Hot Pursuit Read online

  “I think you’re bluffing. Come on, drop your gun.”

  “No, you drop your gun,” he answers, lifting his weapon in my direction.

  “Don’t be an ass Mike, you won’t be able to get away,” David says, stepping out from the other side of the car.

  “I will not go to jail,” he says and, instead of dropping his weapon, he turns around to aim his gun at David.

  On automatic pilot David and I shoot him down, I aim for a leg but as he twists around and falls under David’s bullet I hit higher than I wanted.

  We step toward him and David kicks the gun away.

  Pink bubbles come out of his ripped T-shirt. Fuck, fuck, fuck, the asshole can’t die on me.

  “Where is Sally?” I ask.

  He smirks at me and tries to speak but probably doesn’t have enough air to do so.

  David kneels next to him and puts his hand on the open wound on his chest. “Where is she?” he asks.

  The bastards takes one big gulf of air and tells us, “Fuck you!”

  Famous last words.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Slider

  “Maybe she’s upstairs,” David says. “Why don’t you go look while I call it in.”

  “Yeah, right,” I’m now full of dread. “The man was suicidal. He didn’t care about anything so maybe he did kill her or maybe he did lock her up in a place where we’ll never find her.”

  “Stop it right now!” David yells at me while searching the corpse’s pocket.

  His screaming grounds me and I realize he’s looking for Sally’s keys.

  “Don’t bother,” I tell him pulling out my heavy key ring. “I have my own set.”

  He looks at me sideways and realizes it’s not the right moment to ask me why I have a copy of Sally’s keys. He just says, “Go!”

  In hindsight I realize it may be a bit creepy but, when I borrowed her keys to have a double, it seemed totally natural to me.

  I run to the building. All the lights are on now and people must be calling 911 to report some shootout in their very quiet part of town. I rush up the flights of steps not waiting for the asthmatic elevator. When I reach the landing my heart is beating harder in my chest that if I had run a marathon.

  I turn the key and rush into her little studio. She’s not there. Fuck!

  Mayfair has helped himself to one of the frozen dinners she had in her refrigerator and left the dirty dishes in the sink. The rest of the clutter is her usual mess. Books piled up on her desk and her sofa bed still unfolded, bed unmade.

  It smells like her and I can’t help to think about the things I had planned to do to her on that bed tonight. I should never have gone back to the club. Fuck my shield and my service weapon. Fuck the stupid pictures. I take them out of my pocket and leave them on her desk for her to find when she comes back.

  Because she is coming back. I can’t have killed her. He was one smart son of a bitch, his idea of coming to hide here shows that he was adaptable. Had he not left Sally’s bag behind, it would never have crossed my mind to come looking for him over here. This is good, it shows that he must have kept her alive and hidden somewhere just in case he needed a plan B. The question is, where the fuck did he hide her?

  I leave the apartment, locking the door behind me, and ride the elevator down. When I reach the ground floor the lobby is a mob scene. All the neighbors are out in their nightgowns and pajamas watching the two police officers who are setting up a perimeter around Mayfair’s body and car.

  When I walk out of the elevator they part for me with a scared look on their faces. I feel like Moses crossing the Red Sea until I reach Ms. Molly, she’s Sally’s immediate neighbor. She can’t be a day under 90 and she’s seen me a few times when I dropped Sally home when her car was on the blink.

  “I know you,” she says.

  “Yes, Ms. Molly, you do,” I answer.

  “So you know what that big mess is about?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Sally’s been kidnapped. We’re looking for her and I’ll do my best to bring her back safe and sound.”

  “You do that,” she says tapping gently on my arm. “Do you have her brother’s number?”

  “No, Ma’am, I didn’t even know she had a brother.”

  “Well my understanding is that they’re estranged but under such circumstances maybe you should call him. Life’s obstacles are fabulous opportunities to patch up old wounds.”

  “I’m sure I’ll have our admin look into it,” I tell her. “Now if you would all be so kind as to go home. If you’ve seen or heard anything then I suggest you call the police station tomorrow morning, if not just go back to sleep.”

  I walk out and the sea closes behind me again. They remain in the lobby staring at the flashing cars. Everyone loves a good police show. No harm in getting a vicarious thrill from a death in the parking lot.

  David and I head for the station. We have tons of paperwork ahead of us. Normally I would agree that asking us to fill out some forms is not a lot to ask of someone who’s just shot a fellow officer dead, but I don’t have time for it now.

  When we reach the station, Ice and his Tornadoes are parked by the door. They found nothing. I get them up to speed.

  “I’ll get Whiz on Michael Mayfair’s file,” Ice says. Answering my puzzled look, he explains, “He’s our intelligence guy. I’ll ask him to find any property rented or leased. He’s really good, better than anyone you have in-house.”

  Everest and Catherine arrive as we’re talking.

  “Why don’t you guys go take care of the formalities while Everest and I get a search warrant and go digging in his house to see if we find anything interesting,” Catherine says.

