Hornet`s Nest

Chapter Fourteen

There were many shoe boxes in Rosa's closet, and West and Brazil went through all of them. They found no drugs, the boyfriend was evicted, and Rosa was rewarded with instant gratification. West and Brazil headed back to their car. Brazil felt they had accomplished a good thing. That rotten, stinking, besotted old man was out of there. The poor woman would have some peace. She was safe.

"I guess we got rid of him," Brazil commented with pride.

"She was just scaring him, like she does once a week," West replied.

"They'll be back together by the time we drive off."

She started the engine, watching the old boyfriend in her rearview mirror. He was standing on the sidewalk, carrying his things, staring at the dark blue Crown Victoria, waiting for it to disappear.

"One of these days he'll probably kill her," West added.

She hated domestic cases. Those and dog bite reports were the most unpredictable and dangerous to the police. Citizens called the cops, and then resented the intervention. It was all very irrational. But perhaps the worst feature of people like Rosa and their boyfriends was the co dependency the inability to do without the other, no matter how many times partners brandished knives and guns, slapped, stole, and threatened. West had a difficult time dealing with people who wallowed in dysfunction, and went from one abusive relationship to the next, never gaining insight, and hurting life. It was her opinion that Brazil should not live with his mother.

"Why don't you get an apartment, and be on your own for once?" West said to him.

"Can't afford it." Brazil typed on the MDT.

"Sure you can."

"No, I can't." He typed some more.

"A one-bedroom apartment in a decent neighborhood is about five hundred a month."

"So?" West looked over at him.

"And your car is paid for, right? You owe any money to Davidson?"

It wasn't any of her business.

"You could afford it," West preached on.

"What you got is a sick relationship. You don't get away from her, you'll grow old together."

"Oh really?" Brazil looked up at West, not appreciating her remarks in the least.

"You know all about it, do you?"

"I'm afraid so," West said.

"In case you haven't figured it out yet, Andy, you aren't the first person in the world to have a co dependent enabling relationship with a parent or spouse. Your mother's crippling, self-destructive disease is her choice. And it serves one important function. It controls her son. She doesn't want you to leave, and guess what? So far you haven't."

This was also Hammer's problem, although she had yet to face it fully. Seth, too, was a cripple. When his powerful, handsome wife breezed in with her trophy in the early morning hours, he was surfing hundreds of cable channels made possible by his eighteen-inch satellite dish on the back porch. Seth liked country western music, and was looking for just the right band. It was not true that he was eating a Tombstone pizza. That had been earlier, when it had gotten to be midnight and his wife still was not home. Now he was working on popcorn drenched with real butter he had melted in the microwave.

Seth Bridges had never been much to look at. Physical beauty was not what had attracted Judy Hammer to him long ago in Little Rock. She had loved his intelligence and gentle patience. They had started out as friends, the way everyone would, were the world filled with good sense. The problem lay in Seth's capacity. He grew as his wife did for the first ten years. Then he maxed out, and simply could stretch no further as a spiritual, enlightened, big-thinking entity. There was no other way to broaden himself unless he did so in the flesh. Eating, frankly, was what he now did best.

Hammer locked the front door and reset the burglar alarm, making sure the motion sensors were on stay. The house smelled like a movie theater, and she detected a hint of pepperoni beneath a buttery layer of chilled air. Her husband was stretched out on the couch, crunching, fingers shiny with grease as he stuffed popcorn inside a mouth that never completely rested. She walked through the living room without comment as stations changed as fast as Seth could point and shoot. In her bedroom, she angrily set the trophy on the floor, in a closet, with others she never remembered.

She was overwhelmed with fury, and slammed the door, tore her clothes off, and threw them in a chair. She put on her favorite nightshirt, and grabbed her pistol out of her pocketbook, and walked back out into the living room. She'd had it. No more. Enough.

Every mortal had limits. Seth froze mid-shovel when his wife marched in, armed.

"Why drag it out?" she said, towering over him in blue and white striped cotton.

"Why not just kill yourself and get it over with? Go ahead."

She racked the pistol and offered it to him, butt first. Seth stared at it. He had never seen her like this, and he propped himself up on his elbows.

"What happened tonight?" he asked.

"You and Panesa get into a fight or something?"

"Quite the opposite. If you want to end it, go ahead."

"You're crazy," he said.

"That's right, well on my way to it, thanks to you." His wife lowered the gun and put the safety on.

"Seth, tomorrow you go for help. A psychiatrist and your primary care physician. You straighten yourself out. Starting this minute. You're a pig. A slob. A bore. You're committing slow suicide and I do not intend to watch a minute longer."

She snatched the bowl of popcorn out of his oily hands.

"You don't get it fixed, I'm out of here. Period."

Brazil and West also were suffering aftershocks from their confrontation in her unmarked car. They had continued arguing about his living situation, by now both of them in a lather as they drove through another rough area of the city. Brazil was glaring at her, and not particularly cognizant of the area or its bad people who were thinking violent thoughts about the cop car cruising past. Brazil wondered what possessed him to want to spend so much of his valuable time with this rude, insensitive, inappropriate deputy chief who was old and backward and, in truth, a jerk.

It seemed that fighting was a cloud layer over the Queen City, and Panesa's pleasant mood had deteriorated as well when his lawyer friend called at the precise moment Hammer was locking her bedroom door and West was telling Brazil to grow up and Bubba was on the prowl in his King Cab. The lawyer had been thinking about Panesa, whom she had observed on the late news, in his stunning tuxedo, receiving a trophy.

The lawyer was thinking about Panesa and his silver hair, and wanted to drop by and maybe stay over. Panesa made it clear that this was not possible, and never would be again, as Bubba parked in dark shadows near Latta Park.

Bubba was in camouflage, a black cap pulled low.

When he stealthily reached West's house, he was pleased that she wasn't home. Bubba could only suppose that she was being screwed by her sissy boyfriend, and Bubba smiled as he imagined her getting screwed again by Bubba, as he sneaked closer to the front of the brick house. His intention wasn't felonious but would ruin the bitch's mood when she couldn't open her front or back doors because someone had filled the locks with Super Glue. This idea had come from yet another of his anarchist manuals, and might well have worked like a charm had circumstances not conspired against him as he unfolded his Buck knife and cut off the tip from the tube of glue.

A car was coming, and Bubba wisely supposed it might be the cop returning home. It was too late to run, and he dove into the hedge. The Cavalier wagon passed, carrying Ned Toms to The Fish Market, where he was about to start his shift, unpacking seafood from boxes of ice. He noticed a big dog moving around in bushes in front of a house where he often saw an unmarked cop car parked, then his Cavalier was gone like a breeze.

Bubba emerged from the hedge, his fingers glued together and left hand completely fastened to the right inner thigh of his fatigues. He rapidly hobbled away, looking remarkably like a hunchback. He could not unlock his truck or drive without freeing one hand, and this required his removing his pants, which he was in the process of doing when Officer Wood happened by on routine patrol, checking the park for perverts. Bubba was arrested for indecent exposure.

West and Brazil heard the call over the scanner, but were not even close, and were busy discussing Brazil's life.

"What the hell do you know about my mother or why I choose to take care of her?" Brazil was saying.

"I know a lot. Social services, juvenile court, are overwhelmed by cases just like yours," West said.

"I've never been a social service case. Or in juvenile court."

"Yet," she reminded him.

"Mind your own business for once."

"Get a life," she said.

"Declare your independence. Go out on a date."

"Oh, so now I don't date, either," he snapped.

She laughed.

"When? While you're brushing your teeth? You're out every night working, and then show up in the newsroom by nine, after you've run your ass off around the track and hit a million tennis balls. You tell me when you date, Andy? Huh?"

Fortunately, Radar the dispatcher hailed them exactly at this moment.

Apparently there was an assault on Monroe Road.

"Unit 700 responding," Brazil irritably said into the mike.

They call you Night Voice," West told him.

"Who's they?" he wanted to know.

"Cops. They know when you get on the radio that you're not me."

"Because my voice is deeper? Or maybe because I use proper grammar?"

he said.

West was making her way through more menacing- looking government-subsidized housing. She was constantly checking her mirrors.

"Where the hell are my backups?" she said.

Brazil had his eye on something else, and excitedly pointed.

"White van, EWR-117," he said.

"From the APB earlier."

The van was moving slowly around a corner, and West sped up. She flipped on lights and siren, and twenty minutes later, cops hauled someone else to jail as West and Brazil drove on.

Radar wasn't finished with them yet. A call came in for a car broken into at Trade and Tryon, and he assigned this to unit 700, as well, while other cops rode around with nothing much to do.

"Subject a black male, no shirt, green shorts. May be armed," Radar's voice came over the scanner.

At the scene. West and Brazil discovered a Chevrolet Caprice with a smashed windshield. The upset owner, Ben Martin, was a law-abiding citizen. He'd had his fill of crime and violence, and did not deserve to have his brand new Caprice mauled like this. For what? His wife's coupon book that looked like a wallet in the back seat? Some shithead hooligan destroyed Martin's hard-earned ride to get fifty cents off Starkist albacore tuna, or Uncle Ben's, or Maxwell House?

"Last night, same thing happened to my neighbor over there," Martin was explaining to the cops.

"And the Baileys over there got hit the night before that."

What had gone wrong in the world? Martin remembered being a boy in Rock Hill, South Carolina, where they did not lock their doors, and a burglar alarm was when you walked in on the sucker cleaning you out and he was surprised. So you beat the fool out of him, and that was the end of it. Now there was nothing but randomness, and strangers brutalizing a new Caprice for manufacturer's coupons camouflaged by a red fabric wallet fastened with Velcro.

Brazil happened to notice a black male in green shorts running a block away, headed toward the dark, ancient Settlers Cemetery.

"That's him!"

Brazil shouted.

"Get on the radio!" West ordered.

She took off. It was instinct, and had nothing to do with reality, which revealed her as a middle-aged, out of shape, Boj angles-addicted smoker. She was at least a hundred feet behind the subject and already heaving. She was sweating and clumsy, her body and heavy Sam Browne belt simply not designed for this. The bastard had no shirt on, his muscles rippling beneath gleaming ebony skin. He was a damn lynx. How the hell was she supposed to catch something like this? No way.

Subjects didn't used to be this fit. They didn't used to drink Met-Rx and have fitness clubs in every jail.

Even as she was thinking these thoughts, Brazil passed her, flying like an Olympic athlete. He was gaining on

Green Shorts, closing in as they entered the cemetery. Brazil zeroed in on the muscular V-shaped back. This dude had maybe five percent body fat, was shiny with sweat, running his scrawny butt off, and believing he would get away with stealing that coupon book. Brazil shoved him as hard as he could from the rear, and sent him sprawling to the grass, coupons fluttering. Brazil jumped on top of Green Shorts and dug a knee in the common thief's spine. Brazil pressed his Mag-Lite, like a gun, against Green Shorts's skull.

"Move I'll blow your brains out mother fucker!" Brazil screamed.

He looked up, proud of himself. West had finally gotten around to showing up, heaving and sweating. She would have a heart attack, of this she was certain.

"I stole that line from you," Brazil told her.

She managed to detach handcuffs from the back of her belt, having no clear recollection of when she might have used them last. Was it when she was a sergeant and got in a foot pursuit with a shim in Fourth Ward, way back when, or in Fat Man's? She felt lightheaded, blood pounding her neck and ears. West traced her deterioration back to her thirty-fifth year, when coincidentally, Niles had deposited himself on her back stoop one Saturday night. Abyssinians were exotic and quite expensive. They were also difficult and eccentric, possibly explaining why Niles had been available for adoption. Even West had moments when she wanted to boot him out the car door on one of life's highways. Why the scrawny, cross-eyed kitten with memories of the pyramids had picked West remained unknown.

