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seventh day, seventh hour: 777.
    Harry had the numbers tattooed on his right forearm .
    The story passed by word of mouth. It was never written down. It did not appear in the reports. It had become a quiet police legend that followed Broker through his career.
    Harry and Broker were baby cops together. They’d sat next to each other at the academy. They’d partnered in patrol. Neither of them seriously thought of being coppers for the long haul. They’d both seen action in the latter days of the Vietnam War and looked on police work as a way of extending the tour of duty and the adrenaline rush.
    They’d both liked the clash and sting of the street, but Harry was always the more willing to mix it up. He’d slap the cuffs on extra tight; he’d choke to subdue; he’d break wrists and dislocate arms. On his third month on the job he shot a drug dealer who’d had the bad sense to pull a gun. An investigation ruled it a righteous shoot.
    Then came that perfect night for a domestic. Hot, no moon; cruising the streets, you could feel people’s blood starting to steam up the lighted windows.
    At least this time it was in a nice neighborhood, on Summit Avenue, which was just about as nice as you could get in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1985.
    They went together, two sergeants advancing fast in rank. Comers. They were filling in for patrolmen who were taking vacation time.
    And that’s the night Harry met Diane.
    She was, like her house, very well maintained except for the swelling under her eye and the trickle of blood coming from her nose.
    Hubby was a dentist who was a meticulous success at everything except, apparently, living. He was given to rages over cobwebs and dust balls. He’d found lint in his underwear drawer, and so he beat his wife.
    That night she’d decided not to take it anymore and had picked up the phone. Broker and Harry took one look, then came in fast and split them up. Broker shoved the husband in one room, while Harry sat with Diane in another and persuaded her to file charges.
    Harry continued to advise her through injunctions, restraining orders, and the divorce. A storybook courtship followed.
    But there were some, with an eye toward Harry’s dossier of brutality complaints, who said discreetly that Diane had traded one batterer for another.
    Others in those racially more dubious days scoffed at the notion. Harry, they pointed out, only thumped on young black males.
    Broker stood up in a Lutheran chapel as best man on the day Harry and Diane were married.
    Now he thought back to being young and moist-eyed sentimental on the cathedral light pouring through stained-glass windows, getting dizzy on the fragrance of fresh flowers.
    Here and now he remembered the birthday card inside on the kitchen table. He’d just broken up with his first wife, Caren, and he’d brought a new girl to the wedding. A girl he’d met taking evidence over to the BCA.
    Janey.
    But the dentist husband turned out to have deeper issues than anyone suspected. He held old-fashioned ideas about his marriage vows. He interpreted the death-do-us-part clause literally, and he began to harass Diane. He studied Harry’s shift schedule, and he caught Diane alone in the backyard on a hot July afternoon. He went after her with his fists.
    Diane was lucky; she got away with just her eyes blackened. She’d fought him off with a barbecue fork until her screams brought the neighbors. Word got out over the radios, and Broker met up with Harry in the Ramsey County emergency room.
    He’d watched as she told Harry how crazy the ex had been.
    Crazy, she’d said. Really crazy.
    In a cold fury, Harry left the ER, got in his squad, and drove away.
    Broker followed in a separate car. He knew that the ex-husband was still in his old house which was up for sale as part of the divorce settlement. So he headed for Summit Avenue and found Harry’s squad parked in the driveway. He gave the address over the radio and called for backup. The front door