“Well, it’s all yours now,” Dr. Odom went on to Hammer as stretcher legs clacked.
“I’m not releasing a damn thing to the media. Never do.
Any statement will have to come from you. ”
“We’re not releasing his identity tonight.” Hammer was adamant.
“Not until he’s been positively identified.”
There was no doubt in her mind. His driver’s license was on the floor of the Maxima, on the passenger’s side. Hammer recognized the senator’s imposing stature, the gray hair and goatee, and heavy face.
He hadn’t survived long enough to have tissue response to his horrendous injuries, no swelling or bruising. Butler did not look so different from when Hammer had seen him last, at a cocktail party in Myers Park. She was terribly upset and determined that it would not show. She approached Brazil. He was prowling around the car, taking notes.
“Andy,” she said, touching his arm.
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how sensitive this is.”
He got still, looking at her as if she were the reason people went to church every Sunday. She was God. Hammer was distracted as her gaze wandered inside the car, to the black leather briefcase stamped with the gold initials K. O. B. It was in back, open, as were an overnight bag and a suit bag, everything dumped out. She made a silent inventory of keys, a calculator, US Air peanuts and tickets, a portable phone, pens, paper, address book, Tic Tacs, lubricated Trojan condoms, shoes, socks, and Jockey shorts, all scattered by hard, heartless hands.
“Are we sure it’s the senator?” Brazil managed to ask.
Hammer gave him her upset eyes again.
“Not sure enough for you to release that yet.”
“Okay,” he said.
“As long as you don’t give it to out to someone else first.”
“Never. You do the right thing, so will I,” she said the usual.
“Call me tomorrow at five p.m. I’ll give you a statement.”
She walked off. His eyes followed her as she left the crime scene, and ducked under tape, walking briskly through the strobing blue and red night. Television crews, radio reporters, and mobs of reporters darted at her like barracuda. She waved them off and got into her chief’s car. Brazil prowled some more, disturbed in a way he did not understand as he got closer to where the senator had been killed. Raines and other paramedics were carrying the body to the ambulance, and the Ace twenty-four-hour towing and recovery truck was rolling in to haul the Maxima to the police department.
The ambulance beeped as it backed up, carrying the dead senator to the morgue while cameras caught it all. Brent Webb watched Brazil with jealous eyes. It wasn’t fair Brazil got such special treatment, and could wander around the crime scene with a flashlight as if he belonged there. Brazil’s privileged position, his golden touch, would end soon enough, Webb knew. The television reporter smoothed his perfect hair and lubricated his lips with lip balm. He looked sincerely into the camera and told the world the latest tragic news as a Norfolk-Southern train loudly lumbered past.
Brazil’s flashlight swept gravel and weeds at the edge of rusty railroad tracks as the last train car loudly rumbled through the dark, hot night. Coagulating blood glistened bright red in the strong beam, illuminating a dingy washcloth and bloody quarters, pennies, and dimes that must have come out of pockets when the murdered senator’s pants were pulled down. Blood and gore clung to kudzu, and there were fragments of skull and brain. Brazil took a deep breath, looking down dark tracks, the skyline huge and bright.
Seth had images of his own blood and gore, and savored the imagined reaction of Chief Wife when she walked into his room and found him on top of his bed, where he sat up now drinking beer, the. 38 revolver in his lap. He could not take his eyes off the gun, which was loaded with one Remington +P cartridge. Intermittently, Seth had been spinning the cylinder for hours as he watched “Friends,” “Mary Tyler Moore,” and other reruns, and tested his luck. It wasn’t good.
So far, out of perhaps a hundred dry runs, he had committed suicide successfully but twice. How could that be possible? Didn’t this go against the law of averages? He figured the cartridge should have lined up fatally at least twenty times, since it was a five-shot revolver, and five divided into one hundred was twenty.