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Out of the corner of his eye, he saw in the rearview mirror that the maneuver had thrown Corporal Kerry Rapier against the right rear door.
“Hey, Marshal,” Rapier said, his tone casual, “think you might want to take it a little easier on the car?”
Detective Tony Harris chuckled.
“This thing’s a tank, Kerry,” Payne replied calmly as he steered in the direction of the skid to correct it. Then, squared up, he stepped harder on the gas pedal and the engine roared. “Heavy Dee-troit metal. Big iron block V-8. And you couldn’t throw a turn like that back there without the rear-wheel drive. It’s not as nimble as my Porsche, but then I wouldn’t attempt a PIT with my 911. These cars are built to take it.”
Rapier knew that Pursuit Intervention Technique was basically tactical ramming. In a PIT, the reinforced nose of the Police Interceptor smacked the tail of the car being pursued so that its driver suddenly lost control, turning sideways or spinning out before skidding to a stop.
“Not built to take the way you handle cars,” Rapier replied. “I heard you got that nice sports car all shot up.”
Harris chuckled again. “He’s got you, Matt. By the way, what’s up with your 911? That happened months ago.”
“Still mired in the purgatory known as insurance adjuster arbitration,” Payne said. “I hate insurance companies. The bastards don’t want to write me a check for what it’s worth to replace. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back. So, while I was killing time stuck at the desk going over the pop-and-drops, I found out a half-dozen unmarkeds were about to go back to the feds—they were on loan to Dignitary Protection from the Department of Homeland Security—and I managed to get this one’s transfer paperwork ‘misplaced’ for the foreseeable future.”
Harris grinned. “Smooth move. It’ll take the feds forever to figure out one’s missing.”
“Yeah, and my conscience is clear. Thanks to budget cuts, we don’t have near enough cars, and we’re at least putting this one to good use. The paperwork showed the other five are just getting parked, either warehoused or ‘tasked to a possible high-value target.’”
“Translation being,” Harris said, “left sitting empty with the wigwags flashing outside the U.S. Mint or Fed Reserve here to give the impression that one of the alphabet agencies under DHS is on the ball.”
“Exactly.”
Kerry Rapier went on: “Did you guys know these are about to become dinosaurs? Ford’s not going to make the Crown Vic anymore. And no Crown Vic means no Crown Vic Police Interceptors. They’re going to be replaced with a hopped-up Ford Taurus.”
“What? A scrawny V-6 front-wheel-drive like our Impala squad cars!” Payne said, making a mock gasp. “Horrors! You, Corporal Rapier, have ruined my joyous thoughts of being forever able to abuse police pursuit vehicles. I may as well put in my transfer to the Bike Squad.”
Payne saw in the mirror that Rapier was smiling out his window.
And then he saw that Rapier wasn’t wearing his seat belt.
When they’d first gotten in the car at the Roundhouse, both Payne and Harris had climbed into the front seats. It wasn’t lost on Rapier, as he automatically went to latch his seat belt, that Matt and Tony had sat on their seat belts. The belts had already been buckled across the seats.
“Hey, guys, didn’t your mothers teach you to always put on your seat belts?”
Payne was putting down the unmarked squad car’s two sun visors so that they would be visible at the top of the windshield from the outside. On the driver’s visor was a white sticker with red block lettering that spelled POLICE. Strapped to the passenger visor was a light bar with red-and-blue strobes. The twelve-volt DC power cord for the emergency lights was snaked over the s
talk that held the rearview mirror to the windshield and ran down to the cigarette lighter.
As Payne stuck the plug in the lighter receptacle, he said, “Yes, but that was before dear ol’ Mummy knew that I’d be carrying a pistol on my belt.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“I was going to say, ‘Didn’t they teach you at the Police Academy . . . ?’ then realized that if they had, it would have been on the QT.”
“Why quiet?”
Payne, badly mimicking a Shakespearean actor, said: “To buckle or not to buckle, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer either the slings or the arrows”—he went back to his normal voice—“the slings in this case being seat belts, the arrows being bullets.”
Harris put in, “You really butchered that, Matt.”
“You people clearly have no couth,” Payne said. “Simply put, then: It’s a judgment call as to which you consider the safer option: wearing a seat belt so that you’re better off in case you’re in an accident, or not wearing one so that you can exit the vehicle and draw your weapon faster when going after a bad guy. Having numerous times had to exit vehicles in pursuit of bad guys—some of whom thought it a good idea to shoot at us—certain of us have chosen not to buckle.”
Payne, looking in the rearview mirror, had seen Rapier considering that.
And now, as they had turned onto Jefferson, he saw that Rapier was sitting on his seat belt.
Payne braked hard, bringing the Crown Vic Police Interceptor to a screeching stop not far from a Crime Scene Unit van. A Medical Examiner’s Office van was parked farther down Jefferson, and a gurney holding an obviously full body bag was being rolled into its rear cargo area.
