“I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Deedrick was going to be famous. He was seventeen but could pass for twenty-one
unless he got carded. He would get all those girls who, before this night, had never paid
him any mind.
“I guess it’s all right,” Deedrick reluctantly said, as if weary of all the attention.
Brazil climbed inside the Mustang, which was new and did not belong to Deedrick.
Brazil could tell by the dainty blue lanyard keychain that matched the color of the car.
Most guys too young to drink didn’t have cellular phones, either, Brazil noted, unless they
were drug dealers.
He was willing to bet that the Mustang belonged to Deedrick’s mother.
First Brazil got name, address, phone number, and repeated every syllable back to
Deedrick to make certain all was correct. This he had learned the hard way. His first
month on the job, he had gotten three We Were Wrongs in a row for insignificant,
picayune errors relating to insignificant details, such as somebody junior versus
somebody the third. This had resulted in an obituary about the son, versus the father.
The son was having tax problems, and didn’t mind the mistake.
He had called Brazil, personally, to request that the paper leave well enough alone. But Packer wouldn’t.
Perhaps Brazil’s most embarrassing mistake, and one he preferred not to think about, was
when he covered a loud, volatile community meeting about a controversial pet ordinance.
He confused a place with a person, and persisted in referring to Latta Park this and Miss
Park that. Jeff Deedrick, however, he had right, of this Brazil made sure.
There would be no problems here. Brazil eyed the crime scene in the distance, as
paramedics loaded the body into the ambulance.
“I admit I had a few, am driving along and know I’m not going to make it home,”
Deedrick kept talking, nervous and excited.
“Then you pulled back here to use the bathroom?” Brazil flipped a page, writing fast.
“Pulled in, and see this car with lights on, the door open and think someone else is taking a leak.” Deedrick hesitated. He took off his baseball cap and put it on backward.
“I wait, don’t see no one. Now I’m getting curious, so I go on over and see him! Thank
God I got a phone.”
Deedrick’s wide stare was fixed on nothing, and sweat was beading on his forehead and
rolling from his armpits. At first he thought the guy was drunk, had dropped his pants to
take a piss, and had passed out.
Then Deedrick saw orange paint, and blood. He had never been so frightened in his life.
He galloped back to his car, peeled out, and floored it the hell out of there. He pulled off
under an overpass and peed. He called 911.
“My first thought?” Deedrick went on, a little more relaxed now.
“It’s not really happening. I mean, the little bell is ringing and ringing, all this blood, pants down around his knees. And I … Well, you know.
His parts. ”
Brazil looked up at him. Deedrick was stuttering;
“What about them?” Brazil wanted to know.
“It’s like they were spray-painted traffic cone orange. With this shape.”
Deedrick was blushing as he outlined a figure-eight in the air.
Brazil handed him the notepad.
“Can you draw it?” he asked.
Deedrick shakily drew an hourglass, to Brazil’s amazement.
“Like a black widow spider,” Brazil muttered as he watched West and Hammer duck
under crime-scene tape, ready to leave.
Brazil ended the interview, in one big hurry, conditioned by now to fear being left. He also had a question that Hammer and West needed to hear. He addressed the chief first,
out of respect.
“Has the killer spray-painted all his victims with an hourglass?”
Brazil said earnestly and with excitement.
West went still, which was rare for her. She did not move. Brazil thought Hammer was
the most overpowering person he had ever met. She waved him off with a no comment
sort of gesture.
“I’ll let you handle this,” she said to West.
Hammer headed to shadows where her car was parked. West strode to her Ford without a