The stress brought on by Niles's addition to the family precipitated a self-destructiveness in West that had nothing to do with her growing isolation as she continued to get promoted in a man's world. Her increased smoking, consumption of fat and beer, and her refusal to exercise were completely unrelated to her breaking up with Jimmy Dinkins, who was allergic to Niles, and, frankly, hated the cat to the point of pulling his gun on Niles one night when Dinkins and West were arguing and Niles decided to insert himself by pouncing on Dinkins from the top of the refrigerator.

West was still sweating, her breathing labored, as she led their prisoner back to the car. She thought she might throw up.

"You got to quit smoking," Brazil said to her.

West stuffed the subject into the back of the car, and Brazil climbed in the front.

"You got any idea how much fat's in Bojangles, and all that other shit you eat?" Brazil went on.

Their prisoner was silent, his eyes bright with hate in the rearview mirror. His name was Nate Laney. He was fourteen. He would kill these white cops. All he needed was a chance. Laney was bad and had been since birth, according to his biological mother, who also had always been bad, according to her own mother. This bad seed could be traced back to a prison in England, where the original bad seed had been shipped out to this country, around the same time the troops in the Queen City had been chasing Cornwallis down the road.

"I bet you never exercise." Brazil did not know when to quit.

West gave him a look as she wiped her flushed face with a tissue.

Brazil had just sprinted a hundred yards and wasn't even breathing.

She felt old and crabby, and sick and tired of this kid and his naive, self-righteous opinions. Life was entirely more complicated that he thought, and he would begin to see it for himself after he'd been out here a year or two, with nothing but fried chicken places on every corner. Bojangles, Church's, Popeye's, Chic N Grill, Chick-Fil-A, Price's Chicken Coop. Plus, cops didn't make much money, certainly not in their early years, so even off-duty options for dining were limited to the pizza, burgers, and bar food that were plentiful in Charlotte, where citizens loved their Hornets and Panthers and Nascar race-car drivers.

"When was the last time you played tennis?" Brazil asked as their prisoner plotted in the backseat.

"I don't remember," she said.

"Why don't we go out and hit some."

"You need your head examined," she said.

"Oh come on. You used to be good. I bet you used to be in shape, too," he said.

The massive concrete jail was in the heart of downtown. It had been built at the same time as the big new police department, in this city that enjoyed a crime clearance rate that exceeded the actual number of cases, according to some. There were many levels of security to go through at the jail, starting with lockers where police were to deposit their guns on the way in. At a desk, deputies checked all who entered, and Brazil looked around, taking in yet another new, scary place. A Pakistani woman in dark clothing and a veil was being processed for shoplifting. Drunks, thieves, and the usual drug dealers were being herded by cops, while the sheriff's department supervised.

In the Central Warrant Repository, West searched her prisoner, emptying his pockets of Chap Stick, one dollar and thirteen cents, and a pack of Kools. She shuffled through his paperwork. He was happy now, laughing, full of himself, checking to see who was watching Nate the Man.

"You able to read?" West asked him.

"My bond on there?" Her prisoner was jailing, wearing three pairs of boxer shorts, two pairs of shorts, the outer ones green, falling off, no belt, looking around and unable to stand still.

"Fraid not," West said.

Inside blue metal solitary holding cells, another young boy beyond redemption stared out with forlorn, killing eyes. Brazil stared back at him. Brazil looked at the Holding Area, where a cage was packed with men waiting to be transported to the jail on Spector Drive until the Department of Corrections transferred them to Camp Green or Central Prison. The men were quiet, peering out, gripping bars like animals in the zoo, nothing else to do in their jailhouse orange.

"I ain't been in here in a while," West's prisoner let her know.

"How long's a while?" West completed an inventory of Nate the Man's belongings.

Nate Laney shrugged, moving around, looking. "Bout two months," he said.

West and Brazil ended their ride with break fast at the Presto Grill.

He was wide-eyed and ready for adventure. She was worn out, a new day just begun. She went home long enough to notice a tube of Super Glue in her shrubbery. Nearby was an open Buck knife. She barely remembered hearing something on the scanner about a subject exposing himself in Latta Park. It seemed glue was involved. West bagged possible evidence, getting an odd feeling about why it might have landed in her yard. She fed Niles. At nine a. m. " West accompanied Hammer through the atrium of City Hall.

"What the hell are you doing with a summons book in your car?" Hammer was saying, walking fast.

This had gone too far. Her deputy chief had been out all night in foot pursuits. She had been locking people up.

"Just because I'm a deputy chief doesn't mean I can't enforce the law," West said, trying to keep up, nodding at people they passed in the corridor.

"I can't believe you're writing tickets. Morning, John. Ben. Locking people up. Hi, Frank." She greeted other city councilmen.

"You're going to end up in court again. As if

I can spare you. Your summons book gets turned in to me today. "

West laughed. This was one of the funniest things she'd heard in a while.

"I will not!" she said.

"What did you tell me to do? Huh? Whose idea was it for me to go back out on the street?" Her sleep deficit was making her giddy.

Hammer threw her hands up in despair as they walked into a room where a special city council meeting had been called by the mayor. It was packed with citizens, reporters, and television crews. People instantly were on their feet, in an uproar, when the two women police officials walked in.

"Chief!"

"Chief Hammer, what are we going to do about crime in the east end?"

"Police don't understand the black community!"

"We want our neighborhoods back!"

"We build a new jail but don't teach our children how to stay out of it!"

"Business downtown has dropped twenty percent since these serial killing-carjackings started!" another citizen shouted.

"What are we doing about them? My wife's scared to death."

Hammer was up front now, taking the microphone. Councilmen sat around a polished horseshoe-shaped table, polished brass nameplates marking their place in the city's government. All eyes were on the first police chief in Charlotte's history to make people feel important, no matter where they lived or who they were. Judy Hammer was the only mother some folks had ever known, in a way, and her deputy was pretty cool, too, out there with the rest of them, trying to see for herself what the problems were.

"We will take our neighborhoods back by preventing the next crime," Hammer spoke in her strong voice.

"Police can't do it without your help. No more looking the other way and walking past." She, the evangelist, pointed at all.

"No more thinking that what happens to your neighbor is your neighbor's problem. We are one body." She looked | around.

"What happens to you, happens to me." No one moved. Eyes never left her as she stood before i all and spoke a truth that power brokers from the past had not wanted the people to hear. The people had to take their streets, their neighborhoods, their cities, their states, their countries, their world, back. Each person had to start looking out his window, do his own bit of policing in his own part of life, and get irate when something happened to his neighbor. Yes sir. Rise up. Be a Minute Man, a Christian soldier.

"Onward," Hammer told them.

"Police yourself and you won't need us."

The room was frenzied. That night, West was ironically reminded of the overwhelming response as she and Brazil sped past the stadium rising eerily, hugely against the night, filled with crazed, cheering fans celebrating Randy Travis. West's Crown Victoria was directed and in a hurry as it passed the convention center, where a huge video display proclaimed WELCOME TO THE QUEEN CITY. In the distance, cop cars went fast, lights strobing blue and red, protesting another terrible violation. Brazil, too, could not help but think of the timing, after all Hammer had said this morning. He was angry as they drove.

West knew fear she would not show. How could this happen again? What about the task force she had handpicked, the Phantom Force, as it had been dubbed, out day and night to catch the Black Widow Killer? She could not help but think of the press conference, and its excerpts on radio and television. West was tempted to wonder if this might be more than coincidental, as if someone was making a mockery of Charlotte and its police and its people.

The killing had occurred off Trade Street, behind a crumbling brick building where the stadium and the Duke Power transfer station were in close view. West and Brazil approached the disorienting strobing of emergency lights, heading toward an area cordoned off by yellow crime-scene tape. Beyond were railroad tracks and a late-model white Maxima, its driver's door open, interior light on, and bell dinging.

West flipped open her portable phone and tried her boss's number again. For the past ten minutes, the phone had been busy because Hammer had one son on call waiting, and the other on the line. When Hammer hung up, her phone immediately rang with more bad news.

Four minutes later, she drove out of her Fourth Ward neighborhood in a hurry as West folded the phone and handed it to Brazil. He returned it to the leather case on his belt, where there was plenty of room since volunteers packed light. Brazil was pleased to attach anything to his belt that was road legal, a Charlottean term, the etymology of which could be traced back to Nascar gods and the rockets they drove, not one of which, in fact, was permitted on life's highways unless it was chained to a trailer. Brazil envied what most cops complained about.

Backaches, inconvenience, and being encumbered did not enter his mind.

Of course, he carried a radio with channels for all response areas, the antenna stubby and prone to probe very short officers' armpits.

Brazil also wore a pager no one ever called, a Mini Mag-Lite with two-thousand two-hundred candlepower in its black leather holster, and West's cellular phone, because he was not allowed to carry the Observer's cellular phone when he was in uniform. Brazil had no gun or pepper spray. His ultra duty belt was without expandable baton, nightstick ring, double magazine holders, handcuffs, or double cuff case. Brazil lacked a long flashlight case, or Pro-3 duty holster, or clip holder, and had not a single molded belt keeper, or for that matter, a silent key holder with Velcro wraparound flap.

tw West had all this and more. She was fully loaded, and Niles could hear her coming from the far reaches of the city. Minute by minute, the seven-pound Abyssinian waited for the sound, listening for the beloved clanking and creaking and heavy landings. His disappointment was becoming chronic and broaching unforgivable as he sat in his window over the sink, watching and waiting, and increasingly fixated by the US Bank Corporate Center (USBCC) dominating the sky. Niles in his earlier lives had been intimate with the greatest erections in all of civilization, the pyramids, the magnificent tombs of pharaohs.

In the fantasies of Niles, USBCC was the giant King Usbeecee, with his silver crown, and it was simply a matter of time before his majesty shook loose of his moorings. He would turn right and left, looking at his feeble neighbors. Niles imagined the King stepping slowly, heavily, feeling his way, shaking earth, for the first time. He aroused Niles's fearful reverence because the King had no smile, and when his eyes caught the sun and turned gold, they were overpowering, as was the mighty monarch's sheer weight. King Usbeecee could step on the Charlotte Observer, the entire police department, all of the LEC and City Hall. He could crush the entire force of armed officers, and their chief and deputy chiefs, the mayor, the newspaper's publisher, reducing all to precast dust.

Vy Hammer got out of her car and wasted no time striding through her detectives and uniformed police. She ducked under the tape with its bright yellow warning that always made her ache and fear, no matter where she saw it. Hammer was not in the form she would have liked, having even more on her mind than usual. Since her ultimatum to Seth, her quality of life had radically disintegrated. He had not gotten up this morning, and was mumbling about Dr. Kevorkian, living wills, and the Hemlock Society. Seth had pontificated about the silliness of assuming that suicide was selfish, for every adult had the right to be absent.

"Oh for God's sake," his wife had said.

"Get up and go for a walk."

"No. You can't make me. I don't have to be in this life if I don't want to be."

This had prompted her to remove all firearms from their usual spots.

Hammer had collected many over the years and had strategically tucked them in various places around the house. Still at large when West had called was Hammer's old faithful Smith amp; Wesson stainless steel five-shot. 38 special with Pachmeyer grips. Hammer was fairly certain it was supposed to be in the drawer of her vanity in her bathroom. She was almost positive this was where it had been last time she had rounded up weapons and locked them in the safe before the grand babies came to town.

