He braked sharply, stopped, turned on his flashers, and opened his door.
“Call Radio,” he ordered, handing his cellular to Olivia.
The driver’s door of the Grand Am opened and the driver got out. He was a young, tall, white male.
“You stupid sonofabitch!” Matt muttered.
“This is Detective Lassiter, badge 582. We are at Red Lion and Knights Road. We have a vehicular accident, auto-auto. Possible injuries, start in Fire Rescue, and a sector car.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, then Olivia added, “No. We are not involved.”
Thank God! Matt thought. Neither one of us could pass a Breathalyzer test right now.
The young, tall, white male looked first at the Caravan and then at the Porsche stopped on Knight’s Road with its warning flashers blinking.
Then he sort of shrugged and took off at a lope down Orchard Lane.
“Check on the people in the van,” Matt ordered, and jumped out of the Porsche and ran after the young, tall, white male.
Now it’s leaving the scene of an accident, you dumb sonofabitch!
And that Grand Am is probably stolen.
“Stop!” he shouted. “I am a police officer.”
The young, tall, white male kept running. Matt saw him turn off the street into a driveway.
When Matt reached the lawn of the next house, he cut across it diagonally and at a full run encountered with his foot a wire supporting an ornamental tree on the lawn.
He flew through the air and landed flat on the concrete driveway. He felt his face scrape against the concrete, and a stinging in both hands where they had struck the concrete.
He shook his head and got to his knees.
The young, tall, white male was running around the side of a garage.
Matt ran after him.
When he turned the corner of the garage, he saw the young, tall, white male about to top a five-foot hurricane fence.
“Stop, police officer!” Matt shouted.
The young, tall, white male looked right at him and then dropped to the ground on the far side of the fence.
“I’m going to get you, you sonofabitch!” Matt shouted, and ran toward the fence.
It was his intention to leap the fence gracefully by vaulting over it with the use of his left hand on the parallel pipe at the top of the fence.
Two problems arose. First, the parallel pipe at the top of the fence was perhaps an inch below the top of the fence itself. Second, the uppermost joints of the twisted wire of the fence were above it. One of them penetrated the heel of Matt’s hand, which he had planned to use for leverage.
This caused (a) Matt’s passage over the fence to be considerably less graceful than he intended; (b) a puncture wound in the heel of Matt’s hand; and (c) Matt’s trousers to be torn from just below the knee almost to the cuff as they became ensnared in the twisted wire at the top of the fence.
“Sonofabitch!” Matt cried, and got to his feet.
He saw that he was between two lines of hurricane fence running behind the houses. The young, tall, white male was running between them. Matt ran after him.
At the end of the parallel lines of hurricane fence there were a dozen garbage cans. The young, tall, white male leapt nimbly over the first two cans, but then his foot slipped between two of them and he sprawled onto the ground amid toppled garbage cans.
Matt, breathing heavily, shoved the garbage cans to one side, then fell to his knees beside the young, tall, white male and pulled his arm behind his back. Then he put his knee on the small of the young, tall, white male’s back.