“I want to help.” Brazil was impassioned.

A streetlight shone on broken glass and black stains on pavement and illuminated the gouged tree the Mercedes had been wrapped around. Fresh tears started. Johnson wiped her face with her hands, her humiliation complete as this reporter continued to watch her. She heaved and moaned, as if overwhelmed by a seizure, and was aware of the pistol that could end all of it.

“When I was ten,” the reporter spoke, “my dad was a cop here. About your age when he got killed on duty. Sort of like you feel you’ve been.”

Johnson looked up at him as she wept.

“Eight-twenty-two P.M., March twenty-ninth. A Sunday. They said it was his fault,” Brazil went on, his voice trembling. “Was in plain clothes, followed a stolen car out of his district, wasn’t supposed to make a traffic stop in Adam Two. The backup never got there. Not in time. He did the best he could, but . . .” His voice caught, and he cleared his throat. “He never had a chance to tell his story.”

Brazil stared off into the dark, furious at a street, at a night, that had robbed him of his life, too. He pounded his fist on top of the car.

“My dad wasn’t a bad cop!” he cried.

Johnson had gotten strangely quiet and felt empty inside. “I’d rather be him,” she said. “I’d rather be dead.”

“No.” Brazil bent down, at her eye level. “No.” He saw her left hand on the steering wheel and the wedding band she wore. He reached in and gripped her arm. “Don’t leave anybody behind,” he said.

“I turned in my badge today,” Johnson told him.

“They made you do that?” he protested. “There’s no evidence you . . .”

“No one made me. I did it,” she cut him off. “They think I’m a monster!” She broke down more.

Brazil was determined. “We can change that,” he said. “Let me help.”

She unlocked her car and he got in.

TEN

Chief Hammer was watering her plants when West walked in the next morning. West carried coffee and another healthy breakfast from Bojangles, this time a sausage-egg biscuit and Bo-Rounds, for a little variety. The chief’s phone was going crazy, but Hammer was busy atomizing orchids. She glanced up without a greeting. Hammer was well known for one-two punch announcements in her faint Arkansas accent.

“So.” She sprayed. “He gets in a pursuit, resulting in two arrests. Single-handedly cracking a string of Radio Shack burglaries that has plagued the city for eight months.”

She examined an exotic white blossom and sprayed again. Hammer was striking in a black silk suit with subtle pinstripes, and a black silk blouse with a high collar and black onyx beads. West loved the way her boss dressed. West was proud to work for a woman who looked so sharp and had good legs, and was decent to people and plants, and could still kick butt with the best of them.