She just thought she did. Her lust was far more complicated. Bird would have offered a
possible scenario that might have explained it, had he been officially invited into the case.
Special Agent Bird would have accurately hypothesized that it was payback time. All
those years the pervert was dissed, and not nominated for the homecoming court, and not
worshiped, and not wanted.
As a young woman, the pervert had worked in the cafeteria line at Gardner Webb, where
basketball players, especially Ernie Presley, always grunted and pointed, as if she were as
low on the food chain as the greasy scrambled eggs and grits they desired. Andy Brazil
would have treated her in precisely the same fashion. She did not have to know him to
prove her case. At this stage in her frustrated life, she preferred to screw him in her own
time, and in her own way.
Blinds were drawn, the television turned low and playing an old Spencer Tracy and
Katharine Hepburn movie. The pervert was breathless as she whispered on the phone,
drawing it out, enunciating slowly.
“Saw you driving. Shifting gears. Up and down in overdrive …”
Her power over him was the most exciting thing she’d ever known in her nothing life.
She could not contain it as she thought of his humiliation. She controlled him as
completely as a fish in a tank, or a dog, or a car. Her heart was on a drum roll as she
heard his confused silence over the line, and Hepburn walked into the bedroom, dressed
in a satin robe. What incredible bones; The pervert hated her, and would have switched
channels, but she did not have a free hand.
“Screw yourself,” Brazil’s voice rewarded her with its presence.
“You have my permission.”
The pervert didn’t need permission.
W Packer scrolled through Brazil’s latest and most masterful article.
“This is great stuff!” Packer was ecstatic about every word.
“One hell of a job! Wild, Wild West. Love it!”
Packer got up from a chair pulled close. He tucked in his white shirt, his hand jumping around as if his pants were a puppet. His tie was red and black striped and not the least
bit elegant.
“Ship it out. This runs one-A,” Packer said.
“When?” Brazil was thrilled, because he had never been on the front page.
“Tomorrow,” Packer let him know.
X? That night, Brazil worked his first traffic accident. He was in uniform, with
clipboard in hand, the appropriate forms clamped in.
This was a lot more complicated than the average person may have supposed, even if the
damage was non reportable or less than five hundred dollars. It appeared that a woman in
a Toyota Camry was traveling on Queens Road, while a man in a Honda Prelude was also
traveling on Queens Road, in this unfortunate section of the city where two roads of the
same name intersected with each other.
v9 The pervert was nearby in her Aerovan, stalking and listening to the police scanner and Brazil’s voice on it. She was working her own accident about to happen as this
young police boy pointed and gestured, all in dark blue and shiny steel. She watched her
prey as she rolled past flares sparking orange on pavement in the dark of night, crossing
Queens as she traveled west on Queens.
X Streets having the same name could be attributed to rapid hormonal growth, and was
similar to naming a child after oneself no matter the gender or practicality, or whether the
first three were christened the same, as in George Foreman and his own. Queens and
Queens, Providence and Providence, Sardis and Sardis, the list went on, and Myra Purvis
had never gotten it straight. She knew that if she turned off Queens Road West onto
Queens Road East and then followed Queens Road to the Orthopedic Hospital, she could
visit her brother.
She was doing this in her Camry when she got to that stretch she hated so much,
somewhere near Edgehill Park, where it was dark, because the day was no longer helpful.
Mrs. Purvis was the manager of the La Pez Mexican restaurant on Fenton Place. She had
just gotten off work this busy Saturday night and was tired. None of it was her fault