  Despite my worry I can’t help but notice that Everest didn’t even flinch a little when Catherine took the lead on that one. Hey, who knew he was trainable? The macho man is capable of taking orders from a cutie. Sally will get a kick out of this, she always likes it when a woman takes charge.

  I climb the steps to our work room. Captain Black is already there.

  “Did you guys ride back together?” she asks.

  “Yeah, we did,” I admit.

  “This is highly irregular,” she notes.

  “I think the rule about separating the officers would not apply here since we were riding our bikes. It’s not as if we had 10 minutes together riding in a car,” David observes.

  “Yeah, whatever,” she shrugs. “I’m pretty sure this won’t raise any flags. I mean, I have no doubt you wanted him alive. Now we don’t know Jack Shit about where he hid her.”

  “Not exactly,” says a man’s voice on the other side of the room.

  Our heads snap in its direction. It’s Fed number 1, the man who rode with Captain Black. Shit, I should have paid attention to his name.

  “What do you have Joshua?” Captain Black asks.

  “A perimeter,” he says showing us a map.

  “How did you come up with that?” David asks.

  “I figured it was about seven-ish when Mayfair and the victim left the club…” he points to the location of the club on the map, marked with a big black X.

  “Sally, her name is Sally,” I cut in.

  “Yeah, right,” he doesn’t add ‘who cares’ but his tone says it for him, “and it was about nine-ish when you shot him down, here.”

  He points to another location he has marked on the map. Now I understand where he’s going with this and I say, “We know that in those two hours he did several things: hide Sally,” Joshua nods, “drive to the house where he changed and left his suitcase,” the Fed points out to a house close to the ocean marked with another X “and then drive to Sally’s place.”

  “What’s that red question mark here?” David asks pointing to another house close to the beach.

  “That’s his home,” Joshua says. “We don’t know if he had the suitcase in his trunk all the time or if he went back home to pack.”

  “My guess would be that he had it with him all the time,” Capta
in Black offers. “Otherwise he would have changed in his own house.”

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “I think before things got out of control, his intention was to retrieve the money for Zach, not to take the cash for himself and run.”

  I trace the cloud-shaped perimeter drawn on the map.

  “So taking into account the fact that it’s a quiet Sunday night, I figure that’s the furthest he could have gone to hide … Sally,” Joshua adds.

  “Maybe we could…” David says before he’s interrupted by Captain Black who’s still holding the pads and pens she prepared for us.

  “You’re not doing anything or going anywhere before you fill these out,” she says. “I want a detailed account of all you did between the moment you left the station and the moment you came back here.”

  We each go to do our homework separately.

  From his corner David looks at me and shrugs.

  “Come on Paul,” Captain Black says, “get it over with while we look for another lead.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sally

  Now I know for a fact that someone who is really tired can sleep just about anywhere, but I also know that there is a price your body pays for the rest your brain gets. I’m stiff as a board and my circulation is cut of in strange places. I try to stretch and curse a blue streak.

  The outside noise is louder than when I crashed last night. Monday morning traffic would account for that.

  I need to pee again. Real bad. I get up from my steps, grab the paper and manage to lower my jeans and crouch in the corner by the wall. I send a prayer out. I really, really, really want someone to find me quickly but please, not in the next two minutes.

  I manage to get back to my sitting position on the steps before a knight in shining armor comes waltzing through the door to rescue me. I pull out the spring and start working on the handcuff lock again.

  That’s the difference between real life and movies. In the movies no one ever needs to pee and the clumsiest heroine picks locks as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Well it’s not!

  As time passes I get better at reaching the little latch that I assume is the one I should be pushing to unlock the annoying bracelet, but it doesn’t budge.

  I decide to stop for a minute and look around again searching for divine intervention. That’s when I remember the door. I haven’t even tried to open it. I get up again and slide the cuff all the way up the handrail. I take a big breath and … the handle twists. I push the door and it does open, but just a couple of inches. Something heavy is right behind the door. I peek through the opening. It’s an abandoned store, the door opens in the back of the space. Through the opening I can see the windows of the store and daylight. About a feet away there’s a desk and, on the desk, there’s a phone.

  I press with all my weight against the door and it budges just a tiny bit. Okay, I can do this. I can move this stupid door. I sit on the highest step and put my feet on the closest bar of the handrail and push with my back against the door. The damn thing moves a little more. What the hell did they pile up against it?

  Now I have two things to keep me busy. I alternate between fumbling around in the lock and pushing open the door. My money is on the door, but since I get tired after a few pushes I rest by fighting with the lock. So far the lock is winning.

  Inch by inch the door opens and I’m finally able to slide an arm and a shoulder in the direction of the desk. Close but no cigar.

  I repeat to myself, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this, over and over again as I push and push relentlessly against the door.

  I’m sweating so much I could enter a wet tee-shirt contest. I win a few inches and my vision starts to blur. I stop to breathe and rest. The last thing I need is to pass out. I fight my impulse to press on the door again and try standing up. The world is a little fuzzy but I’m standing. I can touch the telephone cord with the very tip of my fingers. I let out of a scream of frustration before I let myself slide down to the floor and take more deep breaths.

