T. Parker: Cold Pursuit

"Get back on the freeway," yelled Garland. "They can't block it."

"The Five? Where's the Five, Gar?"

"Straight ahead, left on Crosby, babe, you've driven it a million times!"

Patricia made the turn but two SDPD cars were waiting for them and she swerved right on National, then hooked another quick right to miss an oncoming city bus.

"Nooo!" bellowed Garland, but it was too late as the SUV groaned onto the ramp and the great stanchions of the Coronado Bridge rose in the darkness beyond the windshield.

"There's no exits!" shouted Garland. "It's a fucking bridge , Pat."

"Look, a carpool lane!"

McMichael felt the vehicle gently climb, then saw before him the lights that traced the graceful rise and fall of the bridge all the way to Coronado. The water below was black and silver and the navy battleships were black shapes without light. As the SUV climbed out over the dark water McMichael's stomach took a sickening drop.

"Pull over and stop," he said.

"Shut the-" said Garland.

"Pat, you'll kill us all."

She accelerated. The bridge lights came faster and the oncoming headlights blurred. As they topped the span and began the long way down onto the island he saw the flashing lights of the roadblock up ahead. McMichael felt an odd clarity sweep over him. To his left the oncoming traffic suddenly was gone- stopped upstream by the police. Ahead of them two rows of cruisers blocked the road from median to railing, headlights on high and warning lights flashing. To the right was black air and a long fall into the water and McMichael knew what Patricia would do.

"Hold on, men," she said.

Then the deafening sound of metal shearing on concrete. The right side of the SUV caught and buckled under, but its motion was suddenly and horrifically overridden when the back end flipped up and over the rail and fell into the night.

McMichael's world reversed.

He looked through the window at the bridge lights receding above him. He slammed his weight against the door and fumbled for the lock control, pressed the up button. Punched the shoulder strap loose. Yanked the door handle. Shoved off the transmission hump with both feet. Put shoulder and head and arm and soul into it. The door blasted open and flung McMichael into space. The next thing he knew he was upside down, falling through darkness and a dazzling consortium of lights and all he could think to do was tighten himself into a ball and hope that he would hit water and not a battleship and that his major bones wouldn't break and the SUV wouldn't land on top of him. God , he thought: I believe in you .

"San Diego Police detective Thomas McMichael is in stable condition tonight at General Hospital, one day after his dramatic fall from the Coronado Bridge. Channel Eight's Manny Alonzo has the story…"

McMichael viewed the television screen with the grateful disbelief of anyone who has given himself up for dead. Manny was standing on the bridge, where the SUV had flipped over. The rain poured down around the edge of his umbrella and the lights of Coronado twinkled in the background.

"Don't turn it off," said Hector. "I want to see the good part again."

McMichael watched through a Vicodin haze, his left leg in a half cast for a broken tibia, his left shoulder relocated, his head shaved and wrapped in gauze and bearing twenty-six staples, his wrists lacerated by the plastic ties and needing fourteen stitches to close. He felt like Frankenstein. His concussion was relatively mild, according to Dr. Miles Fellon, who used this as a basis for jokes about the hardness of McMichael's head.

"… and it was here, on the Coronado Bridge, where the tragic high-speed chase finally ended," said Alonzo. "The sport utility vehicle driven by Patricia Hansen literally flipped over this railing right here, plummeting almost two hundred feet into the icy waters of Glorietta Bay. Hansen, granddaughter of former San Diego mayor Pete Braga, was killed in the fall. Her husband- Shred! executive Garland Hansen- who was a passenger in the car with Detective McMichael, is missing and presumed dead. Now, San Diego Police are still trying to piece together last night's bizarre events…"

McMichael half closed his eyes, half listened to the report.

Gabriel, legs splayed by casts, sat in his wheelchair on one side of the bed. He'd been infernally chatty, jabbering all afternoon how a broken calf bone was nothing compared to the two thighbones that he had to deal with. He said the pain made him feel closer to God but frankly questioned if that was a good thing, nipping regularly from a dark pint bottle he kept under his butt.

Hector sat on the other side of McMichael's bed, leaning forward on his thick forearms to catch himself on the tube again.

"Yeah, look, Mick- here it is."

McMichael drowsily watched the footage from last night: a pale and silent Hector pulling his partner from the black water of the bay. McMichael, bound and barely conscious, looked dead. Hector looked fine. He'd jumped off the bridge when he saw the SUV go over, pausing just long enough to toss his gun, shoes and wallet into the car. He told McMichael later that landing in the bay was like having your balls walloped against a frozen sidewalk.

"… Police are still not saying how- or even if - these events are connected to the brutal murder of Pete Braga just over two weeks ago in his Point Loma home. Many questions here. Manny Alonzo on the Coronado Bridge in the Coronado rain- back to you, Julie."

McMichael watched the pretty anchorwoman lock her blue eyes on the TelePrompTer and frown very slightly.

"I never got to talk to her," Hector noted gravely.

"In a related-"

"I could relate," said Hector.

"Sally Rainwater, the twenty-eight-year-old premed student at-"

"And total babe," said Hector.

"She's the one, son? She looks just like your mother did!"

"- was released from the women's jail in Santee late this afternoon. All charges against her have been dropped- charges that stemmed from the still-unsolved murder of San Diego's Pete Braga. As if this case could get any more complex, Ms. Rainwater and Detective McMichael are believed to have been romantically involved during the early days of the investigation. Ms. Rainwater stayed inside her beachfront Imperial Beach home, and did not speak to reporters."

Gabriel fixed McMichael with a wickedly complicitous smile as he leaned over and worked his bottle back out.

"Send her some flowers, Mick," said Hector. "Tell her you spent the whole morning with lawyers, just for her. Tell her you're sorry. Tell her your whole body hurts and you need a nurse."

McMichael aimed the remote at Hector and turned him off. Then his father. He picked up the phone, sat it on his belly, and called Victor again.

Johnny and Stephanie came later that evening. McMichael could smell the puppy on his boy when he hugged him and he thought it was a wonderful smell. Johnny brought him a picture of the little chocolate Lab, not much bigger than a football, pointed out his good features, stated that Brownie was almost housebroken. Stephanie rolled her eyes and smiled at McMichael with a full-body wince.

They stayed almost an hour. During that time McMichael drifted in and out of pretending that they were a family again. It was so easy: these moments connected directly back with other moments, and the time between them was banished. He remembered coming home after day shift in the summers years ago, cracking a beer and sitting in the little living room with the view of the harbor and the freeway, with Johnny climbing on and off his lap, yapping about the events of the day; remembered Stephanie in her simple sundresses, hair up for the heat, how fresh and content she seemed; he could smell her, even- this bulk-sized body lotion that to McMichael was better than any perfume; he remembered the neighbor's radio and the jets lowering toward Lindbergh and the bedroom where their nights ended and their days began.