The downtown skyline was huge around a terrible crime scene, minutes past ten p. m. Police were tense and sweating, their flashlights probing a parking lot behind an abandoned building, and an area overgrown with weeds where the black rental Lincoln had been abandoned. The driver's door was open, headlights burning, interior bell dinging a feeble warning that was too late. Detective Brewster had been called in from home and was standing near the Lincoln, talking on his portable phone. He was dressed in jeans and an old Izod shirt, his badge and a Smith amp; Wesson. 40 caliber pistol and extra magazines clipped to his belt.

"Looks like we got another one," he said to his in-transit boss.

"Can you give me a ten-thirteen?" West's voice sounded over the phone.

Ten-thirteen's still clear. " Brewster looked around.

"But not for long. What's your ten-twenty?"

"Dilworth. Heading your way on forty-nine. EOT ten- fifteen."

Vft Brazil had learned how to talk on the radio in the academy and understood codes and why Brewster and West were talking in them.

Something very bad had gone down, and they didn't want anyone else, a reporter for example, monitoring what they were saying. Basically, Brewster had let West know that the scene was still clear of people who shouldn't be there, but not for long. West was en route and would arrive in less than fifteen minutes.

West reached for the portable phone she had plugged into the cigarette lighter. She was on red alert, driving fast as she dialed a number.

Her conversation with Chief Hammer was brief.

West shot Brazil a severe look.

"Do everything you're told," she said.

"This is serious."

By the time they reached the crime scene, reporters had gathered in the night, all poised as Brazil's peers tried to get close to a terrible tragedy. Webb held a microphone, talking into a camera, his pretty face sincere and full of sorrow.

"No identification of the victim, who like the first three shot to death very close to here was driving a rental car," Webb taped for the eleven o'clock news.

West and Brazil were quiet and-determined as they made their way through. They avoided microphones jabbed their way, cameras rolling in their faces as they ducked and dodged and hurried. Questions flew all around them as if some fast-breaking news bomb had gone off, and Brazil was terrified. He was acutely self-conscious and embarrassed in a way he did not understand.

"Now you know what it's like," West said to him under her breath.

Bright yellow crime-scene tape stretched from woods to a streetlight.

Big black block letters flowed across it, repeating the warning

It barred reporters and the curious from the Lincoln and the senseless death beyond it. Just inside it was an ambulance with engine rumbling, cops and detectives everywhere with flashlights.

Video tape was running, flashguns going off, and crime-scene technicians were preparing the car to be hauled into headquarters for processing.

Brazil was so busy taking everything in and worrying about how close he was going to be allowed to get that he did not notice Chief Hammer until he walked into her.

"Sorry," Brazil muttered to the older woman in a suit.

Hammer was distressed and immediately began confer ring with West.

Brazil took in the short graying hair softly framing the pretty, sharp face, and the short stature and trim figure. He had never met the chief, but he suddenly recognized her from television and photographs he had seen. Brazil was awed, openly staring. He could get a terrible crush on this woman. West turned and pointed at him as if he were a dog.

"Stay," she commanded.

Brazil had expected as much but wasn't happy about it. He started to protest, but no one was interested. Hammer and West ducked under the tape, and a cop gave Brazil a warning look should he think about following. Brazil watched West and Hammer stop to investigate something on the old, cracked pavement. Bloody drag marks glistened in the beam of West's flashlight, and based on the small, smeared puddle just inches from the open car door, she thought she knew what had happened.

"He was shot right here," she told Hammer.

"And he fell." She pointed to the puddle.

"That's where his head hit. He was dragged by his feet."

Blood was beginning to coagulate, and Hammer could feel the heat of the throbbing lights and the night and the horror.

She could smell death. Her nose had learned to pick it up the first year she was a cop. Blood broke down fast, got runny around the edges and thick inside, and the odor was weirdly sweet and putrid at the same time. The trail led to a Gothic tangle of overgrown vines and pines, with a lot of weeds.

The victim looked middle-aged and had been dressed in a khaki suit wrinkled from travel when someone had ruined his head with gunshots.

Pants and Jockey shorts were down around fleshy knees, the familiar hourglass painted bright orange, leaves and other plant debris clinging to blood.

