Private: #1 Suspect

CHAPTER 111

One second,Rick was walking toward the back door.

The next, he’d flattened himself against a stockade fence so he wouldn’t get creamed by an old red Chevy Impala that tore across the lawn and passed the car Cruz had parked in the driveway.

Cruz leaped from the front steps and both he and Del Rio ran toward the fleet car. Gomez seemed to have gone from zero to almost sixty in no seconds flat, but I saw her face as the Impala shot past me and made a hard right turn on two wheels.

Gomez didn’t look afraid. She looked determined.

Del Rio yelled to me, “Should I call the cops?”

I shouted, “Yes.”

I got into my car, made a U-turn, and followed Cruz and Del Rio east on Stagg, a narrow road, not a speedway.

Gomez was out in front and gaining ground, driving through the residential development as if she were both drunk and crazy. She took out a mailbox, sideswiped a couple of parked cars, and ran a stop sign.

She took another two-wheel turn, this time a sharp left onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard, scraping the side of an SUV that was headed north in her lane of traffic.

I got onto the boulevard in time to see the red car rocket ahead in the inside lane. Horns blared. The Impala weaved-left, right, back to the inside lane. Cars swerved. Hubcaps rolled across the road. Cruz and Del Rio drafted right behind the Impala but couldn’t pass.

Gomez wasn’t just running, she was escaping like a wildfire was burning up the street.

Sirens blared as we flew through the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Strathern Street, an area cluttered with minimall shops: a liquor mart, a flower shop, a 76 station, fast-food joints.

Then the road flattened into a straightaway that ran between two- and three-story commercial buildings on both sides.

Del Rio’s call to 911 and Gomez’s outlaw run had brought out the cruisers, and when Carmelita Gomez turned, six squad cars were screaming behind us. The sounds of others were in the distance.

Gomez didn’t slow, stop, or falter.

In fact, the more cars pursuing her, the faster and crazier she drove.