Hornet`s Nest

Chapter Nineteen

In the mayor's office, Brazil was impatiently perched on a couch, making a note of his surroundings and watching the secretary, Ruth Lafone, answer another call. She felt a little sorry for Andy Brazil, well aware that he was being set up as others before him. Her phone rang again. Ruth answered and smiled. She was pleasant and respectful to the man elected by an overwhelming majority to serve the people of the city. She hung up as she rose from her chair, and looked at Brazil.

"The mayor will see you now," she said. Brazil was slightly bewildered. He had no idea how many times he had tried to get comments, interviews, and opinions from Mayor Search. Now the mayor was calling Brazil, finally following up on a request? Which request?

Brazil wished he had dressed a little better this day, something beside black jeans that were too small. He had stopped in the men's room, at least, and had tucked in his faded red Head shirt, which also was a bit too small. Since Brazil had lost a few pounds, his normal clothes were falling off as if he were jailing, so he had dipped into another drawer of jeans and shirts he'd had since high school.

"If you don't mind my asking," he said to the secretary as he got off the couch.

"Is there some purpose to this interview other than my requests to talk to the mayor that go back to the beginning of my career?"

"I'm afraid he can't always get to everything right away," she apologized as she had learned to so well over the years.

Brazil looked at her for a moment, hesitating, detecting something in the way she averted her gaze from him.

"Okay," he said.

"Thanks a lot."

"You're so welcome." She led him to the slaughter because she needed her job.

Mayor Search was a distinguished, neat man in a European-cut summer-weight gray suit. He wore a white shirt, his tie charcoal and blue paisley with matching suspenders. He did not get up from his huge block of walnut, the skyline of the city filling many windows.

US Bank Corporate Center was cut off about belt level, directly behind him, and the mayor could not see the crown unless he got on the floor and strained to look up.

"Thank you for finding the time to see me," Brazil said as he sat in a chair across from Search.

"Understand you've got a rather interesting situation here in our city," Search said.

"Yes, sir. And I appreciate it."

This wasn't the typical smartass reporter Search dealt with morning, noon, and night. The kid was Billy Budd, Billy Graham, wide-eyed innocence, polite, respectful, and committed. Search knew the extreme danger of sincere people like this. They died for causes, would do anything for Jesus, served a higher calling, were no respecter of persons, believed in burning bushes, and were not led into sin by Potiphar's wife. This wasn't going to be as easy as Search had supposed.

"Now let me tell you something, son," Search began in his earnest, overbearing way to this lad who was lucky to get the mayor's time.

"No one loves our police department more than I do. But you do realize, I hope, there are two sides to every story?"

"Usually more sides than that, sir, it's been my experience," said Brazil.

Hammer was in her outer office, having a word with Horgess, while she waited for West and a videotape that she prayed might reveal what Mungo seemed to think it did. Maybe her luck would turn for the better for once.

"Fred, enough," Hammer said, standing at the corner of his desk, hands in the pockets of her tobacco brown pants.

"It's just I feel so bad. Chief Hammer. Can't believe I did something like that. Here you trusted me, and I'm supposed to make your life better, be a faithful retainer. And look what I did when things got a little stressful," Horgess said in his same sad, hate-me tone.

This was sounding all too much like Seth, and the last thing Hammer needed at present was an office husband as pitiful as the one in room 333 at Carolinas Medical Center.

"Fred, what do we say about mistakes? As part of our vision statement?" she quizzed him.

"I know." He could not look at her.

"First, we allow a mistake if you were trying to do the right thing when you made it, and second, if you tell someone that you made the mistake. And third, if you are willing to talk about your mistake to others so they won't do the same thing."

"I haven't done two and three," he said.

"No, you haven't," Hammer had to agree as West walked in.

"Two isn't necessary because in this instance, everybody already knows. No later than seventeen hundred hours, I want a commentary by you for the Informer, telling everyone about your mistake. On my desk." She looked at him over the top of her glasses.

Tw/9 Mayor Search did not know the first thing about a community policing vision statement or any other vision statement, for that matter, that did not slaughter people for making mistakes, especially of the egregious nature that caused Hammer such embarrassment. This was not about to happen to him because the mayor knew how to handle people, including the media.

"It absolutely is untrue that the city is unsafe," he stated to Brazil, and the office seemed to have gotten airless and hot, and maybe smaller.

"But five businessmen from out of town have been murdered in the last five weeks," Brazil said.

"I don't know how you can…"

"Random. Isolated. Incidents." Sweat rolled down his sides. Search felt his face getting red.

"Downtown hotels and restaurants claim business has dropped more than twenty percent." Brazil wasn't trying to argue. He just wanted to get to the bottom of this.

"And people like you are only going to make that worse." Search mopped his forehead, wishing Cahoon had never passed this goddamn assignment along to him.

"All I want is to tell the truth, Mayor Search," Billy Budd, Billy Graham, said.

"Hiding it won't help resolve this terrible situation."

The mayor resorted to sarcasm, laughing at this simple boy's simple logic. He felt that bitter juice seep through his veins, the bile rising, as his face reddened dangerously, his rage a solar flare on the surface of his reason. Mayor Search lost control.

