“Ouch!” he yelled.

“Sir, you’re going to have to hold still,” the stern nurse said for the hundredth time.

“Why can’t you knock me out or something!” Tears welled in his eyes as he clenched his fists.

“Mr. Hammer, you’re very fortunate.” It was the triage surgeon’s voice now, rattling X rays that sounded like saw blades. She was a pretty little thing with long red hair. Seth was humiliated that her only perspective on him was his corpulent fanny that had never seen the sun.

SEVENTEEN

The Carolinas Medical Center was famous for its triage, and patients were med-flighted in from all over the region. This early morning, helicopters were quiet silhouettes on red helipads centered by big H’s on rooftops, and shuttle buses moved slowly from parking lots to different areas of the massive concrete complex. The medical center’s fleet of ambulances was teal and white, the colors of the Hornets and much of what filled Charlotte with pride.

The entire hospital staff knew that a V.I.P. had arrived. There would be no waiting, no bleeding in chairs, no threatening, no shortcuts or neglect. Seth Hammer, as he had been erroneously registered and referred to most of his marriage, had been taken straight into the E.R. He had been rolled in and out of many rooms. He wasn’t certain he understood the pretty surgeon’s vernacular, but it seemed, according to her, that although the bullet’s destruction of tissue had been significant, at least no major arteries or veins had been hit. However, because he was a V.I.P., no chances could be taken. It was explained that medical personnel would do arteriography and shoot him full of dye and see what they found. Then they would give him a barium enema.

Hammer parked in a police slot outside the emergency room at not quite four A.M. Brazil had filled twenty pages in his notepad and knew more about her than any reporter who had ever lived. She fetched her large pocketbook with its secret compartment and took a deep breath as she got out. Brazil was struggling with his next question but had to ask. It was for her own good, too.

“Chief Hammer.” He hesitated. “Do you suppose I could get a photographer here to maybe get something of you on your way out of the hospital, later?”

She waved him off as she walked. “I don’t care.”

The more she thought about it, the more she realized it didn’t matter what he wrote. Her life was over. In the course of one short day, all was lost. A senator had been murdered, the fifth in a series of brutal slayings committed by someone the police were no closer to catching. USBank, which owned the city, was at odds with her. Now her husband had shot himself in the ass while playing Russian roulette. The jokes would be endless. What did this suggest about where he assumed his most vital organ was, after all? Hammer would lose her job. What the hell. She may as well offer her two cents’ worth on her way out the door. Brazil had just gotten off a pay phone and was walking fast to keep up with her.