He flew through the air and landed flat on the concrete driveway. He felt his face scrape against the concrete, and a stinging in both hands where they had struck the concrete.

He shook his head and got to his knees.

The young, tall, white male was running around the side of a garage.

Matt ran after him.

When he turned the corner of the garage, he saw the young, tall, white male about to top a five-foot hurricane fence.

"Stop, police officer!" Matt shouted.

The young, tall, white male looked right at him and then dropped to the ground on the far side of the fence.

"I'm going to get you, you sonofabitch!" Matt shouted, and ran toward the fence.

It was his intention to leap the fence gracefully by vaulting over it with the use of his left hand on the parallel pipe at the top of the fence.

Two problems arose. First, the parallel pipe at the top of the fence was perhaps an inch below the top of the fence itself. Second, the uppermost joints of the twisted wire of the fence were above it. One of them penetrated the heel of Matt's hand, which he had planned to use for leverage.

This caused (a) Matt's passage over the fence to be considerably less graceful than he intended; (b) a puncture wound in the heel of Matt's hand; and (c) Matt's trousers to be torn from just below the knee almost to the cuff as they became ensnared in the twisted wire at the top of the fence.

"Sonofabitch!" Matt cried, and got to his feet.

He saw that he was between two lines of hurricane fence running behind the houses. The young, tall, white male was running between them. Matt ran after him.

At the end of the parallel lines of hurricane fence there were a dozen garbage cans. The young, tall, white male leapt nimbly over the first two cans, but then his foot slipped between two of them and he sprawled onto the ground amid toppled garbage cans.

Matt, breathing heavily, shoved the garbage cans to one side, then fell to his knees beside the young, tall, white male and pulled his arm behind his back. Then he put his knee on the small of the young, tall, white male's back.

He tried to catch his breath. He became aware that blood was dripping from his chin onto the white sweatshirt of the young, tall, white male.

He heard the wail of a siren, and then the wail of a second siren.

Matt felt the small of his own back for his handcuffs.

I left the fucking things in the goddamn car!

"You gonna let me up now?" the young, tall, white male asked.

"Shut your fucking mouth!"

The sound of one of the sirens died, and then the other. After what seemed like two and a half years, Matt saw the beam of a sweeping flashlight.

"Over here!" he tried to shout, which told him he had not fully recovered his breath.

The flashlight beam came closer.

"My God, what happened to you?" Detective Lassiter asked.

"You got cuffs?"

Detective Lassiter sort of squatted on the ground, put her small flashlight in her mouth, opened her purse, and took from it a set of handcuffs.

She moved to place the handcuffs on the wrist Matt was holding. The young, tall, white male, realizing what was happening, resisted. Before he was adequately restrained again, Detective Lassiter's flashlight had been knocked from her mouth and had fallen to the ground, in such a position that it shone directly on the junction of her legs, which, covered with pale blue panties, was now, due to the displacement of her skirt, fully exposed.

He heard the sound of a third siren dying.

"Thanks," Sergeant Payne said.

"Happy to be of help," Detective Lassiter said.

"Put your foot on his neck," Sergeant Payne ordered.

Detective Lassiter complied, and Sergeant Payne got to his feet.

"You're bleeding," Detective Lassiter said.

"My, aren't we observant?" Matt said, and took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped at his face.

Matt started to pull the young, tall, white man to his feet.

"Keeping in mind that there is nothing I would rather do right now than rub your face in the garbage, get up and behave," Matt said.

"Not quite 'make my day,' " Olivia said, "But not bad, Sergeant."

I'll be a sonofabitch, she's laughing at me!

Another flashlight beam appeared, and a moment later, another. One was held by a uniform, the other by a Highway Patrol sergeant. The latter flickered across Matt's face.

"Payne! What the hell happened to you?"

"What the hell does it look like?" Matt snapped. He pointed to the uniform. "Put this gentleman in a car," he ordered. "He has not been Mirandized."

"What did he do?" the Highway sergeant said as he stepped closer to Matt as if he thought he was going to need some help.

Then, when his back was to the uniform and he could not be seen, he put something into Matt's hand.

Matt saw what it was. Three round pellets of a very strong brand of English mints.

"Chew those slowly and try not to breathe on anybody. I already gave some to your friend."

"Thanks," Matt said. "I owe you."

"So what did this critter do?"

"For openers, first running a red light and then leaving the scene of an accident," Matt said. "Give me thirty seconds and I can think of a lot more. I wouldn't be surprised if the Grand Am is hot."

"You sure you're all right? You look like hell," the Highway sergeant said.

There were four city vehicles on Knight's Road: a Highway car, a patrol car, a sergeant's car from the Eighth District, and a Fire Department Fire Rescue vehicle.

Two paramedics were loading the passengers of the Caravan into the Fire Rescue truck.

"I think the little boy's got a broken arm," the Eighth District sergeant said. "You're Detective Lassiter?"

"She's Lassiter. My name is Payne."

"You're on the job?"

No, you stupid fuck, I'm a concerned citizen who gets his rocks off chasing tall, young, white males through people's backyards.

"Sergeant, Homicide," Matt said.

"You want to go in with them? Or in your own car?"

"Go where?"

"You look pretty beat up, Sergeant," the Eighth District sergeant said. "You better have a doctor look at your face."

"I'm all right," Matt said. "I scraped it, that's all."

"No, you're not," Detective Lassiter said. "Let the medics look at it."

It was the paramedic's professional judgment that while he had really done a job on his cheek, there wasn't much that could be done for it except clean it up and get some antiseptic on it.

"I live right around the corner," Detective Lassiter said. "And I've got alcohol and hydrogen peroxide."

"That'll do it," the paramedic said.

Matt met Olivia's eyes for a long moment.

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome."

"Can we find out if the Grand Am is hot?" Matt asked.

"He's running it now," the Eighth District sergeant said, nodding toward a uniform in a patrol car.

Less than a minute later, the uniform got out of the car and announced that the Grand Am had been reported stolen.

"Can you take him and hold him on that?" Matt asked. "I'll come by later and do the paper."

The District sergeant shook his head, "no."

"You know better than that, Sergeant. You're the arresting officer and you need to make the statement to the detective at Northeast."

The Highway sergeant stepped between them. "I'll get all of Sergeant Payne's necessary information and make sure the detective has it, Sergeant. Besides, we helped him to make the pinch back there, and I want to make sure Highway gets in on the paperwork. You know how it is."

The Eighth District sergeant looked at him for a moment, then walked away.

The Highway sergeant turned to Matt.

"Let me have your badge and payroll numbers. And I better have hers, too. Tell me what happened and how you hurt yourself so the Northeast Detective can document it if you need to go out IOD,2and make sure you touch base with the assigned detective so you agree with the statement before he puts it on the '49."