She was waiting for him when he trotted out of the Knight-Ridder building, his notepad in hand as he headed to his car and a story. West, in uniform, climbed out of her unmarked Ford, and she strode toward Brazil like she might tackle him. She wished she could have bottled that dead smell and sprayed it in Brazil’s face, and rubbed his nose in the reality West had to live with every day. Brazil was in a hurry and had a lot on his mind. A Honda was on fire in the Mental Health parking lot, according to the scanner. Possibly, it was nothing, but what if someone was in it? Brazil stopped. He was startled as West jabbed a finger into his breastbone.

“Hey!” He grabbed her wrist.

“So how’s the Black Widow reporter today?” West coldly said. “I just came from the morgue, you know, where reality’s laid out and carved up? Bet you’ve never been there. Maybe they’ll let you watch someday. What a good story that would be, right? A man not old enough to be your daddy. Red hair, hundred and ninety-seven pounds. Guess what his hobby was.”

Brazil released West’s arm. He groped for words but didn’t have any.

“Backgammon, photography. He wrote the newsletter for his church, wife’s dying of cancer. They got two kids, one grown, other a freshman at UNC. Anything else you want to know about him? Or is Mr. Parsons nothing but a story to you? Little words on paper?”

Brazil was visibly shaken. He started walking off to his old BMW as the Honda in the Mental Health parking lot burned and he no longer cared. West wasn’t going to let him off so easy. She grabbed his arm.

“Get your goddamn hands off me,” Brazil said. He jerked his arm free, unlocked his car door, and got in.

“You screwed me, Andy,” West told him.

Brazil cranked the engine and squealed out of the parking deck. West returned to the LEC and didn’t go straight to investigations because she had a few of her own. She stopped off at the Records Room, where women in their own special uniforms ruled the world. West really had to court these girls, especially Wanda, who weighed somewhere between two-fifty and three hundred pounds and could type a hundred and five words a minute. If West needed a record or to send a missing-person report off to NCIC, Wanda was either a hero or hell on earth, depending on when she was fed last. West brought in a bucket of KFC once a month, and sometimes Girl Scout or Christmas cookies, depending on what was in season. West approached the counter and whistled at Wanda, who loved West. Wanda secretly wished she was a detective and worked for the deputy chief.

“Need your help,” West said, and her police belt was making her lower back ache, as usual.

Wanda scowled at a name West had scribbled on a slip of paper. “Lord have mercy,” she said, shaking her head. “If I don’t remember that like it was yesterday.”