Officer Baker slid out of his patrol car and strode onto the crime scene. He made a mental note in his head; this is the fifth murder this month. He walked under the yellow caution tape place around the apartment. People were everywhere. Officers were setting up a perimeter to keep everyone out, and from the looks of it in. He walked up to an officer and tapped his shoulder.

“What’s the situation?” he said.

“Another murder,” said the officer. Kaleb noted that he was Officer Dan. “He’s inside if you wanna see for yourself. I’d hurry about it too, their gonna take him away soon.” Officer Dan turned back around to the papers he was shuffling through of the hood of a car. Kaleb walked toward the house, looking at the address before entering. 227. He looked back at the street sign. 227 Jefferson Street; The Chief’s house. He jogged inside the yard and up the stone steps onto the porch. Two officers stepped out of the doorway, guiding a stretcher with a body bag on it. The top of the bag was open and The Chief’s head was there. The b****** got The Chief, thought Kaleb. He walked inside the house and saw a huge puddle of blood in the living room and streaks of it headed down the hall.

“Officer Baker,” called a man standing in the front doorway. “We have a positive ID on the man who did this.”

“You saw him?”

“Yeah, running off the premises,” said the officer. “He’s headed across the alleyway toward the apartment complexes south of town.”

Kaleb thought, We can end this rampage now, right now. We need to play our cards right. “Ok,” he said. “Set up a perimeter around the apartments, get some teams ready to go.” He went back to his patrol car and drove off toward the apartments.

We can get this f***er now. He turned down the alleyway and saw a man sprinting for the end of it. Kaleb picked up speed, hitting 20, 30, 40, and suddenly he was right behind the man. Kaleb slammed on the brakes, the man’s heels hitting the front bumper of the car. He was still running, as if possessed to get away. Kaleb watched the man, as if everything was in slow-motion. The world came back to him, his brakes squealing, his tires sliding along the asphalt and suddenly he was headed sideways along the alley. He slammed into the wall with his rear bumper. The car lurched, stopping dead in the middle of the alley, the man still running.

“S***,” yelled Kaleb, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the passenger side door. “Stop!” he yelled, but the man kept running. The apartment building was just down the street. Those apartments were where they found the first murdered man, a homeless man who had been strangled.

Kaleb ran to the apartment complex, meeting up with the S.W.A.T. teams that had been sent in. He lined up against the outside wall of the building, stacking-up for the breach. His .45 revolver in his hand, Kaleb was the first one inside checking rooms.

“Floor one is clear,” he yelled running up the stairs to the second floor. Every floor was checked and cleared except for the 13th floor, the last floor. Kaleb found the man they were looking for holed up in a room with a shotgun and a hostage, the doorman of the apartment building.

“Listen,” said Kaleb from around the corner, “You don’t want to do this.”

“And what makes you think that,” replied the man.

“Listen,” said Kaleb calmly, “We’re gonna come inside that room and take the shotgun and the hostage away from you, ok.” Dan and six S.W.A.T. team members crept up to the hall toward the door. They stacked up on both sides of the door. Kaleb mouthed, 3, 2, 1. They broke down the door and what they found astonished them. The hostage was dead, his throat slit, and the man they were looking for was gone. SWAT searched the apartment, no signs of him, but the window to the fire escape was open. Not again, Kaleb thought.