Southern Cross

Chapter Thirty-One

Brazil had never met Governor Feuer and it did not register that this indeed was the man walking briskly toward him and Weed on Midvale Avenue.

The man was tall and distinguished in a dark pinstripe suit. He was in a hurry and seemed very anxious about something. Brazil wiped sweat out of his eyes, his mouth so parched he could barely speak.

'Is everything all right?' Brazil asked.

'I was about to ask you that, son,' the man said.

Brazil paused as he processed the familiar voice and fit it with the face.

'Oh,' was all Brazil said.

'I seen your picture all over the place!' exclaimed Weed.

'Looks like you two have been through it,' the governor said. 'What did you do to your chin?' he asked Weed.

'Cut myself shaving.'

The governor seemed to accept this.

'How on earth did you end up out here? Are you hurt? No backup? Doesn't your radio work?' Governor Feuer asked Brazil.

'It works, sir.'

Brazil's words were sticky, as if he had communion wafers in his mouth. His tongue got caught on every syllable. He sounded a little drunk and wondered if he was delirious. Maybe none of this was happening.

'Let's get both of you some water and out of the sun,' the governor was saying.

Brazil was too exhausted and dehydrated to have much of an emotional reaction.

'You should know I've got a prisoner,' Brazil mumbled to the governor.

'I'm not worried unless you are,' Governor Feuer said. 'My driver's state police.'

Jed smiled as he stood attentively by the limousine. He opened a back door and the governor got in. Jed nodded at Brazil and Weed to do the same.

Jed, you've got water, don't you?' Governor Feuer said.

'Oh yes sir. Chilled or unchilled?'

'Doesn't matter,' Brazil said.

'Chilled would be good,' Weed answered.

Brazil was overwhelmed by air conditioning and an expanse of clean, soft gray leather. He sat on the carpeted floor and nodded for Weed to do the same. The governor gave them an odd look.

'What are you doing?' he asked Brazil.

'We're pretty sweaty,' Brazil apologized. 'Wouldn't want to mess up your upholstery.'

'Nonsense. Have a seat.'

Air conditioning blasted their drenched clothes. Jed slid open the glass partition and handed back a six-pack of chilled Evian. Brazil drained two bottles, barely breathing between swallows. A stabbing sensation ran up his sinuses to the top of his head. He bent over in agony and rubbed his forehead.

'What is it?' the governor asked, alarmed.

'Ice cream headache. I'll be fine.'

'Those are miserable. Nothing worse.'

'Uhhh.'

'I get 'em when I drink Pepsi too fast,' Weed commiserated.

Jed's voice came over the intercom. 'Where to, sir?'

'Where can we take you?' the governor asked Brazil. 'Home? Back to headquarters? The jail?'

Brazil rubbed his forehead. He poured water on a napkin and gently cleaned Weed's cut and wiped dried blood off his neck.

'What will it be?' the governor asked.

'Honestly, Governor, you don't have to do that. I can't let you go to the trouble,' Brazil said.

Governor Feuer smiled. 'What's your name, son?'

'Andy Brazil.'

'As in the NIJ fellow who wrote the op-ed on juvenile crime?'

'Yes, that's me.'

The governor was favorably impressed.

'And you?' he asked Weed.

'Weed.'

'That's your real name, son?'

'How come everybody always asks me that?' Weed was tired of it.

'I guess headquarters would be good, sir,' Brazil said.

'Swing by headquarters,' the governor told Jed. 'I guess you'd better call my scheduler and tell him I won't make it to whatever.'

Time had stopped for Patty Passman as she sat in the urine-sticky dark on the cold metal floor of the wagon, arms wrenched behind her, ankles immobilized. Her hands and feet were numb. She was chilled to the core. She envisioned gangrene and amputations and lawsuits.

The scales of her unfortunate chemistry were back in balance. Although weak and somewhat banged up, she was thinking with clarity and premeditation. She knew exactly what Rhoad was doing. The wagon could not carry her to lockup for processing until he filled out at least one arrest sheet. The son of a bitch was trumping up every charge imaginable, filling out the paperwork on every single one because the longer he took, the longer she sat, trussed up like a turkey inside an icebox.

Passman wriggled backward across unforgiving metal, finally finding a side of the van to lean against. She shifted positions every few seconds to relieve the bite of the handcuffs and the ache in her shoulders.

