Branches flicked past my face. There was hardly enough light to see where the suspect was going, but I was just able to make out his outline moving swiftly through the woods on the fringe of the night.
I leapt over a fallen log, rushed past a pile of garbage and a rusted shopping cart that’d somehow found its way in here.
Just past the tree line, streetlights had blinked on. The shooter emerged from the trees, dashed through the circle of light cast down by one of them, and disappeared somewhere beyond it.
A sprawling, boarded-up building squatted on the other side of the street and blocked a direct path through the neighborhood. I couldn’t tell which direction the runner had gone to avoid it-right or left.
I bolted forward, ducked to miss another branch, and, a handful of seconds later, burst through the edge of the trees and stood by the curb.
No sign of the man I was chasing.
Right or left?
No idea.
He held his gun in his right hand.
Hurry!
I made a choice.
Right.
All things being equal, if he fired with his right hand, he’d be right-handed. I recalled Dr. Werjonic’s research, his writings on cognitive maps and fleeing suspects: “Right-handed people typically turn right upon entering a novel environment.”
I dashed toward a row of cramped low-income apartments.
When I came to the intersection, I saw no sign of the shooter.
I ran forward, checked an alley, then gazed down the block.
Nothing.
No cars were moving. No pedestrians. Admittedly, this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people typically take casual strolls in the twilight, but tonight the streets seemed uncharacteristically deserted.
Another hurried search through another alley and I came up empty again. In frustration I let my foot find a nearby trash can. If it hadn’t been chained to a telephone pole, it would have cleared the street. As it was, I left a sizable dent in the side that I might have been proud of any other time.
Immediately, curtains in the nearest apartment building fluttered open and in the porch light I saw a young African-American boy, maybe four or five years old, peering out at me. I was already hurrying back toward the streetlight where the suspect had disappeared, but I didn’t want to frighten the boy, so I hid my gun, continued on casually, and then the curtain closed, and he slipped from view and was gone once again.
When I got to the spot where the suspect had exited the woods, I heard Ralph hurtling through the darkness toward me, the light from his flashlight marking his path. “Anything?” he called as he burst through the edge of the forest.
“No.”
He cursed loudly.
Just as we started scouring the street in the other direction, a patrol car came peeling around the corner.
“Let ’em sweep the area,” I told Ralph. “I want to get back to the train yard and make sure there aren’t any more victims.”
He pulled out his radio. “Or suspects.”
“Yeah.” I was already heading into the forest. “Or suspects.”