Part 6 (1/2)

”Norfolk coming up to Morton,” he yelled.

”Right onto Morton!” he said seconds later.

The dispatcher pa.s.sed along the locations.

The chase was past the fifteen-minute mark and had covered about ten miles. For all the police power brought to bear, the Lexus had outrun the police and was now honing in on its exit plan. The adrenaline was rus.h.i.+ng for those several dozen officers directly involved in the pursuit as well for the officers throughout the city listening to it. Despite the intensity and shouting, however, the transmissions at this point were breaking up.

”Where are we?” the dispatcher yelled. ”Where are we?”

Mike replied, but his words were lost in the static and wailing sound of police sirens. Only fragments of sentences made it through.

”Projects,” Mike yelled. ”Woodmere.”

Mike and Craig knew where the Lexus was headed. They knew it the moment they'd turned into the housing project. They'd worked the area and knew the layout of the streets-that a couple of streets looped, one to the left and the other to the right, and then met at the entrance to the dead end of Woodruff Way. They even knew about the hole in the fence; they'd chased car thieves who'd escaped on foot through it. Knowing all this, Mike and Craig could sense the chase was coming to a climax.

The dispatcher yelled, ”Where are we?”

Only two words from Mike were audible: ”Woodruff Way.”

There was more static and a collision of voices.

”Just the lead car!” the dispatcher yelled.

Mike broke through. ”Woodruff! Woodruff!”

Mike's voice was gone, then back to add that Woodruff Way was a dead end.

Then Mike was screaming: ”Getting ready to bail!”

They were his last words.

Mike and Craig followed the Lexus making a right turn onto Woodruff Way. The road went downhill about a thousand feet to a cul-de-sac enclosed by a chain-link fence. The circular dead end was about thirty yards in diameter. Marking the end were seven steel posts in the ground, beneath a single streetlight.

The Lexus was screeching to a stop beneath the streetlight in the middle of the circle. Mike and Craig were no more than a car's length behind. Mike's heart was pounding. ”You know you're about to run, and you just get prepared to do that. Gather up whatever you need to run, whatever you're gonna have, whether it's your flashlight or your radio or your firearm.” He had been involved in police chases before, but nothing like this. ”It seemed like an eternity.” He was also feeling confident they had finally reached the ”gotcha” moment. Immediately behind them were a slew of cruisers: Ian Daley in his, and Dave Williams and Jimmy Burgio behind Daley. Richie Walker had managed to get into the cul-de-sac behind Williams and Burgio. There was a bottleneck of police and emergency vehicles at the entrance to Woodruff Way, and in the next handful of cars after Walker were Joe Teahan and Gary Ryan, and Kenny Conley and Bobby Dwan.

Mike knew the numbers favored the cops. ”It was such a long, long chase, and I knew there were several officers behind us, so I felt pretty good about being able to catch these people.” For Mike, this was the moment-what being a cop was all about, split-second action, his life on the line and the public's safety at stake. The men in the Lexus, he said, ”had shot someone-that certainly makes you want to catch them.”

The four doors of the Lexus popped open even before the car came to a stop. Craig wanted to trap the driver inside, so he steered the Crown Victoria cruiser to the left side of the Lexus. Craig slammed on the brakes. Mike pushed open his door. It hit the Lexus. The two cars were that close. Tiny Evans jumped out from behind the steering wheel while the Lexus was still rolling. He ran around the front of Mike and Craig's cruiser toward one of the housing units on the left side of the dead end.

Ian Daley began braking directly behind the Lexus, while Dave Williams went to the right to complete boxing the Lexus in. But he skidded on an ice patch and lost control of the car. The cruiser sc.r.a.ped the two open doors on the right side of the Lexus and then smashed into a steel pylon.

Boogie-Down jumped out from the right side. He'd taken only a few steps when he was knocked down by the skidding cruiser. In front of Boogie-Down, Marquis met the same fate. Marquis jumped out, but when he put his feet on the ground, ”I was. .h.i.t immediately.” The two, sc.r.a.ped and bruised, began crawling on their stomachs across the asphalt between their car and the police cruiser.

Behind them, s.m.u.t Brown had scrambled across the backseat to follow Boogie-Down out of the car when he saw the skidding cruiser hit his two friends. ”They like disappeared,” he said. Boogie-Down and Marquis had been in front of him and then, in a flash, they were gone. ”My mind was racing so fast that I know I seen them there, then after that I didn't see them anymore.” s.m.u.t was on his own. ”I thought Boogie-Down was dead, to tell you the truth.” He eyed the fence erected along the right side of the cul-desac. He hit the ground running. ”I ran straight towards the fence.”

Mike pushed the car door hard into the Lexus, trying to make enough room to get out. He'd seen Craig leap out of the car and race after the driver off to the left, but lost sight of them. The security guard in the backseat, Charles Bullard, also headed that way. Craig, in a matter of seconds, caught up to Tiny Evans. Tiny had stopped and raised his hands. Craig hit him in the face with his fist. ”I ran up to him, I punched him. And I grabbed him by his arm, turned him around, twisted his arm behind his back.”

In the other direction, Mike saw the front and back doors of the Lexus pop open. He watched the other suspects scrambling out of the pa.s.senger side. He thought he saw two of them heading toward the fence off to the right. He twisted his body, thickened by his clothing-the black sweats.h.i.+rt and the three-quarter-length black parka.

