Hornet's Nest

by Patricia Cornwell

  Maybe what was called for was the trick where certain scents available at the hunt shop would draw every rodent, neighborhood pet, bug, reptile, and other critter into the yard, that all might ruin it during the night. Bubba slammed the forklift in reverse, thoughts buzzing.

  Or he could feed beer-laced urine through a tube inserted under the police lady's front door. He could mail hair to her, anonymously.

  Eventually, would she move? Hell yes. She'd want to, oh yeah. Or maybe Sea Breeze in the jock strap of that blond kid she was jerking off with, unless both of them were queer, and, frankly, Bubba had his opinion. Honestly, there was no way a man could look that good or a woman could be that powerful unless they were suspect. Bubba could see it now. The pretty boy getting what he deserved, from the rear, from a manly man like Bubba, whose favorite movie was Deliverance. Bubba would teach the little asshole, oh yes he would. Bubba hated fags so intensely that he was on the lookout for them in every sports bar and truck uz. rairitia^urnweii stop, and in all vehicles he passed on life's highways, and in politics and the entertainment industry.

  V> West and Brazil could not know of their personal peril. They were not thinking of themselves this Tuesday night as emergency lights flashed on broken glass and the torn, crumpled remains of a patrol car that had crashed in the affluent residential neighborhood of Myers Park. Raines and other paramedics were using hydraulic tools to get bodies out of a Mercedes 300E that was wrapped around a tree. Everyone was tense and upset as a siren screamed, and police had set up a barricade, blocking off the street. Brazil parked his BMW as close as anyone would let him. He ran towards red and blue lights and rumbling engines.

  West arrived, and cops moved saw horses to let her through. She spotted Brazil taking notes. He was dazed by horror as Raines and other paramedics lifted another bloody dead body out of the Mercedes and zipped it inside a pouch. Rescuers lowered a victim next to three others on pavement stained with spilled oil and blood. West stared at the totaled Charlotte cruiser with its hornet's nest emblem on the doors. She turned her attention to another cruiser not far away, where Officer Michelle Johnson was collapsed in the back seat, holding a bloodstained handkerchief to her devastated face as she trembled and shook. West swiftly walked that way. She opened the cruiser's back door and climbed in next to the distraught officer.

  "It's going to be okay," West said, putting an arm around a young woman who could not comprehend what had just happened to her.

  "We need to get you to the hospital," West told her.

  "No! No!" Johnson screamed, covering her head with her hands, as if her plane were going down.

  "I didn't see him until he was through the light. Mine was green! I was responding to the ten-thirty-three, but my light was green. I swear. Oh God! No, no. Please. No. Please, please, please."

  <? Brazil was inching closer to the cruiser and heard what Johnson said. He stepped up to the door, and stared through the window, watching West comfort a cop who had just smashed into another car and killed all its occupants. For an instant. West looked out. Her eyes met his and held. His pen was poised and filled with quotes he now knew he would never put in any story. He lowered the pen and notepad.

  Slowly, he walked away, not the same reporter or person he had been.

  Brazil returned to the newspaper. He walked in no hurry and not happy to be here as he headed for his desk. He took his chair, typed in his password, and went into his computer basket. Betty Cutler, the night editor, was an old crow with an under bite She had been pacing and waiting for Brazil, and swooped in on him. She began her annoying habit of sniffing as she spoke. It had occurred to Brazil that she might have a cocaine problem.

  "We got to ship this in forty-five minutes," she said to him.

  "What did the cop say?"

  Brazil began typing the lead, and looking at his notes.

  "What cop?" he asked, even though he knew precisely who she meant.

  "The cop who just wiped out an entire family of five, for Chrissake."

  Cutler sniffed, her lower teeth bared.

  "I didn't interview her."

  Cutler, the night editor, didn't believe this. She refused to believe it. Her eyes glittered as she gave him a penetrating stare.

  "What the hell do you mean, you didn't interview her, Brazil!"

  She lifted her voice that all might hear.

  "You were at the scene!"

  "They had her in a patrol car," he said, flipping pages.

  "So you knock on the window," Cutler loudly berated him.

  "You open her door, do whatever you have to!"

  Brazil stopped typing and looked up at a woman who truly depressed him. He didn't care if she knew it.

  "Maybe that's what you would do," he said.

  When the paper thudded on his front porch at six o'clock the next morning, Brazil was already up. He had already run five miles at the track. He had showered and put on his police uniform. He opened the door, snatched the paper off the stoop, and rolled off the rubber band, eager to see his work. His angry steps carried him through the sad living room and into the cramped dingy kitchen where his mother sat at a plastic-covered table, drinking coffee held in trembling hands. She was smoking and momentarily present. Brazil tossed the paper down on the table. The front page, above the fold headline, screamed POLICE CRASH KILLS FAMILY OF FIVE. There were large color photographs of broken glass, twisted metal, and Officer Michelle Johnson weeping in the cruiser.

