My phone rang seconds later. “Do you have a visual on Doyle?” I yelled at Kohn. “I can’t see him anywhere!”
“In pursuit down an alley—he’s on Bishop now, headed toward 79th!”
Shit.
I made a U-turn in the middle of the street, much to the annoyance of other drivers if the blaring horns, screeching tires, and yelling was any indication.
“Shit, wait,” Kohn gasped, “it’s Loomis, not Bishop.”
It was good he told me since I had been poised to make a hard left and instead drove by, flying down the street to the next one and turning in, barreling down it probably much faster than I should have. Alleys were dicey; you never knew who could pop out of one of the buildings.
A man was in a dead sprint toward me, and my partner was in quick pursuit. I came to a lurching stop, and as the guy went to veer around me, I threw open the driver’s-side door. He hit it hard, slamming it shut, but it stopped him.
Ian was there a second later, hauling the dazed man roughly to his feet so I could get out. He cuffed him, then spun him around and shoved him against the car.
“This is police brutality,” he gasped.
“We’re not the police,” Ian stated, not even winded from his run, pulling his badge from the inside of his coat so the guy could see the star. “We’re marshals.”
“Shit,” he groaned. “I don’t wanna go back to the joint.”
“Too late,” I replied cheerfully as Kohn and Kowalski came whipping down the alley—we all drove too fast—followed by three police cars, blue lights pulsing, sirens screaming.
We were surrounded in seconds, but Kowalski had more important things on his mind than the apprehended fugitive.
“Did you guys really eat?” Jer wanted to know before anything else, big bear of a man that he was. He looked like one of those powerlifters in the Olympics, all barrel chested and huge. In contrast was his partner: sleek, metrosexual Eli Kohn, who apparently took a new woman home every single night. I always wondered where he got the energy.
“What?” Ian asked, clearly annoyed.
“What? Why you gotta say it like that? I was gonna treat for dinner, but not if you’re gonna be a prick. I’ll take your partner and leave your ass here.”
Ian’s scowl got darker, and I apologized for him and said we’d love to have dinner at any restaurant of Jer’s choosing.
“There, ya see, douchebag—that’s how not to be a dick.”
“Where’s Sergeant Joyner?” I asked everyone around me.
“Here,” she called out, striding up to me as the men cleared a path.
I passed her the fugitive’s wallet when she reached me. “I release into your custody one Derek LaSalle, formerly of Gresham, Oregon, wanted for assault and battery.”
Sergeant Adele Joyner out of the Portland PD was more than happy to take him off our hands. “Thank you,” she said, shaking my hand and then Ian’s. “Without these task forces, I’d never pick up the criminals who aren’t involved in our open cases.”
It was true. Most cops were so busy not drowning in their day-to-day caseload that people who evaded capture, ran to other states, or crossed jurisdictional lines slipped through the cracks. Many PDs didn’t have the resources or manpower to simply follow a fugitive across the country. But what they could do was bring their missing violent criminals to the marshals service, and we would form what basically amounted to a posse made up of federal, state, and local law enforcement personnel to hunt down whoever they were after. Joyner had approached the marshals in Portland, and they had in turn accessed case records in Chicago and found a lead on her fugitive. The rest was simply waiting and watching.
“I appreciate this so much, gentlemen.”
“It’s our job,” Ian assured her.
“It is,” I agreed.
“So tell me a good place to eat before we go back to the hotel.”
I suggested Girl & The Goat downtown, but Ian wanted meat and beer so we decided on Trenchermen over on North Avenue. I’d taken him once before and the hanger steak there was his new favorite thing. Sadly, when I called to check, the dining room was closed, and since it was past 10:00 p.m., our options were dwindling. Ian’s second idea was Mexican, El Charro over on Milwaukee Ave. He went on and on about the extralarge super burrito with scrambled eggs and chorizo until even Kowalski was salivating. Joyner and some others agreed to follow us there.
He was excited to see that the driver’s-side door on the Taurus was caved in from the fugitive’s impact, so we had to have it towed back to our garage. We technically weren’t allowed to drive a vehicle in any condition where the structural integrity could be called into question.
“Gimme a break, it’s fine,” I told Ian. “It’s still drivable. That’s only a ding.”