"I can't believe it," he laughed derisively at this reporter who was nothing in life.

"You're giving me a lecture. Look. I'm not going to sit here and tell you business isn't suffering. I wouldn't drive downtown at night right now." He laughed harder, unstoppable, and drunk with his power.

By six p. m. at happy hour, West and Raines were on their way to being drunk at Jack Straw's A Tavern of Taste, next to La-dee-da's and Two Sisters, on East Seventh Street. West had changed out of her uniform, and was casual in jeans, a loose denim shirt, and sandals.

She was drinking Sierra Nevada Stout, the beer of the month, and still in a state of disbelief over the videotape she had watched with Hammer.

"Do you have any idea how this makes me and my investigative division look?" she said for the fourth time.

"Christ. Please tell me this is a nightmare. Please, please. I'm going to wake up, right?"

Raines was drinking Field Stone chardonnay, the wine of the month. In gym shorts, Adidas with no socks, and a tank top, he was turning all heads except for the one across the table from him. What was it with her? All she ever talked about was work and that twit from the paper she rode around with. And Niles, oh yes, let's not forget that fucking, God-save-the-queen, cat. How many times had that cat ruined a building moment? Niles seemed to know exactly when to cause a distraction. A jump on Raines's back or head, a bite of a sock-covered toe. How about the time Niles sat on the remote control until the volume of Kenny G sounded like an air raid?

"It's not your fault," Raines said again, working on the spinach dip.

West ate another pickle fried in beer batter as Jump Little Children began setting up all their equipment and instruments. This small place with blue plastic table cloths and funky art in screaming colors by someone named Tryke was going to rock tonight, jam, trot out primitive Ids and libidos. Raines hoped he could make West stay at least until the second set. Actually, Raines thought what had happened to her all in a day's work was hilarious. It was all he could do to look tender and concerned.

He imagined Mungo-Jumbo swinging into the Presto to chow down. He spots a dude with a banana in his pocket who's the head of the Geezer Grill Cartel. A task force is formed, ending with a videotape of Blondie, the King of Vice and top suspect in the Black Widow serial murders, as he cruises Five Points in his tight black jeans and reporter's notepad. What wouldn't Raines have paid to see a videotape of Hammer sitting in her important conference room watching this shit!

Christ! He fought a smile again, and was losing. His face was aching and his stomach hurt.

"What's wrong with you?" West gave him a look.

"There's nothing fucking funny about this."

"There certainly isn't," he said weakly as he dissolved into laugher, doubled over in his chair, howling as tears streamed down his face.

This went on as Jump Little Children set up amplifiers, and checked Fender electric guitars. Pearl drums with Zildjian medium crash cymbals, and Yamaha keyboards. They gave each other sly looks, flipping long hair out of the way, earrings glinting in the dim light. This guy was fried. Man, look at him go. Cool. The girlfriend wasn't digging it, either. Him taking a trip she's not on.

Kind of weird he's drinking chardonfucking-nay.

West was so angry she wanted to flip over the table, cowboy style. She wanted to jump on top of Raines, flex-cuff his ankles and feet and just leave his sorry ass in the middle of Jack Straw's on a hot Thursday night. She halfway believed the only person Mungo was undercover for was Goode. Maybe Goode had gotten to him, and promised him favors if he would set up West, and destroy her credibility, her good relationship with Hammer. Oh God. When they had been sitting at that polished table and the video had flickered on, at first West was certain some mistake had been made. Brazil, big as life, was walking along to the sound of traffic, making notes, for Chrissake! How many serial killers or drug kingpins walk around in the middle of the day making notes?

As for Brazil's physical description, Mungothe-Woolly- Mammoth had missed that by about forty pounds and six inches, although West had to admit she'd never seen Brazil in clothes that tight. She didn't know what to make of it. Those black jeans were so tight she could see the muscles in the back of his thighs flex as he walked, the red polo shirt fitting like paint, muscles lean and well-defined, and he' had veins. Maybe he was trying to blend out there. That would make sense.

"Tell me what she did," Raines choked, wiping his eyes.

West motioned to the waitress for another round.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Oh come on, Virginia. Tell me, tell me. You got to." He straightened up a bit.

"Tell me what Hammer did when she saw the tape."

"No," West said.

Hammer hadn't done much, in truth. She'd sat in her usual spot at the head of the table, staring without comment at the twenty-four-inch Mitsubishi. She'd watched the entire tape, all forty-two minutes of it, every bit of Brazil's long promenade and indistinct conversations with the city's unsavory downtown folks. West and Hammer had watched Brazil point, shrug, jot, scan, and squat to tie shoelaces twice, before finally returning to the All Right to retrieve his BMW. After a pregnant silence, Chief Hammer had taken off her glasses and voiced her opinion.

"What was this?" she had said to her deputy chief in charge of investigations.

"I don't know what to tell you," West had said, feeling dark hate for Mungo.

"And this all began the day we had lunch at the Presto and you saw a man with a banana in his pocket." Hammer had wanted to make sure she was clear on the facts of the case.

"I really don't think it's fair to link the two."

Hammer had gotten up, but West knew not to move.

