West recognized top quality. She knew all the brands and how much they cost. She was curious. She was envious.
'And you have no alarm system,' Brazil said.
The "No Trespassing" sign and the bell in the driveway. I can hear anybody drive in.'
'I didn't know they used those anymore,' Brazil said.
'Muskrat's Auto Rescue has a bunch of them,' Bubba said.
'What about your dog?' West asked.
'Half Shell bawls all day and night. Nobody listens to her anymore.'
'So Half Shell and the gas-station bell were your only alarm system?' West gave him a skeptical look.
Bubba could tell she wasn't impressed with him. He was suddenly conscious of how pretty she was. Bubba felt fat, dirty, unattractive and inferior. He felt the way he had most of his life. Deputy Chief West saw through his guns and tools and home repairs. She saw Bubba as a persecuted little boy with an awful name and a world that ridiculed him. Bubba could see it in her eyes. It suddenly occurred to him that she might have gone to school with him.
'Are you from around here?' he asked her.
'No,' she said.
'You sure?'
'What do you mean, am I sure?'
He was paranoid and obsessed. He had to be convinced.
'So you're not from Richmond,' he said.
'No.' She was getting curt with him.
'It's just that you look like someone I went to school with whose name was Virginia,' Bubba lied.
'We didn't go to school together,' West told him.
'Did the burglar or burglars urinate in here?' Brazil asked.
'Yes.' Bubba pointed. 'Does that mean something?'
'Oftentimes burglars urinate or defecate in the place they've broken into,' West explained. 'It's part of an MO, and may or may not matter.'
Brazil made a note of it.
The sort of thing your police computer might have picked up on if it didn't have the fish virus,' Bubba said. 'I heard about it on the news when I was driving home. So you won't be able to check for a pattern.'
'Don't you even worry about it.' Brazil avoided the subject. 'You got a list of the guns and their serial numbers?'
'I got them all at Green Top,' Bubba said. 'Never buy guns anywhere else.'
'That helps,' Brazil said. 'But I want to list on the report what's missing so the detective can follow up.'
'I guess you won't be able to use the computer to see if someone else got broken into like this,' Bubba said, disappointed. 'Because of the fish problem.'
'Don't worry about how we do our jobs,' Brazil told him. 'Now, about the list.'
'One Browning Buck Mark Bullseye.22,' Bubba recalled, 'a Taurus eight-shot M608.357, Smith and Wesson Model 457 alloy frame.45 ACP and its Bianchi Avenger holster, a Pachmayr pocket cleaning kit, a mini-Clock G26 nine-millimeter with night sights, Sig P226 nine by nineteen millimeter, same thing used by Navy SEALs. Let's see. What else?'
'Jesus,' West said.
Brazil was writing at top speed.
'A Daisy Model 91 Match pistol, air gun, in other words. Ruger Blackhawk.357 revolver, and a couple Ruger competition handguns.'
'Are you a competition shooter?' West asked.
'Haven't had time,' Bubba said.
'Is that it?' Brazil asked.
'I just got a M9 Special Edition nine mil, fifteen-round clips, still in the box. It makes me sick. I never even got to try it out. And I had a bunch of speed loaders and about twenty boxes of cartridges. Most of them Winchester Silvertips.'
'What about anything else?' West asked.
'It's hard to tell,' Bubba said. 'But the only other thing I'm not seeing anywhere is my Stanley tool belt. It's really nice. Black nylon with a padded yellow belt, lightweight and not as hot as leather. Can fit everything but the kitchen sink.'
'I've always wanted one of those,' West confessed. They cost about sixty bucks.'
'That's if you get a discount,' Bubba said.
'What about suspects?' Brazil had gotten to that part of the report. 'Anybody you think might have done this?'
'It had to be somebody who knew what I had inside my shop,' Bubba said. 'And the door wasn't forced, so the person had a remote, too.'
'That's interesting,' Brazil commented.
'You can buy them at Sears,' West said, looking up at the retracted Sears garage door. 'Mr. Fluck, I'm going to see to it that a detective comes by before the day's out to look for any possible evidence, prints, tool marks, whatever.'
'My prints will be in here,' Bubba worried.
'We'll have to print you, now that you mention it, to know what's yours and what's not,' West said.
They walked out of the workshop, careful where they stepped. Half Shell was bawling and jumping in circles.
'Thank Chief Hammer again for me,' Bubba said, following West and Brazil to their car.
'Again?' Brazil looked baffled. 'Have you spoken to her?'
'Not directly,' Bubba said.
Chapter Nineteen
Hammer was extremely sensitive to racial issues and had studied the Richmond metropolitan area's thoroughly. She knew it wasn't so long ago that blacks couldn't join various clubs or live in certain neighborhoods. They couldn't use golf courses or tennis courts or public pools. Change had been slow and in many ways was deceptive.
Memberships and neighborhood associations began to accept blacks, and in some cases women, but making it off the waiting list or feeling comfortable was another matter. When the future first black governor of Virginia tried to move into an exclusive neighborhood, he was turned down. When a statue of Arthur Ashe was erected on Monument Avenue, it almost caused another war.
Chief Hammer was worried as she and administrative assistant Fling drove through Hollywood Cemetery to inspect the damage and find out if the descriptions of it were exaggerated. They weren't. Hammer parked on Davis Circle, where the painted bronze statue was clearly visible in the distance, rising amid a background of magnolias and evergreens, small Confederate flags fluttering at the marble base, the perimeter secured with yellow crime-scene tape.
'Looks like he's hogging the basketball and won't pass it to anyone,' Fling observed. 'He looks kind of stuck-up, too.'
'He was,' Hammer commented.
She stifled laughter, her blood fluttering with peals of it that were almost impossible to suppress. The statue of Davis had always been described as having a proud and haughty air. He had worn the southern gentleman's dress typical of his day, before the graffiti artist, remarkably, had transformed the long coat into a baggy jersey and voluminous shorts to the knees. Trousers had become muscular legs and athletic socks. Boots had been turned into hightop Nikes.
Hammer and Fling got out of the Crown Victoria as the throaty roar of a black Mercedes 420E came up from behind. The sedan, with its sunroof and saddle interior, swerved around Hammer's car and parked in front of it.
'Shit,' Hammer said as Lelia Ehrhart gathered something off the Mercedes's front seat and opened her door. 'Where's the interpreter?'
Although Ehrhart had been born in Richmond, she had spent most of her growing-up years in Vienna, Austria, where her father, Dr. Howell, a wealthy, prominent music historian, had labored for years on an unauthorized psychological biography of the very gentle, sensitive Mozart and his fear of the trumpet. Later the family had moved to Yugoslavia where Dr. Howell explored the subliminal influence of music on the Nemanjic dynasty. German was Lelia Ehrhart's first language, Serbo-Croatian followed, then English. She spoke nothing well and had combined the three, stirring and folding, as if making a cake.
For a moment, Ehrhart stood, transfixed by the statue, her lips slightly parted in shock. She wore yellow Escada jeans, a full yellow-striped blouse with an E on the breast pocket, a black belt studded with brass butterflies and shoes to match. Although Hammer mostly wore Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan, she knew other designers and recognized that the butterflies were several seasons old. This gave Hammer a little satisfaction, but not enough.