Hammer had many concerns. She was depressed and coping the best she could as anxieties from her press conference, which had involved national media, continued to pluck at her. Politics were what she hated most. They, honestly, were the bane of her existence. A hundred and five percent clearance rate.

She wished Cahoon could be here in this Godawful place. This was what he needed to see. The Cahoons of the world lose it, wouldn't be able to handle it, would pale and flee. This gory dead businessman was not about appearances or economic development or the tourist industry.

This overgrown, creepy thicket flickering with fireflies near railroad tracks, this Thrifty rental car, open and dinging, was about reality.

Hammer spoke to no one as she approached tragedy, and blue and red lights lit up her hard, distressed face. She joined West and Brazil near the Maxima as Dr. Odom arranged another black pouch around another body. The medical examiner's gloved hands were bloody, and sweat dripped in his eyes as his heart beat slow and with force. He had dealt with the savagery of sexual homicide most of his life, but nothing like this. Dr. Odom was a compassionate man, but he was tough.

He had learned long ago to keep himself in check and not relate too closely. It was sad but true that it was easier for him to be clinical when the victims were women or obvious gays not getting along or, in some cases, foreigners. It had been comfortable for him to categorize.

Dr. Odom was feeling increasingly shaky about his homosexual serial-killing theory. This victim happened to be fifty-four-year-old state senator Ken Butler from Raleigh. The last thing Dr. Odom intended to imply, in any form or fashion, was that the much-beloved black leader was something less than mainstream. Dr. Odom also knew, from his vast experience, that homosexual politicians didn't cruise downtown streets looking for boys. They went to public parks and men's rooms, where they could always swear they were neither exposing them selves nor offering an invitation. They were urinating.

Dr. Odom zipped the pouch over blood and naked flesh, covering the blaze-orange hourglass. He looked up at Hammer, and shook his head as he stood. His back was killing him. Brazil was staring into the Maxima, hands in his pockets to make sure he didn't inadvertently touch anything and leave his prints. That would be the end of his career. He might even become a suspect. After all, didn't he coincidentally happen to be in the area every time one of these bodies turned up? He nervously glanced around him, wondering if this might remotely occur to anyone. Dr. Odom was busy giving Hammer and West his opinions.

"This is a fucking nightmare," the medical examiner was saying.

"Jesus Christ."

He ripped off his gloves, and wasn't quite sure what to do with them.

He cast about, looking for a receptacle for biological hazards.

Catching the eye of Denny Raines, he gave the paramedic a nod, and the big, handsome guy came through with his stretcher and crew. Raines winked at West, drinking in the sexy sight of her in uniform. She was pretty unbelievable, and Hammer was hot, too. Brazil's eyes fixed on Raines. Brazil got a strange feeling as he watched the over built ambulance attendant eyeing West and Hammer. Brazil wasn't sure what the problem was, but he was suddenly anxious and a little sick to his stomach. He wanted to get in Raines's face, beg him to start something so Brazil could finish it, or at least order Raines to leave the scene.

"Well, it's all yours now," Dr. Odom went on to Hammer as stretcher legs clacked.

"I'm not releasing a damn thing to the media. Never do.

Any statement will have to come from you. "

"We're not releasing his identity tonight." Hammer was adamant.

"Not until he's been positively identified."

There was no doubt in her mind. His driver's license was on the floor of the Maxima, on the passenger's side. Hammer recognized the senator's imposing stature, the gray hair and goatee, and heavy face.

He hadn't survived long enough to have tissue response to his horrendous injuries, no swelling or bruising. Butler did not look so different from when Hammer had seen him last, at a cocktail party in Myers Park. She was terribly upset and determined that it would not show. She approached Brazil. He was prowling around the car, taking notes.

"Andy," she said, touching his arm.

"I'm sure I don't need to tell you how sensitive this is."

He got still, looking at her as if she were the reason people went to church every Sunday. She was God. Hammer was distracted as her gaze wandered inside the car, to the black leather briefcase stamped with the gold initials K. O. B. It was in back, open, as were an overnight bag and a suit bag, everything dumped out. She made a silent inventory of keys, a calculator, US Air peanuts and tickets, a portable phone, pens, paper, address book, Tic Tacs, lubricated Trojan condoms, shoes, socks, and Jockey shorts, all scattered by hard, heartless hands.

"Are we sure it's the senator?" Brazil managed to ask.

Hammer gave him her upset eyes again.

"Not sure enough for you to release that yet."

"Okay," he said.

"As long as you don't give it to out to someone else first."

"Never. You do the right thing, so will I," she said the usual.

"Call me tomorrow at five p.m. I'll give you a statement."

She walked off. His eyes followed her as she left the crime scene, and ducked under tape, walking briskly through the strobing blue and red night. Television crews, radio reporters, and mobs of reporters darted at her like barracuda. She waved them off and got into her chief's car. Brazil prowled some more, disturbed in a way he did not understand as he got closer to where the senator had been killed. Raines and other paramedics were carrying the body to the ambulance, and the Ace twenty-four-hour towing and recovery truck was rolling in to haul the Maxima to the police department.

The ambulance beeped as it backed up, carrying the dead senator to the morgue while cameras caught it all. Brent Webb watched Brazil with jealous eyes. It wasn't fair Brazil got such special treatment, and could wander around the crime scene with a flashlight as if he belonged there. Brazil's privileged position, his golden touch, would end soon enough, Webb knew. The television reporter smoothed his perfect hair and lubricated his lips with lip balm. He looked sincerely into the camera and told the world the latest tragic news as a Norfolk-Southern train loudly lumbered past.

Brazil's flashlight swept gravel and weeds at the edge of rusty railroad tracks as the last train car loudly rumbled through the dark, hot night. Coagulating blood glistened bright red in the strong beam, illuminating a dingy washcloth and bloody quarters, pennies, and dimes that must have come out of pockets when the murdered senator's pants were pulled down. Blood and gore clung to kudzu, and there were fragments of skull and brain. Brazil took a deep breath, looking down dark tracks, the skyline huge and bright.

Seth had images of his own blood and gore, and savored the imagined reaction of Chief Wife when she walked into his room and found him on top of his bed, where he sat up now drinking beer, the. 38 revolver in his lap. He could not take his eyes off the gun, which was loaded with one Remington +P cartridge. Intermittently, Seth had been spinning the cylinder for hours as he watched "Friends," "Mary Tyler Moore," and other reruns, and tested his luck. It wasn't good.

So far, out of perhaps a hundred dry runs, he had committed suicide successfully but twice. How could that be possible? Didn't this go against the law of averages? He figured the cartridge should have lined up fatally at least twenty times, since it was a five-shot revolver, and five divided into one hundred was twenty.

He had never been good in math. Seth had never been good in anything, he decided. Everyone would be better off without him, including his wimpy sons and his emasculating wife. She'd benefit the most, walking in, finding him slumped over, shot in the head through a pillow, blood everywhere, finished, end of story. No longer a problem. No more taking fatso Seth places and being ashamed, while younger men still looked at her with interested eyes. Seth would show her. Take that.

Let his final chapter haunt her the rest of her big-shot days.

tw He would never go through with it. Hammer was quite sure of this.

Certainly, when she had slid open her vanity drawer and found the. 38 missing, it had occurred to the top police officer in Charlotte that her depressed, self-destructive spouse might have a clue as to the gun's whereabouts. And for what? Self-protection. Hardly. Seth rarely remembered to set the burglar alarm. He did not like to shoot and had never carried a gun, not even in Little Rock, when he was a member of the NRA because most people were. Hammer deduced and worried as she drove.

The fool. Wouldn't this be his last and greatest revenge? Suicide was a mean and skulking act, unless one was dying anyway and desired an earlier flight out of pain and suffering. The vast majority of people killed themselves for payback purposes. Some of the nastiest notes Hammer had ever read were the last comments of just such people. She had not much sympathy because there wasn't a soul she knew who didn't bump over bad stretches of life's highways now and again, struggle over long, lonely miles where it entered the mind that maybe one should run off the road, be done with it. Hammer was not exempt. She was well aware of her own spells of destructive eating, drinking, not exercising, laziness. They happened, and she picked herself up and went on. She always chose a better lane, and got healthy again. She would not die, because she was responsible, and people needed her.

She walked into her house, not knowing what she would find. Locking the door, she reset the alarm. The TV was loud in Seth's bedroom across from the kitchen. For a moment, his wife hesitated, tempted to walk back and check, but she couldn't. Suddenly, she was afraid. She headed to her own part of the house, her heart filled with dread as she freshened up in the bathroom. It was late, but she didn't change into her nightshirt yet or pour herself a Dewar's. If he had done it, there would be people all over her property within minutes. There was no point in getting out of her clothes or smelling like booze. Judy Hammer began to cry.

wfl Brazil was thinking about the deal he had made with Hammer as he flew through his story. Still in uniform, he sat before his computer, fingers dancing as he typed and flipped through his notepad. He included incredible detail about this night's Black Widow killing.

With photographic total recall, he showed what was inside the car, describing bloody money, and what the police and medical examiner had done, and how violent death felt and smelled and looked. His piece was graphic and moving, but it did not include the victim's identity. Brazil kept his word.

This was very stressful for him. The journalist in him screamed that he had to print the truth, whether it was known for a fact. Brazil was honorable. He could not betray the police. He assuaged himself with the reality that Chief Hammer would never screw him, and he knew that West wouldn't. Brazil would get his quote tomorrow at 5 p. m. " and no one, especially Webb, would catch on until they read it in the Observer the following morning.

v9 Webb had just come on the air for the eleven o'clock news when Hammer walked into her husband's bedroom. Her heart slowed a little when she saw no blood. Nothing, in the least, stood out. Seth was on his side, head deep in the pillow. Webb's voice was unusually solemn, the killing the lead story.

'. the shocking revelation in this night's tragedy is that the victim is believed to be Senator Ken Burton. "

Hammer turned to stone, riveted to the TV. Seth sat straight up in bed, startled.

"My God," Seth exclaimed.

"We just had drinks with him last month."

"Shhhhhhhhh," Hammer silenced her self-destructive husband.

'. once again, the peculiar symbol of an hourglass was spray-painted on the body. Burton was believed to have been shot at close range with a high-velocity hollowpoint ammunition known as Silvertips. "

Hammer snatched up the portable phone from the table by Seth's bed, where there were three Miller Lite cans and a glass of what looked like bourbon.

"Where's my.38?" she said to him as she dialed.

"Got no idea." He could feel the revolver between his legs, which was not an ideal place for it. But it had rearranged itself when he had fallen asleep.

"Sources say his briefcase, tote bag and suit bag were rifled through inside the rental Maxima. Butler had picked up the Thrifty rental car at five-fifteen this afternoon. His money was gone, except for bloody change found under his body. Blood money, as the Black Widow claims number five. " Webb's voice lowered, resonating tragic irony.

Brazil was getting his fix of press room sound and fury, and therefore was not at his desk to receive Hammer's call. He watched thousands of newspapers speeding on a conveyor belt. His front page headline was an inch high and blurred, but he could still read it from where he stood.

BLOODY MONEY BLACK WIDOW CLAIMS NUMBER FIVE

He couldn't quite make out his byline, but he knew it was there.

Workers dozed in chairs, waiting for technical problems. Brazil watched one-ton newsprint reels eerily floating up from underground, carried slowly along tracks past barrels of liquid alum, and vats of yellow, red, blue and black ink. Metal clanked as dollies carried newsprint that reminded him of giant rolls of toilet paper. He wandered to the mail room, staring at palates of bundled papers, listening to the loud click-clicking of the Muller Martini machine feeding inserts into papers as a belt carried them into the counting machine. His enthusiasm had left him, for some reason. He felt listless. He was restless, nocturnal again, and still sort of offline in a way he did not understand.

