The Chase

A bright light shines from overhead, nearly blinding me. I squint to see a man climbing the steps that lead from the marina to Front Street. He looks shady; black jeans over black boots, black hooded sweatshirt, hood pulled up over a ball cap. His pace is quick, not so fast that anyone with an untrained eye wouldn’t find suspicious, but I’m a cop, and these things stand out. I follow him at a distance down Front Street. He enters Belfast’s, an unsavory dive bar where things get so rough they only serve beer, and it’s served in cans. He takes a seat at the bar, dropping his hood. He looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t figure out why at the moment. I take a seat at the far end of the bar. The guy looks nervous, guilty. He plays with his beer more than he drinks it, spinning it around in his hands. He’s jumpy, every little sound getting him worked into a frenzy. He has dabbed sweat from his brow seven times already and we’ve only been here a few minutes.

A man the size of a Volkswagen Beetle comes out of the back office. He approaches my guy and puts two meaty paws on his shoulders with a nod towards the office. With his big hand on the back of my guy’s neck, he guides him into the office. I get up to follow, hoping to get a glimpse of what is going on behind closed doors, but the big ox squeezes him in and shuts the door, posting guard outside. I take a seat at the bar and wait patiently. After ten or fifteen minutes, my boy comes out with a manilla envelope sticking out of his sweatshirt pocket. I look past him into the office and see someone I do recognize, Elliot Winters.

 Winters is a loan shark, the kind that will break your leg or worse if you don’t pay. My partner Jimmy and I were building a case for this guy, trying to link him to several murders in the area, but he always has an alibi. I was unaware of Winters having any investments in this area, never knew him to work this part of the city. It makes me wonder what transaction went down between him and my guy. Based on his behavior, my guy wasn’t here to get a loan. Those guys are normally overconfident that they are going to beat the odds. No, this guy was nervous going in, and still nervous when he came out.

Stepping out of the bar, I see flashing lights down at the marina where we had come from. Obviously, he must have done something down there which explains his shady behavior. I follow him as he turns down an alley, preferring to stay in the shadows. He takes the fire escape up to the fourth floor of an apartment building where he slips in the window. After he’s in, I go up the fire escape as quietly as I can. I perch myself outside his window and watch him as he empties the contents of the envelope onto his kitchen table. It looks like a passport and some Mexican currency. He grabs a duffle bag from the closet of his studio apartment and begins to fill it. It becomes clearer to me that this guy more than likely has something to do with the incident down at the waterfront. If I charge in there now, I risk the chance of scaring him off, so I climb back down and jog for the marina.

The marina is taped off and there are lights everywhere, forensics are on site. I see my police captain and my partner, Jimmy, standing over a body down at one of the docks. I join them and say, “I followed a suspicious looking man who left here around ten o’clock. He’s connected to Winters. Winters hooked the guy up with a phony passport and some cash to get out of the country. He might be our guy.”

Neither of them says anything. Jimmy stares at the body while the captain looks out into the bay. I look down at the body and realize it’s mine. I begin to swoon as reality sets in. Visions of my wife and our two-year-old daughter back home flood my mind. Memories from my childhood flash before my eyes, pictures in my mind like photographs of my parents and all of those who have touched my life. Then I remembered why that guy looked familiar. He shot me. He was an anonymous caller who said he could provide evidence connecting Winters to a murder. He said to meet him here alone. Foolishly, I did. Now my body lies here all contorted with a bullet hole in my forehead, the back of my head gone.

“You think it’s Winters,” I hear my captain ask.

“It has to be connected to him somehow. I just don’t get what Heath was doing out here all by himself,” Jimmy says.

“You answer that question, and you might have your first clue.”

“I’m going to go wake up Rachel, tell her myself.”

I get into Jimmy’s car for the ride. I try to get him to hear me. As much as my wife deserves to hear of my demise as soon as possible, and deserves to hear it from him, there is no time. If we can catch this guy, we can get him to turn on Winters. Of course, he doesn’t hear me. He’s grieving. His eyes are filled with tears, and he is beating on the steering wheel. In a desperate attempt to get his attention, I focus all my strength on the steering wheel and grab it, forcing the car into a U-turn in the middle of the highway. Cars screech, squeal, and honk as we drive in the wrong direction on the interstate. Jimmy flips out and tries to regain control, eventually slamming on the brakes. He tries to get the car over to the shoulder, but I won’t let him. He throws the car in park and gets out. “Damn piece of crap! What the hell is wrong with you?”

I fling open the passenger door and take the car out of park. The car begins to roll and Jimmy jumps in, trying to stop the car, but I’m in the driver’s seat now. I hit the gas and cross the center divide so that we are heading in the right direction. I take him back to Front Street, just outside my suspects apartment building. Jimmy throws his hands in the air and says, “What am I supposed to do now?”

A taxi pulls up in front of us and my suspect exits the building. I get out of the car and give the guy a good, hard shove, knocking him to the ground. His gun clatters to the concrete and slides to Jimmy’s feet. Jimmy picks it up and shows his badge. “Do you have a license for this?”

The guy scrambles to his feet and takes off running, leaving his duffle bag behind. Jimmy gives chase, gaining on him quickly. The runner dodges into an alleyway and starts knocking over everything he can to slow Jimmy down, but Jimmy is young and agile, dragging the guy down before he can get out of the alley. He reads him his rights as he cuffs him. He puts the guy in the car and grabs the duffle bag as he circles the car to get in. This time, I let Jimmy do the driving as he takes the guy downtown to the precinct.

At the precinct, Jimmy questions the man about my murder and the contents of the bag. The guy, one Terry Rickshaw, says nothing. Jimmy puts him in holding while forensics goes through the evidence. The evidence comes back with a hair they had found on my shirt that wasn’t mine. It was his. The captain offers the guy a deal, one that means less prison time in exchange for Winters. Rickshaw doesn’t turn on Winters, however, knowing his time in prison will be short if he does.

Jimmy has a new partner now, a college kid straight out of the academy. They’re still working on tying the murders in the area to Winters, hoping to eventually bring the guy down. I now know that Winters is having debtors pay off their debts through unlawful actions so the deeds cannot be traced back to him, which will make Jimmy’s and this new kid’s job a lot harder. But I’ll be around to help. That blinding bright light has yet to return.