In Hot Pursuit

She caught the crime out of the corner of her eye. It was so smooth, so efficient, so unremarkable, anybody without training and experience never would have seen it happen.

It was as artful a lift as a pickpocket’s, his paw deftly darting in and taking the prize with his victim being none the wiser. Judy almost got so lost in admiration that she forgot to chase the miscreant, forgot to raise the hue and cry.

And he? Calm as a cucumber, not even quickening his pace as he walked off, appearing as innocent as everyone else on the sidewalk.

That did give her a moment’s advantage; he would assume he hadn’t been seen, and looking around could appear as a mark of guilt. Just walking was clean, unremarkable, flawless.

Judy was too close to radio it in without him hearing. She was torn, just for a moment, between the duty of reporting and the duty of apprehending—she could do one or the other, but not both.

She settled the mental debate by memorizing all his features, not just his appearance but the way he held himself, the way he moved. His easy walk presented a carefree character who was just going about his daily rounds, while his ear movements and the occasional flicks of his tail told their own story.

How alert was he? Alert enough to spot her reflection in a window as he passed. She caught the sudden tension in his shoulders, he almost missed a step, like he was halfway between running or continuing to act as if nothing was going on. After all, cops were a frequent sight on the sidewalks, who was to say that she was after him?

But he knew. She didn’t pretend to fully understand the criminal mind, but she did know that the best of the best had feral instincts when it came to crime; they had a well-honed sense of paranoia. He saw a cop, he knew that cop was after him. Most of the time that wouldn’t be true; most of the time his crime would have gone unremarked until long after the fact, and if his current lift and fade was any indication, no witnesses would have remembered seeing him.

His maroon coat wasn’t the latest fashion, and it was just ostentatious enough that if anybody had noticed him, they’d fixate on the coat, rather than his otherwise plain fur. It could be easily lost or could be concealing anything underneath; he might turn a corner and discard it, totally changing his appearance.

Indeed, he rounded a corner and Judy lost sight of him. She knew the city, she knew the streets and the sidewalks and alleyways; she knew that there was nowhere he could disappear to, and yet she broke out in a run, even if a part of her mind was telling her that this was exactly what he was anticipating.

She forced herself to walk as she rounded the corner. He was bent over, picking a loose coin up off the ground, a perfectly innocuous movement that was beyond reproach, one which even made her doubt herself. Why would a thief stop and pick up a coin when he could be increasing the distance between himself and a police officer?

Wasn’t it obvious? He’d seen her, and he knew if she’d seen him, she would chase after him as soon as she thought herself unobserved. He knew she’d get to the alleyway faster if she was giving chase, and now he’d gotten a good look at her. He’d also had an opportunity to stash his ill-gotten goods somewhere, and if he was really, really good, it’d be somewhere that couldn’t be associated with him.

How long had he been out of her sight? The buildings weren’t that tall, three stories—if he had a good throwing arm, even a roof was a possibility. More likely among the trash and detritus that cluttered every alleyway; he might have used the short window of time where he was unseen to run ahead and hide it then double back.

Judy was utterly convinced that if she were to detain him and pat him down right now, she’d find nothing, and she was also utterly convinced that at the moment she spoke, he’d be the very model of a law-abiding citizen, helpful to a fault, squeaky clean. She could already imagine the backup officers coming to help, doing a half-hearted search of the area that would find nothing and the apologies as they let him go.

She knew what she’d seen, and if nothing else, she’d get a closer look at him, take his measure up close. He’d go down to the station, there would be a mugshot, paw prints, and even if he got released this time, there would be a next time.

“Police. Freeze.”

She’d already prepped her mind for the casual denials, the silver tongue—if his lift was that smooth, so too would be his speech. ‘What’s this about?’ or ‘It’s just a coin I found,’ or any of the innumerable permutations.

Instead, he ran.

Not with a moment’s hesitation, not with the uncertainty of somebody who was unexpectedly accosted. He’d marked her the instant he’d seen her reflection, he’d gone down the alley to be sure, and as soon as she’d spoken, he’d known that the jig was up.