It was a sweet-sick feeling. His heart was heavy and ached, and when he thought of that beefcake paramedic winking at West and looking at Hammer with lust in his eyes, Brazil felt a tightness and a rage. He felt fright. He experienced the same weak, chilly sensation he associated with barely escaping a car accident or almost losing a tennis match. Was it possible either woman might like Raines, that meatloaf of a paramedic who had to have a meager mental bank account to spend so much time working out? Of late, Brazil recently had caught the rumors about Hammer's pitiful marriage to a fat guy who was unemployed. A dynamic woman like her would have needs and urges. How did Brazil know that she might not go for it, and decide to meet Raines somewhere?

It was important for Brazil's peace of mind and spiritual development that he know Hammer had, in fact, driven straight home. He could not trust her unless he knew, with certainty, that she would not betray him and the world by stooping so low as to sneak around with Denny Raines. Brazil drove quickly through Fourth Ward. He was stunned to see an ambulance parked in front of Hammer's house, and her dark blue police car gleaming in the driveway. Brazil's heart was boxing his ribs as he parked some distance away, staring in horror and disbelief.

How in God's name could she be so blatant?

A madness invaded Brazil's otherwise sound mind. He got out of his BMW and strode toward the house of the woman he worshiped but no longer respected or would ever speak to or think of or wonder about again. He would air his righteous thoughts, but there would be no violence unless Raines started it. If so, Brazil would sock him to Oz, ace him, smash him. He tried not to think about Raines's size, or that the paramedic did not appear to be scared of much. Brazil was having second thoughts when Hammer's front door opened.

Raines and another paramedic wheeled out a stretcher bearing a fat older man. Chief Hammer followed and seemed in shock, and Brazil was stunned and baffled in the middle of Pine Street. Hammer was distraught as practiced hands loaded her husband into the ambulance.

"You sure you don't want me to ride with you?" Hammer asked the fat man.

"I'm sure." The fat man was in pain and sluggish, perhaps from whatever was dripping into him intravenously

"Well, have it your way," Hammer told him.

"I don't want her coming," the fat man instructed Raines.

"Not to worry." Hammer sounded hurt as she walked back to the house.

She stood in the doorway, watching the ambulance drive off. Squinting, she noticed Brazil on her dark street, staring at her. She recognized him, and it all came back to' her Oh Christ. As if she didn't have problems enough.

"I tried to get you earlier. Give me a chance to explain," she called out to him.

Now he was completely baffled.

"Excuse me?" He stepped closer.

"Come here." Hammer wearily motioned to him.

He sat on her porch swing. She turned out the light and sat on the steps, certain this young man must think she was the biggest, most dishonest bureaucrat he had ever encountered. Hammer knew this might be the night her controversial community policing project would go to hell along with everything else.

"Andy," she began, 'you've got to believe that I said nothing to anyone. I swear I kept my promise to you. "

"What?" He was getting a very bad feeling.

"What promise?"

She realized he did not know.

"Oh God," she mumbled.

"You didn't hear the news tonight?"

"No, ma'am. What news?" He was getting excited, his voice rising.

Hammer told him about Channel 3 and Webb's scoop.

"That's impossible!" Brazil exclaimed.

"Those are my details! How could he know the stuff about the bloody money, the washcloth, any of it! He wasn't there!"

"Andy, please lower your voice."

Lights were blinking on. Dogs were barking. Hammer stood.

"It's not fair. I play by the rules." Brazil felt as if his life were over.

"I cooperate with you, help as much as I can. And get crucified for it." He got up, too, the swing moving, slowly swaying, and empty.

"You can't stop doing what's right just because others do things that are wrong," she spoke quietly, and from experience, as she opened the door that would lead her back inside her fine home.

"We've done some pretty wonderful things, Andy. I hope you won't let this ruin it."

Her face was kind but sad as she looked at him. He felt the ache in his heart, and his stomach was doing something strange, too. He was sweating and chilled as he stared at her, unable to imagine what it must have been like for her children to be raised by such a person.

"Are you all right?" Hammer thought he was acting oddly.

"I don't know what my problem is." He wiped his face with his hands.

"I think I've been trying to get sick or something. It's none of my business, but is your husband all right?"

"A flesh wound," she replied, weary and depressed again as moths fluttered past, into her house, where soon they would die from pesticide.

Misfires rarely occurred with double-action revolvers. But when Hammer had demanded that Seth return the. 38 to her, he had gotten angry and mean. He'd had enough of being bossed around by this woman, who next would begin searching him and his bedroom. There was no way out.

Unfortunately, she'd walked in before he'd had a chance to stash the gun in a place she couldn't find it. Worse, Seth had been sleeping in a drunken position that had resulted in tingling and numbness in his right hand. When he had decided to send this same hand down to his crotch to fish out the revolver, it had not been a wise move. It was also Seth's bad luck that the one time he did not want the cartridge lined up with the firing pin was precisely then.

"His left buttock," Hammer was explaining to Brazil, who was inside the house with her now, because she could not leave her front door open all night.

Brazil looked around at vibrant oriental rugs on polished hardwood floors, at fine oil paintings and handsome furniture in warm fabrics and rich leathers. He was standing in the foyer of Chief Hammer's splendid restored home, and no one else was around. It was just the two of them, and he began sweating profusely again. If she noticed, she did not let on.

"They'll X-ray, of course," she was saying, 'to make certain the bullet isn't lodged close to anything important. "

There was a dark side of +P hollowpoints, Hammer thought. The objective of their design was for the lead projectile to expand and rip through tissue like a Roto Rooter. Rarely did the bullets exit, and there was no telling how much lead was scattered through Seth's formidable lower region. Brazil was listening to all this, wondering if the chief would ever get around to calling the police.

"Chief Hammer," Brazil finally felt compelled to speak.

"I don't guess you've called this in?"

"Oh dear." It hadn't even occurred to her.

"You're absolutely right. I guess a report has to be taken." She began pacing as the reality hit.

"Oh no, oh no. That's all I need! So now I get to hear about this on TV, the radio. In your paper. This is awful. Do you realize how many people will enjoy this?" She envisioned Cahoon sitting in his crown, laughing as he read about it.

No one would be fooled, not for a minute. A depressed, unemployed, obese husband in bed with his wife's. 38 loaded with only one cartridge? Every cop who worked for Hammer would know that her husband had been flirting with suicide. All would know that there were serious problems in her house. Some would even suspect that she had shot her husband and knew exactly how to get away with it. Maybe it wasn't his left buttock she had been aiming at, either. Maybe he had turned around just in the nick of time. Hammer went into the kitchen and reached for the phone.

There was simply no way she was dialing 911 and having the call broadcast to every cop, paramedic, reporter, and person who owned a scanner in the region. She got the duty captain on the line. It happened to be Horgess. He was fiercely loyal to his boss, but not especially quick-thinking or known for shrewd judgment.

"Horgess," she said.

"I need an officer over to my house ASAP to take a report. There's been an accident."

"Oh no!" Horgess was upset. If anything ever happened to his chief, he'd answer directly to Goode.

"Are you all right?"

She paced.

"My husband's at Carolinas Medical. I'm afraid he had an accident with a handgun. He should be fine."

Horgess immediately grabbed his upright portable radio. He ten-fived David-One unit 538, a rookie too scared to do anything other than what she was told. This decision would have been good had Horgess not failed to overlook the reason Hammer had called him, the duty captain, directly.

"Need you over there now to take an accidental shooting report," Horgess excitedly said into his radio.

"Ten-four," Unit 538 came back.

"Any injuries?" ~ "Ten-four. Subject en route to Carolinas Medical;' Every officer on duty, and some who weren't, and anyone else with a scanner, heard every word of the broadcast. Most assumed Chief Hammer had been accidentally shot, meaning Jeannie Goode this very instant was the acting chief. Nothing could have sent the force into more of a panic. Hammer had a base radio station in her kitchen and it was on.

"Horgess, you idiot!" she exclaimed in disbelief to no one in particular, inside her kitchen.

She stopped pacing. It struck her that Andy Brazil was still standing in the doorway. She was not entirely sure why he was here and suddenly doubted the wisdom of a handsome young reporter dressed like a cop being in the house with her, in the wake of a domestic shooting. Hammer also knew that her entire evening shift was heading toward her address, flying to investigate the fate of their leader.

W Goode never kept her radio on at home or in her car, but a source had tipped her off, and she was already putting on her uniform, preparing to take over the Charlotte Police Department, as Unit 538 sped through Fourth Ward. Unit 538 was terrified. She worried she might have to stop to vomit. She turned on Pine Street, and was stunned to find five other police cars already in front of Hammer's house, lights strobing. In Unit 538's rearview mirror, more cars came, miles of them, speeding through the night to help their fallen chief.

Unit 538 parked, shakily gathered her metal clipboard, wondering if she could just leave, and deciding probably not.

Hammer went out on the porch to reassure her people.

"Everything is under control," she spoke to them.

"Then you're not injured," said a sergeant whose name she did not recall.

"My husband is injured. We don't think it's serious," she said.

"So everything's okay."

"Man, what a scare."

"We're so relieved. Chief Hammer."

"See you in the morning." Hammer dismissed them with a wave.

That was all they needed to hear. Each officer secretly keyed his mike, broadcasting several clicks over the air, signaling comrades everywhere that all was ten-four.

Only Unit 538 had unfinished business, and she followed Hammer into the rich, old house. They sat in the living room.

"Before you even start," Hammer said, "I'm going to tell you how this is going to be done."

"Yes, ma'am."

"There will be no implication that the right thing was not done here, that exceptions were made, because the subject involved happens to be married to me."

"Yes, ma'am."

"This is routine and will be worked according to the book."

"Yes, ma'am."

"My husband should be charged with reckless endangerment and discharging a firearm in the city limits," Hammer went on.

"Yes, ma'am."

Unit 538's handwriting was unsteady as she began filling out the accidental shooting report. This was amazing. Hammer must not like her husband much. Hammer was nailing him with the maximum charge, locking him up and throwing away the key. It just proved Unit 538's theory that women like Hammer got where they were by being aggressive hard asses They were men poured into the wrong form at the factory.

Hammer recited all the necessary information. She answered Unit 538's banal questions, and got the cop out as fast as possible.

Brazil remained seated at the kitchen table in Chief Hammer's house, wondering if anyone might have recognized his distinctive BMW parked out front. If the cops ran his tag, what would they think? Who was he here to see? He remembered with a sinking feeling that the condominiums Axel and friends lived in were just around the corner.

Cops with their suspicious minds might think Brazil had parked a street away, trying to fool everybody.

If word got back to Axel, he'd believe Brazil was stalking him, had a thing for him.

"Andy, let's wind this up." Hammer walked in.

"I sup pose it's too late to get this in the paper for tomorrow."

"Yes, chief. The city edition deadline was hours ago," Brazil replied, glancing at his watch, and startled that she would want a word of this in the paper.

"I'm going to need you to help me, and have to trust that you will, even after what happened with Channel Three," she said.

There was no one Brazil would rather assist.

Hammer looked at the clock on the wall, in despair. It was almost three a. m. She had to get to the hospital, whether Seth liked it or not, and she needed to be up in three hours. Hammer's body did not appreciate all-nighters anymore, but she would make it. She always did. Her plan was the best she could devise under circumstances which were truly extreme and upsetting. She knew tomorrow's news would bristle with Seth's bizarre shooting and what it might imply. She could not preempt the television and radio stations, but she could at least straighten out the facts the following day with a true, detailed account by Brazil.

