Let It Burn by Steve Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

own footing.
    “Stop! Police! I will shoot!”
    It was a lie, but worth trying. I was not going to shoot him in the back. If we’d had Tasers back then, I would have pulled mine from my belt and sent those two barbed hooks into him. With a range of thirty-five feet, then fifty thousand volts of electricity, it would have put him on the ground without, as they say, further incident.
    But we didn’t have Tasers that year. We had guns and we had batons and we had our own bodies. So I put my head down and I kept chasing him. But I had a few years on him, and even though my old scouting report said, “Runs well,” that praise was quickly qualified with “for a catcher.” You squat down, then stand up a couple hundred times a day, each and every day for an entire season. Then you see how well you run.
    The tracks took a slight curve to the right, then went under Bagley Street. I didn’t see any helpful backup sitting up there on the bridge. A siren and some flashing lights, and the knowledge that he couldn’t keep running down those tracks forever—that’s probably all it would have taken. Instead, I saw my suspect disappear into the darkness under the bridge.
    When I finally got there myself, I was just about ready to collapse, but I kept moving down the rails, trying to be careful with my footing. Up ahead of me I saw the tracks straighten out and head right for the tunnel that went under the Detroit River, for miles and miles, all the way to Canada. For one horrible second I couldn’t help imagining this kid trying to make his escape that way, and then the single bright light from an oncoming train, suddenly bearing down on him. Or me if I was stupid enough to chase him down the tunnel.
    I came out from the shade of the bridge, into the sudden glare of the sunlight. I didn’t see my suspect.
    A movement to my left. I reached for my revolver out of pure instinct. But no, he was up against the abutment, where the fence met the bridge. The bottom corner was loose, and he was working himself through the opening.
    “Stop!” I said, running to the spot, just in time to see him slip underneath, feet first. The ragged edge of the fence caught against his shirt, scraping his arm, tearing at his right sleeve. He scrambled to his feet, wincing and looking at his arm. There was a thin trickle of blood on his skin. He looked at me. That one second, the two of us seeing each other on opposite sides of a metal fence. He was close enough for me to see the color of his eyes. Close enough to see the Oakland Raiders logo on his black baseball hat. That close, yet a world apart. I pointed my revolver though the fence.
    “Get on the ground! Right now! Or I’ll shoot!”
    He stood there for another beat, a stone-cold look on his face. Then he turned and ran up the slope, onto Bagley Street. I didn’t shoot him in the back, much as I wanted to. I’ll be damned if anyone’s gonna make me run down the railroad tracks like a maniac, sweating and gasping and generally putting myself into near cardiac arrest. All on the short-shift day, no less.
    I crouched down and pulled up the corner of the fence. I couldn’t imagine how he could get through there. I couldn’t imagine myself even trying. So instead I keyed the radio on my shoulder. I was breathing too hard to speak. I had to wait a moment before I finally got it out.
    “Unit Forty-one,” I said, by way of identification. “I need two-eleven on a suspected dealer heading east on Bagley Street. Young black male, jeans, gray T-shirt, black Oakland Raiders baseball cap.”
    I heard a few responses. Cars in the general area, heading closer for a look. Maybe they’d pick him up. Maybe not. It was up to them now.
    I stood there with my hands on my knees for a while. When I was more or less functional again, I started walking back down the tracks. Under the bridge, then out into the daylight. I tried to remember exactly where he had thrown away whatever had been in his hand. I replayed