  I will not entertain the possibility that the phone line is dead. A nasty little voice in my heads tells me that it would make sense since the place is closed but I will not listen to it.

  Instead I will rest a little while rolled up in a ball on the top step.

  When I feel good enough to start pushing again, I notice that it’s dark outside. I slept the major part of the day away. I’m thirsty. I have this vision of a large tumbler with iced water and a slice of lime. Screw the lime, screw the ice, even warm water would do fine.

  I push, once and then another time. It’s getting more difficult even though I give it all I’ve got. I’m ready to push a third time when whatever was behind the door tilts and falls in what seems like a deafening noise.

  I pray that some neighbors will hear it and come and see or better yet, call the police, but I hear nothing but a little traffic. It was only deafening to me.

  Very slowly I stand up and I can slide my body through the opening. I pull on the cord and the phone falls from the desk, as I pull it toward me I hear the marvelous sound of the dial tone. Two tears of joy pop into my eyes.

  I sit down again but this time partly inside the store with one arm extended, still attached to the rail. Cradling the receiver between my neck and my shoulder, I rest the base on my knees and dial 911 with my free hand.

  “Please hold the line,” says the recorded voice, “This is the Police, an operator will be with you shortly…”

  That’s when I see flashes of light outside and I hear someone say “I see her, she’s in there.”

  Someone smashes the window of the empty shop and I close my eyes under the glare of two powerful flashlights.

  Someone un-cuffs me and massages my wrist while someone else gently takes the phone away from me.

  “Slider?”

  A voice barks, “Idiots, put your lights down. Can’t you see you’re blinding her?” I smile as I recognize Brian’s unique deep voice.

  He’s the one who took the phone away. David is standing right next to him. The lights point to the floor and I see Slider studying my face with care while holding my hand, “You’re gonna be alright, Baby.”

  “How did you find me?” I ask, tears falling freely from my eyes.

  “I’ll tell you once I get you safely home,” Slider says.

  I hear David talking to the police operator. He gives our location and asks for an ambulance.

  I wrap my arms around Slider’s neck and repeat, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Slider sits on the floor next to me and pulls me on his lap.

  “You can thank Ice and his crew,” he says. “They’re the ones who found this place.”

  “Yeah, that we did but then he’s the one who broke the window. You couldn’t wait two minutes for Brains to force the lock,” David teases him. “I’d like to see you explain that away, man!”

  “Oh that’s easy, we were in hot pursuit,” Slider says. “Didn’t they teach you that when you were in the Police academy? During a hot pursuit just about anything goes.”

  “I guess they did,” Brian admits “but somehow I feel I must have missed out on the definition of the hot pursuit.” He winks at me and takes the phone from David.

  “Thank you so much Brian.”

  “Don’t mention it, sweet pea. When you decided to come work for us you became a Tornado and we take care of our own,” he tells me.

  He’s about to tell me more but then he stops when whoever he was calling answers.

  “Yeah, we have her… She’s fine … Yeah, just a little shaken but she’s a tough cookie…. No, not home, I’m sure she’s gonna be checked out at the hospital before they let her go home … Yeah, I’ll tell her. See you in a bit honey.”

  Turning to me again he explains, “That was Lisa. Juliya and her have been camping at the Club House worried sick about you.”

  “Give them a hug for me,” I say and then looking at Slider I ask, “Please take me home now. I pr
omise, I’m fine. Please.”

  “No honey, we’re going to wait for a box to take you to the hospital for a checkup and then we’ll go home.” He has that determined look on his face that says no negotiation is possible.

  I’m too washed out to fight him about this so I just snuggle against him. His shoulder makes a perfect head rest so I close my eyes, just for a minute enjoying the fact that I’m trapped in the prison of his arms and it feels so perfect I could cry… again.

  Somehow, I know that between Slider, David, and the Tornadoes, there is nothing I should fear. I’ll be safe now.

  Well, maybe not from the big bully of a paramedic who picks me up from Slider’s arms and straps me up on a gurney. Pulling the head rest up to put me in a sitting position, he pushes a bottle of water in my hands and says, “Drink!”

  I greedily open the bottle and drink. I had forgotten how thirty I was. Talking to himself as he secures the gurney in the ambulances, the paramedic mumbles, “Locked up for 24 hours and no one thinks of bringing water, bunch of assholes if you ask me.”

  I want to say that nobody asked him but instead after draining the bottle empty, I just say, “Thank you, I needed that.”

  He gives me another and after instructing me to drink more slowly, he taps on the thin metal wall that separates us from the driver and yells, “Ready when you are.”

  A few minutes later we’re at the emergency entrance of Point Lookout Hospital.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Slider

  I’m already by the door of the hospital when Sally’s ambulance arrives. I hold her hand while she’s being rolled in until the nurse asks me to get the hell out of her way.

  “Why don’t you go find out how Prince is doing?” Sally suggests. She watches me hesitate and shushes me out, “Go! I’m fine. I’m really worried about him and I want to know that I didn’t make things worse when I packed his wound.”