his sole intention to rape a woman home alone. Was it resentment that fired such cruelty? An up yours to the rich? Brazil tried to put himself in the mind set of such a young violent man as he watched lighted windows flow past.
He realized the rapist had probably done exactly what Brazil was doing this night. He would have browsed, stalked, but most likely on foot.
He would have spied and planned, the actual awful act incidental to the fantasy of it. Brazil could not think of much worse than to be sexually violated. He had been scorned by enough rednecks in his brief life to fear rape as a woman might. He would never forget what Chief Briddlewood of Davidson security told him once. Don't ever go to jail, boy. You won't stand up straight the whole time you're there.
The wreck was right about where Selwyn and the various Queens Roads got confused, and Brazil recognized the scene instantly as he approached. What he had not' expected was the Nissan pulled off the street. As he got closer, he was shocked to realize Officer Michelle Johnson inside it, crying in the dark. Brazil parked on the shoulder.
He got out and walked toward the officer's personal car, his footsteps sure and directed, as if he were in charge of whatever was going on.
He stared through the driver's window, transfixed by the sight of Johnson crying, and his heart began to thud. She looked up and saw him and was startled. She grabbed her pistol, then realized it was that reporter. She relaxed but was enraged. She rolled her window down.
"Get the fuck away from me!" she said.
He stared at her and could not move. Johnson cranked the engine.
"Vultures! Fucking vultures!" she screamed.
Brazil was frozen. He was acting so oddly and atypically for a reporter that Johnson was taken aback. She lost interest in leaving. She did not move, as they stared at each other.
"I want to help." Brazil was impassioned.
A streetlight shone on broken glass and black stains on pavement, and illuminated the gouged tree the Mercedes had been wrapped around.
Fresh tears started. Johnson wiped her face with her hands, her humiliation complete as this reporter continued to watch her. She heaved and moaned, as if overwhelmed by a seizure, and was aware of the pistol that could end all of it.
"When I was ten," the reporter spoke, 'my dad was a cop here. About your age when he got killed on duty. Sort of like you feel you've been. "
Johnson looked up at him as she wept.
"Eight-twenty-two p.m." March twenty-ninth. A Sun day. They said it was his fault," Brazil went on, his voice trembling.
"Was in plain clothes, followed a stolen car out of his district, wasn't supposed to make a traffic stop in Adam Two. The backup never got there. Not in time. He did the best he could, but…" His voice caught, and he cleared his throat.
"He never had a chance to tell his story."
Brazil stared off into the dark, furious at a street, at a night, that had robbed him of his life, too. He pounded his fist on top of the car.
"My dad wasn't a bad cop!" he cried.
Johnson had gotten strangely quiet, and felt empty inside.
"I'd rather be him," she said.
"I'd rather be dead."
"No." Brazil bent down, at her eye level.
"No." He saw her left hand on the steering wheel, and the wedding band she wore. He reached in and gripped her arm.
"Don't leave anybody behind," he said.
"I turned in my badge today," Johnson told him.
They made you do that? " he protested. There's no evidence you…"
"No one made me. I did it," she cut him off. They think I'm a monster! " She broke down more.
Brazil was determined.
"We can change that," he said.
"Let me help."
She unlocked her car and he got in.
Chapter Ten
Chief Hammer was watering her plants when West walked in the next morning. West carried coffee and another healthy breakfast from Bojangles, this time a sausage-egg biscuit and Bo-Rounds, for a little variety. The chief's phone was going crazy, but Hammer was busy atomizing orchids. She glanced up without a greeting. Hammer was well known for one-two punch announcements in her faint Arkansas accent.
"So." She sprayed.
"He gets in a pursuit, resulting in two arrests.
Single-handedly cracking a string of Radio Shack burglaries that has plagued the city for eight months. "
She examined an exotic white blossom, and sprayed again. Hammer was striking in a black silk suit with subtle pinstripes, and a black silk blouse with a high collar, and black onyx beads. West loved the way her boss dressed. West was proud to work for a woman who looked so sharp and had good legs, and was decent to people and plants, and could still kick butt with the best of them.
"And he somehow managed to get the truth from Johnson." Hammer nodded at the morning paper on her desk.
"Clearing up this notion that she's responsible for those poor people's deaths. Johnson's not going to quit."
Hammer moved over to a calamondin tree near a window and plucked dead leaves from bushy branches that always bore fruit.
"I talked to her this morning," she went on.
"All this, and Brazil wasn't even riding with us." She stopped what she was doing, and looked up at her deputy chief.
"You're right. He can't be out by himself. God knows what he'd do if he had a uniform on. I wish I could transfer him to another city about three thousand miles from here."
West smiled as her boss worried about spider mites and quenched a corn plant with a small plastic watering can.
"What you wish," West said to her, 'is that he worked for you. " Paper crackled as she dug into her Bojangles bag.
"You eat too much junk," Hammer told her.
"If I ate all the crap you do, I'd be a medicine ball."
"Brazil called me," West finally got around to this as she folded back a greasy wrapper.
"You know why he was behind that Radio Shack?"
"No." Hammer started on African violets, glancing curiously at West.
Five minutes later. Hammer was walking with purpose down a long hallway on the first floor. She did not look friendly. Police she passed stared and nodded. She reached a door and opened it. Uniformed officers inside the roll call room were startled to see their well-dressed leader walk in. Deputy Chief Jeannie Goode was in the midst of briefing dozens of the troops about her latest concerns.
"All, I mean all inquiries get routed to the duty captain…" Goode was saying before the vision of Hammer walking toward her cut the meeting short. Goode knew trouble when she saw it.
"Deputy Chief Goode," Hammer said for all to hear.
"Do you know what harassment is?"
The color drained from Goode's face. She thought she might faint, and leaned against the blackboard while cops stared, paralyzed. Goode could not believe the chief was about to dress her down in front of thirty-three lowly David One street cops, two sergeants, and one captain.
"Let's go upstairs to my office," Goode suggested with a weak smile.
Hammer stood in front of her troops and crossed her arms. She was very calm when she replied, "I think every one could benefit from this. It has been reported to me that officers tailed an Observer reporter all over the city."
"Says who?" Goode challenged.
"Him? And you believe him?"
"I never said it was a him," Hammer informed her.
The chief paused for a long time and the silence in the room gave Goode chills. Goode thought about the pink Kaopectate tablets in her desk drawer. The third floor seemed very far away.
"One more time." Hammer looked at everyone.
"It will cost you."
High heels snapped as she walked out. When she tried to reach Andy Brazil at home, someone else answered the phone. The woman was either drunk or did not have her teeth in, perhaps both. Hammer hung up and tried Panesa.
"Judy, I will not have my reporters intimidated, bullied…" Panesa jumped right in.
"Richard, I know," Hammer simply said, staring out at the skyline, and discouraged.
"Please accept my apology and my promise that something like this will not happen again. I'm also giving Brazil a special commendation for his assisting the police last night."
"When?"
"Immediately."
"And we can put that in the paper," Panesa said.
Hammer had to laugh. She liked this man.
"Tell you what," Hammer said.
"You put that in the paper, but do me a favor. Leave out the part about why Brazil was hiding in an alleyway."
Panesa had to think about this for a moment. Generally, cops abusing their power, harassing a citizen, was a much better story than something positive, such as a citizen helping, or making a difference by doing the right thing, and demonstrating community responsibility and being appreciated for it.
"Now listen," Hammer spoke again.
"It happens again, then run it one-A, Richard, okay? I wouldn't blame you. But don't punish the entire police department because of one asshole."