“Take a look,” West said quietly to her chief.

Hammer squatted by the open car door and examined documents without touching them. She had been making investments and saving money most of her life. She knew creative banking when she saw it and was shocked at first, then disgusted as truth began to whisper. As best she could tell, and of course none of it could be proven at this precise moment, it appeared Blair Mauney III was behind hundreds of millions of dollars loaned to Dominion Tobacco that seemed to be linked to a real-estate development group called Southman Corporation in Grand Cayman. Associated with this were multiple bank account numbers not linked by identification numbers. Several of the same Miami telephone numbers showed up repeatedly, with no description other than initials that made no sense. There were references to something called USChoice.

“What do you think?” West whispered to Hammer.

“Fraud, for starters. We’ll get all this to the FBI, to Squad Four, see what they make of it.”

The news helicopter circled low. The cocooned body was loaded into the ambulance.

“What about Cahoon?” West asked.

Hammer took a deep breath, feeling sorry for him. How much bad news did anybody need in one night? “I’ll call him, tell him what we suspect,” she grimly said.

“Do we release Mauney’s I.D. tonight?”

“I’d rather hold out until morning.” Hammer was staring beyond bright lights and crime-scene tape. “I believe you have a visitor,” she said to West.

Brazil was at the perimeter taking notes. He was not in uniform this night, and his face was hard as his eyes met West’s and held. She walked toward him, and they moved some distance away from others and stood on different sides of crime-scene tape.

“We’re not releasing any information tonight,” she said to him.

“I’ll just do my usual,” he said, lifting the tape to duck under.

“No.” She blocked him. “We can’t let anybody in. Not on this one.”

“Why not?” he said, stung.

“There are a lot of complications.”

“There always are.” His eyes flashed.

“I’m sorry,” she told him.

“I’ve been inside before,” he protested. “How come now I can’t?”

“You’ve been inside when you’ve been with me.” West began to back away.

“When I’ve . . . ?” Brazil’s pain was almost uncontainable. “I am with you!”

West looked around and wished he would lower his voice. She could not tell him what she had found inside the victim’s car and what it quite likely implied about the not-so-innocent victim Blair Mauney III. She glanced back at Hammer. The chief was still leaning inside the Lincoln, looking through more paperwork, perhaps grateful for the distraction from her own private tragedies. West thought of Brazil’s behavior at her house while Raines was watching the videotape. This was a mess, and it could not go on. She made the right decision and could feel the change inside her, the curtain dropping. The end.

“You can’t do this to me!” Brazil furiously went on. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”