“You got no fucking right!” she said.

“It’s a good story.” He was getting defensive. “You’re a hero.”

She went on, enraged and not certain why. “What hero? Who cares?”

“I told you I was going to write about you.”

“Seems to me that was a threat.” She turned back to her fence and hammered. “And I didn’t believe you meant it.”

“Why not?” He didn’t understand any of this and didn’t think it was fair.

“No one has before.” She hammered again and stopped again, trying to stay mad but not doing a good job of it. “I wouldn’t have thought I was all that interesting.”

• • •

“What I did is good, Virginia,” he said.

Brazil was vulnerable and trying not to be. He told himself that what this hammer-wielding deputy chief thought didn’t matter in the least. West stood in the rain, the two of them looking at each other as Niles watched from his favorite window, tail twitching.

“I know about your father,” West went on. “I know exactly what happened. Is that why you run around playing cop morning, noon, and night?”

Brazil was struggling with emotions he didn’t want anyone to know about. West couldn’t tell if he was angry or close to tears as she chipped away at him with her own investigation into his past.

“He’s plainclothes,” she said, “decides to pull a stolen vehicle. Number one violation. You don’t do that in an unmarked car. And the asshole turns out to be a felon on the run, who points his gun close range. Last thing your father said was, ‘Please God no,’ but the fucker does it anyway. Blows a hole in your daddy’s heart, dead before he hits the pavement. Your favorite newspaper made sure Detective Drew Brazil looked bad in the end. Screwed him. And now his son’s out here doing the same thing.”

Brazil sat on the swampy lawn, staring hard at her. “No, I’m not. That’s not the point. And you’re cruel.”

West didn’t often have such a powerful effect on guys. Raines never got this intense, not even when she broke it off with him, which she had done three times now. Usually, he got mad and stormed off, then ignored her as his phone didn’t ring until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Brazil she did not comprehend, but then she had never known a writer or any artist, really. She sat next to him, both of them in a grassy puddle and drenched. She tossed the hammer and it splashed when it landed, its violence spent for the day. She sighed as this young volunteer-cop-reporter stared at drops streaking past, his body rigid with rage and resentment.

“Tell me why,” she said.

He wouldn’t look at her. He would never speak to her again.

“I want to know,” she persisted. “You could be a cop. You could be a reporter. But oh no. You got to be both? Huh?” She playfully punched his shoulder and got no response. “You still live with your mother, I got a feeling. How come? Nice-looking guy like you? No girlfriend, you don’t date, I got that feeling, too. You gay? I got no problem with that, okay?”