Raines and another paramedic wheeled out a stretcher bearing a fat older man. Chief Hammer followed and seemed in shock, and Brazil was stunned and baffled in the middle of Pine Street. Hammer was distraught as practiced hands loaded her husband into the ambulance.
“You sure you don’t want me to ride with you?” Hammer asked the fat man.
“I’m sure.” The fat man was in pain and sluggish, perhaps from whatever was dripping into him intravenously
“Well, have it your way,” Hammer told him.
“I don’t want her coming,” the fat man instructed Raines.
“Not to worry.” Hammer sounded hurt as she walked back to the house.
She stood in the doorway, watching the ambulance drive off. Squinting, she noticed Brazil on her dark street, staring at her. She recognized him, and it all came back to’ her Oh Christ. As if she didn’t have problems enough.
“I tried to get you earlier. Give me a chance to explain,” she called out to him.
Now he was completely baffled.
“Excuse me?” He stepped closer.
“Come here.” Hammer wearily motioned to him.
He sat on her porch swing. She turned out the light and sat on the steps, certain this young man must think she was the biggest, most dishonest bureaucrat he had ever encountered. Hammer knew this might be the night her controversial community policing project would go to hell along with everything else.
“Andy,” she began, ‘you’ve got to believe that I said nothing to anyone. I swear I kept my promise to you. ”
“What?” He was getting a very bad feeling.
“What promise?”
She realized he did not know.
“Oh God,” she mumbled.
“You didn’t hear the news tonight?”
“No, ma’am. What news?” He was getting excited, his voice rising.
Hammer told him about Channel 3 and Webb’s scoop.
“That’s impossible!” Brazil exclaimed.
“Those are my details! How could he know the stuff about the bloody money, the washcloth, any of it! He wasn’t there!”
“Andy, please lower your voice.”
Lights were blinking on. Dogs were barking. Hammer stood.
“It’s not fair. I play by the rules.” Brazil felt as if his life were over.
“I cooperate with you, help as much as I can. And get crucified for it.” He got up, too, the swing moving, slowly swaying, and empty.
“You can’t stop doing what’s right just because others do things that are wrong,” she spoke quietly, and from experience, as she opened the door that would lead her back inside her fine home.
“We’ve done some pretty wonderful things, Andy. I hope you won’t let this ruin it.”
Her face was kind but sad as she looked at him. He felt the ache in his heart, and his stomach was doing something strange, too. He was sweating and chilled as he stared at her, unable to imagine what it must have been like for her children to be raised by such a person.
“Are you all right?” Hammer thought he was acting oddly.
“I don’t know what my problem is.” He wiped his face with his hands.
“I think I’ve been trying to get sick or something. It’s none of my business, but is your husband all right?”
“A flesh wound,” she replied, weary and depressed again as moths fluttered past, into her house, where soon they would die from pesticide.
Misfires rarely occurred with double-action revolvers. But when Hammer had demanded that Seth return the. 38 to her, he had gotten angry and mean. He’d had enough of being bossed around by this woman, who next would begin searching him and his bedroom. There was no way out.
Unfortunately, she’d walked in before he’d had a chance to stash the gun in a place she couldn’t find it. Worse, Seth had been sleeping in a drunken position that had resulted in tingling and numbness in his right hand. When he had decided to send this same hand down to his crotch to fish out the revolver, it had not been a wise move. It was also Seth’s bad luck that the one time he did not want the cartridge lined up with the firing pin was precisely then.
“His left buttock,” Hammer was explaining to Brazil, who was inside the house with her now, because she could not leave her front door open all night.