“Down on your stomach!” He ordered as he grabbed the suspect’s arm at the wrist.
“Yob tvaya mat!”
Sully didn’t know what that meant, but from the tone he figured it wasn’t compliance. The thin man slipped and turned underneath him, trying to escape.
“Police! You’re under arrest!” Sully barked at him, refusing to release his grip on the man’s wrist.
The suspect answered by rolling onto his back and throwing a punch at Sully’s head.
* * *
“Take the car,” Tower instructed Katie, “and go after Battaglia. I’ll try to find O’Sullivan.”
Katie nodded. She slammed shut the passenger door of the Ghost and limped hurriedly around to the driver’s side.
Tower returned to his truck, reversed the engine and headed off toward the northeast.
Katie’s leg throbbed as she adjusted the seat to reach the pedals. She was grateful that the Ghost was an automatic. Operating a clutch right now was probably not an option.
She put the car into gear and flipped around to go after Battaglia.
* * *
The punch whizzed by Sully’s face, grazing his cheek and temple.
A shot of anger exploded in his chest. First this guy attacks Katie, then he runs from them and now he was going to punch him?
“Enough of this shit,” he growled at the suspect.
He slipped to the side, drew back his knee and drove it into the man’s buttocks. The man grunted in surprised pain, but managed to throw out another punch toward Sully. This second punch was a wild one and came nowhere near hitting him.
“Stop fighting!” Sully shouted. He slid to his left and fired his opposite knee. This one thudded into the soft tissue below the rib cage.
The suspect howled in pain. He curled his body into a fetal position.
Sully transitioned quickly into an arm bar, controlling the man’s elbow as well as his wrist. Using his leverage, he forced the suspect onto his stomach. Once he had that accomplished, he shuffled forward and lowered his left knee across the back of the man’s neck. Now he controlled three points — the head, the elbow and the wrist.
He’d won.
Propping the elbow against his right knee, Sully fished in his belt-line for the handcuffs hanging half-in and half-out of his jeans. He was grateful to find they hadn’t fallen out in the chase or during the brief struggle.
Like every other time he’d won a foot pursuit or a fight, the clicking sound the cuffs made when he ratcheted them onto the suspect’s wrist was like a symphony to his ears. As the second cuff clicked into place, a pair of headlights turned the corner and illuminated the two of them.
2212 hours
Katie found Battaglia trudging up the middle of Howard Street, three blocks from the park. If the lack of a prisoner didn’t tell the story of what happened, the sour expression on his face would have.
She slowed the Ghost, pulling up next to him. Without a word, Battaglia opened the door and dropped into the passenger seat in a huff. He slammed the door and stared straight ahead.
Katie didn’t say a word. She drove to the next block, turned and headed back toward the park.
“Goddamnit,” Battaglia muttered, staring out the window in sullen anger.
“Don’t feel bad,” Katie said, her leg still throbbing with each heartbeat. “At least you didn’t get your ass kicked like me.”
Battaglia sighed. “I guess this is the loser car, then, huh, MacLeod? All passengers must have gotten their ass kicked or been outran by a suspect?”
“I guess so.” She was quiet a moment, then said, “I hope Sully and Tower have better luck catching their guy.”
“Sully is the reincarnation of Bruce Jenner,” Battaglia said. “He’ll catch his guy. Besides, he went after the slow one.”
The pair rode in silence for a block. Then Katie said, “Bruce Jenner isn’t dead.”
“Huh?”
“Bruce Jenner is still alive.”
“So?”
“So you can’t have a reincarnation of someone who is still alive. That’s not how it works.”
“Whatever,” Battaglia said, shrugging away her comment. After a second, he shook his head to himself. “That son of a bitch was fast.”
“Kicks like a mule, too,” Katie added. She reached down and massaged her bunching quadriceps.
“You all right?”
“Hurts like hell,” she said. “But what’s worse, these guys weren’t even who we were after. They’re not rapists. Probably just a couple of crooks who saw an opportunity to rob someone.”
“Assholes,” muttered Battaglia.
2249 hours
Tower stood in the small observation room next to Katie. Both stared through the one-way glass at the slender man seated in the interview room. Under the light, his features were clearly Slavic.
“He looks Russian,” Katie guessed.
“Safe bet,” Tower said. “There’s been thousands of them pouring in to River City since the fall of the Soviet Union.”
“We’ve noticed it on patrol,” Katie told him. “All across the boards, too — witnesses, victims and suspects. A noticeable increase in contacts with Russians.”
“Well, this one is definitely in the ‘suspect’ category. The question is, of what?”
Katie shook her head. “He’s not a rapist. They went for my fanny pack. It was a straight up robbery.”
“Which one went for the bag?”
Katie pointed at the man in the interview room. “He did. The one that got away is the one who kicked me.”
“Did he say anything that made you think he might be after more than money?”
“He didn’t say anything at all,” she answered. “He just reached for my fanny pack. It was a robbery, not a rape. Besides, you never said anything about The Rainy Day Rapist being a team.”
Tower shrugged. “This isn’t an exact science. I could be wrong.”
“You know you’re not.”
“I could be.”
Katie snorted lightly. “You’re wasting your time.”
“I’m paid by the hour,” Tower said. He squeezed Katie on the shoulder and left the observation room. As he stepped through the doorway, he almost bumped into Lieutenant Crawford.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
Crawford ran his hand through his thinning, tousled hair. “See me in my office after your interview, Tower.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tower took three hurried steps to the interview room door. At the door, he took a deep breath and put on his game face. Then he turned the knob and went in.
The man looked up at the sound of his entrance. His face was calm, despite the small scrape on his cheek and the smudge of dirt on his forehead. His eyes fixed Tower with a hard, appraising stare.
Tower sat down opposite him. For a long minute, the two men looked intently at each other from across the small table. Neither blinked.
“What’s your name?” Tower finally asked.
The Russian did not speak. His flat expression radiated a cold hatred back at Tower.
“Do you speak English?” Tower asked.
“Da.”
“Then answer my question. What’s your name?”
A small smile curled at the edge of his thin lips. “Do you know that I could refuse to tell you? Or give you any name I wish? You would never know difference. You not have my fingerprints.”
Tower matched his smile with his own. “Let’s start over. You know you don’t have to talk to me, right?”
“Da. Of course.”
“And that you can have an attorney, if you want?”
The Russian snorted. The line of his mouth went straight and hard, all hint of the smile gone.
“You don’t want an attorney?” Tower asked.
“In my country,” the Russian replied, “we have saying. God, he want to punish mankind, so he send lawyers.”
Tower allowed himself a small grin. “I think we just found something to agree about.”