No good deed goes unpunished

A series of awful events began one night when I was parked in front of a fast food place, eating a hamburger. I was watching the traffic go by, and listening to my police scanner, which I kept hidden in a compartment under the rear shelf.

The radio ten codes were a bit different here than previous places I'd been, and I hadn't yet had time to compensate for this. So I was only comprehending maybe seventy or eighty percent of what was being transmitted. But that was okay. Because no one was after me. Instead, on this nice cool night in Texas, they were after someone else.

I also didn't know the names of most of the local roads, so had little idea of where the chase was actually taking place. That is, until I noticed the name plate of the street I was facing, on a nearby pole. Apparently the chase was now on this very highway. But I knew this road was a long one, so it was unlikely I'd see...

Wait! Was that sirens I could hear out my open window? Yes! They were coming this way!

It was a high speed chase, too. For it wasn't long at all after I first heard the sirens that the fugitive and his pursuing police car went whizzing by. Wow!

I couldn't help but get a little excited. Most chases I'd ever experienced involved me being chased, or chasing someone else. I also got nervous, and instinctively surveyed my surroundings to make sure a cop car wasn't creeping up on me from somewhere.

Well, that was that. I'd had my excitement for the night. It was time to head home and hit the bed. My day job at the refinery rarely failed to exhaust me.

(By this time I had my trailer, and was no longer homeless. However, I was still living alone)

I cranked up Shadow. Then noticed a new development in the chase over the scanner. The fugitive had turned around and was coming back this way. Heck if I might not get to see an encore!

But there was more: it turned out there was a baby in the fleeing car! Yikes! The car was stolen with a baby onboard! Holy smokes!

This was in the days before folks had special car carriers or child seats for little ones. So the child was likely flopping around in the back seat or floorboards in a chase. Ow!

I was the oldest of six kids, so the thought of a baby being battered about in a car chase grated on me a little more than I could take.

They were coming this way. There was no telling how long the chase would go on. I knew that from personal experience. But the longer the chase, the greater the risk to the infant.

Was there some way I could stop this guy? Gently, somehow?

I wasn't sure what I could do, but I'd definitely be unable to do anything if I didn't first get over to the two far lanes. Luckily traffic was pretty light, so with Shadow's get up and go I'd attained the far lanes in seconds.

I once again pulled off the road to wait for my prey.

I had to stop him gently somehow, for the kid's sake. The cops could take over after that.

I just hoped the kid wasn't already dead or hurt. What was that guy thinking, racing around like that with a baby in the car?

From what I heard on the scanner, the main cop in pursuit was enjoying himself. Treating it all like a game. I got the impression he was the champion of pursuit in his jurisdiction, and was purposely dragging the chase out because it was otherwise a slow night, and he hadn't had a really good "rabbit" in a long time.

The fact a baby was possibly onboard didn't seem to matter a bit to him. Bastard.

All the more reason to stop the chase now, I thought.

I could hear the sirens again. Here came the "rabbit". Shadow and I jumped back onto the road to await the fugitive, who was driving a late model Chevrolet.

I was afraid to use my tire poppers or crash bars in this situation. For the stop needed to be as gentle as possible. And spreading gear like that around here might cause additional casualties.

I'd pulled back onto the highway, and was now moving forward in the same direction as the car thief, only much slower, letting him draw nearer. I maneuvered myself alongside another car in traffic, effectively blocking both lanes ahead of him, then moved up just a bit to make it look like his best shot for moving forward would be behind me.

Plus, Shadow's hot rod look might appeal to his current sense of urgency, too.

Luck was with the child, as the road here was lined with concrete dividers in some places, and high curbs in others, with no easy way for the driver to bypass me and my unwitting accomplice in the next moment or two.

The thief slowed down a lot as he got to us, and changed lanes repeatedly, antsy to get by. He soon settled behind me, as I'd hoped.

I flipped on my super bright rear strobe lights, and instantly blinded, he instinctively hit the brakes. Just as usually happened when I flashed those behind me.

I was monitoring him closely in my rear view mirror. I quickly matched up speeds as well I could, and then slowed so that the front of his car would meet up gently with Shadow's rear bumper, while he was still blinded and slowing down on his own.

After the bumpers were well engaged I forced a full stop on him. Shadow's tail end complained a bit, but accosted by both blindness and sudden massive resistance ahead, the thief cooperated by further braking himself too, after a second or so of scooting Shadow and me down the road with our wheels locked.

As soon as we were fully stopped with his front end tight against Shadow's rear, I flipped off the strobes, stomped on my emergency brake pedal, put Shadow into Parking gear, threw open my car door, and ran to the other vehicle.

I knew I wouldn't have long; within seconds he could be backing up to get around my sudden roadblock.