Brazil was silent and stunned as he sat in the passenger's seat of Hammer's impeccable Crown Victoria. He took notes while she talked.

She told him all about her early life and why she had gone into law enforcement She talked about Seth, about what a support he had been as she was fighting her way through the ranks of what was truly a male militia. Hammer was exhausted and vulnerable, her personal life in shambles, and she had not been to a therapist in two years. Brazil had caught her at a remarkable time, and he was moved and honored by her trust. He would not let her down.

"It's a perfect example of the world not allowing powerful people to have problems," Hammer was explaining as she drove along Queens Road West, beneath a canopy of great oak trees.

"But the fact is, all people have problems. We have tempestuous and tragic phases in relationships we don't have time enough to tend to, and we get discouraged and feel we have failed."

Brazil thought she was the most wonderful person he had ever met.

"How long have you been married?" he asked.

"Twenty-six years."

She had known the night before her wedding that she was making a mistake. She and Seth had united out of need, not want. She had been afraid to go it alone, and Seth had seemed so strong and capable back then.

X. As he lay on his stomach in the ER, after X-rays and scrubbing and being rolled all over the place, Seth wondered how this could have happened. His wife had once admired him, valued his opinion, and laughed at his witty stories. They were never much in bed. She had far more energy and staying power, and no matter how he might have wanted to please, he simply could not carry her same tune, didn't have as many pages, usually was snoring by the time she'd returned from the bathroom, ready for the next act.

"Ouch!" he yelled.

"Sir, you're going to have to hold still," the stern nurse said for the hundredth time.

"Why can't you knock me out or something!" Tears welled in his eyes as he clenched his fists.

"Mr. Hammer, you're very fortunate." It was the triage surgeon's voice now, rattling X-rays that sounded like saw blades. She was a pretty little thing with long red hair. Seth was humiliated that her only perspective on him was his corpulent fanny that had never seen the sun.

The Carolinas Medical Center was famous for its triage, and patients were med-flighted in from all over the region. This early morning, helicopters were quiet silhouettes on red helipads centered by big His on rooftops, and shuttle buses moved slowly from parking lots to different areas of the massive concrete complex. The medical center's fleet of ambulances were teal and white, the colors of the Hornets and much of what filled Charlotte with pride.

The entire hospital staff knew that a V. I. P had arrived. There would be no waiting, no bleeding in chairs, no threatening, no shortcuts or neglect. Seth Hammer, as he had been erroneously registered and referred to most of his marriage, had been taken straight into the ER.

He had been rolled in and out of many rooms. He wasn't certain he understood the pretty surgeon's vernacular, but it seemed, according to her, that although the bullet's destruction of tissue had been significant, at least no major arteries or veins had been hit.

However, because he was a V. I. P, no chances could be taken. It was explained that medical personnel would do arteriography, and shoot him full of dye, and see what they found. Then they would give him a barium enema.

Hammer parked in a police slot outside the emergency room at not quite four a. m. Brazil had filled twenty pages in his notepad, and knew more about her than any reporter who had ever lived. She fetched her large pocketbook with its secret compartment, and took a deep breath as she got out. Brazil was struggling with his next question, but had to ask.

It was for her own good, too.

"Chief Hammer." He hesitated.

"Do you suppose I could get a photographer here to maybe get something of you on your way out of the hospital, later?"

She waved him off as she walked.

"I don't care."

The more she thought about it, the more she realized it didn't matter what he wrote. Her life was over. In the course of one short day, all was lost. A senator had been murdered, the fifth in a series of brutal slayings committed by someone the police were no closer to catching.

US Bank which owned the city, was at odds with her. Now her husband had shot himself in the ass while playing Russian roulette. The jokes would be endless. What did this suggest about where he assumed his most vital organ was, after all? Hammer would lose her job. What the hell. She may as well offer her two cents worth on her way out the door. Brazil had just gotten off a pay phone, and was walking fast to keep up with her.

"We'll also be running the Black Widow story, if there's a positive ID," he nervously reminded her.

She didn't care.

"I'm wondering," Brazil pushed his luck, 'if you'd have a problem with my slipping in a few details or two that might trick the killer. "

"What?" Hammer glanced blankly at him.

"You know, if I messed with him a little. Well, Deputy Chief West didn't think it was a good idea, either," he conceded.

The enlightened chief caught on to what he was suggesting, and was interested.

"As long as you don't release sensitive case details."

She fixed on the triage nurse in her console, and headed there. No introduction was necessary.

"He's on the way to the OR right now," the nurse said to the police chief.

"Do you want to wait?"

"Yes," Hammer decided.

"We have a private room the chaplain uses, if you'd like a little quiet," the nurse said to this woman who was one of her heroes.

"I'll just sit where everybody else does," Hammer said.

"Someone might need that room."

The nurse certainly hoped not. Nobody had died in the last twenty-four hours, and this had better not change on her shift. Nurses always got the raw end of that deal. Doctors suddenly vanished. They were off to their next bit of drama, leaving the nurses to take out tubes, tie on toe tags, wheel the body to the morgue, and deal with bereft relatives who never believed it and were going to sue. Hammer found two chairs in a corner of the reception area. There were maybe twenty distressed people waiting, most accompanied by someone trying to comfort them, most arguing, others moaning and bleeding into towels, or cradling broken limbs, and holding ice on burns. Almost all were weeping, or limping to the restroom, and drinking water from paper cups, and fighting another wave of nausea.

Hammer looked around, pained by what she saw. This was why she had chosen her profession, or why it had chosen her. The world was falling apart, and she wanted to help. She focused on a young man who reminded her of Randy, her son. The young man was alone, five chairs away. He was burning up with fever, sweating and shivering, and having a difficult time breathing. Hammer looked as his earrings, his chiseled face and wasted body, and she knew what was wrong with him. His eyes were shut as he licked cracked lips. It seemed everyone was sitting as far from him as possible, especially those leaking body fluids. Hammer got up. Brazil never took his eyes off her.

The triage nurse smiled at Hammer's approach.

"What can I do for you?"

the nurse said.

"Who's the young man over there?" Hammer pointed.

"He's got some sort of respiratory infection." The nurse became clinical.

"I'm not allowed to release names."

"I can get his name from him myself," Hammer told her.

"I want a large glass of water with a lot of ice, and a blanket. And when might your folks get around to seeing him? He looks like he could pass out any minute, and if he does, I'm going to know about it."

Some seconds later. Hammer was returning to the waiting area with water and a soft folded blanket. She sat next to the young man and wrapped him up. He opened his eyes as she held something to his lips.

It was icy cold and wet and felt wonderful. Warmth began to spread over him, and his shivering calmed as his feverish eyes focused on an angel. Harrel Woods had died, and he was relieved as he drank the water of life.

"What's your name?" the angel's voice sounded from far away.

Woods wanted to smile, but his lips bled when he tried.

"Do you have a driver's license with you?" the angel wanted to know.

It blearily occurred to him that even Heaven required a picture ID these days. He weakly zipped open his black leather butt pack, and handed the license to the angel. Hammer wrote down the information, in the event he might need a shelter somewhere, if he ever got out of here, which wasn't likely. Two nurses were making their way to him with purpose, and Harrel Woods was admitted to the ward for AIDS patients. Hammer returned to her chair, wondering if she might find coffee somewhere. She digressed more about helping people.

She told Brazil that when she was growing up, it was all she had wanted to do in life.

"Unfortunately, policing seems to be part of the problem these days," she said.

"How often do we really help?"

"You just did," Brazil said.

She nodded.

"And that's not policing, Andy. That's humanity. And we've got to bring humanity back into what we do, or there's no hope. This is not about politics or power or merely rounding up offenders.

Policing always has been and always must be about all of us getting along and helping each other. We're one body. "

tw Seth's body was in dire straits in the OR. His arteriogram was fine and he hadn't leaked any barium from his bowels, but because he was a V. I. P, no chance would be taken. They had draped and prepped him, and he was face down again, and nurses had pierced his tender flesh repeatedly with excruciatingly painful injections and a Foley catheter, to relieve pain and check his urine for blood, or so he thought he overheard. They had rolled in a tank of nitrogen and connected it to a tube. They began subjecting him to what they called a Simpulse irrigation, which was nothing more than a power wash with saline and antibiotics. They were blasting him with three thousand ccs, suctioning, debriding, as he complained.

Tut me under! " he begged.

There was too much risk.

"Anything!" he whined.

They compromised and gave him an amnesiac they called Midazolam, which did not relieve pain, but caused it to be forgotten, it seemed.

Although the bullet was located on the X-ray, they would never locate it in so much fat, not without dicing Seth as if he were destined for a chef salad, the surgeon knew. Her name was Dr. White. She was a thirty-year-old graduate of Harvard and Johns Hopkins, and had done her residency at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. White would not have been as concerned about leaving the bullet were it the typical semi-jacketed, round-nosed variety.

But hollowpoints opened like a flower on impact. The deformed missile in the chief's husband had cut a swath, exactly as planned by Remington, and might continue to do damage after the fact. Without question, it put him at considerable risk for infection. Dr. White made an incision so the wound could drain, and it was packed and dressed.

The sun was rising by the time Dr. White met Chief Hammer in recovery, where Seth was groggy, lying on his side, tethered by IV lines, a curtain drawn to give him the privacy afforded VIPs, as set by the medical center's unwritten policy.

"He should be fine," Dr. White was saying to Hammer.

"Thank God," Hammer said with relief.

"I want to keep him overnight in isolation, and continue the IV antibiotics. If he spikes a fever during the first twenty-four hours, we'll keep him longer."

"And that could happen." Hammer's fears returned.

Dr. White could not believe she was standing here and the police chief was looking to her for answers. Dr. White had read every article written about this incredible woman. Hammer was what Dr. White wanted to be when Dr. White was older and powerful. Caring, strong, goodlooking, kick-ass in pearls. Nobody pushed Hammer around. It wasn't possible that Hammer put up with the same shit Dr. White did, from the old boy surgeons. Most were graduates of Duke, Davidson, Princeton, and UVA, and wore their school bow ties to the symphony and cocktail parties. They didn't think twice when one of their own took a day off to boat on Lake Norman or play golf. But should Dr. White need a few hours to go to her gynecologist, to visit her sick mother, or give in to the flu, it was another example of why women didn't belong in medicine.

"Of course, we're not expecting any problem," Dr. White was reassuring Hammer.

"But there is extensive tissue damage." She paused, searching for a diplomatic way to explain.

"Ordinarily, a bullet of that power and velocity would have exited, when fired at such close range. But in this case, there was too much mass for the bullet to pass through."

The only image that came to Hammer's mind was tests the firearms examiners conducted by shooting into massive shimmering blocks of ballistic jelly, manufactured by Knox. Brazil was still taking notes.

Nobody cared. He was such a respectful, helpful presence, he could have continued following Hammer for years and it would not have been a problem. It was entirely possible she would not have been fully cognizant of it. If her imminent termination were not an inevitability, she might have assigned him to her office as an assistant.

Hammer spent little time with her husband. He was checked out on morphine, and would have nothing to say to her were this not the case. She held his hand for a moment, spoke quiet words of encouragement, felt terrible about all of it, and was so angry with him she could have shot him herself. She and Brazil headed out of the hospital as the region headed to work. He hung back to allow the Observer photographer to get dramatic shots of her walking out the ER entrance, head down, grimly following the sidewalk as a Medvac helicopter landed on a nearby roof. Another ambulance roared in, and paramedics rushed to get another patient out as Hammer made her way past.