Squeezing his way out, Mike ran behind the Lexus. The sound of screeching wheels caught his attention. He hesitated and looked back to see police cruisers braking to a halt. ”I kind of glanced up to make sure it wasn't going to hit me.” One cruiser skidded along the right side of the Lexus. Police sirens blasted and cruiser lights sliced up the night, and Mike thought the sight of the cruisers flooding into the dead end was a good thing. ”There was more help coming.”

As he ran behind the Lexus, he looked inside. ”I could see the doors to the Lexus were wide open and I could see inside the car and see that there's no guns hanging out.” The quick appraisal meant no one was looking to shoot at him, and the four suspects were all out.

Mike looked and caught sight of the suspect who bolted from the Lexus's backseat and was running over to the fence. He took off after the suspect, hard on the man's heels, barely hindered by the long down jacket and pumping his legs like a football running back.

Mike saw the man throw himself onto the fence and kick his legs up. The section of fencing was missing an iron bar, making the top unstable and barbed. The suspect was gaining traction and tumbling over the top when his brown leather jacket got snagged on one of the sharp p.r.o.ngs.

This was Mike's chance. ”He's dangling from the top of the fence.” Mike reached up and grabbed a sleeve. He held on to it tightly. He briefly looked at the suspect, but in that moment did not recognize s.m.u.t Brown. Mike tried pulling the suspect back, but the physics were against him. The suspect was already too far onto the other side. The last thing Mike wanted to do was let go-he had the suspect in his grip-but he had to.

The suspect dropped onto the hill on the opposite side of the fence and rolled. Mike took a step back. He was thinking about his next move, ”whether I wanted to jump over the fence and get cut up or hurt versus trying to find another way.”

The answer was to go straight ahead-up and over.

Mike stepped and reached for the fence. Then from behind, he felt the first blow, ”a real sharp, painful blow.”

He turned to his right to see what the h.e.l.l was going on.

Kenny Conley and Bobby Dwan raced downhill toward the cul-de-sac and saw the snarl of cruisers ahead of them screeching to a halt. Kenny had slowed to get through the bottleneck at the entrance to the dead end of Woodruff Way and then accelerated again.

They were now the seventh or eighth cruiser behind the Lexus. Directly in front of them, they saw another officer from their station-Joe Horton-who was driving a one-man cruiser.

”It was very hectic,” Bobby said. ”The sirens were going. Lights were flas.h.i.+ng, which if you look at them, they blind you. It was pretty dark other than the lights flas.h.i.+ng. There were car doors open from people jumping out and running around.”

Kenny, looking through the chaos, noticed the one suspect exit the rear of the Lexus and run toward the chain-link fence. He slammed the car brakes, and the cruiser began skidding to a stop at the top of the dead end. He did his best to keep an eye on the man running toward the fence.

Kenny was locked in-tunnel vision. In those split seconds, he did not pick up on the commotion Bobby was noticing farther down along the fence. He saw only the suspect on the other side of the fence-a man whose name he would later learn was Robert ”s.m.u.t” Brown.

Bobby, climbing out of the pa.s.senger seat, had glimpsed three or four people over near the fence. The officers had surrounded someone. ”I was just thinking they're cuffing him.” In the other direction, meanwhile, Bobby saw Joe Horton run to the left after another suspect who was already on the ground. Bobby made the quick calculation. The guys at the fence had a suspect and probably didn't need him. ”It seemed to me they were all set.” Horton, in contrast, was running alone toward a suspect. The call wasn't close. ”I worked with Horton,” he said, and so he ran over to a.s.sist him.

Kenny hustled to the front of the cruiser and ran into Bobby. Kenny was heading right, Bobby was heading left. They crisscrossed past each other and kept going. ”The last time I saw him,” Bobby said about Kenny, ”he was at the fence ready to go over.”

Kenny got over quickly. ”There was no bar on top,” he said. ”I put my feet up and was kind of wiggling and I jumped.” He dropped to his feet and stumbled. Up ahead, he saw the shadowy figure of s.m.u.t Brown leap off a little wall onto a street.

Kenny took off after s.m.u.t. s.m.u.t headed to the right, ran across the street and through a parking lot. He ran behind a building and up a hill through some woods. ”He was probably forty feet in front of me,” Kenny said. s.m.u.t hopped over a chain extended across a cement staircase, ran up the stairs, and then headed across another lot. Kenny followed.

They'd run the length of a couple of football fields when Kenny drew his Glock semiautomatic handgun. ”f.u.c.king stop!” he yelled.

s.m.u.t did, and he raised his arms. ”You don't have to shoot me.” s.m.u.t did not turn around. He yelled he was not armed. ”I haven't done anything.” Kenny ordered s.m.u.t to get down on the ground on his belly. s.m.u.t did, with Kenny's help. ”I pushed him with my forearm on the back of his shoulder blades.”

s.m.u.t did not resist. He was worried. He had seen plenty back at the fence, a stampede of cops beating a man he thought was Marquis. s.m.u.t was worried he was next-that this officer with the gun was ”going to come and jump on me.”

But it turned out he didn't have to worry. Kenny put his gun back in its holster, leaned over the drug dealer, and snapped on a pair of handcuffs.

When Mike turned to see what had hit him, he was. .h.i.t a second time. His head exploded, and he could not see. His only thought was wondering why he did not feel more pain. ”I just remember saying, like, Ouch, to myself.” It was a strange question to be asking, as if his mind had left his body and taken up a position of clinical observation.