"Of course it's fair," Hammer had said, hands in her pockets again.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming you, Virginia." She'd begun pacing.

"How could Mungo not recognize Andy Brazil? He's out there morning, noon and night, either for the Observer or us."

"Mungo is deep cover," West had explained.

"He generally avoids any place police or the press might be. I don't think he reads much, either."

Hammer had nodded. She could understand this, actually, and she was raw. Hammer was not ready or willing to react violently to the embarrassments and honest mis takes of others, whether it was Horgess, Mungo, or even West, who really had made no error, except perhaps in her choice of Mungo to do anything in life.

"Do you want me to destroy it?" West had asked as Hammer popped the tape out of the VCR.

"I mean, I'd prefer not to. Some of that footage includes known prostitutes. Sugar, Double Fries, Butterfinger, Shooter, Lickety Split, Lemon Drop, Poison."

"All of them were in there?" Hammer was perplexed as she had opened the conference room door.

"They blend in. You have to know where to look."

"We'll hang on to it," Hammer had decided. Raines was laughing so hard. West was furious with herself for telling him the rest of the story. He had his head on the table, hands covering his face. She wiped her forehead with a napkin, perspiring and flushed, as if she were in the tropics. The band would be cranking up soon, and Jack Straw's was getting crowded.

She noticed Tommy Axel walk in, recognizing him from his picture in the paper. He had another guy with him, both dressed a lot like Raines, showing off. Why was it most of the gay guys were so good-looking? West didn't think it was fair. Not only were they guys in a guy's world, with all the benefits, but their DNA had somehow managed to appropriate the good stuff women had, too, like gracefulness and beauty.

Of course, gay guys got some of the bad stuff, too. Sneakiness, game playing, compulsive grooming, vanity, and shopping. Maybe it had nothing to do with gender, after all. West considered. Maybe there was no such thing as gender. Maybe biologically people were just vehicles, like cars. She'd heard that overseas the steering wheels were on one side, while here they were on the other. Different genders? Maybe not. Maybe just different cars, the behavior of all determined by the spirit in the driver's seat.

"I've had enough," West hissed at Raines.

She drained her Sierra Nevada and started on another one. She might just tie one on tonight. Raines was driving.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He took another deep breath and was spent.

"You look like you don't feel too good," he said with one of his concerned expressions.

"It is a little hot in here."

West mopped her face again, her clothes getting damp, but not in the way Raines might have hoped. She was feeling the heaviness in her lower nature, the goddess of fertility reminding West with more volatility every month that time was running out. West's gynecologist had warned her gravely and repeatedly that troubles would begin about her age. She, Dr. Alice Bourgeois, spoke of punishment when there were no children and none on the way. Never underestimate biology, Dr. Bourgeois always said.

West and Raines placed an order for cheeseburgers, fries, and another round of drinks. She wiped her face again and was getting cold. She wasn't sure she could eat anything else, not another fried pickle. She watched the band setting up, her attention wandering to people at other tables. She was quiet for a long time, overhearing a couple not so far away speaking a foreign language, maybe German. West was getting maudlin.

"You seem preoccupied," said Raines the intuitive.

"Remember when those German tourists got whacked in Miami? What it did to the tourist industry?" she said.

Raines, as a man, took this personally. He had seen the bodies in the Black Widow slayings, or at least several of them. It was unthinkable to have a gun shoved against your head, your brains blown out. There was no telling what indignities those guys had been subjected to before the fact, and how did anyone really know that their pants hadn't been pulled down first, that maybe they hadn't been raped and then spray-painted? If the killer had been wearing a condom, who was going to know? West had said just the right thing to put Raines in a mood. Now he was totally pissed, too.

"So this is about the tourist industry," he said, leaning across the table and gesturing.

"Forget guys being jerked out of their cars, brains blown all over, balls spray-painted with graffiti!"

West wiped her face again and dug Advil out of her butt pack.

"It's not graffiti. It's a symbol."

Raines crossed his legs, feeling endangered. The waitress set down their dinner. He grabbed the ketchup bottle as he folded a french fry between his lips.

"It makes me sick," he said.

"It should make everybody sick." West could not look at food.

"Who do you think's doing it?" He dipped a bouquet of french fries into a red puddle.

"Maybe a shim." She was soaked in cold sweat. Her hair was wet around her face and neck, as if she'd just been in a foot pursuit.

"Huh?" Raines glanced up at her, biting into his dripping burger.

"She-him. Woman one night, man the next, depending on the mood," she said.

"Oh. Like you." He reached for the dish of mayonnaise.

"Goddamn it." West shoved her plate away.

"I must be about to start."

Raines stopped chewing, rolling his eyes. He knew what that meant. The first twangs on electric guitars shattered the din, and sticks beat-beat and beat-beat-beat. Cymbals crashed and crashed as Axel snaked his foot around Jon's ankle and thought about Brazil for the millionth time this day.

W Packer was thinking about Brazil, too, as the editor earned Dufus out the back door, like a small, squirming football, headed for the same Japanese maple. Dufus had to go in the same place, get used to it, and be able to find his smells. It didn't matter that the tree was in the hinterlands and that it had started to rain. Packer dropped his wife's wall-eyed dog in the same bald spot next to the same gnarled root. Packer was out of breath, watching Dufus curtsey to the Queen.