That photograph of her by the ambulance, a helicopter landing in the background, her eyes cast down and face bravely tragic, was sensational. The next morning, it was staring out from racks, boxes, and stacks of papers throughout the greater Charlotte-Mecklenburg area. Brazil's story was the most stunning profile of courage Packer had ever seen. The entire metro desk was in awe. How the hell did he get all this? Hammer wasn't known for divulging anything personal about herself or her family, and suddenly, in a time when discretion was most vital, she revealed all to this rookie reporter?

The mayor, city manager, city council, and Cahoon were not likewise impressed. They were interviewed by several television and radio reporters, and were openly critical of Hammer, who continued to draw far too much attention to the serial murders and other social problems in the Queen City. It was feared that several companies and a restaurant chain were reconsidering their choice of Charlotte as a new location. Businessmen were canceling meetings. It was rumored that sites for a computer chip manufacturing plant and a Disney theme park were being scouted in Virginia.

Charlotte's mayor, city manager, and several city councilmen promised that there would be a full police investigation into the accidental shooting. Cahoon, in a brief statement, agreed this was fair. The men smelled blood and were crazed by it. Panesa did not often get directly involved in choosing sides, but he rolled up his sleeves on this one and penned an impassioned editorial on the Opinion page that ran Sunday morning.

It was called HORNET'S NEST, and in it, Panesa went into great detail about the city's ills as seen through the eyes of an unflagging, humane woman, their beloved chief, who was embattled by her own demons and yet 'has never let us down or burdened us with her private pain," Panesa wrote.

"Now is the time to support Chief Hammer, to show her respect and caring, and prove that we, too, can stand up and make the right choices." Panesa went on to allude to Brazil's story of Hammer in the ER bringing a blanket and water to a young man dying of AIDS.

"That, citizens of Charlotte, is not only community policing, but Christianity," Panesa wrote.

"Let Mayor Search, city council, or Solomon Cahoon throw the first stone."

This went on for days, things stirred up, hostility rising from Gaboon's crown and swarming through the mayor's window. Telephone lines angrily buzzed as the city fathers plotted on secure phones, devising a way to run Hammer out of town.

"It's got to be the public that decides," the mayor said to the city manager.

"The citizens have got to want it."

"No other way," Cahoon agreed in a conference call, from his mighty desk, as he viewed his kingdom between aluminum pipes.

"It's entirely up to the citizens."

The last thing Cahoon wanted was pissed-off people changing banks. If enough of them did and went on to First

Union, CCB, BB amp;T, First Citizens Bank, or Wachovia, it could catch up with Cahoon and hurt him. It could become an epidemic, infecting the big, healthy investors, like a computer virus, Ebola, salmonella, hemorraghic fever.

"The problem, damn it, is Panesa," opined the mayor.

Cahoon felt a fresh wave of outrage. He would not soon recover from the publisher's Sunday editorial with its comment about throwing stones. Panesa had to go, too. Gaboon's brain raced through his formidable network, contemplating allies in the Knight-Ridder chain.

This would have to come from on high, at the level of chairman or president. Cahoon knew them all, but the media was a goddamn centipede. The minute he gave it a prod, it curled up tight and took care of its own.

"The only person who can control Panesa is you," the mayor said to Cahoon.

"I've tried. He won't listen to me. It's like trying to talk sense to Hammer. Forget it."

Both the publisher and the police chief were unreasonable. They had agendas, and had to be stopped. Andy Brazil was becoming a problem, as well. Cahoon had been around the block enough times to know exactly where he would attack.

"Talk to the boy," Cahoon said to the mayor.

"He's probably been trying to get quotes from you anyway, right?"

"They all do."

"So let him come see you, Chuck. Pull him over to our side, where he belongs," Cahoon said with a smile as he gazed out at the hazy summer sky.

W Brazil had turned his attention to the Black Widow killings, which he was certain would not stop. He had become obsessed with them, determined that somehow he would uncover that one detail, that important insight or clue that might lead police to the psychopath responsible.

He had gotten FBI profiler Bird on the phone, and had written a chillingly accurate but manipulative story. Last night, Brazil had returned to the train tracks on West Trade Street, to explore the razed brick building, his flashlight shining on crime-scene tape stirred by the wind. He had stood still, looking around that forsaken, frightening place, trying to read the emotion of it. He tried to imagine how the senator had stumbled upon the place.

It was possible the senator had plans to meet someone, back in the dark overgrowth where no one would see. Brazil wondered if the autopsy had revealed drugs. Did the senator have a secret vice that had cost him his life? Brazil had cruised South College Street, looking out at the hookers, still not sure which were men or vice cops. The young one he had seen many times before, and it was obvious that she now recognized him in his BMW as she languidly strolled and boldly stared.

Brazil was tired this morning. He could barely finish four miles at the track and didn't bother with tennis. He hadn't seen much of his mother, and she punished him by not speaking on those rare occasions when she was awake and up. She left him notes of chores she needed done, and was more slovenly than usual. She coughed and sighed, doing all she could to make him miserable and stung with guilt. Brazil continued to think of West's lecture to him about dysfunctional relationships. He heard her words constantly in his head. They pounded with each step he ran, and blinked in the night as he tried to sleep.

He had not seen or talked to West in days and wondered how she was, and why she never called to go shooting or to ride or just to say hi.

He felt out of sorts, moody and introverted, and had given up trying to figure out what had gotten into him. He did not understand why Hammer hadn't contacted him to say thanks for his profile. Maybe something in it had pissed her off. Maybe he had gotten a fact wrong.

He had really put his heart into that story, and had worked himself almost sick. Panesa seemed to be ignoring him, also, now that Brazil was making a list. Brazil told himself that if he were as important as any one of these powerful people, he would be more sensitive. He would try to think of the little person's feelings, and make that person's day by picking up the phone, or sending a note, or maybe even flowers.

V9 The only flowers West had in her life this moment were the ones Niles had shredded all over the dining-room table. This was after he had scattered litter in the bathroom while his owner was in the shower, her wet bare feet about to step on grit and unpleasant things coated in it. West's mood was volatile, anyway. She was incensed over the storm of controversy surrounding her beloved boss, and fearful of where it all might end. The day Goode became acting chief was the day West moved back to the farm. West knew all about Brazil following Hammer into very private rooms that not even West had entered.

It was all so typical, she thought as she cussed Niles, rinsed her feet and cleaned up the bathroom floor. Brazil used West to gain a foothold with the chief. Brazil had acted like a friend, then the moment he got a chance to ingratiate himself with a higher power. West didn't hear a word from him ever again. Wasn't that the way things went? The son of a bitch. He hadn't called to go shooting, to ride, or even to make sure she was still alive. West discovered what was left of the blood lilies from her garden as Niles darted under the couch.

The resurrection lilies Hammer carried into Seth's hospital room at ten a. m. were magenta and appropriately named. Hammer set them on a table and pulled a chair close. The bed was raised, allowing her husband to eat, read, visit, and watch TV on his side. His eyes were dull with the strep infection that had invaded from unknown colonies.

Fluids and antibiotics ready for combat marched nonstop through narrow tubes and into needles taped to each arm. Hammer was getting frightened. Seth had been in the hospital three nights now.

"How are you feeling, honey?" she asked, rubbing his shoulder.

"Shitty," he said, eyes wandering back to Leeza on TV.

He had seen, heard, and read the news. Seth knew the terrible thing he had done to himself. Most of all, he knew what he had done to her and his family. Honestly, he had never meant any of it. When he was in his right mind, he'd rather die than hurt anyone. He loved his wife and could not live without her. If he ruined her career in this city, then what? She could go anywhere, and it would be ever so much easier for her to leave him behind, as she had already threatened, if she had to move anyway.

"How are things with you?" Seth mumbled as Leeza argued with a gender-reassigned plumber who had cleavage.

"Don't you worry about me," Hammer firmly said, patting him again.

"All that matters right now is that you get better. Think positively, honey. The mind affects everything. No negativity."

This was like telling the dark side of the moon to lighten up a bit.

Seth stared at her. He couldn't remember the last time she'd called him honey. Maybe never.

"I don't know what to say," he told her.

She knew precisely what he meant. He was poisoned by remorse and guilt and shame. He had set out to ruin her life and the lives of his children, and was getting good at it. He ought to feel like shit, if the truth was told.

"You don't have to say anything," Hammer gently reassured him.

"What's done is done. Now we move on. When you leave here, we're going to get you some help. That's all that matters now."

He shut his eyes and tears swam behind the lids. He saw a young man in baggy white trousers, and bow tie and snappy hat, grinning and happy on a sunny morning as he skipped down the granite steps of the Arkansas state capitol. Seth had been charming and sure of himself once. He had known how to have fun, and party with the rest of them, and tell funny tales. Psychiatrists had tried Prozac, Zoloft, Nortriptylene, and lithium. Seth had been on diets. He had stopped drinking once. He had been hypnotized and had gone to three meetings of Overeater's Anonymous. Then he had quit all of it.

"There's no hope," he sobbed to his wife.

"Nothing left but to die."

"Don't you dare say that," she said, her voice wavering.

"You hear me, Seth? Don't you dare say that!"

"Why isn't my love enough for you!" he cried.

"What love?" She stood, anger peeking around her curtain of self-control.

"Your idea of love is waiting for me to make you happy while you do nothing for yourself. I am not your caretaker. I am not your zookeeper. I am not your innkeeper. I am not your keeper, period." She was pacing furiously in his small private room.

"I am supposed to be your partner, Seth, your friend, your lover. But you know what? If this were tennis, I'd be playing goddamn singles in a goddamn doubles match on both sides of the net while you sat in the shade hogging all the balls and keeping your own private score!"

tw Brazil had spent the better part of the morning wondering if he should call West to see if she wanted to play some tennis. That would be innocent enough, wouldn't it? The last thing he wanted was to give her the satisfaction of thinking he cared a hoot that he hadn't heard from her in three and a half days. He parked at the All Right lot on West Trade, near Presto's, and went inside the grill for coffee, starved, but saving himself for something healthy. Later, he'd drop by the Just Fresh, the eat well feels good fast food restaurant in the atrium of First Union. That and Wendy's grilled chicken filet sandwiches with no cheese or mayonnaise were about all he lived on these days, and he was losing weight. He secretly wondered if he were getting anorexic.

He sat at the counter, stirring black SD coffee, waiting for Spike to stop cracking eggs with one hand over a bowl. Brazil wanted to chat.

The Michelob Dry clock on the wall over Spike's head read ten-forty-five. There was so much to do, and Brazil had to get it done by four p. m. " when his beat for the newspaper formally began. As much as Packer loved Brazil's scoops, the regular news of burglaries, robberies, rapes, suicides, fistfights in sports bars, white-collar bank crimes, drug busts, domestic problems, dog bites, and other human interest stories needed to be covered. Most of those reports Webb stole long before anyone else could see them. In fact, the situation was so acute, that the rest of the media now referred to the Charlotte Police Department's press basket as The Webb Site.

West, having recalled Brazil's early complaint about this, had finally done her bit by calling Channel 3 and complaining to the general manager. This had solved nothing. Nor was Goode receptive when West had brought it up to her, not realizing that Goode, in fact, regularly logged into The Webb Site. These days she and Brent Webb parked all over the city in her Miata. This was not due to a problem with their going to her apartment, where she lived alone. The risk of exposure was a huge turn-on to the couple. It was not unusual for them to park within blocks of his house, where his wife waited dinner for him, and picked up his dirty clothes, and sorted his socks.

