West started pulling out and Brazil broke into a run, as if he were about to miss the school bus. Bledsoe looked surprised and annoyed for he hadn't finished talking, and West knew it was no accident that the councilman just happened to be out tonight while Andy Brazil, the experiment in community policing, was riding. Bledsoe would find his way into a story and impress his constituents this reelection year with how diligent and caring he was. CITY COUNCILMAN TAKES TIME TO RIDE WITH POLICE. She could see the headline now. Opening the glove box, she rummaged for a roll of Turns.
She stopped the car so Brazil could climb in. He wasn't even breathing hard and had just sprinted a good fifty yards. Reminders like that made West want to smoke.
"I told you not to talk to anyone," she said, lighting up.
"What was I supposed to do?" He was indignant.
"You walked off without me and he got in my face."
They passed more impoverished houses, most of them boarded up and not lived in anymore. Brazil was staring at West, thinking about Bledsoe calling her Superwoman.
"They made a mistake promoting you," Brazil said.
"That was really something, what you did back there."
West had been good at this once. Taking the sergeant's exam had been the first step toward paperwork and political correctness. If Hammer hadn't come to town, West was fairly certain she would have looked for some thing else.
"So tell me," Brazil was saying.
"Tell you what?" West asked, blowing out a stream of smoke.
"What did you say to him?" Brazil wanted to know.
"Say to who?"
"You know, the guy in the ambulance."
"Can't tell you."
"Come on. You said something that really pissed him off," Brazil insisted.
"Nope." West flicked an ash out the window.
"Oh, come on. What?"
"I didn't say anything."
"Yes you did."
"I called him a pussy," she finally confessed.
"And you can't print that."
"You're right," Brazil told her.
Chapter Four
The downtown skyline was huge around a terrible crime scene, minutes past ten p. m. Police were tense and sweating, their flashlights probing a parking lot behind an abandoned building, and an area overgrown with weeds where the black rental Lincoln had been abandoned. The driver's door was open, headlights burning, interior bell dinging a feeble warning that was too late. Detective Brewster had been called in from home and was standing near the Lincoln, talking on his portable phone. He was dressed in jeans and an old Izod shirt, his badge and a Smith amp; Wesson. 40 caliber pistol and extra magazines clipped to his belt.
"Looks like we got another one," he said to his in-transit boss.
"Can you give me a ten-thirteen?" West's voice sounded over the phone.
Ten-thirteen's still clear. " Brewster looked around.
"But not for long. What's your ten-twenty?"
"Dilworth. Heading your way on forty-nine. EOT ten- fifteen."
Vft Brazil had learned how to talk on the radio in the academy and understood codes and why Brewster and West were talking in them.
Something very bad had gone down, and they didn't want anyone else, a reporter for example, monitoring what they were saying. Basically, Brewster had let West know that the scene was still clear of people who shouldn't be there, but not for long. West was en route and would arrive in less than fifteen minutes.
West reached for the portable phone she had plugged into the cigarette lighter. She was on red alert, driving fast as she dialed a number.
Her conversation with Chief Hammer was brief.
West shot Brazil a severe look.
"Do everything you're told," she said.
"This is serious."
By the time they reached the crime scene, reporters had gathered in the night, all poised as Brazil's peers tried to get close to a terrible tragedy. Webb held a microphone, talking into a camera, his pretty face sincere and full of sorrow.
"No identification of the victim, who like the first three shot to death very close to here was driving a rental car," Webb taped for the eleven o'clock news.
West and Brazil were quiet and-determined as they made their way through. They avoided microphones jabbed their way, cameras rolling in their faces as they ducked and dodged and hurried. Questions flew all around them as if some fast-breaking news bomb had gone off, and Brazil was terrified. He was acutely self-conscious and embarrassed in a way he did not understand.
"Now you know what it's like," West said to him under her breath.
Bright yellow crime-scene tape stretched from woods to a streetlight.
Big black block letters flowed across it, repeating the warning
It barred reporters and the curious from the Lincoln and the senseless death beyond it. Just inside it was an ambulance with engine rumbling, cops and detectives everywhere with flashlights.
Video tape was running, flashguns going off, and crime-scene technicians were preparing the car to be hauled into headquarters for processing.
Brazil was so busy taking everything in and worrying about how close he was going to be allowed to get that he did not notice Chief Hammer until he walked into her.
"Sorry," Brazil muttered to the older woman in a suit.
Hammer was distressed and immediately began confer ring with West.
Brazil took in the short graying hair softly framing the pretty, sharp face, and the short stature and trim figure. He had never met the chief, but he suddenly recognized her from television and photographs he had seen. Brazil was awed, openly staring. He could get a terrible crush on this woman. West turned and pointed at him as if he were a dog.
"Stay," she commanded.
Brazil had expected as much but wasn't happy about it. He started to protest, but no one was interested. Hammer and West ducked under the tape, and a cop gave Brazil a warning look should he think about following. Brazil watched West and Hammer stop to investigate something on the old, cracked pavement. Bloody drag marks glistened in the beam of West's flashlight, and based on the small, smeared puddle just inches from the open car door, she thought she knew what had happened.
"He was shot right here," she told Hammer.
"And he fell." She pointed to the puddle.
"That's where his head hit. He was dragged by his feet."
Blood was beginning to coagulate, and Hammer could feel the heat of the throbbing lights and the night and the horror.
She could smell death. Her nose had learned to pick it up the first year she was a cop. Blood broke down fast, got runny around the edges and thick inside, and the odor was weirdly sweet and putrid at the same time. The trail led to a Gothic tangle of overgrown vines and pines, with a lot of weeds.
The victim looked middle-aged and had been dressed in a khaki suit wrinkled from travel when someone had ruined his head with gunshots.
Pants and Jockey shorts were down around fleshy knees, the familiar hourglass painted bright orange, leaves and other plant debris clinging to blood.
Dr. Wayne Odom had been the medical examiner in the greater Charlotte-Mecklenburg area for more than twenty years. He could tell that the spray-painting had occurred right where the body had been found, because a breeze had carried a faint orange mist up to the underside of nearby poplar leaves. Dr. Odom was reloading a camera with bloody gloved hands, and was fairly certain he was dealing with homosexual serial murders. He was a deacon at Northside Baptist Church and believed that an angry God was punishing America for its perversions.
"Damn it!" Hammer muttered as crime-scene technicians scoured the area for evidence.
West was frustrated to the point of fear.
"This is what? A hundred yards from the last one? I got people all over the place out here.
Nobody saw anything. How can this happen? "
"We can't watch the street every second of the day," Hammer angrily said.