'We're in my office. On the left, just past the bedroom.' She waited for him to go first as she continued to stand in front of the table.

Brazil was already getting a sick feeling. He didn't want to see what was on the table. He walked past the bedroom and refused to look inside. He entered West's office and didn't look around. Hammer was sitting close to the desk, reading glasses on, eyes fixed on the strange map on the computer screen.

'What were you saying to that woman in the Jeep?' Hammer asked him right off. 'The one whose parking place I took.'

'I told her she was in a garbage zone.'

'A what?' West said as she walked in.

'Where trucks pull in and out all night as they make their rounds to restaurant Dumpsters. I showed her my badge and she complied.'

'You probably shouldn't have done that,' Hammer told him. 'You got anything to drink in this house, Virginia?'

'Good stuff?'

'I'm driving my police car.'

Brazil found a chair and set it down near Hammer.

'Water and Sprite,' West said.

'What about Perrier?' Hammer asked.

'Not since the benzene scare.'

'That's ridiculous, Virginia. When chickens get avian flu, do you never eat them again?'

'Has that happened recently? I got Diet Coke.'

'Tap water is fine,' Hammer said. 'Andy, we've been sitting here talking and not getting anywhere at all. Do you have a clue as to what this is about? Please explain how fish got into COMSTAT.'

'Well, they didn't, not directly, Chief Hammer,' Brazil said. 'And I'd love some water, too,' he said to West. 'But I can get it. I can get Chief Hammer's, too, if you want. I'd be happy to.'

'I'll do it. And don't be so polite, it makes me sick.'

'I'm sorry.' Brazil was polite again.

It was awful being inside West's home and reminded that she had never invited him over, not even once since they had moved to Richmond. It was the first time he had seen her in anything but business suits or running clothes, and she was wearing the worn-out jeans that had always driven him crazy. Her gray tee shirt was made out of really soft cotton that clung to every contour of full breasts he was no longer allowed to see, much less touch. He ached all over.

'If you look at the top of the screen here.' He ran his finger across the monitor, addressing Hammer as if West had been caught up in the rapture, never to be seen again. This tells you what we're looking at is our website, because that's its address.'

'No,' Hammer said in disbelief.

' 'Fraid so,' Brazil said.

Hammer and West bent close to the screen and stared in shock at: http://www/sen__orrin__hatch__r__utah.govsen__bill_ _ 10/sen__judic__commit/dept__justice/nij/nypd__I__p ol__plaza/comstat/comp__map__center__dc/interpol/s cot__yrd/fbi/atf/ss/dea/cia/va__nat__guard/va_state__ pol/va__corn__dept/va__crim__just__serv/juv__just__s erv/va__att gen/va__gov__off/va__dept__health/va__ dept__safety/city__mang/gsa/city__hall/city__counc//ric h__pol__dept/off__pub__info/qa/rich__times__disp/ap/ upi/link_ntwk/all_rights_resrv/classfyd/asneed/othr%vyz /pub__domain.html 'Andy, I've never seen such shit as this,' Hammer exclaimed. 'Please don't tell me this is how the public accesses our website.'

'I'm afraid that's it,' Brazil told her anyway.

'How the hell do you expect anyone to remember something like that?' West asked, scowling at the screen.

Brazil ignored her. 'At least it works,' he said. 'We know that much since we've gotten some responses.'

'But why the hell is ours so goddamn complicated?'

Hammer wanted to know. 'How many responses are we going to get with an address like that?' She paused for a minute, a shadow falling over her face. 'Don't tell me Fling had something to do with this.'

Silence.

'Oh God,' Hammer muttered.

'Well,' Brazil answered her, 'you wanted this ASAP, Chief Hammer. It was a matter of finding gateways to pass through en route to our website, sort of the way mail is routed here and there before it finally gets to you, or the way you may have to change planes at four different airports before you get where you need to go…'

'Oh great,' West said. 'So Fling has people going to fifty different airports just to get from one end of the city to the other. He has the post office routing a letter through twenty different states just to travel two blocks.'

To give Fling a little credit, the more gateways, the more secure your system is,' Brazil said objectively.

'Ha!' West really snorted this time. 'We're safe, all right! The damn website's been up and running for a few days and we have fucking fish all over the place and are locked out of COMSTATT 'It would also seem to me,' Hammer followed the bread crumbs of what little logic there seemed to be in this dark forest, 'that the security situation is rather much the opposite of what you said, Andy. It would seem to me that the more gateways, the more possibility of outsiders getting in. Like doors in your house. The fewer the better.'

There's that side of it, too,' Brazil agreed. 'Look, to be honest, I had no idea Fling put together an address like that until it was too late.'

Hammer peered at the screen some more. Her disgust grew.

'Let me make sure I've got this straight,' she said. The first gateway to our small Richmond website is Senator Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the judiciary committee, the patron of Senate Bill 10?'

'Yes,' Brazil replied calmly as he imagined pepper-spraying Fling and throwing him off an overpass.

'What does the Violent and Repeat Juvenile Offender Act of 1997 have to do with our website, Andy?' Hammer demanded.

Brazil didn't have a clue.

'And from that we go through Interpol and Scotland Yard? And FBI, ATF, DBA, Secret Service and CIA gateways?'

Hammer got up abruptly and began pacing.

'And NYPD at One Police Plaza? And the Virginia governor's office? And goddamn city hall, yada, yada, yada?'

She threw up her hands in despair.

'Is there any fucking place on the earth where inquiries from the Richmond public won't land before they get to our website?' Hammer's voice rose dangerously.

Niles fled out from under the table, where he had been asleep on top of West's foot.

'Look!' Brazil could take no more. 'I had nothing to do with the Internet address, okay? All the important programming was done by NIJ's Computer Mapping Center. Fling was just supposed to come up with a very simple address.'

'And now we have fish!' Hammer exclaimed.

'We don't know that the address has anything to do with the fish getting in.' Brazil didn't believe what he was saying. 'They might have gotten in anyway, no matter how short the address.'

West got up for another Miller.

'Let's forget the address shit for a minute,' she called out from the kitchen. 'This web thing is new.'

'As new as slick-soled shoes,' Brazil said to Hammer instead of answering West.

West glared at him as she returned to the table. She hated it when he made analogies. She hated it more when he pretended she was a lamp, a chair, some mundane object he didn't notice.

'Yes, it's exactly like that,' said Hammer, who had slipped across marble and hardwood quite enough in life whenever new shoes had all-leather soles that needed to be roughed up by bricks, pavement or perhaps a serrated knife.

'So how does somebody know enough about our brand-new website to download fish?' West asked. 'I mean, come on. We all know damn well the fucking Fling address is how the fish got in.'

'That's a very good point,' said Hammer.

'The op-ed that ran Sunday a week ago. Remember? I said we were starting a web page so citizens could write in their questions, concerns, complaints, whatever. They were told the new address would be ready in a couple days and they could call HQ for it. Obviously Fling gave it out.'