"Why don't you lift your leg like a man," Packer muttered as bulging eyes watched him, speckled pink nose twitching.

"Sissy," Packer said.

The worn-out editor's pager had vibrated earlier this evening while he was mowing the grass on his vacation- day. It had been Panesa, calling to tell him that the mayor had admitted that even he wouldn't drive downtown at night right now! Jesus living God, this was unbelievable.

Surely the paper was well on its way to winning a Pulitzer for a series that made a difference in society, one that changed history.

Why the hell did this wait to happen when Packer was out of the newsroom? He'd been there thirty-two years. The moment he decided to put life in perspective, ward off that heart attack perched outside the window of his existence, Andy Brazil showed up.

Now it was run-through-the-yard time to get Dufus's bowels wound up that they might unleash what, in Packer's mind, should have been a humiliation to any creature, except maybe a small domestic cat. Dufus would not chase Packer, or come, and this was not new. The editor sat on the back porch steps while his wife's dog chewed mulch until it was time to drop his niggling gifts. Packer sighed and got up. He walked back into the air-conditioned house, Dufus on his heels.

"There's my good little boy," Mildred cooed as the dog hopped and licked until she picked him up and rocked him in loving arms.

"Don't mention it," Packer said, falling into his recliner chair, flicking on television.

He was still sitting there hours later, eating chicken nuggets, and dipping them in Roger's barbecue sauce. He loudly dug into a big bag of chips, swiping them in sauce, too. After several Coronas with lime, he had forgotten about the window and the heart attack perched beyond it. Mildred was watching Home for the Holidays, again, because she thought it was their life. Go figure. In the first place, Packer did not play the organ and she did not wear a wig or smoke, and they did not live in a small town. Their daughter had never gotten fired, at least not from an art gallery. That was one place she had never worked, probably because she was color blind. Nor was their son gay that Packer knew of or cared to know of, and any intimations to the contrary by his wife went into the Bermuda Triangle of their marital news hole. The editor didn't listen and the story didn't run. The End.

Packer pointed the remote control with authority. The volume went up, the ubiquitous Webb staring at the camera in a way that Packer knew meant trouble.

"Shit," Packer said, hitting a lever on his chair, cranking himself up.

"In a rare, if not shocking, moment of candor today," Webb said with his sincere expression, "Mayor Charles Search said that because of the Black Widow serial killings, hotel and restaurant business has dropped more than twenty percent, and he himself would not feel safe driving downtown at night. Mayor Search implored Charlotte's citizens to help police catch a killer who has ruthlessly murdered five…"

Packer was already dialing the phone, bag of potato chips falling out of his lap, scattering over the rug.

'. an individual the FBI has profiled as a sexual psychopath, a serial killer who will not stop. " Webb went on.

"Are you listening to this?" Packer exclaimed when Panesa picked up his phone.

"I'm taping it," he said in a homicidal tone Packer rarely heard.

"This has got to stop."

Brazil never watched television because his mother monopolized the one at home, and he did not frequent Charlotte's many sports bars, where there were big screens in every corner. He knew nothing about what had been on the eleven o'clock news this Thursday night, and no one paged him or bothered to find him. All was peaceful as he ran on the Davidson track in complete darkness, close to midnight, no sound but the rhythm of his breathing and falling feet. As pleased as he was about his amazing nonstop journalistic home runs, he could not say that he was happy.

Other people were getting a lot of the same stuff he was. Webb, for example, and no matter how informative or compassionate the story, the bottom line was the scoop. Brazil, of late, was scooping no one, if the truth be told. It just seemed he was because what he wrote routinely ended up on the front page and changed public opinion and seemed to rattle a lot of cages. Brazil would have been satisfied to spend the rest of his days writing pieces that did just this and nothing else. Prizes didn't matter much, really. But he was realistic.

If he didn't beat everybody to the quote, the revelation, or the crime scene, one of these days he might not get paid any more to write.

At which point, he could become a cop, he supposed, and this turned his mind to West again, sailing him off firm ground into a dark, tangled, painful thicket that hurt and frustrated him the more he tried to fight his way out of it. He ran harder, bending around goal posts, passing empty bleachers filled with the memories of games, mostly lost, during fall nights when he had usually been studying or walking the frosty campus beneath stars he tried to describe as no one ever had. He would tuck his chin into his hooded sweatshirt, heading to the library or a hidden corner of the student lounge, to work on a term paper or poetry, not wanting couples he passed to notice him.

Even if West hadn't wanted to play tennis, there was no need for her to have been rude about it unless she hated him. Forget it. Her voice saying those heartless words followed him as he ran harder, lungs beginning to burn, catching fire around the edges as his legs reached farther, and sweat left a trail of scattered spots. He tried to outrun the voice and the person who owned it, anger flinging him through the night, and past the fifty yard line. Legs wobbled as he slowed. Brazil fell into cool, damp grass. He lay on his back, panting, heart thundering, and he had a premonition that he was going to die.

