'So which is it?' Yates wanted to know.

'Misdemeanor, class one,' Brazil said. 'We don't know how much cleaning up the statue's going to cost. If it's more than a thousand dollars, we'll deal with it at the trial.'

Weed was staring wide-eyed at Brazil. It was obvious Weed did not understand. He was terrified.

'Hearing's set for Friday,' Yates went on. 'He got someone…?'

'I want the hearing in the morning,' Brazil interrupted. 'It's really important, Charlie.'

'Hey, no big deal.' It made no difference to Yates.

It did to Brazil. He knew from this month's court calendar that Judge Maggie Davis was on the bench. She had a policy that her courtroom was not open to the public unless the juvenile had committed a felony, and the last thing Brazil wanted was Weed's hearing open to the public. He didn't want some reporter making the rounds and walking in. He didn't want anyone except the attorneys and judge to hear what he and Weed might have to say.

'He got someone to pick him up tonight and take him home?' Yates was asking.

'We haven't been able to locate his mother.'

She was in the operating room and could not be disturbed, not that Brazil had tried very hard. Weed didn't want to go home and Brazil didn't want him to, either.

There's no beds in detention. I just checked,' Yates said.

'Never are,' Brazil replied.

'So if he can't go home, he's going to end up in a holding cell until the morning.'

That's fine,' Brazil said, not taking his eyes off Weed. 'As soon as you can get here, I'll sign the petition and take him on over. And try to make it fast, Charlie. There's a lot going on.'

Weed had an intake room without much of a view, a cell no bigger than a closet, everything stainless steel, including the bed. He could not sleep. He stared out a small grate and watched other kids brought in who reminded him of Sick, Beeper, Divinity and Dog. No one reminded him of Smoke. Smoke didn't look like what he was.

It was dark when Officer Brazil had transported Weed to this place. They called it the Juvenile Detention Home, but it wasn't like any home Weed had ever been in. He couldn't see what the outside of it was like but he knew it was in a bad part of town, because right before he'd gotten here they'd driven past the jail. It was all lit up, rolls of razor wire shining like knife blades waiting to cut someone. Weed's stomach got hollow and he had a cold feeling in his heart.

Weed was still mad they had made him take off all his clothes and go into the shower. When he came out they had a uniform for him to wear. It was nothing to make Weed proud. He was reminded of what his daddy wore cleaning out gutters and clipping hedges when he wasn't gambling away what he earned.

'Hey!' Weed banged on the door.

Someone was cussing and a deputy was telling a cocky badass boy everything he had done wrong and why he was going to pay for it.

'Hey!' Weed pounded the metal door with his fist, standing on his tiptoes to see through the grate.

Suddenly a deputy was in his face, nothing but a crisscross of metal between them. Weed could smell cigarettes and onions on his breath.

'You got a problem?' the deputy asked.

'I wanna see my police officer,' Weed told him.

'Yo!' the deputy called out. 'He wants to see his po-lice officer!'

Laughter and bad-mouthing followed.

'What, you got your own personal po-lice officer?' the deputy smarted off to Weed. 'Now ain't that something.'

'He's the one who brought me in,' Weed said. 'Tell him I got to talk to him.'

'You can tell him in court.'

'When's that?'

'Nine in the morning.'

'I need to find out if he called my mama!' Weed exclaimed.

'Maybe you should've thought about your mama before you broke the law,' the deputy said.

Chapter Thirty-Three

At shortly after three A.M. a SWAT team raided the Pikes' clubhouse at the Southside Motel and found the room abandoned. Police recovered no guns or ammunition. They found nothing but liquor and trash and filthy mattresses.

Brazil was on one phone, West on another, each of them in a cubicle inside the detective division. Brazil had called Godwin's principal, Mrs. Lilly, at home, and when she realized what it was about, she met the registrar at the high school and they started going through records.

Eventually they figured out that Smoke's real name was Alex Bailey, but the address listed in his school records didn't exist, the phone number didn't work, and there was no photograph of him on file. Although the yearbook wasn't out yet, a check of those who had gotten their pictures taken for it did not include him. All anyone really knew was the classes he had been in and that last summer he had moved here from Durham, North Carolina, where the obscure private high school he supposedly had transferred from didn't exist.

Brazil called every Bailey in the city directory, waking people up. No one seemed to have a family member named Alex who went to Godwin High School.

'How the hell did he get away with it?' Brazil said to West. 'He uses a bogus address, phone number, name of his former high school and who knows what else.'

West was smoking a Carlton. She'd sort of quit months ago, but at times like this she needed a friend.

'Who's going to check?' she said. 'You ever had your high school call you at home or come see you?'

'I don't remember.'

'Well, I sure as hell didn't. Most people don't unless they get in trouble. And it sounds like he was just your average kind of keep-to-yourself nobody until a couple weeks ago. Then he cuts classes or doesn't show up at all. Maybe the school starts calling. But guess what? By then it's too late.'

'I wonder what his parents know.' Brazil reached for his Styrofoam cup of what once was drinkable coffee.

'Denial. Maybe protecting him. Don't want to face it and never have. No question in my mind this kid's not new to the system. No pictures of him anywhere, including the yearbook, just like all these other little felons, so we don't know what they look like. I bet you anything he's got a record in North Carolina, probably transferred from Dillon High School.' She sarcastically referred to the juvenile training school in Butner, North Carolina. 'His fucking family probably moved him here when he turned sixteen and all his records were expunged. So the asshole gets to start all over again, clean as a Boy Scout.'

Brazil swirled the coffee in his cup. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

'So. You going to bother going to bed tonight?' West said.

'There's no night left,' Brazil said.

'You want to come over, maybe scramble up a few eggs or something?'

Sadness walked through Brazil's eyes.

'As long as we stop at my house first,' he said. There's something I've got to get.'

The Azalea Motel on Northside's Chamberlayne Avenue was not where the police would have expected to find Smoke. He also liked the irony of the name, since the Azalea Parade was the day after tomorrow. Smoke had big plans.

He sat on his single bed in his single room and thought where he was staying wasn't much better than the clubhouse. The Azalea Motel was the sort of place where people did drugs and got murdered and nobody cared. Smoke got room 7 for twenty-eight dollars a night. He stared blankly at the TV and drank vodka from a plastic cup. Smoke had been monitoring the news. At five after six A.M., his phone rang.

'What,' he answered.

It was Divinity.

'Baby, they raided our place just like you said they would,' she told him in an excited voice.

Smoke smiled as he stared at the trash bags full of guns and ammunition in the corner.

'Sick and me parked the car at the dirty bookstore and we was in the woods watching, you know, baby. It was all we could do not to laugh. Them busting in there with all their stuff on and big guns and all. You sure was right about getting out when we did, sugar. But I wanna know when I'm gonna see you, huh?'