The task force West had assembled to investigate drug deals going down at the Presto Grill also had much dirt to find, sort through, and hopefully match with other crime trends in the city. Mungo was an undercover detective, and he was eating grilled chicken tips and gravy in the grill, while Brazil, whom Mungo did not know, sipped black coffee. Mungo had gotten his street name for obvious reasons. He was a mountain in jeans and Panthers T-shirt, his wallet chained to his belt, long bushy hair tied back, and a bandana around a sloping forehead. He wore an earring. Mungo was smoking, one eye squinting as he watched the blond guy quiz Spike at the grill.

"No, man." Spike was flipping a burger and chopping hash browns.

"See, none's from around here, know what I mean?" He spoke with a heavy Portuguese accent.

"Where they come from doesn't matter," Brazil said.

"It's what happens once they get here. Look, the source of the bad shit going down is right where we are." He was talking the language, drumming his index finger on the counter.

"Local. I'm sure of it. What do you think?"

Spike wasn't going to explore this further, and Muneo's radar was locked in. That blond pretty-boy looked familiar. It seemed Mungo had seen him somewhere, and that made him only more convinced that he was going to develop Blondie as a suspect. But first things first. Mungo needed to sit here a little longer, see what else was going down, and he hadn't finished his breakfast.

"I need more toast," he said to Spike as Blondie left.

"Who's he?"

Mungo jerked his head in the direction of the shutting front door.

Spike shrugged, having learned long ago not to answer questions, and Mungo was a cop. Everybody knew it. Spike started filling a toothpick holder while Brazil made his next stop. Adjoining the Presto was the Traveler's Hotel, where one could get a room for as little as fifty dollars per week, depending on how well one negotiated with Bink Lydle at the desk. Brazil asked his questions to Lydle and got the same information he'd been handed next door.

Lydle was not especially hospitable, his arms folded across his narrow chest as he sat behind the scarred reception desk, with its bell and one-line telephone. He informed this white boy that Lydle knew nothing about these businessmen being whacked around here, and couldn't imagine that the 'source of this bad shit going down' was local.

Lydle, personally, had never seen anyone who made him auspicious, certainly not in his hotel, which was a city landmark, and the place to go back in the days of the Old Southern Train Station.

Brazil walked several blocks to Fifth Street and found Jazzbone's Pool Hall. Brazil decided that somebody was going to talk to him, even if he had to take a risk. At this early hour, Jazzbone's wasn't doing much business, just a few guys sitting around drinking Colt 45, smoking, telling favorite stories about binges, and women, and winning at numbers. Pool tables with shabby green felt were deserted, balls in their triangles, waiting for tonight when the place would be crowded and dangerous until the boozy early morning. If anyone knew what was going on in the neighborhood, Jazzbone was the man.

"I'm looking for Jazzbone," Brazil said to the drinking buddies.

One of them pointed to the bar, where Jazzbone, in plain view, was opening a case of Schlitz, and aware of the golden-hair dude dressed like college.

"Yeah!" Jazzbone called out.

"What you need."

Brazil walked across cigarette-burned, whisky-smelling carpet. A cockroach scuttled across his path, and salt and cigarette ashes were scattered over every table Brazil passed. The closer he got to Jazzbone, the more he noticed details. Jazzbone wore gold rings, fashioned of diamond clusters and coins, on every finger. The gold crowns on his front teeth had heart and clover cut-outs. He wore a semiautomatic pistol on his right hip. Jazzbone was neatly replacing bottles of beer in the cooler.

"All we got cold right now is Pabst Blue Ribbon," Jazzbone said.

Last night had been busy and had wiped Jazzbone out. He had a feeling this boy wanted something other than beer, but he wasn't undercover, like Mungo. Jazzbone could smell police and the Feds the minute they hit the block. He couldn't remember the last time he was fooled.

Jazzbone only got spanked by the other dudes out there, people coming into his establishment looking just like him, guns and all.

"I'm with the Charlotte Observer," said Brazil, who knew when it was better to be a volunteer cop, and when not.

"I'd like your help, sir."

"Oh yeah?" Jazzbone stopped putting away beer, and had always known he'd make a good story.

"What kind of help? This for the paper?"

"Yes, sir."

Polite, too, giving the man respect. Jazzbone scrutinized him, and started chewing on a stirrer, cocking one eyebrow.

"So, what you want to know?" Jazzbone went around to the other side of the bar and pulled out a stool.

"Well, you know about these killings around here," Brazil said.

Jazzbone was momentarily confused.

"Huh," he said.

"You might want to specify."

"The out-of-towners. The Black Widow." Brazil lowered his voice, almost to a whisper.

"Oh, yeah. Them," Jazzbone said, and didn't care who heard.

"Same person doing all of 'em."

"It can't be helping your business worth a damn." Brazil got tough, acting like he was wearing a gun, too.

"Some creep out there ruining it for everyone."

"Now that's so, brother. Tell me about it. I run a clean business here. Don't want trouble or cause none either." He lit a Salem.

"It's others who do. Why I wear this." He patted his pistol.

Brazil stared enviously at it.

"Shit, man," he said.

"What the hell you packing?"

One thing was true, Jazzbone was proud of his piece. He had got it off a drug dealer playing pool, some dude from New York who didn't know that Jazzbone owned a pool hall for a reason. In Jazzbone's mind, when he was good at something, whether it was a woman, a car, or playing pool, he may as well own it, and he was definitely one hell of a pool player. He slipped the pistol out of its holster so Brazil could look without getting too close.

"Colt Double Eagle.45 with a five-inch barrel," Jazzbone let him know.

Brazil had seen it before in Guns Illustrated. Stain less steel matte finish, adjustable sights with high-profile three-dot system, wide steel trigger, and combat-style hammer. Jazzbone's pistol went for about seven hundred dollars, new, and he could tell the kid was impressed and dying to touch it, but Jazzbone didn't know him well enough for that.

"You think it's the same one whacking all these white men from out of town?" Brazil repeated.

"I didn't say they was white," Jazzbone corrected him.

"The last one, the senator dude, wasn't. But yeah, same motherfucker's doing 'em."

"Got any idea who?" Brazil did his best to keep the excitement out of his voice.

Jazzbone knew exactly who, and didn't want trouble like this in his neighborhood anymore than those rich men wanted it in their rental cars. Not to mention, Jazzbone was a big supporter of free enterprise, and collected change from more than pool sharking and beverages. He had an interest in a few girls out there. They earned a few extra dollars and kept him company. The Black Widow was hurting business bad. These days, Jazzbone had a feeling men came to town after watching CNN and reading the paper, and they rented adult movies, stayed in. Jazzbone didn't blame them.

"There's this one punkin head I seen out there running girls," Jazzbone told Brazil, who was taking notes.

"I'd be looking at him."

"What's a punkin head?"

Jazzbone flashed his gold grin at this naive reporter boy.

"A do." Jazzbone pointed to his own head.

"Orange like a punkin, rows of braids close to his head. One mean motherfucker."

"You know his name?" Brazil wrote.

"Don't want to," Jazzbone said.

"W West, in charge of investigations for the city, had never heard of a punkin head in connection with the Black Widow killings. When Brazil called her from a pay phone, because he did not trust a cellular phone for such sensitive information, he was manic, as if he had just been in a shoot-out. She wrote down what he said, but not a word of it sparked hope. Her Phantom Force had been undercover out on the streets for weeks. Brazil had spent fifteen minutes at Jazzbone's, and had cracked the case. She didn't think so. Nor was she feeling the least bit friendly toward Brazil's two-timing, user-friendly ass.

"How's the chief?" he asked her.

"Why don't you tell me," she said.

"What?"

"Look, I don't have time to chit-chat," she rudely added.

Brazil was on a sidewalk in front of the Federal Courthouse, hateful people looking at him. He didn't care.

"What did I do?" he fired back.

"Tell me when's the last time I've heard from you? I haven't noticed you picking up the phone, asking me to do anything or even to see how I am."

This had not occurred to West. She never called Raines. For that matter, she did not call guys, and never had, and never would, with the occasional exception of Brazil. Now why the hell was that, and why had she suddenly gotten weird about dialing his number?

"I figured you'd get in touch with me when you had something on your mind," she replied.

"It's been hectic.

Niles is driving me crazy. I may turn him over to the juvenile courts.

I don't know why I haven't gotten around to calling you, okay? But a lot of good it's going to do for you to punish me for it. "

"You want to play tennis?" he quickly asked.

West still had a wooden Billie Jean King racquet, clamped tight in a press. Neither were manufactured anymore. She had an ancient box of Tretorn balls that never went dead but broke like eggs. Her last pair of tennis shoes were low-cut plain white canvas Converse, also no longer made. She had no idea where anything was, and owned no tennis clothes, and didn't especially enjoy watching the sport on TV, but preferred baseball at this stage in her personal evolution. There were many reasons she gave the answer she did.

"Forget it," she said.

She hung up the phone and went straight to Hammer's office. Horgess was not his usual informative, friendly self. West felt sorry for him.

No matter how many times Hammer had told him to let it go, he never would. He had picked up the radio instead of the phone. Horgess, the sycophantic duty captain, had made sure all the world knew about the embarrassing shooting at the chief's house. That's all anybody talked and speculated about. The expected jokes were ones West would never want her boss to hear. Horgess was pale and depressed. He barely nodded at West.

"She in?" West asked.

"I guess," he said, dejected.

West knocked and walked in at the same time. Hammer was on the phone, tapping a pen on a stack of pink tele phone messages. She looked amazingly put together and in charge in a tobacco-brown suit and yellow and white striped blouse. West was surprised and rather pleased to note that her boss was wearing slacks and flats again. West pulled up a chair, waiting for Hammer to slip off the headset.

"Don't mean to interrupt," West said.

"Quite all right, quite all right," Hammer told her.

She gave West her complete attention, hands quietly folded on top of the neatly organized desk of someone who had far too much to do but refused to be overwhelmed by it. Hammer had never been caught up, and never would be. She didn't even want to get to all of it. The older she got, the more she marveled over matters she once had considered important. These days, her perspective had shifted massively, like a glacier forming new continents to consider and cracking old worlds.

"We've not really had a chance to talk," West proceeded delicately.

"How are you holding up?"

Hammer gave her a slight smile, sadness in her eyes before she could run it off.

"The best I can, Virginia. Thank you for asking."

"The editorials, cartoons and everything in the paper have been really terrific," West went on.

"And Brazil's story was great." She hesitated at this point, the subject of Andy Brazil still disturbing, although she didn't understand it, entirely.

Hammer understood it perfectly.

"Listen, Virginia," she said with another smile, this one kind and slightly amused.

"He's pretty sensational, I have to admit. But you have nothing to worry about where I'm concerned."

"Excuse me?" West frowned.

X? Brazil was out in bright sunshine, walking along the sidewalk in an area of the city where he should not have been without armed guards. This was a very special juncture known as Five Points, where the major veins of State, Trade, and Fifth Streets, and Beatties Ford and Rozzelles Ferry Roads, branched out from the major artery of Inter state 77, carrying all traveling on them into the heart of the Queen City. This included the thousands of businessmen coming from Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, and those bad dudes waiting, including the serial killer, Punkin Head.

Punkin Head was believed to be a shi'm by those who had laid eyes on the pimp, which were few. It held its own council, as a rule, in an '84 Ford cargo van, dark blue, 351 V8, which it was especially fond of because the van had windows only in front. Whatever business Punkin Head chose to run out of the back remained private, as it should have, and this included sleeping. This fine morning, Punkin Head was parked in its usual spot on Fifth Street, in the Preferred Parking lot, where the attendant knew to leave well enough alone, and was now and then rewarded with services Punkin Head's business could provide.