Vy Virginia West felt like it. She lay in bed, lights out, a hot water bottle held close as contractions prepared her for birth for no good cause. Ever since she was fourteen, she'd gone into labor once a month, some episodes worse than others. On occasion, the pain was debilitating enough to send her home from school, a date, or work, lying about what was wrong as she gulped Midol. After a sullen Raines, the paramedic, had dropped her off, she'd taken four Motrin, a little too late. Hadn't Dr. Bourgeois told her to take two hundred milligrams of ibuprofen four times a day three days before trouble started so it could be prevented, and don't cut yourself or get a nosebleed, Virginia? West, as usual, had gotten too busy to bother with anything so mundane, so trivial, as her health. Niles recognized the cyclical emergency and responded, curling around his owner's neck and head, keeping her warm. He was pleased she wasn't going anywhere and he didn't have to share their bed.

Chief Judy Hammer was having morbid premonitions and was bedside, too, in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) of Carolinas Medical Center, where Seth's condition was serious and on the wrong side of getting better. Hammer was in shock, dressed in gown, mask and gloves, sitting by his bed. High dose penicillin, clindamycin, and immunic globulin dripped into her husband's veins in an effort to counter necrotizing fasciitis (NF). It was a rare infection, and associated with systemic infection, and a fulminant course, according to Hammer's personal observations and the notes she had been taking every time Dr. Cabel, the infectious disease doctor, spoke.

This was all somehow related to everyday group A beta-hemolytic streptococci and Staphylococcus aureus, which Hammer could not comprehend beyond figuring out that the microscopic bastards were eating her husband alive. Meanwhile, Seth's oxygen content in his bloodstream had dropped below normal, and the medical center was in a panic. Personnel had made Seth, the V. I. P, a top priority, and specialists were in and out. Hammer could not keep them straight. She could not think as she stared at her husband's slack, feverish face and smelled his death through the mask she wore.

During the Civil War, surgeons would have diagnosed her husband's condition as simple gangrene. No fancy Latin term changed the reality of flesh turning black and green at a wound site, with limbs, and eventually the person, rotting alive. The only treatment for NF was antibiotics, surgery, and amputation. About a third of the three to five hundred people who got the disease in the US annually died, or approximately thirty percent, according to what Hammer had found through searches on America Online.

Nothing she had discovered about the disease had consoled or given hope. The deadly bacteria burst upon the scene in recent years when it killed eleven people in Great Britain. KILLER BUG ATE MY FACE, screamed the Daily Star. DEADLY FLESH EATING BACTERIA, other tabloids proclaimed. It had killed Jim Henson of the Muppets, Hammer had discovered on the Internet, and was believed to be a virulent form of a strep that had caused scarlet fever in the 1800s. In some cases, NF spread too rapidly for antibiotics to work, and it was feared that Seth would be the latest statistic. His V. I. P status had insured aggressive treatment since admission, so the problem lay not in the hospital, but in his general condition.

Seth had poor nutrition. He was clinically depressed. He had a history of heavy drinking and arteriosclerotic vascular disease. He had received a trauma resulting in an open wound, and a foreign body that could not be removed. Seth, according to Dr. Cabel, was immunosuppressed, and was losing approximately a pound of flesh per hour. This did not include layers lost by surgeons file ting to the next level of healthy, bleeding tissue, which soon after turned black and green, despite all efforts and prayers. Hammer was motionless in her chair, reliving every word she'd ever spoken to her husband, every deed that had been angry or unkind. None of his flaws would come to her now.

This was all her fault. It had been her. 38 special, her Remington hollowpoint +P cartridge. It had been her order that he root under the sheets for that gun and hand it over to her this minute. It had been Hammer giving him the ultimatum about his weight, and she halfway believed that what he suffered from now was no coincidence, but a functional illness. Seth was melting before her eyes, an inch smaller every hour, slabs lighter after every surgery. This was not the weight-loss plan she would have wished for him. He was punishing her for all those years he had lived in her shadow, the wind beneath her wings, her inspiration and biggest fan.

"Chief Hammer?"

She realized someone was speaking, and her eyes focused on Dr. Cabel, in surgical greens, cap, mask, gloves, and shoe covers. He was no older than Jude. God help me, Hammer thought with a deep, quiet breath as, once again, she got out of her chair.

If you'll give me a minute with him," Dr. Cabel said to her.

Hammer went out into the antiseptic, bright corridor. She watched nurses, doctors, family members, and friends alight on different rooms where more suffering lay tethered to narrow hydraulic beds, and machines monitored the life force as it struggled on. She stood, in a daze, until Dr. Cabel returned, slipping Seth's chart in the envelope on the back of the door.

"How is he?" Hammer asked the same question, pulling her mask down around her neck.

Dr. Cabel left his mask on. He took no chances, and didn't even shower at home anymore without lathering from head to toe with antibacterial soap. He shut Seth's door, eyes troubled. Hammer was shrewd, and not interested in further euphemisms, convolutions, and evasions. If this young infectious disease doctor thought he could hide the truth from her, she was about to add to his education.

"We're going to take him back into surgery," Seth's doctor said.

"Which is fairly typical at this point."

"And which point is this point, exactly?" Hammer wanted to know.

