TWENTY-TWO

The sensational courtroom drama of the caped crusaders sitting on the front row while the joker of the judge dissed them, bristled over the airwaves. It was bounced from radio tower to radio tower throughout the Carolinas. Don Imus picked it up, embellishing as only he could, and Paul Harvey told the rest of the story. Hammer was back and forth to SICU and aware of little else, and West drove Charlotte’s streets, looking for Brazil, who had not been seen since Thursday. It was Saturday morning now.

Packer was out with the dog again when West called. He got on the phone, irritable and perplexed. He had heard nothing from Brazil, either. In Davidson, Mrs. Brazil snored on the living-room couch, sleeping through Billy Graham’s televised service, as usual. The phone rang and rang, an overflowing ashtray and bottle of vodka on the coffee table. West was driving past the Knight-Ridder building, hanging up her portable phone in frustration.

“Goddamn it!” she blurted. “Andy! Don’t do this!”

Mrs. Brazil barely opened her eyes. She managed to sit up an inch, thinking she heard something. A choir in blue with gold stoles praised God. Maybe that was the noise. She reached for her glass, and it shook violently as she finished what she had started the night before. Mrs. Brazil fell back into old sour couch cushions, the magic potion heating blood, carrying her away to that place nowhere special. She drank again, realizing she was low on fuel with nothing nearby but the Quick Mart. She could get beer or wine, she supposed. Where was Andy? Had he been in and out while she was resting?

Night came, and West stayed home and did not want to be with anyone. Her chest was tight and she could not sit long in any one spot or concentrate. Raines called several times, and when she heard his voice on the machine, she did not pick up. Brazil had vanished, it seemed. West could focus on little else. This was crazy. She knew he wouldn’t do anything stupid. But she was revisited by the horrors she had worked in her career.

She had seen the drug overdoses, the gunshot suicides not discovered until hunters returned to the woods. She conjured up images of cars covered by the clandestine waters of lakes and rivers until spring thaws or hard rains dislodged those who had chosen not to live.

Even Hammer, with all her problems and preoccupations, had contacted West several times, voicing concern about their young at-large volunteer. Hammer’s weekend, so far, had been spent at SICU, and she had sent for her sons as their father settled deeper into the valley of shadows. Seth’s eyes stared dully at his wife when she entered his room. He did not speak.

He did not think complete thoughts, but rather in shards of memories and feelings unexpressed that might have formed a meaningful composite had he been able to articulate them. But he was weak and sedated and intubated. During rare lucid flickers during days he could not measure, when he might have given Hammer enough to interpret his intentions, the pain pinned him to the bed. It always won. He would stare through tears at the only woman he had ever loved. Seth was so tired. He was so sorry. He’d had time to think about it.