  "I can't believe it!" Brazil exclaimed.

  "Look! The damn headline makes it sound like it was the cop's fault when we don't even know who caused the wreck!"

  His mother wasn't interested. She got up, moving slowly toward the screen door that led out to the side porch. Her son watched with dread as she swayed, and snatched keys from a hook on the wall.

  "Where are you going?" he asked.

  "The store." She dug inside her big, old pocketbook.

  "I just went yesterday," he said.

  "I need cigarettes." She opened her billfold and scowled.

  "I bought you a carton. Mom." Brazil stared at her.

  He knew where his mother was really going and felt the same old defeat. He sighed angrily as his mother clutched her pocketbook and counted dollar bills.

  "You got a ten-spot?" she asked him.

  "I'm not buying your booze," he stated.

  She paused at the door, regarding an only child she had never known how to love.

  "Where are you going?" she said with a cruel expression that made her face ugly and unfamiliar.

  "A costume party?"

  "A parade," Brazil answered.

  "I'm directing traffic."

  "Parade charade." She sneered.

  "You're not police, never will be. Why do you want to be going out there to get killed?" She got sad just as quickly as she had turned mean.

  "So I can end up all alone?" She yanked the door open.

  The morning got no better. Brazil drove fifteen minutes through the police department deck, and finally left his BMW in a press space, even though he really wasn't on official press business. The day was lovely, but he took the tunnel from the deck to the first level of police headquarters because he was feeling especially antisocial.

  Whenever he had encounters with his mother, he got very quiet inside.

  He wanted to be alone. He did not want to talk to anyone.

  At the Property Control window, he checked out a radio and was handed keys for the unmarked vehicle he would be driving in the Charlie Two response area between Tryon and Independence Boulevard for the annual Freedom Parade. It was a modest celebration sponsored by local Shriners in their tasseled hats and on their scooters, and Brazil could not have been assigned a worse car. The Ford Crown Victoria was dull, scratched black, and had been driven hard for a hundred and sixteen thousand miles. The transmission was going to drop out any moment, providing the damn thing started, which it didn't seem inclined to do.

  Brazil flipped the key in the ignition
again, pumping the accelerator as the old engine tried to turn over. The battery supplied enough juice to wake up the scanner and radio, but forget about going anywhere, as the car whined, and Brazil's frustration soared.

  "Shit!" He pounded the steering wheel, accidentally blaring the horn.

  Cops in the distance turned around, staring.

  tw Chief Hammer was causing her own commotion not too far away inside the Carpe Diem restaurant on South Tryon, across the street from the Knight-Ridder building. Two of her deputy chiefs. West and Jeannie Goode, sat at a quiet corner table, eating lunch and discussing problems. Goode was West's age and jealous of any female who did anything in life, especially if she looked good.

  "This is the craziest thing I've ever heard," Goode was saying as she poked at tarragon chicken salad.

  "He shouldn't be out with us to begin with. Did you get a load of the headline this morning? Implying we caused the accident, that Johnson was pursuing the Mercedes?

  Unbelievable. Not to mention, skid marks indicate it wasn't us who ran the red light. "

  "Andy Brazil didn't write the headline," West said, turning to Hammer, her boss, who was working on cottage cheese and fresh fruit.

  "All I'm asking is to ride routine patrol with him for maybe a week."

  "You want to respond to calls?" Hammer reached for her iced tea.

  "Absolutely," West said as Goode looked on with judgment.

  Hammer put down her fork and studied West.

  "Why can't he ride with regular patrol? Or for that matter, we've got fifty other volunteers.

  He can't ride with them? "

  West hesitated, motioning to a waiter for more coffee. She asked for extra mayonnaise and ketchup for her club sandwich and fries, and returned her attention to Hammer as if Goode was not at the table.

  "No one wants to ride with him," West said.

  "Because he's a reporter.

  You know how the cops feel about the Observer. That won't go away overnight. And there's a lot of jealousy. " She looked pointedly at Goode.

  "Not to mention, he's an arrogant smartass with an entitlement attitude," Goode chimed in.

  "Entitlement?" West let the word linger like a vapor trail in the rarified air of Carpe Diem, where high feminine powers met regularly.

  "So tell me, Jeannie, when was the last time you directed traffic?"

  W It was an odious job. Citizens did not take traffic cops seriously.

  Carbon monoxide levels got dangerously high, and the cardinal rule that one must never turn his back to traffic was irrelevant in four-way intersections. How could anyone face four directions simultaneously? Brazil had questioned this since the academy. Of course, it made no sense, and added to the mix was a basic disrespect problem. Already, he'd had half a dozen teenagers, women, and businessmen make fun or him or offer gestures that he was not allowed to reciprocate. What was it about America? Citizens were all too aware of law enforcement officers, such as himself, who wore no gun and seemed new at the job. They noticed. They commented.