Punkin Head was reading the paper, and eating its third take-out bacon and egg sandwich with hot sauce and butter, brought to him by the attendant. Punkin Head saw the white boy walking around, snooping, a notepad in hand. Word on the street was the dude's name was Blondie, and Punkin Head knew exactly who Blondie was trying to snitch on, and Punkin Head wasn't appreciative. It watched, thinking, as it finished its breakfast and popped open a Michelob Dry, taking another look at the front page story in this morning's Observer.

Some South American reporter named Brazil was get ting far too personal about Punkin Head, and it was not pleased. In the first place, it was incensed that when the masses thought about Punkin Head, they envisioned a spider, and that all believed the orange symbol Punkin Head painted on each body was an hourglass. Punkin Head painted what it did because it liked orange. It also intended to whack and rob eight businessmen, and no more, before it moved on. To linger longer in the same area would be pressing its luck, and the figure eight was simply a reminder, a note to itself, that soon it would be time for Punkin Head and Poison to head out in the van, maybe up to the DC area.

In an article this morning, the reporter named Brazil had quoted an FBI profiler as saying that the Black Widow was a failure in interpersonal relationships, had never married or held a job long, was inadequate sexually and in every other way, and suffered from a sexual identity crisis, according to Special Agent Bird. Punkin Head, who of course was not referred to by name, but simply as 'the killer," had read and viewed considerable violent pornography throughout its life, had come from a dysfunctional home, and had never finished college, if it had ever gone at all. It owned a vehicle, probably old and American, and still lived with its father, which it hated, or had for much of its adult life. Punkin Head was slovenly, possibly fat, and a substance abuser.

SA Bird, the article went on to say, predicted that Punkin Head would soon begin to decompensate. Punkin Head would make mistakes, overstep itself, become disorganized and lose control. All psychopaths eventually did. Punkin Head threw the newspaper into the back of the van in disgust. Someone was snitching, leaking personal details about Punkin Head to the press, and it glared out at Blondie pausing at the Cadillac Grill, where the shim's sandwiches had been carefully prepared. Blondie decided to go inside.

The clientele at the Cadillac Grill wasn't happy to see Blondie walk in. They knew he was a reporter and wanted nothing to do with him or his questions. What did he think? They were crazy? They're suppose to risk getting Punkin Head pissed off, turn it meaner than usual and end up with Silvertips in their heads? That shim was the nastiest, most hateful of all time, and the truth was that the business community of Five Points wanted it to move on or get whacked. But as was often true in fascist regimes, no one had the guts or the time to rise up against Punkin Head. Energy and lucid thought were low among soldiers who stayed up late drinking Night Train, smoking dope, and shooting pool.

The head cook at the Cadillac was Remus Wheelon, a heavyset Irishman with tattoos. He had heard all about Blondie and didn't want the snitch in his establishment. Remus was well aware that he had just fixed Punkin Head three deluxe Rise and Shine sandwiches, and the cold-blooded killing piece of shit was probably sitting out there in its van, watching, and waiting for Remus to so much as serve Blondie a cup of coffee. Remus waited on the counter. He took his time scraping the grill. He made more coffee, fried another batch of baloney, and read the Observer.

W Brazil had helped himself to a booth and picked up a greasy plastic-laminated menu, handwritten, prices reasonable. He was aware of people staring at him in a manner that was about as unfriendly as he had ever seen. He smiled back, as if this were Aunt Sarah's Pancake House, giving them an eat me attitude that made all think twice.

Brazil refused to be deterred from his mission. His pager went off for all to hear, and he grabbed it as if it had bitten him. He recognized the number, and was surprised. Brazil looked around, deciding that the venue probably wasn't the best for whipping out his reporter's portable phone and calling the mayor's office.

He was getting up to leave, and changed his mind when the door opened, the bell over it ringing. The young hooker walked in, and Brazil's pulse picked up. He wasn't sure why he was so fascinated, but he couldn't take his eyes off her, and felt compassion that was equaled by fear. She wore jeans cut off high, sandals with tire tread soles, and a Grateful Dead T-shirt with sleeves torn off. Her naked breasts moved in rhythm as she walked. She took the next booth over, facing him, eyes bold on his as she flipped dirty blond hair out of the way.

Remus brought her coffee before she could even pick up the menu. She studied plastic-covered writing with difficulty, the words tangling like fishing line on the shore of Lake Algae, as the rich folks in Davidson called the pond at Griffith and Main Streets, where her daddy had taken her fishing a few times. This was before she got older and Mom was working in housekeeping at the Best Western.

Daddy was a truck driver for Southeastern, and kept erratic hours. Mom wasn't always home when her husband rolled in from a long trip.

In the mind of Cravon Jones, his three daughters belonged to him, and how he chose to express affection was his business and his right.

There was no question he was partial to Addie, who was named after his wife's mother, who he hated. Addie was blond and pretty from the day she was born, a special child who loved to cuddle with her daddy, and with whom her mother did not bond or get along. Mrs. Jones was tired of coming home to a drunk, disgusting, stinking man, who slapped her around, shoved, and on one occasion broke her nose and jaw. The daughters, understandably, were drawn to him out of fear.

Addie reached her eleventh year, and Daddy crawled in bed with her one night. He smelled like sour sweat and booze as he pressed his hard thing against her, and then drove it in while blood soaked sheets and her silent tears flowed. Addie's sisters were in the same room and heard all of it. No one spoke of the event or acknowledged that it was real, and Mrs. Jones remained selectively ignorant. But she knew damn well, and Addie could tell by her mother's eyes, increased drinking, and growing indifference toward Addie. This went on until Addie turned fourteen and ran away one night while Mrs. Jones was working and Daddy was on the road somewhere. Addie got as far as Winston-Salem, where she met the first man who ever took care of her.

There had been many since, giving her cain and crack, cigarettes, fried chicken, whatever she wanted. She was twenty-three when she stumbled off the Greyhound in Charlotte some months back. Addie didn't remember it much, seemed like last she recalled she was in Atlanta, getting high with some rich dude who drove a Lexus and paid an extra twenty dollars to urinate in her face. She could take anything as long as she wasn't present, and the only turnstile to that painless place was drugs. Sea, her last and final man, beat her with a coathanger because she had cramps and couldn't make any money one night. She ran off for the countless time in her life, headed to Charlotte because she knew where it was, and it was all she could afford after grabbing some old lady's purse.

Addie Jones, who had not been called by her Christian name in too many highs to remember, had an Atlanta Braves duffel bag she'd stolen from one of her tricks. In it she had a few things, and both hands had been gripping hard as she had walked along West Trade, nearing the Presto Grill, across from the All Right parking lot, where Punkin Head was waiting in its van, fishing. Most of its best catches had come off buses, all those fuck-ups washing ashore like biological hazards, their stories all the same. Punkin Head knew this for a fact, having crawled off one of those buses itself some time back.

Fifteen minutes later, Addie had been inside that dark blue van, and Punkin Head knew it had a find this time. Not only did it want this girl for itself, but the Johns out there were going to fall hard for her perky body and sultry eyes and swollen mouth. Punkin Head christened its new creature Poison, and the two of them began their unfriendly takeover. Other pimps were flip at first. Then the killings began, and cops were everywhere. There were stories of bad hollowpoints and something painted orange, and something else about a spider. All got scared.

"What'll be?" Remus asked Poison as she smoked a cigarette and stared out at the street.

"Some bacon," she said in an accent that no longer sounded white or even American.

It had been Remus's observation throughout his career that hookers took on the accents and mannerisms of their owners. Black hookers sounded white and white hookers sounded black, white gigolos walked with an NBA spring, black gigolos strutted like John Wayne. By now Remus was used to it. He just did his cooking and ran his joint, live and let be. He didn't want trouble, and Poison troubled him like an ice pick too close to his eye. She had a mocking smile, as if she knew the joke was on him. Remus sensed that a cold-blooded killing, including his own, would amuse her.

Brazil sat in his booth for quite some time, watching the clientele thin. He was tapping his menu, his table bare since no one seemed inclined to wait on him. He watched the young hooker finish breakfast.

She dropped money on the table and got up. Brazil's eyes followed as she left. He was dying to talk to her, but scared. The bell on the door got quiet in her mysterious wake, and he got up, too. Brazil forgot he had never ordered, and left a tip. He emerged from the grill, notepad out, looking up and down the sidewalk, walking around the block, his eyes scanning the parking lot across Fifth Street, not seeing her anywhere. Disappointed, he continued wandering.

A black van with dark tinted glass drove slowly past, but Brazil gave it not a second thought as his mind tried to unlock something he was certain he knew the combination to, but could not yet access.

Mungo stared out the van's windshield at Blondie, realizing that this case was getting only bigger. Mungo watched the slow, languid way the guy moved, stopping every now and then to search traffic and stare. Mungo's excitement mounted when Blondie approached Shena, one of the oldest sluts in the area.

She was perched on the front wooden steps of a dilapidated wooden house, sipping Coke, trying to get over the night before, and readying herself for the one coming up. Blondie walked up like they knew each other. He started talking to her. She shrugged, gestured, then got pissed and waved him off like he was a pigeon in her way. Uh huh, Mungo thought. This boy-bait was becoming a territorial problem out here, moving in on the other hookers' lemonade stands.

Blondie was probably luring men, maybe some women, selling them dope, committing crimes against nature, and getting rich from it.

Mungo was convinced that if he dug further he would find out that Blondie was way up there on the drug- dealing chain, probably directly connected to New York. There could be a connection to the Black Widow killings. Mungo got out the video camera and captured what was possibly the best-looking, most clean-cut male prostitute he'd ever seen, except in the movies. Mungo quickly drove back to headquarters.

tw West had been up all night. She had done her best to make Niles shut up his yowling and kneading. She had thrown him off the bed until her shoulder got tired. She had talked in an adult fashion with him, trying to make him understand her fatigue and need of sleep. She had yelled, threatened, and locked him out of her room. He had been well rested, and happily snoozing on his favorite windowsill when West hurried out the door this morning, late for work. She had no patience left. When Mungo walked into the conference room in the midst of her meeting with the Phantom Force, she was not welcoming.

"We're having a meeting," she said to Mungo.

"And I got something you're going to want to hear about." He proudly held up the videotape.

"Definitely a player, maybe even more, maybe even our killer or at least involved." Mungo was breathless and looked like a biker, Hammer had been on the phone ever since West had seen her last, and West got on the radio and told her boss to give her a call.

"I don't want you to get your hopes up," West told her.

"But it sounds pretty promising."

"Describe him," Hammer said.

"White male, five-foot-seven, one-thirty pounds, blond, tight black jeans, tight polo-type shirt, Nikes. Strolling the area of Fifth and Trade, looking at cars, talking to hookers. Apparently he was in the Presto talking about the quality of drugs in the area, and local sources, words to that effect. Also," West went on, 'and this bothers me considerably, chief, you're aware of Poison, a. k. a. Addie Jones? "

"Right." Hammer had no idea.

"They were in the Cadillac Grill together for quite a long time. She left, and he went out right after her. At that point they split, seemingly off to do whatever they were up to."

"Where's this videotape?" Hammer wanted to know.

"I've got it."

"You looked at it yet?"

"We use these handheld JVC Grax 900 camcorders for covert operations.

Mungo has gone to get the VHS adapter, and should have it for me in a minute. "

"Bring it by," Hammer said to her.

"Let's take a look."