The victim looked middle-aged and had been dressed in a khaki suit wrinkled from travel
when someone had ruined his head with gunshots.
Pants and Jockey shorts were down around fleshy knees, the familiar hourglass painted bright orange, leaves and other plant debris clinging to blood.
^ift Dr. Wayne Odom had been the medical examiner in the greater Charlotte-
Mecklenburg area for more than twenty years. He could tell that the spray-painting had
occurred right where the body had been found, because a breeze had carried a faint
orange mist up to the underside of nearby poplar leaves. Dr. Odom was reloading a
camera with bloody gloved hands, and was fairly certain he was dealing with homosexual
serial murders. He was a deacon at Northside Baptist Church and believed that an angry
God was punishing America for its perversions.
X9 “Damn it!” Hammer muttered as crime-scene technicians scoured the area for
evidence.
West was frustrated to the point of fear.
“This is what? A hundred yards from the last one? I got people all over the place out
here.
Nobody saw anything. How can this happen? ”
“We can’t watch the street every second of the day,” Hammer angrily said.
Vy From a distance, Brazil watched a detective going through the victim’s wallet. Brazil
could only imagine what West and Hammer were seeing as he impatiently waited by
West’s car, taking notes. One thing he had learned while writing term papers was that
even if he didn’t have all the information, he could create a mood. He studied the back of
the abandoned brick building, and decided it had been some sort of warehouse once.
Every window was shattered, and an eerie dark emptiness stared out. The fire escape was
solid rust and broken off halfway down.
Emergency lights were diluted and weird by the time they got to the thicket where
everyone was gathered. Fireflies flickered around the dinging rental car, and Brazil could
hear the sounds of far-off traffic. Paramedics were coming through, sweating in
jumpsuits, and carrying a stretcher and a folded black body bag. Brazil craned his neck,
writing furiously, as the paramedics reached the scene. They unfolded the stretcher’s
legs, and Hammer turned around when metal clacked. West and Brewster were studying
the victim’s driver’s license. No one was interested in giving Brazil a quote.
WA “Carl Parsons,” Brewster read from a driver’s license.
“Spartanburg, South Carolina. Forty-one years old. Cash gone, no jewelry if he had
any.”
“Where was he staying?” Hammer asked him.
“Looks like we got a confirmation number for the Hyatt near Southpark.”
West crouched to see the world from a different angle. Parsons was half on his back and half on his side in a nest of bloody leaves, his eyes sleepy slits and dull. Dr. Odom
inflicted yet one more indignity by inserting a long chemical thermometer up the rectum
to get a core temperature. Whenever the medical examiner touched the body, more blood
spilled from holes in the head. West knew that whoever was doing this had no plan to
stop.
X? Brazil wasn’t going to stop, no matter how much West got in his way. He had done
all he could to capture visual details and mood, and now he was on the prowl. He
happened to notice a new bright blue Mustang parked near an unmarked car, where a
teenaged boy sat in the front seat with a detective Brazil had seen before, running around,
impersonating a drug dealer. Brazil took more notes as the teenager talked and
paramedics zipped the body inside a pouch. Reporters, especially Webb, were obsessed
with getting footage and photographs of the murdered man being carried away like a big
black cocoon. No one but Brazil focused on the teenager climbing out of the detective’s
car and returning to his Mustang, in no hurry.
The top was down, and when Brazil headed toward the flashy car, the teenager’s blood
began to pound with excitement again. The nice-looking blond guy had a reporter’s
notepad in hand. Jeff Deedrick got out his Chapstick and cranked the engine, trying to
look cool as his hands shook.
“I’m with the Charlotte Observer,” Brazil said, standing close to the driver’s door.