And he’d had his head partially covered, too. Between the collar of his coat and using his left hand to pick up the coin, he’d given himself a good view of her while preventing her from seeing much of his facial features. For all she knew he had some sort of obvious deformity, maybe an eyepatch. He had the bearing of a cat with an eyepatch.

In hindsight, it was stupid of her to not have considered that he might do a runner, but in the moment she was caught out as he planted a paw and took off down the alley, hell-bent for leather.

On the plus side, him running removed the last lingering doubts. Not to mention that there was no need to be coy any more. He knew, she knew, and soon everybody on the force would know.

“Judy in pursuit of a suspect,” she said as she started sprinting after him. “Feline, gamboge fur, about six feet tall, alley near Second and Elm, headed south.” She could run and talk. That wasn’t something that got expressly covered in training, more of a skill that got picked up over time.

“Ten-four, units on the way.”

For now, it was one-on-one, but it wouldn’t remain that way for long. Or, it shouldn’t—as Judy was about to find out, she was soon to embark on a journey that no ZPD officer had yet made.

🥕🥕🥕

That was still some minutes in the future. In the present, she was running after him, forming a mental map of her location and what bolt-holes he might have available to him. At the end of the alley, he could turn right or left, and then he’d be back on a public street, obvious enough if he kept up a run. Even if he shed his jacket, the alarm had been raised; any feline in the immediate area would be a suspect.

He might have run because he had a car just around the corner. THer mind began running through permutations, like a game of chess played at high speed. He would know she had a radio and would call for backup. He wouldn’t know how fast she could run, nor if there were any other cops in the immediate vicinity to intercept and arrest him. Running made him stand out in the crowd. Whatever his escape plan was, it would be close.

It was.

She didn’t recognize it even when she was right on top of it. She’d seen which way he turned, and he was making no attempt to hide himself as he raced through the crowd and then button- hooked down another alleyway, earning himself a few irate shouts from the locals.

A blind alleyway; she knew it was there, she knew that cats could climb and if he had a few good claw-holds, he might make it to a fire escape, and from there could get up to a roof. A good short-term escape plan; she couldn’t follow him up there. But units could quickly surround the block, limiting his range, and then it was only a matter of time before he was brought to justice.

There were dumpsters and boxes and crates and shadowed nooks and crannies that could all be hiding spots, he might be planning to temporarily hide, wait for her to rush past, and then duck back out of the alley, leaving her to search for nothing as he lost himself in the crowd. Unless she actually saw him in the alleyway, her best bet was guard the entrance and wait for backup to arrive.

She rounded the corner and immediately took in all the obstacles, hiding places—a shimming, sea-green circle pulsing at the end of the alleyway silhouette him as he ran into it full-tilt. She saw that out of her peripheral vision, and locked in on it just as the tails of his coat vanished.

Judy bolted to the end of the alley and regarded this portal. It went without saying that she’d never seen anything like it before; it was purely something out of fantasy or science-fiction. She stuck a finger in it, experimentally. It was pleasantly tingly, and when she pulled her finger back out, it was unharmed.

Ever the diligent officer, she radioed in this new information . . . most of the new information. If she just said there was a portal, nobody would believe her. If they arrived and saw it with their own eyes, they’d have to.

Just then, she noticed that it was shrinking, Slowly at first, but picking up speed.

She should have stayed at her post, guarding it. However, the portal was closing; he was there and she was here; there was no time to think, only time to act.

She dove through, and one flash of interdimensional travel later, she was in a brave new world.

Her mind struggled to fill in the details on the periphery, while her focus remained locked in on her target. He’d stopped and turned, no doubt checking to see if she was still following him.

He didn’t have an eyepatch, but other than that, his face was almost exactly how she imagined it would look. Arrogant in the way many cats were.

He looked genuinely surprised that she’d followed and she pressed the advantage, charging for him.

In its blind focus and image overload, her brain was still getting up to speed. Moving objects were resolved. Non-moving ones didn’t present a threat and therefore went unremarked.

Thus it was that in the heat of the chase she ran, full-tilt, into a stallion.