The room was frenzied. That night, West was ironically reminded of the overwhelming
response as she and Brazil sped past the stadium rising eerily, hugely against the night,
filled with crazed, cheering fans celebrating Randy Travis. West’s Crown Victoria was
directed and in a hurry as it passed the convention center, where a huge video display
proclaimed WELCOME TO THE QUEEN CITY. In the distance, cop cars went fast,
lights strobing blue and red, protesting another terrible violation. Brazil, too, could not
help but think of the timing, after all Hammer had said this morning. He was angry as
they drove.
West knew fear she would not show. How could this happen again? What about the task
force she had handpicked, the Phantom Force, as it had been dubbed, out day and night to
catch the Black Widow Killer? She could not help but think of the press conference, and
its excerpts on radio and television. West was tempted to wonder if this might be more
than coincidental, as if someone was making a mockery of Charlotte and its police and its
people.
The killing had occurred off Trade Street, behind a crumbling brick building where the
stadium and the Duke Power transfer station were in close view. West and Brazil
approached the disorienting strobing of emergency lights, heading toward an area
cordoned off by yellow crime-scene tape. Beyond were railroad tracks and a late-model
white Maxima, its driver’s door open, interior light on, and bell dinging.
West flipped open her portable phone and tried her boss’s number again. For the past ten
minutes, the phone had been busy because Hammer had one son on call waiting, and the
other on the line. When Hammer hung up, her phone immediately rang with more bad
news.
Four minutes later, she drove out of her Fourth Ward neighborhood in a hurry as West
folded the phone and handed it to Brazil. He returned it to the leather case on his belt,
where there was plenty of room since volunteers packed light. Brazil was pleased to
attach anything to his belt that was road legal, a Charlottean term, the etymology of
which could be traced back to Nascar gods and the rockets they drove, not one of which,
in fact, was permitted on life’s highways unless it was chained to a trailer. Brazil envied
what most cops complained about.
Backaches, inconvenience, and being encumbered did not enter his mind.
Of course, he carried a radio with channels for all response areas, the antenna stubby and
prone to probe very short officers’ armpits.
Brazil also wore a pager no one ever called, a Mini Mag-Lite with
two-thousand two-hundred candlepower in its black leather holster, and West’s cellular phone, because he was not allowed to carry the Observer’s cellular phone when he was in
uniform. Brazil had no gun or pepper spray. His ultra duty belt was without expandable
baton, nightstick ring, double magazine holders, handcuffs, or double cuff case. Brazil
lacked a long flashlight case, or Pro-3 duty holster, or clip holder, and had not a single
molded belt keeper, or for that matter, a silent key holder with Velcro wraparound flap.
tw West had all this and more. She was fully loaded, and Niles could hear her coming
from the far reaches of the city. Minute by minute, the seven-pound Abyssinian waited
for the sound, listening for the beloved clanking and creaking and heavy landings. His
disappointment was becoming chronic and broaching unforgivable as he sat in his
window over the sink, watching and waiting, and increasingly fixated by the US Bank
Corporate Center (USBCC) dominating the sky. Niles in his earlier lives had been
intimate with the greatest erections in all of civilization, the pyramids, the magnificent
tombs of pharaohs.
In the fantasies of Niles, USBCC was the giant King Usbeecee, with his silver crown, and
it was simply a matter of time before his majesty shook loose of his moorings. He would
turn right and left, looking at his feeble neighbors. Niles imagined the King stepping
slowly, heavily, feeling his way, shaking earth, for the first time. He aroused Niles’s
fearful reverence because the King had no smile, and when his eyes caught the sun and