“Goddamn son of a bitch,” West exclaimed as she flipped on flashing lights.
Brazil sped up. West couldn’t believe what was happening. How could he do anything this stupid?
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” She hit the siren.
Brazil had been in pursuits, but he had never been the lead car.
Usually, he was back there sitting in the front seat with West. He drank another swallow of the beer he had bought at the 76 truck stop just off the Sunset East exit. He needed another one, and decided he might as well hit 1-77 off Trade Street, and cruise on back for a refill. He tossed his empty in the back seat, where several others clinked and rolled on the floor. His broken speedometer faithfully maintained its belief that the BMW was going thirty-two miles per hour.
In fact, he was going sixty-three when he turned onto the Interstate.
West doggedly pursued as her alarm and anger grew. Should she call for other cars, Brazil was ruined, his volunteer days ended, his real troubles only begun. Nor was there a guarantee that more cops would effect a stop. Brazil might decompensate further. He might feel desperate, and West knew how that might end. She had seen those final chapters before, all over the road, crumpled metal sharp like razors, glass, oil, blood, and black body bags on their way to the morgue.
His speed climbed to ninety miles per hour, and he maintained it, with her steadily behind him, lights and siren going full tilt. It penetrated his fog that she had not gotten on the radio for help. He would have heard it on his scanner, and backup cars surely would have shown up by now. He didn’t know if this made him feel better or worse.
Maybe she didn’t take him seriously. Nobody took him seriously, and nobody ever would again, because of Webb, because of the unfairness, the heartlessness of life and all in it.
Brazil shot onto the exit of Sunset Road East and began to slow. It was finished. In truth, he needed gas. This chase had its limits anyway. He might as well stop. Depression settled heavier, crushing him into his seat as he parked at the outer limits of the tarmac, far away from eighteen-wheelers and their bright-painted shiny cabs with all their chrome. He cut the engine and leaned back, shutting his eyes, as punishment approached. West wouldn’t cut him any slack. She, in her uniform and gun,
was above all else a cop, and a hard, unkind one at that. It mattered not that they were partners and went shooting together and talked about things.
“Andy.” She loudly rapped a knuckle on his window.
“Get out,” she commanded this common lawbreaker.
He felt tired as he climbed out of a car that his father, Drew, had loved. Brazil took off his father’s jacket and tossed it in the back seat. It was almost eighty degrees out, gnats and moths swarming in sodium vapor lights. Brazil was soaked with sweat. He tucked the keys in a pocket of the tight jeans that Mungo believed pointed to Brazil’s criminal leanings. West shone her flashlight through the back window, illuminating aluminum tallboy beer cans on the mat in back. She counted eleven.
“Did you drink all these tonight?” she demanded to know as he shut his door.
“No.”
“How many have you had tonight?”
“I didn’t count.” His eyes were hard and defiant on hers.
“Do you always elude police lights and sirens?” she said, furious.
“Or is tonight special for some reason?”
He opened the back door of his BMW, and angrily grabbed out a T-shirt.
He had no comment as he peeled off his wet polo shirt, and yanked on the dry one. West had never seen him half naked.
“I ought to lock you up,” she said with not quite as much authority.
“Go ahead,” he said.
W Randy and Jude Hammer had flown into the Charlotte- Douglas International Airport within forty-five minutes of each other, and their mother had met them downstairs in baggage. The three were somber and distracted as Hammer returned to Carolinas Medical Center without delay. She was so happy to see her boys, and old memories were reopened and exposed to air and light.