"See you in the morning." Hammer dismissed them with a wave.
That was all they needed to hear. Each officer secretly keyed his mike, broadcasting several clicks over the air, signaling comrades everywhere that all was ten-four.
Only Unit 538 had unfinished business, and she followed Hammer into the rich, old house. They sat in the living room.
"Before you even start," Hammer said, "I'm going to tell you how this is going to be done."
"Yes, ma'am."
"There will be no implication that the right thing was not done here, that exceptions were made, because the subject involved happens to be married to me."
"Yes, ma'am."
"This is routine and will be worked according to the book."
"Yes, ma'am."
"My husband should be charged with reckless endangerment and discharging a firearm in the city limits," Hammer went on.
"Yes, ma'am."
Unit 538's handwriting was unsteady as she began filling out the accidental shooting report. This was amazing. Hammer must not like her husband much. Hammer was nailing him with the maximum charge, locking him up and throwing away the key. It just proved Unit 538's theory that women like Hammer got where they were by being aggressive hard asses They were men poured into the wrong form at the factory.
Hammer recited all the necessary information. She answered Unit 538's banal questions, and got the cop out as fast as possible.
Brazil remained seated at the kitchen table in Chief Hammer's house, wondering if anyone might have recognized his distinctive BMW parked out front. If the cops ran his tag, what would they think? Who was he here to see? He remembered with a sinking feeling that the condominiums Axel and friends lived in were just around the corner.
Cops with their suspicious minds might think Brazil had parked a street away, trying to fool everybody.
If word got back to Axel, he'd believe Brazil was stalking him, had a thing for him.
"Andy, let's wind this up." Hammer walked in.
"I sup pose it's too late to get this in the paper for tomorrow."
"Yes, chief. The city edition deadline was hours ago," Brazil replied, glancing at his watch, and startled that she would want a word of this in the paper.
"I'm going to need you to help me, and have to trust that you will, even after what happened with Channel Three," she said.
There was no one Brazil would rather assist.
Hammer looked at the clock on the wall, in despair. It was almost three a. m. She had to get to the hospital, whether Seth liked it or not, and she needed to be up in three hours. Hammer's body did not appreciate all-nighters anymore, but she would make it. She always did. Her plan was the best she could devise under circumstances which were truly extreme and upsetting. She knew tomorrow's news would bristle with Seth's bizarre shooting and what it might imply. She could not preempt the television and radio stations, but she could at least straighten out the facts the following day with a true, detailed account by Brazil.
Brazil was silent and stunned as he sat in the passenger's seat of Hammer's impeccable Crown Victoria. He took notes while she talked.
She told him all about her early life and why she had gone into law enforcement She talked about Seth, about what a support he had been as she was fighting her way through the ranks of what was truly a male militia. Hammer was exhausted and vulnerable, her personal life in shambles, and she had not been to a therapist in two years. Brazil had caught her at a remarkable time, and he was moved and honored by her trust. He would not let her down.
"It's a perfect example of the world not allowing powerful people to have problems," Hammer was explaining as she drove along Queens Road West, beneath a canopy of great oak trees.
"But the fact is, all people have problems. We have tempestuous and tragic phases in relationships we don't have time enough to tend to, and we get discouraged and feel we have failed."
Brazil thought she was the most wonderful person he had ever met.
"How long have you been married?" he asked.
"Twenty-six years."
She had known the night before her wedding that she was making a mistake. She and Seth had united out of need, not want. She had been afraid to go it alone, and Seth had seemed so strong and capable back then.
X. As he lay on his stomach in the ER, after X-rays and scrubbing and being rolled all over the place, Seth wondered how this could have happened. His wife had once admired him, valued his opinion, and laughed at his witty stories. They were never much in bed. She had far more energy and staying power, and no matter how he might have wanted to please, he simply could not carry her same tune, didn't have as many pages, usually was snoring by the time she'd returned from the bathroom, ready for the next act.
"Ouch!" he yelled.
"Sir, you're going to have to hold still," the stern nurse said for the hundredth time.
"Why can't you knock me out or something!" Tears welled in his eyes as he clenched his fists.
"Mr. Hammer, you're very fortunate." It was the triage surgeon's voice now, rattling X-rays that sounded like saw blades. She was a pretty little thing with long red hair. Seth was humiliated that her only perspective on him was his corpulent fanny that had never seen the sun.
