No one moved. Eyes never left her as she stood before all and spoke a truth that power brokers from the past had not wanted the people to hear. The people had to take their streets, their neighborhoods, their cities, their states, their countries, their world, back. Each person had to start looking out his window, do his own bit of policing in his own part of life, and get irate when something happened to his neighbor. Yes sir. Rise up. Be a Minuteman, a Christian soldier.

“Onward,” Hammer told them. “Police yourself and you won’t need us.”

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.