Neon Nights Chapter 18

If there were an actual scale of one to ten for how busy the night had been, Officer Jay Thompson would have given this one a 13. Sitting in his cruiser, he sipped his 3 a.m. gas station coffee, loaded down with as much creamer and sugar as the cup could hold to make it palatable.

JT was what he went by at work, the naturally shortened moniker appropriate for obvious reasons. But other members of the department enjoyed the correlation to the famous singer as well, as Thompson was known in karaoke bars far and wide for his pop renditions that brought the house down after he had a couple of cocktails.

Everyone wants to be someone else.

His legs were starting to get numb from sitting in one place for so long, so he got out of the car and stretched them as best as he could, running in place for thirty seconds to get the blood flowing. It seemed to do the trick and reinvigorated his brain and body, both on their last gasp of the night.

His assignment tonight was the Highway 13 corridor that led from the interstate to the beach and went directly past the fairground exit.

The road meant an overabundance of crazy kids heading to the festival and the usual influx of partiers coming to celebrate a weekend at the beach by trying to drink their body weight over the next forty-eight hours.

One day, he would tire of the graveyard shift, with its vampiric sleep schedule and the loonies in the boonies, but that day had yet to arrive. This was the time of night when things could get interesting. Mind you, when the summer was over, there was a lot less action, but tonight had run the gamut of the East Bay criminal code: reckless driving, indecent exposures, drunk or drugged in public, and a string of fender benders that had kept the wheels of justice actively adding rubber to the pavement since dusk.

It was a veritable charcuterie board of stupidity.

Deep into the witching hour, things had quieted down on the roads, and he felt like it might be an easy cruise to the end of his shift at 6

a.m. when the day crew came on. Just enough time to log into one of the five dating apps he kept installed on his phone. Never one to be without companionship, no matter how fleeting, he was like an addict when it came to finding out what beautiful new woman had reached out to him with a message or had hearted his profile.

"Damn!" he said out loud to himself in the cruiser, looking at a photo of a mid-twenty-something brunette named Zoe, who looked like she had been cut from the pages of Cosmo and transported to a dairy farm—daisy dukes and all.

Zoe: Hi there, Officer :). Maybe we can do coffee and donuts if that's something you guys actually do, LOL.

He attacked the phone with his fingers.

Absolutely ma'am :) As you would expect, I know where to get the best of both items, LOL.

He shifted the black Hemi Challenger into gear and started back down the two-lane highway towards the interstate, pondering the bleakness of a world where a new romantic companion was more than a text message away.

The stretch of highway from the fairgrounds to the interstate was the most poorly lit section on the road. It was a sleep-inducing vortex for anyone who traveled it without the company of other cars, the dark pavement seemingly stretching out to the end of the universe as old streetlights kept a pale-yellow watch over a dense, dark forest.

The coffee wasn't holding up its part of the bargain, and JT found himself fighting harder and harder to stay awake, resorting to the age-old remedies of slapping himself across the cheeks, sitting up higher in the seat, and rolling down the windows. He cranked up some music and sang along to a string of rap songs from the 90s that he had on a playlist. He may not have understood how people dated twenty years earlier, but he got their music. The dreams of a parallel life of superstardom blasted his senses with every note, and with his eyes and ears refreshed, he opted to take the crossover back toward town and start a fresh lap.

A set of headlights headed eastbound kept him in the crossover while waiting for them to pass.

He grabbed a protein bar from the snack bag in his passenger seat and took a bite. As the vehicle drew closer, he could see that it was a black delivery van with no markings on it, and it was straddling the lane divider, turning a two-lane road into a single.

Not the end of the world at this time of night, but if the driver is falling asleep, it's a much bigger problem.

Eighty-four in a seventy was the reading as the van zipped by, seemingly oblivious to him sitting there.

No tap of the brake lights. Okay, two strikes.

He set his bar back in the bag, pulled the unmarked cruiser back onto the road, and started following at a distance. After another mile down and three more trips over the lane lines, he had seen enough.

Strikes three, four, and five.

He flipped the lights and sped towards the van.

The lights seemed to shake the driver out of his haze, but instead of pulling over to the shoulder, he pushed the gas pedal to the floor and cracked the one-hundred-mile-per-hour mark.

JT grabbed the radio and called into dispatch.

"Unit fourteen here, I've got a black delivery van headed eastbound on Highway 13, speeding and driving erratically. I am in pursuit and requesting backup. Approaching the Nine Mile Forest exit, if there are any units around."

"Copy that, Fourteen. Units are in route," the dispatcher squawked back through his handset.

The gas pedal felt alive under JT's foot, and the car lurched forward, his pulse ticking up two notches in rapid succession.

He hit the sirens.

