the nurse said.

"Who's the young man over there?" Hammer pointed.

"He's got some sort of respiratory infection." The nurse became clinical.

"I'm not allowed to release names."

"I can get his name from him myself," Hammer told her.

"I want a large glass of water with a lot of ice, and a blanket. And when might your folks get around to seeing him? He looks like he could pass out any minute, and if he does, I'm going to know about it."

Some seconds later. Hammer was returning to the waiting area with water and a soft folded blanket. She sat next to the young man and wrapped him up. He opened his eyes as she held something to his lips.

It was icy cold and wet and felt wonderful. Warmth began to spread over him, and his shivering calmed as his feverish eyes focused on an angel. Harrel Woods had died, and he was relieved as he drank the water of life.

"What's your name?" the angel's voice sounded from far away.

Woods wanted to smile, but his lips bled when he tried.

"Do you have a driver's license with you?" the angel wanted to know.

It blearily occurred to him that even Heaven required a picture ID these days. He weakly zipped open his black leather butt pack, and handed the license to the angel. Hammer wrote down the information, in the event he might need a shelter somewhere, if he ever got out of here, which wasn't likely. Two nurses were making their way to him with purpose, and Harrel Woods was admitted to the ward for AIDS patients. Hammer returned to her chair, wondering if she might find coffee somewhere. She digressed more about helping people.

She told Brazil that when she was growing up, it was all she had wanted to do in life.

"Unfortunately, policing seems to be part of the problem these days," she said.

"How often do we really help?"

"You just did," Brazil said.

She nodded.

"And that's not policing, Andy. That's humanity. And we've got to bring humanity back into what we do, or there's no hope. This is not about politics or power or merely rounding up offenders.

Policing always has been and always must be about all of us getting along and helping each other. We're one body. "

tw Seth's body was in dire straits in the OR. His arteriogram was fine and he hadn't leaked any barium from his bowels, but because he was a V. I. P, no chance would be taken. They had draped and prepped him, and he was face down again, and nurses had pierced his tender flesh repeatedly with excruciatingly painful injections and a Foley catheter, to relieve pain and check his urine for blood, or so he thought he overheard. They had rolled in a tank of nitrogen and connected it to a tube. They began subjecting him to what they called a Simpulse irrigation, which was nothing more than a power wash with saline and antibiotics. They were blasting him with three thousand ccs, suctioning, debriding, as he complained.

Tut me under! " he begged.

There was too much risk.

"Anything!" he whined.

They compromised and gave him an amnesiac they called Midazolam, which did not relieve pain, but caused it to be forgotten, it seemed.

Although the bullet was located on the X-ray, they would never locate it in so much fat, not without dicing Seth as if he were destined for a chef salad, the surgeon knew. Her name was Dr. White. She was a thirty-year-old graduate of Harvard and Johns Hopkins, and had done her residency at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. White would not have been as concerned about leaving the bullet were it the typical semi-jacketed, round-nosed variety.

But hollowpoints opened like a flower on impact. The deformed missile in the chief's husband had cut a swath, exactly as planned by Remington, and might continue to do damage after the fact. Without question, it put him at considerable risk for infection. Dr. White made an incision so the wound could drain, and it was packed and dressed.

The sun was rising by the time Dr. White met Chief Hammer in recovery, where Seth was groggy, lying on his side, tethered by IV lines, a curtain drawn to give him the privacy afforded VIPs, as set by the medical center's unwritten policy.

"He should be fine," Dr. White was saying to Hammer.

"Thank God," Hammer said with relief.

"I want to keep him overnight in isolation, and continue the IV antibiotics. If he spikes a fever during the first twenty-four hours, we'll keep him longer."

"And that could happen." Hammer's fears returned.

Dr. White could not believe she was standing here and the police chief was looking to her for answers. Dr. White had read every article written about this incredible woman. Hammer was what Dr. White wanted to be when Dr. White was older and powerful. Caring, strong, goodlooking, kick-ass in pearls. Nobody pushed Hammer around. It wasn't possible that Hammer put up with the same shit Dr. White did, from the old boy surgeons. Most were graduates of Duke, Davidson, Princeton, and UVA, and wore their school bow ties to the symphony and cocktail parties. They didn't think twice when one of their own took a day off to boat on Lake Norman or play golf. But should Dr. White need a few hours to go to her gynecologist, to visit her sick mother, or give in to the flu, it was another example of why women didn't belong in medicine.

