“I’m afraid he can’t always get to everything right away,” she apologized as she had learned to so well over the years.

Brazil looked at her for a moment, hesitating, detecting something in the way she averted her gaze from him. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”

“You’re so welcome.” She led him to the slaughter because she needed her job.

Mayor Search was a distinguished, neat man in a European-cut summer weight gray suit. He wore a white shirt, his tie charcoal and blue paisley with matching suspenders. He did not get up from his huge block of walnut, the skyline of the city filling many windows. USBank Corporate Center was cut off about belt level, directly behind him, and the mayor could not see the crown unless he got on the floor and strained to look up.

“Thank you for finding the time to see me,” Brazil said as he sat in a chair across from Search.

“Understand you’ve got a rather interesting situation here in our city,” Search said.

“Yes, sir. And I appreciate it.”

This wasn’t the typical smartass reporter Search dealt with morning, noon, and night. The kid was Billy Budd, Billy Graham, wide-eyed innocence, polite, respectful, and committed. Search knew the extreme danger of sincere people like this. They died for causes, would do anything for Jesus, served a higher calling, were no respecter of persons, believed in burning bushes, and were not led into sin by Potiphar’s wife. This wasn’t going to be as easy as Search had supposed.

“Now let me tell you something, son,” Search began in his earnest, overbearing way to this lad who was lucky to get the mayor’s time. “No one loves our police department more than I do. But you do realize, I hope, there are two sides to every story?”

“Usually more sides than that, sir, it’s been my experience,” said Brazil.

• • •

Hammer was in her outer office, having a word with Horgess, while she waited for West and a videotape that she prayed might reveal what Mungo seemed to think it did. Maybe her luck would turn for the better for once.

“Fred, enough,” Hammer said, standing at the corner of his desk, hands in the pockets of her tobacco brown pants.

“It’s just I feel so bad, Chief Hammer. Can’t believe I did something like that. Here you trusted me and I’m supposed to make your life better, be a faithful retainer. And look what I did when things got a little stressful,” Horgess said in his same sad, hate-me tone.

This was sounding all too much like Seth, and the last thing Hammer needed at present was an office husband as pitiful as the one in room 333 at Carolinas Medical Center.

“Fred, what do we say about mistakes? As part of our vision statement?” she quizzed him.

“I know.” He could not look at her.

“First, we allow a mistake if you were trying to do the right thing when you made it, and second, if you tell someone that you made the mistake. And third, if you are willing to talk about your mistake to others so they won’t do the same thing.”