I took off after him. He spun his wheels for a moment in the gravel of the railroad bed, giving me the chance to close the distance. But he found purchase and started moving fast. His stride was ugly, but he stayed ahead of me.
“Stop!” I yelled. “Stop right there! Police!”
He glanced back at me for one quick instant. Then his right arm came out from his body. He threw something away from him. I couldn’t quite see what it was. Something not that big. A slight flash in the sunlight, maybe a clear plastic bag filled with crack. Big surprise, yet another dealer. At least that’s what I was thinking as I chased after him.
I knew that Franklin would be calling it in behind me. Another car would go down Bagley Street to intercept our runner. But then I realized that as we got farther from the station, there’d be fences on both sides of the tracks. Tall fences with razor wire curled along the tops. Meaning there’d be nowhere else for him to run except straight ahead.
“Don’t be an idiot!” I said. “It’s not worth it!”
Possession with intent, not the biggest rap in the world, and yet here he was adding an evading charge on top of it. Meaning I have to keep chasing you, no matter how much it’s killing me.
He was running along the railroad tracks now, somehow managing to hit the ties with each stride. One wrong step and he’d plant his face right on the hard iron of the tracks. I stayed behind him, concentrating on my 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 the whole thing in my mind. Hand comes out, object in the air. There were two sets of tracks running parallel. I pictured the trajectory of the object, figuring it probably cleared the tracks closest to him, landing right around the near rail on the other side. So I crossed over and looked at the ground as I continued back to the station. When I got to what I thought was the approximate spot, I crouched down and duckwalked along the track, looking carefully. But I didn’t see anything. No clear Baggie with white rocks inside. Nothing but the gravel and the usual assortment of trash you find anywhere. Gum wrappers, cigarettes, rain-soaked pieces of paper.
Franklin was waiting about fifty yards down the tracks, talking into his radio. He shook his head as I came closer.
“Are you okay?”
“Why did I do that?” I asked him. “Some dumb kid with ten bucks’ worth of crack probably, and I gotta chase him a half mile down the railroad tracks? I could have tripped on one of those railroad ties and killed myself.”
“I’m kinda surprised you didn’t.”
“Nice backup we got there, too. One man standing on the bridge, that’s all we needed.”
Franklin smiled and looked away from me.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Did something funny happen here that I missed?”
“What, besides you running after that boy, like there was any chance in hell of you catching him?”
“So it wasn’t a complete loss, is what you’re saying. Because at least you were entertained.”
“Don’t you remember what we were saying earlier? About how all we needed to make the day complete was you chasing somebody, climbing a fence, throwing them into some garbage cans? Then complaining about how we’re too old for this?”
“Yeah, so? He went under the fence instead of over it. And I sure as hell didn’t catch him and throw him into any garbage cans.”
“Well,” he said, still smiling and shaking his head. “At least you can still say you’re too old for this. Go ahead.”
I didn’t bother. I walked back to the train station, already feeling the pain in my legs. I knew there’d be hell to pay the next morning.
“What was he doing back here?” Franklin said, looking up at the station. Eighteen empty floors, this whole back end of the station not used for anything. Not for years. The one corner of the station still open was on the opposite end. There was no reason to come down this far.
“You tell me,” I said. “Maybe he was meeting somebody back here.”
“I didn’t see anybody else. Did you?”
I shook my head, looking up at the windows high above me.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t be the first guy who broke into this place,” I said. “There’s probably copper wire and other stuff to steal.”