'Oh please hurry,' she begged in the dark as the tears came. 'I'm so cold. Oh God, I hurt! Please! You're so mean to me!' She burst into sobs that no one heard or would have been moved by were she standing in the middle of a packed coliseum.

No one cared. No one ever had.

Patty Passman's first mistake in life was being born a girl to parents who already had six girls and were devastated when they had yet one more on their last try. Passman spent her childhood trying to make it up to them.

She pounded on her sisters and told them they were ugly, stupid and flat-chested. She broke toys, dismembered dolls, drew obscene pictures, passed gas, belched, spat, didn't flush the toilet, was insensitive, hoarded candy, kept quarters meant for the Sunday school offering, lost her temper, teased the dog, played Army, played doctor with other girls in the neighborhood and refused to play the piano. She did all she could to act like a boy.

She toned it down as years passed, only to find she had been gender contraire for so long she had fallen too far behind in the female race to ever catch up or even come in last. She was disqualified and defaulted by all except Moses Pharaoh, who nominated her for the wrestling homecoming court because, he told her as he escorted her across the spotlit basketball court that illustrious night, he was turned on by fat women with small teeth.

Afterward the two of them ate lasagne, garlic bread, salad and cheesecake at Joe's Inn. On the way home in his '69 high-performance Chevelle, with its 425 horsepower and 475 pounds of torque, Moses drove her up to the observation point at the end of East Grace Street.

What Passman knew about kissing she had learned from movies. She was not prepared for the huge garlic-tasting thick tongue thrust down her throat. She was shocked when Moses shoved his hands down her chiffon neckline, groping for the Promised Land. He parted her, crossed her, broke all ten commandments, or seemed to, on that awful night when her long pink satin dress was pushed up and crushed, all because she had not been born a boy.

She was shivering and feeling crazed again when the wagon rumbled awake. It pulled ahead. With each turn it took she rolled on her side like a log in the tide. Minutes seemed forever. The van finally halted.

'Sally Port One, put the gate up,' a male voice announced.

Passman heard what sounded like a grate lurch and begin slowly rolling up. The van drove ahead and stopped again. The grate screeched back down. The van's tailgate swung open, a cop standing there, chewing gum.

He was disheveled, his waist drooping over his duty belt like excess pizza dough hanging off the pan. One eye was hazel, the other brown, his graying hair slicked back, ears and nostrils bristly like stiff paintbrushes. Wagon drivers were the flatworms of law enforcement, a throwback to a spineless, lazy, lower order of life Passman had grown to despise.

'O-kie do-kie,' he said to her. 'Let's head 'em up and move 'em out.'

Passman squinted at him from her supine position on the floor.

'I can't,' she said.

He clicked her a giddy-up out of the side of his mouth.

'I'm not going anywhere until you at least undo my ankles.' She meant it.

Her dress was pushed up to her padded hips and she could do nothing about it. He was staring. She knew if she lost her temper again, it would only ensure further bondage.

'Please undo my ankles so I can get out,' she said again.

'Pretty please with sugar on top?'

She thought she recognized his voice, then was certain.

'You're unit 452,' she said.

'Guess I'm famous. Now I'm gonna cut off these flex cuffs, but you so much as twitch and I'm gonna keep you busy.'

She did not know his name, but one thing Passman did know was voices. She had total recall when it came to words uttered on the air by hundreds of units she never saw. Unit 452 cut off the flex cuffs with a pocketknife and the feeling rushed back to her feet in swarms of tiny pins. She worked her way to the open rear of the van, her skirt hiking higher, far above the brown tops of her panty hose, up to the waistband. He stared, chomping gum. She inch-wormed her way to the ground.

Unit 452 pushed a button on the wall to open the door to lockup, and on his way in used a key from his snap holder to secure his pistol inside the gun safe. He got out another key, this one tiny, and unlocked her handcuffs.

'Unit 452,' Passman mimicked him. 'Go ahead, 452, I'm 10-1 2600 block of Park. Ten-4, 452. That'd be the Robin Inn, for a meal. Uh, 10-4…'

'You!' Unit 452 was shocked and deeply offended. 'You're the one! That bitch in the radio room!'

'You're that dumb shit who's always hiding out at Engine Company Number Nine playing your fucking nutless puzzle games. Tetris Plus, Q*Bert, Pac Man, Boggle!' Passman accused.

'What, what?' Unit 452 stammered.

Passman had him.

'Everyone knows,' she went on as Deputy Sheriff Reflogle took the arrest sheets from unit 452 and began to search Passman.

