You're Driving a Prius?

132.

“You’re driving a Prius?”

We have the building security duty officer scanning video from the elevator. My contact, a guy who by my current count owes me more than a dozen favors, is scouring the feeds from the street cams on both sides of the block. Unless the perp(s) walked out the back door, we should be able to get the make, model, year and color of the getaway vehicle.

Julie opens the car door with her key fob and I hop in drivers side. She will run com as I give chase. I fumble around the dashboard and steering column looking for the key as she tells me to step in the brake pedal and pushes the power button to engage the engine. The look she shoots me is direct payback for my earlier scolding. The garage exit is protected by an automatic coded gate and she hands me the magnetic card to swipe it open. I immediately ask her if there is surveillance here, as should be, and she asks the duty officer whom she is talking to on her cell. A moment later he provides the bad news that the cameras in the garage have been down for two days awaiting back ordered parts. I roll my eyes indicating disgust and face another test of intuition.

We can go right or we can go left.

The quickest way into traffic is to go right so I pull hard on the wheel and hit the gas, and although the acceleration is not what I expect it does generate some pep. 

We get the initial word from building security that a single caucasian male, wearing a Washington Nationals ball cap and dark sunglasses entered the building nineteen minutes ago and appears to have left in a late model, black Lincoln Navigator at 1644, or six minutes ahead of us. I relay this intel to my traffic coordinator friend and we get an almost instant report that the perp is heading east on F Street at Garfield Park. He asks if we want a screen grab showing the vehicle and driver. It shows up in my private text messaging app and I immediately share it with Julie, who is coordinating the surveillance video review as well as offering pertinent backstory to the fingerprint techs who have just arrived at the office. I risk a peek at the screen grab as I test the responsiveness of our chase car. 

I compliment my pal on his outstanding police work and ask for another favor. This one, I bargain, might get us back to even. 

“Can you create a distraction somehow to allow all the lights in his direction to stay red so we can catch up?” I ask.

“Why not radio ahead and have DC cops road block?” 

“If I told you that this is too hot to involve any local agencies, would that be enough?”

“I could get in serious trouble.”

“That is why we call them favors and why we are still friends. You are going to have to trust me on this one.” 

“And we’re even if I do?” 

“FUCK NO.” 

I hear him chuckle and suggest that he had to try, but sure, he can simulate an emergency and hold the lights red for two minutes, anything after that he would have to file a formal report.

“Take the next left onto Third and hustle up to Seventh, and he’ll be stopped across the street from Ted’s Bulletin. Make it happen Bogart, good luck. Initiating emergency sequencing in three, two one….Go get ‘em cowboy.” 

We hear the shrill start-up of the sirens as I push the little blue-gray hybrid through traffic. “As long as he doesn’t panic, we’ll have him at the intersection of F and Seventh. He could get spooked, especially if, as I suspect, he is a rookie at this.” 

“Why you think he is green?” asks Julie.

“The brake-in was a hack job, he had no emergency escape plan, or backup, and then allowed himself to be surveilled and ID’ed in less than twenty-seconds. Also I bet we’ll get a nice set of prints on him as well. His only hope is that he can evade us, or out-run us in that tank Navigator.” 

Julie is getting confirming identification and an update from the fingerprint techs that they have pulled a solid pair of prints from the file cabinet as we turn the corner and see the Navigator idling at the flashing red light. We pull up and watch, the Prius perfectly inconspicuous. 

“Let’s take him,” Julie suggests as the light changes to green. 

“Not yet,” I announce, “let’s follow and see where he is going, he might run straight to papa.”