Rodriguez hit the intersection of Belmont and Racine at fifty miles an hour and climbing. He had his lights and siren on and was typing into a computer built into a console between us. I had just hung up with Rachel and was scribbling down everything she’d told me. Rodriguez finished with his notes and looked over.
“What do you got?”
“She said he was dressed in a dark-colored jacket and maybe jogging pants. Holed up on a little rise of grass, just west of the Drive.”
Rodriguez was at sixty now, moving east on Belmont.
“And she thinks he’s the guy?”
“She says he was packing a black duffel and running.”
“Hold on.”
Rodriguez typed a few more lines into his computer. Then he came back to me.
“You al right with this?” he said.
Rachel told me she was okay. She sounded okay. And she let me talk to one of the people on the road with her who assured me she was more than okay. So I let her tel me about the man on the hil. Let her talk me into going after him.
“I’m fine. What are we doing?”
Rodriguez swung a hard right onto Inner Lake Shore Drive. Traffic was at a standstil. Rodriguez cut back west and picked his way south down Sheridan.
“We’re setting up a perimeter from Halsted Street east, along the lake from Addison to North Avenue. We’re getting some choppers up, and I got the description out there. If he didn’t jump in a car, we got a chance.”
“How many did he hit?”
Rodriguez shrugged. “Don’t know. But it doesn’t sound good.”
The detective smoked his tires taking a left off Sheridan and gunned it the wrong way down Diversey, to a dead end and a parking lot. It was less than five minutes since the last shot was fired. The lot had three cars in it. Al of them empty. Rodriguez and I pul ed our guns and moved to the soccer fields that lay just beyond.
“The area she described is just over the hil,” Rodriguez said. “I’m gonna go straight up. You circle around to the south. If he’s stil on foot, there’s a chance he headed that way.”
Rodriguez was right. If our shooter had headed north or west, he’d have to navigate a half mile’s worth of open ground. To the south was the parking lot. Beyond it, cover in the form of winding paths, trees, and a series of underpasses.
“Put me on your net so some cop doesn’t shoot me,” I said.
Rodriguez nodded. “You’re on it. Just don’t change clothes on me. Here, take a radio.”
The detective threw me a handheld and headed toward the hil. I checked the volume on the two-way to make sure it was squelched and started jogging south along a running path that skirted Diversey Harbor and Lincoln Park Lagoon. Two minutes and a hundred yards later, a dog stood at the top of a smal rise, wagging his tail for no apparent reason. I knew a little about dogs. Very little. My pup, however, rarely wagged without a reason, usual y because she saw something or someone. I pushed up the incline.
“What do we got here, boy?” I scratched the dog behind the ears. He wagged his tail even harder. Ahead, the jogging path dipped to the left and ran underneath a bridge that spanned Ful erton Avenue. I crept toward the black hole under the bridge. The dog stayed where he was. Smart dog.