'Looks like you're getting the book thrown at you, girl,' Reflogle said. 'Must've been a bad time at home to act out like this.'

Passman wasn't listening.

'You're a joke in the radio room!' she railed on to Unit 452. 'B is boy, not bravo, and H is Henry, not hotel, you shit dick! What do you think you are, an airplane pilot?'

'Now you quiet down,' Deputy Reflogle said to her as he fished eight quarters out of her skirt pockets.

He rolled Passman's fingers on an ink pad and transferred her loops and whirls to a ten-print card. He took mug shots. He asked her about aliases. He asked about a.k.a's in case she didn't know what aliases were. He locked her inside a holding cell. It was not much bigger than a locker, a hard bench to sit on, a small square screen to see through. She ate cherry Jell-O, cottage cheese and fish sticks for lunch. '

The magistrate's office for the city of Richmond was on the first floor of the police department, past the information desk and in close proximity to lockup and Sally Port 1.

It was not quite four o'clock in the afternoon. Vince Tittle wasn't feeling good about his job or life. It wasn't hard to look back and see where he had cracked the glass, chipped the china, scorched the sweet milk in the pot. He had succumbed to a favor. He had sold his soul for an office that looked very much like a tollbooth.

Tittle had not always thought the worst about himself. Until four years ago he had enjoyed a fulfilling career as a photographer at the morgue. He had been proud of taking pictures perfectly to scale. He had been a magician with lighting and shutter speeds. His art went to court. It was viewed by prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and juries.

The chief medical examiner adored him. Her deputy chiefs and the forensic scientists did, too. Defendants hated him. Tittle's lust for justice was what got him into trouble. His road to hell began when Tittle joined the Gentleman's Bartering Club, which included hundreds of people with training, skills and talents that Tittle couldn't always afford. He took family portraits, and photos for Christmas cards, calendars, graduations and debutante balls, swapping his skills for virtual cash minus a ten percent commission that went to the club.

Tittle rarely shopped in reality after that. He could take wedding pictures, for example, and earn a thousand virtual dollars, which in turn he might virtually spend on roof repair. Tittle was addicted to his camera. Soon he became virtually wealthy, which is how he met Circuit Court Judge Nicholas Endo, who was at war with his wife and losing.

Judge Endo believed Mrs. Endo was having an affair with her dentist, Bull Ehrhart, and wanted to catch her in the act. Tittle would never forget what Judge Endo said to him one night when they were drinking bourbon in the clubhouse.

'Vince, you've got virtually everything a man could want,' said the judge as he paid five virtual dollars for a drink that was real. 'But there's got to be one thing in this club you can't buy, and I bet I damn well know what it is.'

'What?' Tittle said.

'You love court. You love the law,' said the judge. 'Taking photographs of stiffs is getting boring. Has to be. Should always have been, Vince.'

Tittle slowly swirled ice in his Maker's Mark. The truth pained him deeply.

'Come on. Come on.' The judge leaned across the table and said in the tone that reminded Tittle of come here, kitty, kitty, kitty, 'I mean, Vince, how goddamn challenging can it be to shoot a liver on a scale, a brain on a cutting board, stomach contents, little cups of urine and bile, bite marks, axes in the back of people's heads?'

'You're right,' Tittle muttered, motioning for Seunghoon the cocktail waitress. 'This round's on me.'

'What will it be, sugar?' Seunghoon asked.

'Another round. You got Booker's?'

'Shoot. I don't think so, cutie. But you know what? I believe Mr. Mack carries it in his restaurant. He has quite a bar.'

'We ought to get that in.' Judge Endo rendered his verdict. 'Best damn bourbon known to man. Hundred twenty proof, knock you back to China. Maybe next time a movie comes to town, Vince, you could take a couple shots of Mack with a celebrity or two? He can hang them in his restaurant. Charge him two hundred virtual dollars, turn around and buy the Booker's with it.'

'Okay,' Tittle agreed.

Their conversation went on for quite a while before the judge got into the substance of his case.

'I think you'd make a damn good magistrate, Vince,' he said, puffing on an illegal Cuban cigar. 'I've always thought so.' He blew a smoke ring.

'It would be an honor,' Tittle said. 'I would like a chance to punish bad people. I've always wanted that.'

'How 'bout we make a trade?'

'I'm always doing it,' Tittle said.

