Hammer didn’t have a clear shot because a street person and a little kid in a band uniform were in the way. Drifting pepper spray irritated Hammer’s eyes and lungs. She and West split up as Smoke wheeled around, apparently hearing the sound of approaching feet. The barrel of his pistol seemed huge and unreal as he pointed it straight at Hammer’s face. She couldn’t shoot first. There were too many people in the way.
Hammer hadn’t been in a good fight in a while but she hadn’t forgotten her training. She hurled her pistol at Smoke as hard as she could, and it sailed and spun like a boomerang, and Smoke involuntarily raised his arms to ward it off, giving Hammer an opportunity to dive at his feet, knocking him down. They struggled over his gun.
‘GIVE IT UP!’ Hammer demanded.
He tried to point the gun into her ribs and she managed to get a good purchase on one of his thumbs. She bent it straight back, an old and reliable police trick. He howled in pain. She wrested the gun away from him and shoved it hard under his chin.
‘MOVE I’LL BLOW YOUR MOTHERFUCKING HEAD OFF!’ she yelled at him.
Her finger was on the trigger. She wanted him to give her an excuse.
‘You goddamn little bastard,’ she said in his face. ‘That helpless old woman you murdered was my neighbor.’
Brazil had recovered enough to help West handcuff Smoke and haul him away. Bubba sat up, tears streaming down his cheeks. Pigeon was facedown, still covering his eyes. The sock had come off his stump. Weed was unsteady as he got to his feet. He looked at Chief Hammer with red, watering eyes. She was standing very still, a gun at her side, pointed at the grass.
Thanks,’ Weed said to her. ‘I sure am glad you’re here.’
CHAPTER thirty-six
That night it rained. Water spilled from the sky in waves that reminded Weed of pictures he had seen of oceans. Next, hail was bouncing off streets, the wind pushing so strong, Weed bet it could ring doorbells.
‘Who is it?’ he whispered in the dark, messing with the powers that be. ‘Come in,’ he talked to himself. ‘Oh ‘cuse me, I guess I forgot how to unlock the door.’
Tears filled his eyes, his attempts at being funny not amusing anyone else since no one else was there. Lightning flashed in his barred window and snapped and cracked like popping bubble wrap. Weed imagined a tornado and thought of Twister. Weed had heard he wasn’t supposed to walk around with a golf club, play the cymbals or talk on the phone when lightning was flying everywhere, and here he was sitting on a stainless steel bed.
Oh well. Who cared if he was dead.
Somewhere in a different part of the detention home, in what was called a pod, Smoke was locked up, too. The thought of that made Weed feel little bugs all over his skin. He scratched and brushed himself off, his heart bouncing everywhere. He was having difficulty breathing and couldn’t seem to get warm. He pulled the covers more tightly around him and thought of his steel bed again when lightning flamed like a big gun.
Chief Hammer hated lightning and usually stayed away from windows and objects that conducted electricity. But she couldn’t sit still. She was pacing in her living room before windows and near lamps and iron fireplace tools and beneath the brass chandelier while Brazil and West sat restlessly on her couch, relentlessly replaying the day’s events.
‘I don’t care what anyone says,’ Brazil repeated his biggest concern as the power went out. ‘Weed shouldn’t be in the same facility Smoke’s in. Different pods or not. Smoke’s already proven how clever, how diabolical he is.’
‘Didn’t prove it enough to stay out of lockup,’ West reminded them. ‘But I don’t like the situation either.’
‘I’m going to tell you right now,’ Brazil went on. ‘If Smoke wants to do something, he will.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Hammer said as she moved this way and that while Popeye snored from a wing chair and thunder boomed.
Brazil was worried to the point of taking drastic action, although he wasn’t sure what that was. Apparently, Smoke hadn’t wanted Divinity, Beeper, Dog and Sick running loose while he was locked up. He had told the police how to find every one of them, and now all of the Pikes were supposedly in different pods in detention, maybe one or two corridors away from where Weed was being held in his single room with its steel toilet and fold-down bed.