  "Hey Star Trek," a middle-aged woman yelled out her window.

  "Get a phaser," she said as she gunned onto Enfield Road.

  "Shooting blanks, are we, fairy queen?" screamed a dude in an Army-green Jeep with a basher bumper, sports rack, and safari doors.

  Brazil directed the Jeep through with a hard stare and set jaw, halfway wishing the shithead would stop and demand a fight. Brazil was getting an itch. He wanted to deck someone, and sensed it was only a matter of time before he busted another nose.

  ^-f w Sometimes, Hammer got so sick of her diet. But she remembered turning thirty-nine and getting a partial hysterectomy because her uterus had pretty much quit doing anything useful. She had gained fifteen pounds in three months, moving up from a size four to an eight, and doctors told her this was because she ate too much.

  Well, bullshit. Hormones were always to blame, and for good reason.

  They were the weather of female life. Hormones moved over the face of the female planet and decided whether it was balmy or frigid or time for the storm cellar. Hormones made things wet or dried them. They made one want to walk hand-in-hand in balmy moonlight, or be alone.

  "What does directing traffic have to do with anything?" Goode wanted to know.

  "Point is, this guy works harder than most of your cops," West replied to Goode.

  "And he's just a volunteer. Doesn't have to. Could have a real attitude problem, but doesn't."

  Hammer wondered if salt would hurt her much. Lord, how nice it would be to taste something and not end up looking like her husband.

  "I'm in charge of patrol. That's where he is right now," Goode said, turning over lettuce leaves with her fork to see if anything good was left. Maybe a crouton or a walnut.

  W Brazil was sweating in his uniform and bright orange traffic vest.

  His feet were on fire as he blocked off a side street. He was turning cars around left and right, routing them the other way, blowing his whistle, and making crisp traffic motions. Horns were honking, and another driver began yelling rudely out the window for directions.

  Brazil trotted over to help, and was not appreciated or thanked. This was a terrible job, and he loved it for reasons he did not understand.

  to?

  "So he relieves at least one sworn officer from traffic duty," West was saying as Hammer chose to ignore both of her deputy chiefs.

  Frankly, Hammer could take but so much of the bickering between the brass. It never ended. Hammer glanced at her watch and imagined Cahoon at the top of his crown. The fool. He would turn this city into the prick of America, peopled by yahoos with guns and US Air Gold cards and box seats for the Panthers and Hornets if someone did not stop him.

  "W Cahoon had been stopped three times on his way to lunch on the sixtieth floor, in the corporate dining room. Awaiting him amid linen and Limoges were a president,

  four vice-presidents, a chairman and a vice-chairman, and a top executive with the Dominion Tobacco Company, which over the next two years would be borrowing more than four hundred million dollars from US Bank for a cancer research project. Computer printouts had been stacked high by Gaboon's plate. There were fresh flowers on the table, and waiters in tuxedos hovered.

  "Good afternoon." The CEO nodded around the table, his eyes lingering on the tobacco executive.

  Cahoon didn't like the woman and wasn't sure why, beyond his rabid hatred of smoking, which had begun seven years ago, after he had quit.

  Cahoon had serious misgivings about granting such a huge loan for a project so scientific and secretive that no one could tell him precisely what it was about, beyond the fact that US Bank would be instrumental in the development of the world's first truly healthy cigarette. He had reviewed endless charts and diagrams of a long and robust cylinder with a gold crown around the filter. The amazing product was called US Choice It could be smoked by all, would harm none, and contained various minerals, vitamins, and calming agents that would be inhaled and absorbed directly into the bloodstream.

  Cahoon was reminded of what his bank's contribution would mean to humanity, as he reached for his bubbly water, and felt happy.

  tw The people along Eastway Drive were also happy as they waited for the Freedom Parade. It was always full of hope and bounce, Shriners zigzagging on their scooters, waving at the crowd, reminding all of burn units and good deeds. Brazil was slightly concerned that other cops at other intersections seemed bored and restless. There were no floats. He scanned the horizon and saw nothing but a patrol car in a hurry heading his way. A horn blared and another driver yelled, this time an angry old woman in a Chevrolet. No matter how much Brazil tried to help, she was determined to be unpleasant and unreasonable.

  "Ma'am," he politely said, 'you have to turn around and take Shamrock Drive. "

  She flipped him a bird and roared off, as the frantic, irritated cop in the patrol car rolled up on Brazil's intersection.

  "The parade and a funeral somehow got routed
through here at the same time," the cop hastily explained.

  "What?" Brazil asked, baffled.

  "How ... ?"