Judge Endo went on to say that he wanted explicit photographs of Mrs. Endo's adultery. He didn't care if they were doctored. He didn't care how Tittle did it. Judge Endo just wanted to keep his house, his car and his dog, and have his grown children take his side.

'It won't be easy,' the judge said, jaw muscles clenching. 'I know, I've tried everything I can think of. But you pull it off, I'll take care of you.'

The next day, Tittle went to work. He discovered soon enough that Mrs. Endo's MO was so simple it was complicated. Bull Ehrhart had forty-three strip mall offices throughout the greater Richmond area, and twenty-two additional ones as far away as Norfolk, Petersburg, Charlottesville, Fredericksburg and Bristol, Tennessee.

Twice a week, Mrs. Endo used a different alias to make a late-day appointment at a different office. When she'd done the circuit, she'd start again. She'd change her accent, hair color and style, experimenting with makeup, glasses and designer clothes.

For weeks, Tittle failed. The adulterous couple was too careful and clever. Just when Tittle was about to give up, he found a crow that had flown into his kitchen window because it didn't see the glass and died of a head injury, Tittle could only suppose. Tittle got an idea. He put the dead crow in the freezer. He painted a camera and tripod yellow.

Late that afternoon he followed Mrs. Endo to dental office number 17 on Staples Mill Road, near Ukrops, and set up his faux surveyor's equipment in the parking lot. It was five-thirty P.M. The only office lit up was a corner one, the windows covered by shut Venetian blinds. Tittle gave Mrs. Endo and Dr. Ehrhart fifteen minutes to get into it as Tittle pointed the twelve-hundred-millimeter telephoto lens and attached the cable release.

He pulled the frozen crow out of a pocket of his coat and hurled it at the window, where it hit with a sickening thud, shaking the glass. The blinds suddenly flashed open. The naked dentist looked out and around and down at the ground, discovering the poor bird that had flown into the glass. The naked Mrs. Endo put a hand over her mouth, shaking her head in pity.

They paid no attention to the surveyor walking off the job with his bright yellow equipment. The divorce turned out favorably for Judge Endo. In return, he gave Tittle the appointment, as promised in their bartering agreement.

Magistrate Tittle's guilt grew with the years. He became increasingly depressed and intimidated when Judge Endo called from time to time to remind him of the favor and the necessity of going to the grave, in this case Hollywood Cemetery, with the secret swap that had brought about Tittle's dream-come-true. Magistrate Tittle never told a soul.

He confessed his sin to God and swore to make restitution. Tittle took photographs no more. He resigned from the barter club. He reported its members to the IRS. He turned in the neighbor who illegally hooked up cable. Tittle exposed the lady in the grocery store who was trying to pass expired manufacturers' coupons. He admitted when something was his fault. He was humble and hardworking.

Magistrate Tittle became known for his zero tolerance of felons, fools, rotten kids and stupid cops. He was admired for his fairness and truth if one was unjustly accused. This was both good and bad for Officer Rhoad, who had not made an arrest in over twenty years. When Rhoad had flipped through the Virginia code, looking for charges to bring against Patty Passman, he had been certain Magistrate Tittle would empathize and go with life imprisonment with no TV or chances for appeals and lawsuits.

Tittle was reaching back to the coffeemaker to pour another cup, his grim gray suit jacket draped over a chair, when Officer Rhoad appeared at his window.

'I need to get some warrants,' Rhoad said.

'What makes you think I can see you right this minute?' said Tittle.

'Because you don't look busy, I guess.'

'Well, I am,' he said through the small opening in the bulletproof glass. 'I should make you sit over there for an hour or two, but I'm about to go home. So let's get this over with.'

Tittle shoved out a metal drawer. Rhoad placed his thick stack of arrest sheets in it. Tittle pulled them in and started looking through them. Tittle was silent for a long time while Rhoad watched through the glass.

'Officer?' Tittle finally spoke. 'You ever heard of piling on charges?'

'Certainly,' said Rhoad, who was used to quotas and assumed the magistrate was paying him a compliment.

'Use of police radio during commission of a crime,' Tittle started going through the charges.

'Obstructing justice. Subject did knowingly attempt to impede this officer from engaging in his duties.'

Tittle went to the next one. 'Using abusive language.'

'You should have heard her,' Rhoad said indignantly.

'Disorderly conduct in public places. Resisting or obstructing execution of legal process." Tittle peered up over his reading glasses. 'Crimes against nature?'

'She grabbed me.' Rhoad's face got hot.

