Patricia Cornwell - Southern Cross

'I wonder what his parents know.' Brazil reached for his Styrofoam cup of what once was drinkable coffee.

'Denial. Maybe protecting him. Don't want to face it and never have. No question in my mind this kid's not new to the system. No pictures of him anywhere, including the yearbook, just like all these other little felons, so we don't know what they look like. I bet you anything he's got a record in North Carolina, probably transferred from Dillon High School.' She sarcastically referred to the juvenile training school in Butner, North Carolina. 'His fucking family probably moved him here when he turned sixteen and all his records were expunged. So the asshole gets to start all over again, clean as a Boy Scout.'

Brazil swirled the coffee in his cup. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

'So. You going to bother going to bed tonight?' West said.

'There's no night left,' Brazil said.

'You want to come over, maybe scramble up a few eggs or something?'

Sadness walked through Brazil's eyes.

'As long as we stop at my house first,' he said. There's something I've got to get.'

The Azalea Motel on Northside's Chamberlayne Avenue was not where the police would have expected to find Smoke. He also liked the irony of the name, since the Azalea Parade was the day after tomorrow. Smoke had big plans.

He sat on his single bed in his single room and thought where he was staying wasn't much better than the clubhouse. The Azalea Motel was the sort of place where people did drugs and got murdered and nobody cared. Smoke got room 7 for twenty-eight dollars a night. He stared blankly at the TV and drank vodka from a plastic cup. Smoke had been monitoring the news. At five after six A.M., his phone rang.

'What,' he answered.

It was Divinity.

'Baby, they raided our place just like you said they would,' she told him in an excited voice.

Smoke smiled as he stared at the trash bags full of guns and ammunition in the corner.

'Sick and me parked the car at the dirty bookstore and we was in the woods watching, you know, baby. It was all we could do not to laugh. Them busting in there with all their stuff on and big guns and all. You sure was right about getting out when we did, sugar. But I wanna know when I'm gonna see you, huh?'

'Not now,' Smoke told her without much interest as he spun around the cylinder of a Colt.357.

'I sure could do with a little more / miss you enthusiasm.' Divinity's voice was hurt on the way to being mad.

Smoke wasn't listening. His mind wandered back to the old woman and her fear. Smoke had never scared anybody that much. He was awed by his power and as drunk from it as he was from vodka. He loved the way it felt to squeeze the trigger. He had been so high he barely heard the explosions when he blew apart her head. He threw back another swallow of vodka.

'What'cha gonna tell the others?' Divinity was asking.

Smoke came to.

'About what?' he said.

'You ain't even listening.' Her voice was getting sharp.

One thing Smoke avoided was fighting with Divinity. She could make a scene, and that was what he didn't need right now.

'I'm just so tired,' he said, sighing. 'And I miss you and it makes me crazy I can't see you until Saturday night. That's when we'll be free and clear.'

'How?'

'You'll see.'

'What about Dog and the rest of them?'

'I don't want them anywhere near me,' Smoke said. 'None of you come anywhere near the Azalea Parade.'

'I don't understand this big shit about some little parade named after a bush.' Divinity hadn't softened much.

'Baby, I'm gonna be the king of it,' Smoke said.

'What'cha gonna do, ride on a float?'

He couldn't stand it when she got sarcastic. He slammed down the vodka bottle and snapped the revolver's empty cylinder in place. He dry-fired at the TV.

'Shut up!' he said in his voice from hell, that tone he got when the change came over him. 'You just do what I say, bitch.'

'I always do.' Divinity backed down.

'Don't you call anymore. Don't you come around, and the others don't know where I am, right?'

'I ain't told 'em nothing. So you dumping me?'

'For two days.'

'Then we're good?'

'As good as it gets,' he said.

Brazil ran into his house for only a moment and when he returned to West's car, he was carrying a grocery bag with something in it. He had a strange look on his face.

'What's that?' West asked.

'You'll see,' he said. 'I don't want to talk about it right now.'

'You got a body part in there or something?'

'In a way,' Brazil said morbidly.

West knew about Ruby Sink. The word had traveled like electricity. Everyone in the police department found out Miss Sink was Brazil's landlady, and when West heard the truth, she felt sick with guilt. She felt stupid and ignorant. Brazil's so-called girlfriend had been a seventy-one-year-old woman who rented a row house to him. West felt absolutely terrible and for hours had been trying to think of what to say.

She drove through the Fan. Nothing was open, not even the Robin Inn. She parked in front of her town house and turned off the engine but didn't get out. She looked at Brazil in the dark. Her heart stirred as she stared at his face, sharply defined by shadows from the streetlight.

'I know,' she said.

He was quiet.

'I know about Ruby Sink. That she was your landlady. The landlady I heard you were seeing.'

Brazil turned to her, baffled.

'Seeing?' he said. 'Where the hell did you hear something like that?'

'The talk was all around the department from day one,' West replied. 'People told me you had a thing going with your landlady. Then I heard you on the phone with her and… well, it sounded like it was true, in a way.'

'Why? Because I was nice to her when she paged me?' Brazil said with emotion. 'Because she was lonely and always bringing me cookies, cakes and things?' His voice wavered. 'Leaving them on my doorstep because I was never fucking home and never gave her the rucking time of day!'

'I'm sorry, Andy,' West said gently.

'It's like my mother.' He dissolved. 'I don't call her. She's so fucking drunk all the time and I can't stand it and won't listen to the awful things she says. I don't know. I don't know.'

West moved over and put her arms around him. She held him close to calm him. Her blood got hot and her chemistry woke up.

'It's all right, Andy,' she said. 'It's going to be all right.'

She wanted to hold him forever, but suddenly the awkwardness of it overtook the magic. She thought of her age. She thought of his talent, of everything that made him so unusual and special. He was probably hugging her back because he was terribly upset, no other reason. His heart probably wasn't pounding like hers. He probably wasn't as aware of their bodies touching as she was. She abruptly pulled away.

'I guess we should go in,' she said.

Niles heard them long before they gave a thought to him. He was waiting by the front door when his owner and Piano Man walked in.

Piano Man took a moment to pet Niles, while Niles's owner couldn't be bothered. Niles stayed where he was, tail switching. He watched with crossed eyes and plotted as they went into the kitchen.

When they were out of view, Niles jumped up on the table in the foyer. He hooked a claw into the florist's card. He jumped down, landing silently on three legs.

West did not think she could eat the sweet potato pie. She stared at the slice Brazil set before her. The idea that Ruby Sink had made it before her cold-blooded murder was too much for West to process.

'I can't throw it away.' Brazil sat across from West at the kitchen table. 'It would be heartless to throw it away. I just can't. You couldn't either, Virginia. She would want us to eat it.'

'This is kind of sick,' West said, blinking, focusing, looking at him. 'I don't think I can.'