The Carolinas Medical Center was famous for its triage, and patients were med-flighted in from all over the region. This early morning, helicopters were quiet silhouettes on red helipads centered by big His on rooftops, and shuttle buses moved slowly from parking lots to different areas of the massive concrete complex. The medical center's fleet of ambulances were teal and white, the colors of the Hornets and much of what filled Charlotte with pride.
The entire hospital staff knew that a V. I. P had arrived. There would be no waiting, no bleeding in chairs, no threatening, no shortcuts or neglect. Seth Hammer, as he had been erroneously registered and referred to most of his marriage, had been taken straight into the ER.
He had been rolled in and out of many rooms. He wasn't certain he understood the pretty surgeon's vernacular, but it seemed, according to her, that although the bullet's destruction of tissue had been significant, at least no major arteries or veins had been hit.
However, because he was a V. I. P, no chances could be taken. It was explained that medical personnel would do arteriography, and shoot him full of dye, and see what they found. Then they would give him a barium enema.
Hammer parked in a police slot outside the emergency room at not quite four a. m. Brazil had filled twenty pages in his notepad, and knew more about her than any reporter who had ever lived. She fetched her large pocketbook with its secret compartment, and took a deep breath as she got out. Brazil was struggling with his next question, but had to ask.
It was for her own good, too.
"Chief Hammer." He hesitated.
"Do you suppose I could get a photographer here to maybe get something of you on your way out of the hospital, later?"
She waved him off as she walked.
"I don't care."
The more she thought about it, the more she realized it didn't matter what he wrote. Her life was over. In the course of one short day, all was lost. A senator had been murdered, the fifth in a series of brutal slayings committed by someone the police were no closer to catching.
US Bank which owned the city, was at odds with her. Now her husband had shot himself in the ass while playing Russian roulette. The jokes would be endless. What did this suggest about where he assumed his most vital organ was, after all? Hammer would lose her job. What the hell. She may as well offer her two cents worth on her way out the door. Brazil had just gotten off a pay phone, and was walking fast to keep up with her.
"We'll also be running the Black Widow story, if there's a positive ID," he nervously reminded her.
She didn't care.
"I'm wondering," Brazil pushed his luck, 'if you'd have a problem with my slipping in a few details or two that might trick the killer. "
"What?" Hammer glanced blankly at him.
"You know, if I messed with him a little. Well, Deputy Chief West didn't think it was a good idea, either," he conceded.
The enlightened chief caught on to what he was suggesting, and was interested.
"As long as you don't release sensitive case details."
She fixed on the triage nurse in her console, and headed there. No introduction was necessary.
"He's on the way to the OR right now," the nurse said to the police chief.
"Do you want to wait?"
"Yes," Hammer decided.
"We have a private room the chaplain uses, if you'd like a little quiet," the nurse said to this woman who was one of her heroes.
"I'll just sit where everybody else does," Hammer said.
"Someone might need that room."
The nurse certainly hoped not. Nobody had died in the last twenty-four hours, and this had better not change on her shift. Nurses always got the raw end of that deal. Doctors suddenly vanished. They were off to their next bit of drama, leaving the nurses to take out tubes, tie on toe tags, wheel the body to the morgue, and deal with bereft relatives who never believed it and were going to sue. Hammer found two chairs in a corner of the reception area. There were maybe twenty distressed people waiting, most accompanied by someone trying to comfort them, most arguing, others moaning and bleeding into towels, or cradling broken limbs, and holding ice on burns. Almost all were weeping, or limping to the restroom, and drinking water from paper cups, and fighting another wave of nausea.
Hammer looked around, pained by what she saw. This was why she had chosen her profession, or why it had chosen her. The world was falling apart, and she wanted to help. She focused on a young man who reminded her of Randy, her son. The young man was alone, five chairs away. He was burning up with fever, sweating and shivering, and having a difficult time breathing. Hammer looked as his earrings, his chiseled face and wasted body, and she knew what was wrong with him. His eyes were shut as he licked cracked lips. It seemed everyone was sitting as far from him as possible, especially those leaking body fluids. Hammer got up. Brazil never took his eyes off her.
The triage nurse smiled at Hammer's approach.
"What can I do for you?"