She shut her door and began her usual routine of dialing Webb’s number and hanging up if someone other than the handsome news reporter answered. Goode enjoyed a feature on her police line that scrambled signals and rendered Caller I.D. useless. She was hanging up on Webb’s wife when Goode’s door suddenly flew open. Chief Hammer walked in, about to live up to her name. Goode’s first reaction was how sharp her boss looked in gray. Goode’s second and final reaction was that Hammer did not seem to be in mourning as she strode to the desk and snatched up Goode’s brass nameplate.

“You’re fired,” Hammer said in a voice not to be questioned. “I want your badge and gun. Your desk gets cleared out now. Let me help you start.”

Hammer threw the nameplate into the trash. She turned without another glance and walked out. Hammer was fury traveling down the corridors of her department, yet she was forthcoming in nods and salutations to troops she passed. Word was already out on the radio about her husband, and members of the Charlotte Police Department were overwhelmed with sorrow and newfound respect for their leader. Throughout it all, she was here, damn it, and she wasn’t going to let them down. When a sergeant saw Goode sneaking out to her car with her office crammed in bags and boxes, there was rejoicing throughout Adam, Baker, Charlie, and David response areas, and investigations and support. Cops high-fived and low-tenned in the parking deck and the roll call room. The duty captain lit a rum crook cigar in his nonsmoking office.

Brazil got the good word by pager as he was out in the parking lot changing the oil in his car. He went inside and dialed West’s home number.

“Bond won’t be bothering you anymore.” West tried to be cool, but she was intensely proud of herself. “Goode won’t be getting your stories from the little shit and leaking them to Webb.”

Brazil was shocked and ecstatic. “No way!”

“Oh yeah. It’s done. Hammer’s fired Goode and Bond is in a state of paralysis.”

“Bond was making those calls?” To Brazil, this seemed incongruous.

“Yup.”

He was oddly disappointed that it wasn’t someone more dynamic and attractive thinking such thoughts about him.

West sensed this and told him, “You aren’t looking at this the right way.”

“Looking at what?” He played dumb.

“Andy, I see this kind of thing all the time, doesn’t matter whether it’s a man or woman doing it, except that women aren’t likely to expose themselves to you, so at least you can be grateful for that,” she explained. “This sort of thing is not about sex or being attracted to someone in the normal sense of things. It’s all about control and power, about degrading. A form of violence, really.”

“I know that,” he said.

He still wished his verbal assailant had been someone halfway pretty, and he couldn’t help but wonder what it was about him that prompted people like the creep at the car wash, and now Brenda Bond, to select him. Why? Did he send out signals that made them think they could take advantage of him? He bet that no one dared do such a thing to West or Hammer.