"Day two of progressive streptococcal gangrene and necrotizing fasciitis," he replied.

"The necrosis is visibly beyond the margins of the original debridement."

While Dr. Cabel respected Chief Hammer, he did not want to deal with her. He cast about for a nurse. Shit. All were busy elsewhere.

"I need to get started," he said.

"No so fast," Hammer let him know.

"Exactly what are you going to do in surgery?"

"We'll know better when we go in."

"How about hazarding a guess." She might slap him.

"Generally, at this stage, the wound is debrided again down to bleeding, healthy tissue. We'll probably irrigate with saline and pack the wound with Nu-Gauze. We'll continue with hyperbaric oxygen therapy twice a day, and I recommend total parenteral nutrition."

"Multivitamins then," she said.

"Well, yes." He was mildly surprised by her ability to connect the dots.

Hammer had been buying vitamins for years and failed to see anything special about the suggestion. Dr. Cabel started to walk off. She snatched him back by his greens.

"Let's cut to the chase," she said.

"Seth has had strep throat a dozen times in his life. Why has it turned into this now?

Aside from his lousy immune system. "

"It's not exactly the same thing as the strep that causes a sore throat."

"Clearly."

This lady was not going to let him go. Dr. Cabel felt sorry for Seth in a different way, now. Living with this woman would wear out anybody.

Imagine asking her to fetch coffee or take your word for it? When all else failed, Dr. Cabel switched to the language that only his super race understood.

"It's quite possible strep has acquired new genetic information, picked up genes. This can happen through infection by abacteriophage," Dr. Cabel informed her.

"What's abacteriophage?" She wouldn't give up.

"Uh, a virus that can incorporate its DNA into abacterial host," he said.

"The hypothesis is, that some Ml strain of group A strep, in approximately forty percent of recent invasive infections, seems to have acquired genetic material from a phage. This is according to WHO. "

"Whoi' Hammer frowned.

"Exactly." He looked at his watch long enough to give her a broad hint.

"Who the hell is wboY She would get an answer.

"World Health Organization. They have a strep reference laboratory.

The long and short of it, this may all be connected to a gene that encodes a toxin called super antigen which is widely believed to be connected to toxic-shock syndrome. "

"My husband has the same thing you get from a tampon?" Hammer raised her voice.

"A distant cousin."

"And since when do you amputate for that?" she demanded as passerbys glanced curiously at the two people in greens arguing in the spotless, well-lit corridor.

"No, no." He had to get away from this woman, so he, the English major, threw Shakespeare at her.

"Ma'am, with what your husband's got, surgery remains the most effective treatment.

"Be bloody, bold and resolute," he quoted.

"King Lear."

"Macbeth," Hammer, who loved the theater, said as Dr. Cabel hurried off.

She lingered long enough to see her husband wheeled back to the OR, then Hammer went home. By nine o'clock, she had collapsed in bed, too exhausted and distressed to remain in a conscious state effectively.

She and her deputy chief, in their respective homes, one with a pet, one without, slept fitfully the rest of the night.

Brazil tossed and yanked sheets this way and that, over his feet, under them, back over them again, on his side, on his belly. Finally, he lay on his back, staring up into the dark, listening to the TV murmur through the wall as his mother lay passed out on the couch again.

He kept thinking about what West had said. He should move out, find an apartment. Yet whenever he followed this scary, exciting path a few steps further, he always ran slam into the same scarecrow that sent him fleeing the other way. What was he supposed to do about his mother? What would happen to her if he left her alone? He supposed he could still bring by groceries, stop in to check on her, fix things, and run errands. Brazil worried as he thrashed in bed, listening to the eerie strains of what must have been some three a. m. half-a-star horror flick. He thought about West and felt depressed again.

Brazil decided that he did not like West in the least.

She was not the kind, enlightened woman that Hammer was. One day, Brazil would find someone like Hammer. They would enjoy and respect each other, and play tennis, run, work out with weights, cook, fix the cars, go to the beach, read good fiction and poetry, and do everything together, except when they needed space. What did West know about any of this? She built fences. She cut her own grass with a rider mower because she was too lazy to use a push one, and her yard was barely half an acre. She had disgusting eating habits. She smoked. Brazil turned over again, hanging his arms off either side of the mattress, miserable.

At five, he gave up and went back to the track to run again. He clipped off eight more miles and could have gone farther, but he got bored and wanted to get downtown. It was strange. He'd gone from exhaustion to hyperactivity in a matter of days. Brazil could remember no other time in his life when his chemistry had swung him around like this. One minute he was dragging, the next he was high and excited with no explanation. He contemplated the possibility that his hormones were going through a phase, which he expected would be normal for one his age. It was true that if the male did not give in to his drives between the ages of sixteen and twenty, biology would punish him.

His primary care physician had told him exactly that. Dr. Rush, whose family practice was in Cornelius, had warned Brazil about this very phenomenon when Brazil had a team check-up his freshman year at Davidson. Dr. Rush, recognizing that Brazil had no father and needed guidance, said many young men made tragic mistakes because their bodies were in a procreation mode. This, said Dr. Rush, was nothing more than a throwback to colonial times when sixteen was more than half of the male's life expectancy, assuming Indians or neighbors didn't get him first. When viewed in this fashion, sexual urges, albeit primitive, made perfect sense, and Brazil was to do his best not to act on them.