The thief was a bit confused but his vision was returning. I yanked open his car door and tried to jerk him out of the car.

My first attempt failed. He was a big dude. I made a second attempt and he punched me in the face. For a split second I was blinded too, and grappling with him without seeing what I was doing.

I finally managed to get him out of the car, but not the way I'd hoped. He got so angry with me he jumped out on his own accord, shoved me down to the ground, then straddled me to hold me in place. He next began pummeling me, as I lay trapped on the hard asphalt. Oww!

I tried to shield myself as best I could, but wasn't being very successful. My glasses of course were gone too.

Good thing I'd half-blinded him before jumping in his face, right?

Thankfully, the champion pursuit cop taking his time getting there wasn't the only officer headed for the scene. A patrol car which had been far behind in the initial chase was now at the forefront, due to the thief turning around on them. It was the two officers from that car which arrived first, and pulled the guy off of me.

Of course they weren't entirely sure of who was who for a moment, and so treated us both as suspects. I didn't get a chance to explain my role for another ten minutes or so, as they checked out the baby and called for an ambulance and a wrecker. There were also traffic re-direction duties to be performed, so the pair was somewhat short-handed even after they got the thief and I separated and lying prone on the road behind the stolen Chevrolet.

Mr. Champion arrived, and boy was he pissed. Much more at me than the thief he'd been chasing. For I'd ruined his catch for the day.

It didn't satisfy him that I had a bloody nose and numerous bruises, and likely some automotive damage as well for my trouble. He wanted my hide, too.

He wasn't shy about it either, as he painfully jerked me up off the pavement and then back and forth several times by the chain of the handcuffs which now had my hands restrained behind me. I wondered if anything was breaking in my shoulders, as the pain got surprisingly intense several times. I realized if he broke my arms I'd really be up the creek here, virtually alone, a thousand miles from home. For some reason, being unable to feed myself sprang to mind.

But the other two officers intervened on my behalf. The more details of the incident which came to light, the easier things got on me.

Pretty soon they were about to over-rule the chase champion, and let me go scot free. Which got me to wondering if I could manage the drive home half-blind (my glasses were missing), and with no working arms (my arms and back were aching, some from the beating, but mostly from the vicious man-handling by Mr. Champion).

But my car door was still hanging open, seemingly inviting folks in. For some dumb reason I'd thought there'd be plenty of time to close it after I'd subdued the thief. When the champion saw he was losing the battle for my fate with his fellow officers, he went over and began investigating Shadowfast himself. And boy, did that make him happy.

He called the other officers over and they looked at the roll cage, the blacked out race car body work-- and heard my police scanner, as I hadn't taken the time to turn it off.

Mr. Champion opened up the compartment where it was hidden, and with a few tries yanked my scanner completely out of the car, broken wires trailing behind it.

Seeing someone trashing your car is a bit hard to take. I began to wonder just how much worse this night was going to get.

The scanner discovery made things a lot more complicated. But still I somehow managed to talk my way out of anything worse than having to get a Texas driving license, and car inspection within the next two weeks.

Mr. Champion had been over-ruled by his buddies again, and he was livid. He could no longer yank my cuff chains, as they'd been taken off me. But he did shove me hard in the chest several times, and threaten me in various ways. I guess trying to get me to take a swing at him in front of the others. But I knew better than that.

One of the other officers brought me my eye glasses around that time, and I finally got my first good look at Mr. Champion. He was big, but not quite as large as the car thief. He was definitely uglier. Standard close haircut. I glanced at his name tag and saw "Briggs".

My glasses were busted, of course. They almost always were in fights. The damage this time was worse than average though. Besides the frame's problems, one lens was now missing a good-sized chunk.

So that traffic stop cost me a new set of glasses, and my police scanner (Briggs seemed to have kept it as a trophy).

I wouldn't be able to replace the scanner for a while (for me, such stuff was expensive).

On the brighter side, the baby seemed okay, from what I could tell, and my own injuries didn't force me to the hospital-- though my skull did feel cracked for a few days, and my shoulders didn't feel quite right for a while. My forearms were bruised too, mostly from fending off the thief, but the tender rings around my wrists had to be from all the cuff-tugging by Briggs.

And the cops didn't find much worse things about Shadow's onboard equipment-- like the tire poppers or crash bars. I might have been thrown in the hoosegow for sure, then.

And they hadn't seen me use the strobes, either. I heard the thief mention them in passing, but nobody realized the significance (thankfully).

Even the damage to Shadow's rear end was surprisingly minimal. The rear bumper had sort of shoved in closer to the body on the left side, but you had to look close to discern it. There were also long and narrow winding strips of exposed bumper chrome, where the flat black paint had been scratched off. But those I took care of easily with a spray can. Overall, the automotive damage cost had been pretty low.