well mannered, well bred, and had lost control of her courtroom. This was a first.
Someone had to pay. It might as well be the son of a bitch who caused all this when he
climbed on that damn bus.
“The state agrees to consolidate sentencing under ten counts,” the judge announced
rapidly and with no attempt at drama.
“Defendant is a prior record level two and will receive in each of the ten counts a
sentence of seventy months minimum or ninety-three months maximum, for a total of
seven hundred months minimum and nine hundred and thirty months maximum. The
court is recessed until one.” She gathered her robe in one hand and fled as Mr. Martino
checked the judge’s math.
Reporter Nicks fled back to South McDowell Street, where Today’s Hot New Country
and “Your All Time Favorites could be heard on 96.9. It was rare his station got breaking
news, scoops, tips, or leaks, as if to imply that a country music audience didn’t vote or
care about crime or want crack dealers in jail. The point was, no city official or Deep
Throat had ever bothered to think of Nicks when something went down.
This was his day, and he was out of his ’67 Chevelle with such urgency that he had to run
back twice to get his notepad and lock the doors.
Chapter Twenty-two.
The sensational courtroom drama of the caped crusaders sitting on the front row, while
the joker of the judge dissed them, bristled over the airwaves. It was bounced from radio
tower to radio tower throughout the Carolinas. Don Imus picked it up, embellishing as
only he could, and Paul Harvey told the rest of the story. While Hammer was back and
forth to SICU and aware of little else. West drove Charlotte’s streets, looking for Brazil,
who had not been seen since Thursday. It was Saturday morning now.
Packer was out with the dog again when West called. He got on the phone, irritable and
perplexed. He had heard nothing from Brazil, either. In Davidson, Mrs. Brazil snored on
the living-room couch, sleeping through Northside Baptist’s televised service, as usual.
The phone rang and rang, an overflowing ashtray and bottle of vodka on the coffee table.
West was driving past the Knight-Ridder building, hanging up her portable phone in
frustration.
“Goddamn it!” she blurted.
“Andy! Don’t do this!”
v^iA TW Mrs. Brazil barely opened her eyes. She managed to sit up an inch, thinking
she heard something. A choir in blue with gold stoles praised God. Maybe that was the
noise. She reached for her glass, and it shook violently as she finished what she had
started the night before. Mrs. Brazil fell back into old sour couch cushions, the magic
potion heating blood, carrying her away to that place nowhere special. She drank again,
realizing she was low on fuel with nothing open but the Quick Mart. After noon, she
could get beer or wine, she supposed. Where was Andy? Had he been in and out while
she was resting?
Night came, and West stayed home and did not want to be with anyone.
Her chest was tight and she could not sit long in any one spot or concentrate. Raines
called several times, and when she heard his voice on the machine, she did not pick up.
Brazil had vanished, it seemed, and West could focus on little else. This was crazy. She
knew he wouldn’t do anything stupid. But she was revisited by the horrors she had
worked in her career.
She had seen the drug overdoses, the gunshot suicides not discovered until hunters
returned to the woods. She conjured up images of cars covered by the clandestine waters
of lakes and rivers until spring thaws or hard rains dislodged those who had chosen not to
live.
Wft Even Hammer, with all her problems and preoccupations, had contacted West
several times, voicing concern about their young, at-large volunteer. Hammer’s weekend,
so far, had been spent at SICU, and she had sent for her sons as their father settled deeper
into the valley of shadows. Seth’s eyes stared dully at his wife when she entered his room. He did not speak.