"Of course, we're not expecting any problem," Dr. White was reassuring Hammer.

"But there is extensive tissue damage." She paused, searching for a diplomatic way to explain.

"Ordinarily, a bullet of that power and velocity would have exited, when fired at such close range. But in this case, there was too much mass for the bullet to pass through."

The only image that came to Hammer's mind was tests the firearms examiners conducted by shooting into massive shimmering blocks of ballistic jelly, manufactured by Knox. Brazil was still taking notes.

Nobody cared. He was such a respectful, helpful presence, he could have continued following Hammer for years and it would not have been a problem. It was entirely possible she would not have been fully cognizant of it. If her imminent termination were not an inevitability, she might have assigned him to her office as an assistant.

Hammer spent little time with her husband. He was checked out on morphine, and would have nothing to say to her were this not the case. She held his hand for a moment, spoke quiet words of encouragement, felt terrible about all of it, and was so angry with him she could have shot him herself. She and Brazil headed out of the hospital as the region headed to work. He hung back to allow the Observer photographer to get dramatic shots of her walking out the ER entrance, head down, grimly following the sidewalk as a Medvac helicopter landed on a nearby roof. Another ambulance roared in, and paramedics rushed to get another patient out as Hammer made her way past.

That photograph of her by the ambulance, a helicopter landing in the background, her eyes cast down and face bravely tragic, was sensational. The next morning, it was staring out from racks, boxes, and stacks of papers throughout the greater Charlotte-Mecklenburg area. Brazil's story was the most stunning profile of courage Packer had ever seen. The entire metro desk was in awe. How the hell did he get all this? Hammer wasn't known for divulging anything personal about herself or her family, and suddenly, in a time when discretion was most vital, she revealed all to this rookie reporter?

The mayor, city manager, city council, and Cahoon were not likewise impressed. They were interviewed by several television and radio reporters, and were openly critical of Hammer, who continued to draw far too much attention to the serial murders and other social problems in the Queen City. It was feared that several companies and a restaurant chain were reconsidering their choice of Charlotte as a new location. Businessmen were canceling meetings. It was rumored that sites for a computer chip manufacturing plant and a Disney theme park were being scouted in Virginia.

Charlotte's mayor, city manager, and several city councilmen promised that there would be a full police investigation into the accidental shooting. Cahoon, in a brief statement, agreed this was fair. The men smelled blood and were crazed by it. Panesa did not often get directly involved in choosing sides, but he rolled up his sleeves on this one and penned an impassioned editorial on the Opinion page that ran Sunday morning.

It was called HORNET'S NEST, and in it, Panesa went into great detail about the city's ills as seen through the eyes of an unflagging, humane woman, their beloved chief, who was embattled by her own demons and yet 'has never let us down or burdened us with her private pain," Panesa wrote.

"Now is the time to support Chief Hammer, to show her respect and caring, and prove that we, too, can stand up and make the right choices." Panesa went on to allude to Brazil's story of Hammer in the ER bringing a blanket and water to a young man dying of AIDS.

"That, citizens of Charlotte, is not only community policing, but Christianity," Panesa wrote.

"Let Mayor Search, city council, or Solomon Cahoon throw the first stone."

This went on for days, things stirred up, hostility rising from Gaboon's crown and swarming through the mayor's window. Telephone lines angrily buzzed as the city fathers plotted on secure phones, devising a way to run Hammer out of town.

"It's got to be the public that decides," the mayor said to the city manager.

"The citizens have got to want it."

"No other way," Cahoon agreed in a conference call, from his mighty desk, as he viewed his kingdom between aluminum pipes.

"It's entirely up to the citizens."

The last thing Cahoon wanted was pissed-off people changing banks. If enough of them did and went on to First

Union, CCB, BB amp;T, First Citizens Bank, or Wachovia, it could catch up with Cahoon and hurt him. It could become an epidemic, infecting the big, healthy investors, like a computer virus, Ebola, salmonella, hemorraghic fever.

"The problem, damn it, is Panesa," opined the mayor.

Cahoon felt a fresh wave of outrage. He would not soon recover from the publisher's Sunday editorial with its comment about throwing stones. Panesa had to go, too. Gaboon's brain raced through his formidable network, contemplating allies in the Knight-Ridder chain.

This would have to come from on high, at the level of chairman or president. Cahoon knew them all, but the media was a goddamn centipede. The minute he gave it a prod, it curled up tight and took care of its own.