It's about 1:20 am here in CA.  A couple of hours ago I turned on the TV to see the replay of the Boston memorial service and President Obama's great speech (which I'd seen on my computer), and was greeted with flashing lights and chaos in Watertown, Mass.  A chase that apparently began at MIT resulted in a firefight in Watertown.  Right now they're playing home video of that firefight and explosions between two suspects and police.  The gunfire is interlaced with barking dogs and birds calling.

I've been watching all this in real time.  The police are now announcing that one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing identified last evening with photos from the FBI was involved in the firefight and is now at large in Watertown.  One of the suspects was killed in the firefight.  The officers looked pretty worried, and were warning residents to stay indoors.  In reference to the photos released earlier, it is the young man in the black cap who was killed, and the one in the white cap who is on the run.

It's very weird, watching this unfold in real time in the middle of the night.  Through all the TV blather I've also been monitoring online.  The New York Times actually had the most precise story from an eyewitness to the firefight. 

This started with an MIT officer shot and killed when investigating a distrubance complaint, possibly a car-jacking, a robbery at a 7-Eleven.  The dots are yet to be assembled, and the situation is ongoing.  Pete Williams of NBC, who has been the most reliable reporter on this entire story from the bombing onward, suggests that this all started when the two guys decided to get out of town and car-jacked a vehicle.  It may be that the whole photo thing was the FBI's way of flushing out the suspect.  That's my speculation, not his.