Brazil would be twenty-three next May, and the urges had not lessened with time. He had been faithful to Dr. Rush, who, according to local gossip, was not faithful to his wife and never had been. Brazil thought about his sexuality as he ran a few sprints before trotting home. It seemed to him that love and sex were connected but maybe shouldn't be. Love made him sweet and thoughtful. Love prompted him to notice flowers and want to pick them. Love crafted his finest poetry, while sex throbbed in powerful, earthy pentameters he would never show to anyone or submit for publication.

He hurried home and took a longer than usual shower. At five past eight, he was moving through the cafeteria line in the Knight-Ridder building. He was in jeans, pager on his belt, people staring curiously at the boy wonder reporter who played police and always seemed alone.

Brazil selected Raisin Bran and blueberries as the intercom piped in WBT's wildly popular and irreverent Don't Go Into Morning show, with Dave and Dave.

"In a fast-breaking story last night," Dave was saying in his deep radio voice, 'it was revealed that even our city's mayor won't go downtown at night right now. "

"Question is, why would he anyway?" quipped Dave.

"Same thing Senator Butler should have asked."

"Just checking on his constituents, Dave.

Trying to be of service. "

"And the eensy weensy spider crawled up his water spout…"

"Whoa, Dave. This is getting out of control."

"Hey, we're supposed to be able to say anything on this show. That's in the contract." Dave was his usual witty self, better than Howard Stern, really.

"Seriously. Mayor Search is asking everybody to help catch the Black Widow Killer," Dave said.

"And next up is Madonna, Amy Grant, and Rod Stewart…"

Brazil had stopped in the middle of the line, frozen as the radio played on and people made their way around him. Packer was walking in, heading straight towards him. Brazil's world was Humpty Dumpty off the wall, cracks happening everywhere at once. He paid for his breakfast, and turned around to face his ruination.

"What's going on?" he said before his grim editor could tell him.

"Upstairs now," Packer said.

"We got a problem."

Brazil did not run up the escalator. He did not speak to Packer, who had nothing more to say. Packer wanted no part of this. He wasn't going to insert his foot in his mouth. The great Richard Panesa could fix this one. That's why Knight-Ridder paid Panesa those big bucks.

Brazil had been marched to the principal's office only twice during his early school years. In neither case had he really done anything wrong. The first time he had poked his finger into the hamster cage and had gotten bitten. The second time of trouble occurred when he inserted his finger into the hole at the top of his clipboard and had gotten stuck.

Mr. Kenny used wire cutters to free young Brazil, who had been humiliated and heartbroken. The blue Formica clipboard with its map of the United States was destroyed. Mr. Kenny threw it into the trash while Brazil stood bravely by, refusing to cry, knowing his mother could not afford to buy him another one. Brazil had meekly asked if he could stay after school for a week, dusting erasers on back steps, to earn enough to buy something new to hold notebook paper and write on. That had been okay with all.

Brazil wondered what he could offer to Panesa to make up for whatever he had done to cause such a problem. When he walked into the publisher's intimidating glass office, Panesa was sitting behind his mahogany desk, in his fine Italian suit and leather chair. Panesa didn't get up or acknowledge Brazil directly, but continued reading a printout of the editorial for the Sunday paper, which slammed Mayor Search for his glib, albeit true, comment about his reluctance to travel downtown these nights.

"You might want to shut the door," Panesa quietly said to his young reporter.

Brazil did and took a seat across from his boss.

"Andy," he said, 'do you watch television? " His confusion grew.

"I rarely have time…"

"Then you may not know that you are being scooped right and left."

The dragon inside Brazil woke up.

"Meaning?" Panesa saw fire in his eyes. Good. The only way this sensitive, brilliant young talent was going to last in this criminal world was if he were a fighter, like Panesa was. Panesa wasn't going to give him a breath of comfort. Andy Brazil, welcome to Hell School, the publisher thought as he picked up a remote control from his mighty desk.

"Meaning' - Panesa hit a button, and a screen unrolled from the ceiling 'that the last four or five major stories you've done have been aired on television the night before they ran in the paper, usually on the eleven o'clock news." He pressed another button, and the overhead projector turned on.

"Then the radio stations pick them up first thing in the morning. Before most people get a chance to read what we've plastered on the front page of our paper."

Brazil shot up from his chair, horrified and homicidal.

"That can't be! No one's even around when I'm out there!" he exclaimed, fists balled by his sides.

Panesa pointed the remote control, pressed another but ton, and instantly Webb's face was huge in the room.

'. in a Channel Three exclusive interview said she returns to the scene of the crash late at night and sits in her car and weeps.

Johnson, who turned in her badge this morning, said she wishes she had been killed, too. "

Panesa looked at Brazil. Brazil was speechless, his fury toward Webb coalescing into hatred for all. Moments passed before the young police reporter could gather his wits.

"Was this after my story?" Brazil asked, though he knew better.