No acknowledgment from the van. Now he was starting to get irritated.

94 … 97 … The digital numbers continued to tick higher and higher. 101.

This idiot is in a van, and it's the middle of the night. Where does he think he is going to go?

The exit was approaching fast now. One mile to go.

There were only two more exits in the "country," and then they would be at the bridge into the city.

He grabbed his radio.

"Dispatch, this guy has no plans of slowing down. Where's my help?!"

111 miles per hour.

"Two units in route, Fourteen." 119.

The driver faded to the left, then tapped his brakes and made a Formula One-worthy turn onto the exit ramp, the van seeming to

defy every law of physics by not flipping over or spinning out. JT had gotten too close and was so awed by the driver's move that he was slow to respond and missed the exit, jamming his brakes hard to recover from the mistake. The brake pads clawed into the rotors, and the car ground to an unimaginably quick stop. He threw the big engine in reverse, his tires digging deep into the pavement, smoke billowing from around them, and realigned himself with the missed exit. Then he laid his foot hard into the gas, a guttural roar escaping from the engine, the rubber on the tires clawing to find purchase.

"Dispatch, suspect took a hard right at the Nine Mile Forest exit and is headed southbound towards Sunrise Shores."

A long pause.

"Roger that, Fourteen. Help has been diverted and is en route."

The country road was only two lanes wide and was far from a straight shot. The van's taillights disappeared around a curve, and JT's blood pressure spiked at the thought of losing his prey. There were a million places the guy could turn off or ditch the van.

The scales were tipped heavily in the driver's favor.

Up ahead was a mile-long straightaway, and there wasn't even the faintest sight of taillights ahead now.

90 … 110 … 130.

He roared down the dark road, and with a slight curve approaching, JT masterfully balanced speed, muscle, and finesse to float around it and onto the next straightaway.

Bingo.

A faded taillight was barely visible about a quarter mile ahead on the winding road.

Within a hundred feet of the van now, he keyed the car's loudspeaker.

"Pull over! This is the East Bay Police. Pull over now!"

He maneuvered the car to the left of the van and took aim at the back quarter panel with the push bar on the front of his car. Suddenly a deer jumped out into the road ahead, causing the driver to swerve to his right and into one of the countless pine trees lining the side of the road, which promptly swallowed the engine block of the van into its squat base.

JT braked hard and narrowly missed the deer, his fingers clenched so tight on the wheel that they felt like they might snap like twigs. He reversed his car, the tires squealing against the silent night, and positioned his car to block any potential escape by the van. He threw open his door with his weapon drawn and took cover behind it.

"Police, get out of your van NOW!" No response.

His pulse raced, and he cycled through a dozen potential scenarios. He couldn't come up with one that didn't end badly.

The blue and red lights, coupled with the spotlight beam against the pitch-black forest, created a dizzying effect, and he shifted to his left to find a clear line of sight. The driver's door opened, and then the rear door.

Shit, one versus two.

"Both of you, get up against the driver's side of the van. Do it right now!"

The driver slunk out of the door and, unable to get his legs to engage; he crashed into the ground hard. Blood dripped from his face, and the airbag was covered with a splatter that would have made Jackson Pollock envious. The man was badly hurt, with a bone sticking out of his right leg where the engine block had compressed into it.

The passenger slithered out of the van's rear door, using the door for support to try to stay upright. He was disoriented and looked around wildly into the night.

Both men wore gray janitorial coveralls with a patch that JT could not make out in the darkness, black work boots, and tattoos across their necks and hands.

As he approached the passenger, the man jumped up like a deer who had recovered from the shock of a car's impact and started to take off back down the road. However, the passenger's over-eagerness to evade capture didn't mesh with his current reality, and he went no more than ten feet before he crashed to the ground again.

JT fought back a laugh as he walked up to the man and cuffed him. "That didn't go the way you planned, did it?"

He dragged him out of the road and propped him up against the rear driver's side tire.

One down.

On the other side, he found the driver writhing in agony, and when he snapped the cuffs on him, the man wailed in pain.

"Why the hell didn't you stop this vehicle?" No response.

"No answer, huh?" Nothing.

"Okay, no big deal. I'll figure it out for myself then," JT said, irritation creeping into his voice.

He walked back to the cruiser and keyed the mic.

"Fourteen here; pursuit is over. Two suspects hit a tree about three miles in on the Nine Mile Forest. Ambulance needed.”

"Roger that, Fourteen. Units are on the way and will arrive in five minutes."

JT got both men a bottle of water from the cruiser and brought it to them, helping each get a drink.

Then he moved to the rear of the van and swung the doors open, his jaw dropping at the sight in front of him.

"Well shit, fellas. Y'all have been busy!"