From fifteen hundred feet off the ground, the blue pickup truck looked like a Matchbox toy. Normally it would have blended with traffic, but on this clear Tuesday afternoon in early June, the pilot watched the truck race past other vehicles and veer back and forth between lanes as the driver searched for any open space he could find.

The aircraft, a Cessna 172, had high wings and a single propeller. Its pilot was a forty-year-old police officer named Dan Page. He knew that the driver of the pickup was male because he monitored a police radio through his headphones and was aware that ten minutes earlier the man had shot and killed another man in a feud between drug dealers at Fort Marcy Park. A police officer driving by saw the shooting. When he sped into the park, the assailant fired through the cruiser’s windshield and killed him. Park workers who saw the murders all identified the shooter as a thin, twentyish Anglo with a shaved head and a white T-shirt, the short sleeves of which revealed a large tattoo on his left arm.

This was Page’s day off. A private pilot, he enjoyed flying his Cessna from Santa Fe’s small airport and, as he phrased it, “getting above it all.” But when his police radio transmitted news of the chase, he headed over the four-mile-wide city to where the truck had last been seen, hoping to spot it among Santa Fe’s low buildings and provide directions to his fellow officers in the pursuing police cars. Five minutes later, he had it in sight. The truck’s frantic, random route would have been difficult to follow on the ground but was obvious from the air.

“He’s going east on Peralta,” Page said into the microphone on his headset. “Now he’s turning right onto Guadalupe, heading downtown.”

“I’m five blocks in front of him,” another officer’s voice answered quickly. “I can cut him off.”

“Wait. Now he’s veering onto Agua Fria.”

Page stared down helplessly as an oncoming car swerved out of the truck’s way, lurched onto a sidewalk, and hit an adobe wall, earthen bricks cascading onto the hood. He imagined the sound of the crash, the violence somehow gaining in magnitude because of the distance.

“He’s back on Saint Francis Drive,” Page warned.

“If he’s headed toward the interstate, we’ve got the ramps blocked,” an urgent voice replied.

Again the truck abruptly changed direction.

“He’s turning right onto Cerrillos Road,” Page yelled.

“I’ll intercept him at Cordova!” a different voice blurted.

Peering down toward a crosswalk, Page noticed pedestrians scurrying to avoid the truck. A car was forced off the road.

“Too late! He’s past Cordova!”

“We’ll set up a roadblock at Saint Michael’s Drive.”

“Better make it Rodeo Road! He’s driving so fast, you won’t have time at Saint Michael’s!”

Indeed, the speed with which the truck covered distance was astounding. The other vehicles on Cerrillos Road seemed to be standing still.  

My God, he’s got to be doing over a hundred, Page thought.

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