"Before," Panesa replied, watching him carefully, and assessing.

"The night before it ran. Like every other one that's followed. Then this bit with the mayor. Well, that clinched it. We know that was a slip on Search's part and not something Webb could know unless he's got the mayor's office bugged."

"This can't be!" Brazil boiled over.

"It's not my fault!"

"This is not about fault." Panesa was stern with him.

"Get to the bottom of it. Now. We're really being hurt."

Panesa watched Brazil storm out. The publisher had a meeting, but sat at his desk, going through memos, dictating to his secretary while he observed Brazil through glass. Brazil was angrily opening desk drawers, digging in the box under it, throwing notepads and other personal effects into his briefcase. He ran out of the newsroom as if he did not plan on coming back. Panesa picked up the phone.

"Get Virginia West on the line," the publisher said.

Tommy Axel was staring after Brazil's wake, wondering what the hell was going on, and at the same time suspicious. He knew about Webb, and had heard about the leaks, and didn't blame Brazil for being out of his mind. Axel couldn't imagine the same thing happening to him, someone stealing brilliant thoughts and analyses from his music columns. God. Poor guy.

Brenda Bond also was alert to the uproar as she worked on a computer that had gone down three days in a row because the idiot garden columnist had a knack for striking combinations of keys that somehow locked him out or translated his files into pi signs. Bond had a strange sensation as she went into System Manager. She found it hard to concentrate.

West was standing behind her desk, struggling to pack up her briefcase, and snap the lid back on her coffee, and wrap up the biscuit she didn't have time to eat. She looked worried and frantic as Panesa talked to her on the phone.

"You have any idea where he went?" West inquired.

"Home, maybe?" Panesa said over the line.

"He lives with his mother."

West looked hopelessly at the clock. She was supposed to be in Hammer's office in ninety seconds, and there was no such thing as putting the chief on hold, or being late, or not showing up, or forgetting. West shut her briefcase, and slid her radio into the case on her belt. She was at a loss.

"I'll do what I can," she promised Panesa.

"Unfortunately, I've got court this morning. My guess is he's just blowing off steam. As soon as he cools down, he'll be back. Andy's not a quitter."

"I hope you're right."

"If he hasn't shown up by the time I get back, I'll start looking," West said.

"Good idea."

West hoped that Johnny Martino would plead guilty. Hammer didn't. She was in a mood to cause trouble. Dr. Cabel had done her a favor, really.

He had ignited a few sparks of anger, and the brighter they got, the more the mist of depression and malaise burned off. She was walking the fastest West had ever seen her, a zip-up briefcase under an arm, sunglasses on. Hammer and West made their way through the sweltering piedmont morning to the Criminal Court Building, constructed of granite in 1987, and therefore older than most buildings in Charlotte.

Hammer and West waited in line with everyone else at the X-ray machine.

"Quit worrying." West tried to reassure her boss as they inched forward behind some of the city's finer citizens.

"He'll plead." She glanced at her watch.

"I'm not worried," said Hammer.

West was. There were a hundred cases on the docket today. In truth, this was a bigger problem than whether Martino pled guilty versus taking his chances before a jury of his peers. Deputy Octavius Able eyed the two women getting closer in line and was suddenly alert and interested in his job. West had not passed through his X-ray machine since it resided in the old courthouse. Never had Able so much as laid eyes on Hammer in person. He had never had complete control over her.

West was in uniform, and walked around the door frame that was beeping every other second as pagers, change, keys, good luck charms, and pocket knives, went into a cup.

Hammer walked around, too, assuming the privilege of her position.

"Excuse me, ma'am!" Deputy Able said for all to hear.

"Ma'am! Please step through."

"She's the chief of police," West quietly told him, and she knew damn well it went without saying.

"Need some identification," the powerful deputy said to Hammer.

A long line of restless feet stopped, all eyes on the well-dressed lady with the familiar face. Who was that? They'd seen her somewhere, Maybe she was on TV, the news, a talk show? Oh heck. Then Tinsley Owens, six deep in line, here for reckless driving, got it. This lady in pearls was the wife of someone famous, maybe Billy Graham. Hammer was nonplussed as she dug through her pocketbook, and this made Deputy Abie's assertion of self not quite as rewarding. She smiled at him, holding up her badge.

"Thanks for checking." She could have knocked him over when she said that.

"In case anybody had any doubts about the security of our courthouse." She leaned close to read his nameplate.

"O.T. Able," she repeated, committing it to memory.

Now the deputy was dead. She was going to complain.

"Just doing my job," he weakly said as the line got longer, winding around the world, the entire human race witnessing his destruction.

"You most certainly were," Hammer agreed.

"And I'm going to make sure the sheriff knows how much he should appreciate you."

The deputy realized the chief meant every word of it, and Able was suddenly taller and slimmer. His khaki uniform fit perfectly. He was handsome and not nearly as old as he had been when he was at the BP pumping gas this morning and a carload of juveniles yelled, calling him Deputy Dawg, Hawaii Five-0, Tuna Breath, and other racial slurs. Deputy Octavius Able was ashamed of himself for throwing his weight around with this woman chief. He never used to be that way, and did not know what had happened to him over the years.