Dr. Wayne Odom had been the medical examiner in the greater Charlotte-Mecklenburg area for more than twenty years. He could tell that the spray-painting had occurred right where the body had been found, because a breeze had carried a faint orange mist up to the underside of nearby poplar leaves. Dr. Odom was reloading a camera with bloody gloved hands, and was fairly certain he was dealing with homosexual serial murders. He was a deacon at Northside Baptist Church and believed that an angry God was punishing America for its perversions.

"Damn it!" Hammer muttered as crime-scene technicians scoured the area for evidence.

West was frustrated to the point of fear.

"This is what? A hundred yards from the last one? I got people all over the place out here.

Nobody saw anything. How can this happen? "

"We can't watch the street every second of the day," Hammer angrily said.

Vy From a distance, Brazil watched a detective going through the victim's wallet. Brazil could only imagine what West and Hammer were seeing as he impatiently waited by West's car, taking notes. One thing he had learned while writing term papers was that even if he didn't have all the information, he could create a mood. He studied the back of the abandoned brick building, and decided it had been some sort of warehouse once. Every window was shattered, and an eerie dark emptiness stared out. The fire escape was solid rust and broken off halfway down.

Emergency lights were diluted and weird by the time they got to the thicket where everyone was gathered. Fireflies flickered around the dinging rental car, and Brazil could hear the sounds of far-off traffic. Paramedics were coming through, sweating in jumpsuits, and carrying a stretcher and a folded black body bag. Brazil craned his neck, writing furiously, as the paramedics reached the scene. They unfolded the stretcher's legs, and Hammer turned around when metal clacked. West and Brewster were studying the victim's driver's license. No one was interested in giving Brazil a quote.

WA "Carl Parsons," Brewster read from a driver's license.

"Spartanburg, South Carolina. Forty-one years old. Cash gone, no jewelry if he had any."

"Where was he staying?" Hammer asked him.

"Looks like we got a confirmation number for the Hyatt near Southpark."

West crouched to see the world from a different angle. Parsons was half on his back and half on his side in a nest of bloody leaves, his eyes sleepy slits and dull. Dr. Odom inflicted yet one more indignity by inserting a long chemical thermometer up the rectum to get a core temperature. Whenever the medical examiner touched the body, more blood spilled from holes in the head. West knew that whoever was doing this had no plan to stop.

X? Brazil wasn't going to stop, no matter how much West got in his way. He had done all he could to capture visual details and mood, and now he was on the prowl. He happened to notice a new bright blue Mustang parked near an unmarked car, where a teenaged boy sat in the front seat with a detective Brazil had seen before, running around, impersonating a drug dealer. Brazil took more notes as the teenager talked and paramedics zipped the body inside a pouch. Reporters, especially Webb, were obsessed with getting footage and photographs of the murdered man being carried away like a big black cocoon. No one but Brazil focused on the teenager climbing out of the detective's car and returning to his Mustang, in no hurry.

The top was down, and when Brazil headed toward the flashy car, the teenager's blood began to pound with excitement again. The nice-looking blond guy had a reporter's notepad in hand. Jeff Deedrick got out his Chapstick and cranked the engine, trying to look cool as his hands shook.

"I'm with the Charlotte Observer," Brazil said, standing close to the driver's door.

"I'd like to ask you a few questions."

Deedrick was going to be famous. He was seventeen but could pass for twenty-one unless he got carded. He would get all those girls who, before this night, had never paid him any mind.

"I guess it's all right," Deedrick reluctantly said, as if weary of all the attention.

Brazil climbed inside the Mustang, which was new and did not belong to Deedrick. Brazil could tell by the dainty blue lanyard keychain that matched the color of the car. Most guys too young to drink didn't have cellular phones, either, Brazil noted, unless they were drug dealers.

He was willing to bet that the Mustang belonged to Deedrick's mother.

First Brazil got name, address, phone number, and repeated every syllable back to Deedrick to make certain all was correct. This he had learned the hard way. His first month on the job, he had gotten three We Were Wrongs in a row for insignificant, picayune errors relating to insignificant details, such as somebody junior versus somebody the third. This had resulted in an obituary about the son, versus the father. The son was having tax problems, and didn't mind the mistake.

He had called Brazil, personally, to request that the paper leave well enough alone. But Packer wouldn't.

Perhaps Brazil's most embarrassing mistake, and one he preferred not to think about, was when he covered a loud, volatile community meeting about a controversial pet ordinance. He confused a place with a person, and persisted in referring to Latta Park this and Miss Park that. Jeff Deedrick, however, he had right, of this Brazil made sure.