Southern Cross

'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.