Chameleon 2

"We've got a runner." Jim said, while his knee pressed into the neck of a man lying face down in the alley.

"On it." Chuck responded, taking off after the second member of the break-in at O'Murphy's pub.

It is 3am the day after St. Patrick's Day, and O'Murphy's had been hit last year at about this time, losing half of their income from their busiest night of the year.  Shay O'Murphy is a believer in the saying, 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.'  He hasn't been fooled twice in a long while.

Chuck races down the dimly lit alley, closing the distance between himself and the second perpetrator.  They turn a few corners, weaving in and out of alleys and streets.  The perpetrator is aware that the police officer is closing the gap, so he begins knocking over trash bins and whatever else he can get his hands on to slow down his pursuer.

"Get down on the ground!" Chuck yells, reaching for his gun as he continues running after the man.

The man doesn't stop, still a few hundred feet ahead of Chuck, and makes a sharp right turn.  Sharp turns in a pursuit are always dangerous, you never know if the bad guy has kept running, or set up an ambush.

Chuck takes the corner wide, in case the man had gotten tired of running and planned a surprise.  To Chuck's amazement, when he rounded the corner, pistol drawn, the perpetrator was lying face down alongside the original perpetrator.

"Well, god damn!" Chuck says, out of breath.

"Bright eyes here decided to round the corner and give you a little surprise with this." Jim says, showing Chuck a switchblade with his right hand.  "Apparently he wasn't very aware of his surroundings, so I gave him a tap on his head with Billy." Jim says, holding up his billy club in his left hand.

---

Jim liked his life, he had things pretty good.  He enjoyed his routine of snoozing the alarm clock once and rolling out of bed and into the shower on the alarm's second beep--it rarely got off more than one beep.  Jim always showered in under four minutes, a habit of growing up poor in Oklahoma.  He didn't need to save water, living in Seattle, but just because it rained ten months out of the year, didn't mean he couldn't still save a penny and some water at the same time.

The coffee pot had been set to an auto-start the night before, and was grinding away as Jim started breakfast sandwiches for he and his wife, Sally.  No kids yet, and no plans for kids anytime soon.  Jim and Sally were both 32, and kids were something they had talked about, but still had so much in their lives they wanted to do before that big commitment.

Sally walked downstairs in her cotton bath robe, preferring to eat before showering and heading to work as a 3rd grade teacher.  She heard the coffee still grinding and walked outside to get the morning paper.  Jim was just making the finishing touches on the breakfast sandwiches, sliding the two over-hard eggs on top of thick slices of cheese atop crispy toasted english muffins.

She tossed the sports page at Jim, while she started at the beginning of the paper.  The Seattle Times had gotten so thin over the past decade, there were only three sections left during the week.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Jim said.

"What's it, honey?"

"No way.  The Mariners traded away Felix to... guess who?"

"I don't know, Portland?" Sally said.

"Portland doesn't have a baseball team."

"Oh. Wait, yes they do! We went down to watch the Sounders last year and you said they played at the same place as a baseball team."

"No a professional baseball team, that is only a double-a team."

"Still a baseball team..."

"Okay, okay, you're right.  But which baseball team do I hate the most?"

"The Yankees?"

"Bingo! I can't believe we traded Felix to the Yankees! He has got to be the eighth or ninth hall of Famer we have traded to those damn Yankees."

"Oh God." Sally said, shocked enough to cover her mouth with her right hand.

"I know! It is like we are their farm team."

"No... not your baseball." she said.

"What is it?"

She pushed the paper over to him.  On the second page a story about a shooting in the Central District, involving a family.  The photo showed the intersection of Yesler and MLK, Jr, with a bullet-ridden red Jeep Grand Cherokee.  The same exact model that Jim's partner on the police force, Chuck Granger, drives.

((owe 2200))