Sour Grapes

haul. Sit back and enjoy the ride.”
    “Not with a broad driving,” he muttered under his breath.
    “Would you prefer to get out and run alongside?” ‘Just keep your eye on... Hey, what’s goin’ on?” Savannah was wondering the same thing. The patrol cars had suddenly pulled back. Way back. She and Dirk appeared to be the only ones continuing the chase.
    “Do you see anything?” she shouted as she maintained speed and their position behind the Acura, while trying to look into the cars. “What...? Are they shooting? Do you see guns?”
    Dirk was leaning forward, gripping the dash. “I don’t see anything.” He looked back at the cruisers, who were still with them but far behind. “Why did they—?”
    Savannah saw it lying across the road ahead of them. A bar of metal, shining silver in their headlights.
    Now she knew, but it was too late to stop.
    The Acura shot across the metal. So did the Lexus. And the Mustang.
    “Shit, spike strip,” Dirk said. “Hang on, Van.”
    She heard the fatal, popping sound of her tires as they disintegrated beneath her. The Mustang shuddered, pulled sharply to the right, then the left, and she felt as though she were driving through half-set cement. Just ahead, the Lexus and Acura fishtailed, slamming back fenders before the Acura spun off the road and into the median.
    Even as Savannah fought to maintain control of her automobile, she saw half a dozen patrol cars, some from SCPD, some from the county sheriffs, and Jake Mc-Murtry’s van.
    They were converging on the suspects’ vehicles before they even came to a complete stop. Behind them, she saw some cops scrambling to retract the spike strip. The units that had been pursuing along with her and Dirk were approaching, driving through the median.
    She brought the car to a halt on the right shoulder as the acrid stench of scorched rubber filled the interior.
    Dirk jumped out of the Mustang, gun drawn, and ran to the suspects’ vehicles. Savannah followed right behind him, coughing, her eyes and throat burning from the smoke of twelve ruined tires. By the time they had reached the cars, Jake and his fellow officers had unloaded the suspects and had all six of them spread, facedown, on the asphalt.
    One by one, they were cuffed, searched, and had their rights read to them. As Savannah ran her hands over the girl’s body, she found a .22 caliber pistol shoved in the waistband of her jeans and a switchblade taped to her ankle.
    “Didn’t your mama ever tell you that ladies don’t play with those kinds of toys?” Savannah asked as she turned the girl around to face her.
    Even in the dim light of the freeway lamps, Savannah saw the look of recognition, followed by astonishment and anger, cross the young face.
    “Hey, bitch,” she said, “what’re you doin’ bustin’ us? Where’s the cannibal dude?”
    “Right over there, reading your main man his rights,” Savannah replied.
    “Reading him his... what? He’s a cop? The cannibal’s a stinkin’ pig?”
    Savannah chuckled. “Oink, oink.”
    The girl was dumbfounded, devastated. Savannah hadn’t seen such à look since her brother had told her younger sister that there was no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny... all on the same day.
    “Oh, man... a cop.” She shook her head, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed. “I didn’t think they let serial killers be cops. I mean, how screwed up is that?”
    It was Savannah’s turn to stare, confused. Stupidity never failed to amaze her.
    “Sounds like there are a few other things your mama didn’t teach you.” She slapped her on the back. “You’d better get your act together, darlin’, ‘cause you’re not sharp enough to be a criminal.”
    Savannah handed her over to Jake, then strolled back to her Mustang and began to inspect her tires. Eventually, Dirk joined her.
    “Sorry about that, kid.”
    Savannah reached down, picked up a strip of shredded rubber, and held it out to him. ‘Just how sorry are you, big boy?”
    He shrugged and looked away. “You know, sorry. Real sorry.”
    “About a grand sorry, I’d say. They were steel-belted, custom red-walled radials “
    “No way!” He bristled; she could practically see the hair rising on the back of his neck. ‘They were recaps! Thirty-buck-apiece recaps. I was with you when you bought ‘em!”
    “Oh, yeah... I forgot.” She nodded toward the big, black, late-model Mercedes that had just arrived, bearing the auspicious person of their police chief, Norman