'She carnally knew you by anus?'

'No, sir.'

'What about by mouth?'

'Just the things she said.'

'This isn't about things said, officer. What about bestiality?'

'Yes! She was a beast! She was awful!'

'Officer Rhoad,' Tittle said in a hard tone. 'Bestiality means screwing animals. No probable cause.' He tossed the arrest sheet in a to-be-shredded basket. 'Let's see.' He continued. 'Keeping, residing in or frequenting a body place.'

'She wouldn't let go,' Rhoad said, the memory clearly smarting.

'B-A-W-D-Y, not B-O-D-Y,' Tittle said slowly and deliberately as he tossed the report in the basket. 'Entering property of another for purpose of damaging it.'

'Same thing. She touched my property, sir.'

'What property, Officer Rhoad?'

'Well, my privates. She tried to damage my privates.'

That report went into the basket with the others.

Trespass after having been forbidden to do so,' Tittle read.

'I told her to stop.'

'Aggravated sexual assault. How did you arrive upon that one?'

'Because it was my privates she went after,' Rhoad reminded him.

'I suppose attempted rape is for the same reason.'

'What if it were you?'

'Sexual battery, rape. No probable cause,' Tittle said, strained. 'And oh. Here we have threatening the governor or his immediate family P'

'She said, "I'm going to find the governor or his wife or children or relatives. And then you'll be sorry!'"

Rhoad averted his eyes. He wasn't really sure of this one. So much was a blur now. Tittle balled up the arrest sheet and tossed it on the floor.

'Oral threats. Bodily injuries caused by prisoners. Assault and battery. Malicious bodily injury. Aggravated malicious wounding.'

Tittle balled up each sheet, pummeling them at the trash basket.

'Shooting, stabbing with intent to maim, kill. Failure to obey order of conservator of the peace. Treason. Treason?'

'Subject did resist the execution of the laws under color of its authority,' Rhoad cited. 'She levied war against the Commonwealth when she attacked me.'

'You need a therapist.'

'I'm a citizen of the Commonwealth, aren't I?' Rhoad argued.

'Why did this woman grab your genitals, Officer Rhoad?' Tittle had never met such an idiot in his life. 'Did she swoop in out of nowhere? Was she provoked? A spurned lover?'

'She tried to stop me from putting a parking ticket on her car,' Rhoad explained.

'I don't buy it.'

'Well,' Rhoad said, 'I'd done it a few times before.'

Brazil was wise enough to ask Governor Feuer to drop off his guest passengers a block from the police department, thus avoiding a scene that would be difficult, if not impossible, to explain.

'I'm going to take you to MCV,' Brazil said to Weed as they walked along the sidewalk. 'Then let's get your mother to come for you. You don't want to be locked up all night.'

'Yes I do,' Weed told him.

Brazil noticed Weed was very agitated, looking all around as if afraid someone was following them.

'You're not making any sense to me,' Brazil went on. 'And you know why?' He opened double glass doors on the lower lot of headquarters. 'Because you're not telling me everything, Weed. You're holding back.'

Weed had nothing to say. Brazil checked out a car and let the radio room know where he was going. He and Weed sat in MCV's emergency room, where Weed could not be treated without one of his parents being present. Weed's mother didn't answer the phone and she wasn't at work. Weed's father was out cutting grass somewhere and didn't return Brazil's call. Brazil's radio would not transmit from inside the hospital. He felt cut off from the world, angry, helpless and miserable.

Brazil finally had to get a judge to grant permission for treatment, which would have resolved the matter had there not been a school-bus accident midafternoon. The E.R. could not get to Weed until almost eleven P.M., when a nurse cleaned Weed's cut and put a butterfly bandage over it.

'I don't get it,' Brazil was saying to Weed as they drove back to headquarters. 'Are you sure you have a mother?'

The remark hurt Weed. Brazil could tell.

'She don't answer the phone very much, especially when she's sleeping, and she sleeps a lot in the day.'

'Why wouldn't she answer the phone otherwise?' "Cause Daddy's always calling. He says real mean things to her. I don't know why, and he has to have the number 'cause I stay with him sometimes.'

They parked in the back lot and Brazil escorted Weed inside the police department. They walked past the information desk and Weed didn't seem to care where he was being taken. His mood continued to sink.

'You know something,' Brazil told him. 'You know something big. Something so big you're scared, real scared.'

'I ain't scared of nothing,' Weed told him.

