months pregnant, was shot and left for dead last evening in front of her sister's apartment building in the Leather District. The assailant then turned the gun on himself and died at the scene. Ms. Brown succumbed in the ambulance, where her child was delivered by emergency cesarian section. Her sister, Alexis Brown, was with her. Preliminary investigation revealed the gunman to be a former boyfriend of the victim.

Three monthsafter the tragedy, Alexis Brown deliberately removed the news clipping from her kitchen message board and placed it in an envelope for safekeeping. Reading wasn't necessary; she'd memorized the article. The headline, however, still had the power to suck the air out of her. Even now, as she handled the clipping, her pulse fluttered when memories of that night tortured her like scenes from a well-made horror movie.

She remembered running downstairs after Sherri to return a child-care book her sister had forgotten to take. Arriving just in time to watch a man shoot himself, and to see Sherri lying on the sidewalk. Calling 9-1-1 on her cell phone. Watching the doctor and the EMT deliver the baby. Holding Sherri's hand, straining to hear her last words, whispered directly into Alexis's ear.

She shivered head to toe, her stomach cramping as she thought about the police report, the result of a first-rate investigation. She'd learned more than she'd really wanted to know.

Clasping a pen, she wrote Michelle's name on the envelope, sealed it and filed the newspaper article with the baby's other legal papers in the bottom drawer of her desk. When her niece grew up, she'd be entitled to rea