'We're all scared of something,' Brazil replied.

Handcuffed prisoners drifted in and out, heading to lockup, muttering, staggering and swaggering, some wearing sunglasses and cool clothes, many of them high or drunk. The air smelled of body odor, alcohol and marijuana. Brazil turned right, passing through another set of double doors. He opened one leading into a small drab room with desks built into the walls, and plastic chairs, and ugly green upholstered benches stained with unpleasant, recalcitrant life.

Brazil went to a phone and dialed the pager number of the intake officer on call. There was an old radio on a table and Brazil tuned it in to 98.1. He sat on top of a desk and looked at Weed.

'Talk to me,' Brazil said.

'Got nothing to say.' Weed sat on a bench.

'Why did you decide to paint the statue?'

'Felt like it.'

'Did someone tell you to do it? One of the Pikes?'

'I don't know nothing about Pikes.'

'Bullshit,' Brazil said. 'Where'd you get that number tattooed on your finger?'

A radio announcer was going on and on about the ATM homicide, and at first the news and the name of the victim did not penetrate Brazil's fatigue and frustration. Then he caught it.

'… confirmed her identity as a seventy-one-year-old Church Hill woman named Ruby Sink…'

'Wait a minute!' Brazil turned up the volume.

'… made a withdrawal at the ATM, was abducted and shot to death in her own car. A gang known as the Pikes has claimed responsibility. This is the same gang that claimed responsibility for the vandalism of Jefferson Davis's statue in Hollywood Cemetery…'

Brazil was beside himself. He paced furiously, his fists clenched. He was confused and disbelieving as he envisioned Ruby Sink and remembered when she had called him last.

'No!' he exclaimed. 'No/'

Brazil pounded the wall and kicked the trash can. It clanged across the floor, paper, fried chicken boxes and fast food wrappers spilling.

'How could someone do that to a helpless old woman!'

His last conversation with her sounded in his mind. He could hear her voice. He had used her to make West jealous. Brazil clenched his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms. He grabbed Weed by the shoulders.

'You know them, I know you do!' he said in fury. 'They just murdered someone, Weed! Someone I knew! Someone who never did anything to anybody! A human being with a name and a family and now people who loved her have to deal with what happened just like you do with Twister!'

Weed stared at him in shock.

'You're going to protect monsters like that?'

Brazil let go of Weed and walked across the room. Brazil tried to control himself. He was trembling, his heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his neck.

'I tried to tell you on the computer,' Weed said sadly.

Tell me? Tell me what?'

The fish map.'

Brazil's mind had an electrical outage.

'On AOL. A map with pikes on it,' Weed explained.

'Pikes as in fish?' Brazil came back.

'Uh huh. I did a papier-mache pike in Mrs. Grannis's class. Trying to tell somebody where they are.'

'Wait a minute.' Brazil pulled up a chair and sat down. The fish on the map. That's where the Pikes have their clubhouse?'

Weed nodded. 'In the back of Southside Motel. Behind a big piece of wood.'

'You've been there?'

'I didn't wanna be. I swear. But Smoke made me go and he hit me, too.' Weed wouldn't look up.

'Who is Smoke?' Brazil said.

'He broke in the garage and took all them guns. He made me go along and I held pillowcases for him. So I guess I get locked up for that and everything and I don't care 'cause if I go out, Officer Brazil, Smoke gonna kill me. I know it. He's looking for me now. That's why I told you to lock me up.'

'Do you know Smoke's real name?'

'He's just Smoke. Never heard no other name.'

'He go to school with you?'

'Uh huh.'

'And you don't know his real name?'

'He's a senior and I don't know no seniors except the ones in art class, and Smoke never been in one of my art classes. Not the band, either.'

'He get in a lot of trouble in school?' Brazil asked.

'I never even noticed him until he come looking for me and found me after school in the band room. He asked if I wanted a ride to school in the morning and something told me not to tell him no. And next thing he's talking about guns and the Pikes and how nobody in the school deserved to be a Pike except the ones he picked. He said he had special things to do.'

'Did he tell you what these special things were?'

'All he kept saying was everybody was going to know him. He'd be more famous than Twister ever was, 'cause there's still pictures of Twister and trophies in the glass cases so I guess that's how Smoke heard about him.'

'Think hard, Weed.' Brazil put his hands on Weed's shoulders. 'Was Smoke planning something that might make him famous? Maybe something bad?'

'I think he wants to shoot people,' Weed said.