Hornet's Nest jhabavw-1

by Patricia Cornwell

  West flipped open her portable phone and tried her boss's number again. For the past ten minutes, the phone had been busy because Hammer had one son on call waiting, and the other on the line. When Hammer hung up, her phone immediately rang with more bad news.

  Four minutes later, she drove out of her Fourth Ward neighborhood in a hurry as West folded the phone and handed it to Brazil. He returned it to the leather case on his belt, where there was plenty of room since volunteers packed light. Brazil was pleased to attach anything to his belt that was road legal, a Charlottean term, the etymology of which could be traced back to Nascar gods and the rockets they drove, not one of which, in fact, was permitted on life's highways unless it was chained to a trailer. Brazil envied what most cops complained about.

  Backaches, inconvenience, and being encumbered did not enter his mind.

  Of course, he carried a radio with channels for all response areas, the antenna stubby and prone to probe very short officers' armpits.

  Brazil also wore a pager no one ever called, a Mini Mag-Lite with two-thousand two-hundred candlepower in its black leather holster, and West's cellular phone, because he was not allowed to carry the Observer's cellular phone when he was in uniform. Brazil had no gun or pepper spray. His ultra duty belt was without expandable baton, nightstick ring, double magazine holders, handcuffs, or double cuff case. Brazil lacked a long flashlight case, or Pro-3 duty holster, or clip holder, and had not a single molded belt keeper, or for that matter, a silent key holder with Velcro wraparound flap.

  tw West had all this and more. She was fully loaded, and Niles could hear her coming from the far reaches of the city. Minute by minute, the seven-pound Abyssinian waited for the sound, listening for the beloved clanking and creaking and heavy landings. His disappointment was becoming chronic and broaching unforgivable as he sat in his window over the sink, watching and waiting, and increasingly fixated by the US Bank Corporate Center (USBCC) dominating the sky. Niles in his earlier lives had been intimate with the greatest erections in all of civilization, the pyramids, the magnificent tombs of pharaohs.

  In the fantasies of Niles, USBCC was the giant King Usbeecee, with his silver crown, and it was simply a matter of time before his majesty shook loose of his moorings. He would turn right and left, looking at his feeble neighbors. Niles imagined the King stepping slowly, heavily, feeling his way, shaking earth, for the first time. He aroused Niles's fearful reverence because the King had no smile, and when his eyes caught the sun and turned gold, they were overpowering, as was the mighty monarch's sheer weight. King Usbeecee could step on the Charlotte Observer, the entire police department, all of the LEC and City Hall. He could crush the entire force of armed officers, and their chief and deputy chiefs, the mayor, the newspaper's publisher, reducing all to precast dust.

  Vy Hammer got out of her car and wasted no time striding through her detectives and uniformed police. She ducked under the tape with its bright yellow warning that always made her ache and fear, no matter where she saw it. Hammer was not in the form she would have liked, having even more on her mind than usual. Since her ultimatum to Seth, her quality of life had radically disintegrated. He had not gotten up this morning, and was mumbling about Dr. Kevorkian, living wills, and the Hemlock Society. Seth had pontificated about the silliness of assuming that suicide was selfish, for every adult had the right to be absent.

  "Oh for God's sake," his wife had said.

  "Get up and go for a walk."

  "No. You can't make me. I don't have to be in this life if I don't want to be."

  This had prompted her to remove all firearms from their usual spots.

  Hammer had collected many over the years and had strategically tucked them in various places around the house. Still at large when West had called was Hammer's old faithful Smith amp; Wesson stainless steel five-shot. 38 special with Pachmeyer grips. Hammer was fairly certain it was supposed to be in the drawer of her vanity in her bathroom. She was almost positive this was where it had been last time she had rounded up weapons and locked them in the safe before the grand babies came to town.

  Hammer had many concerns. She was depressed and coping the best she could as anxieties from her press conference, which had involved national media, continued to pluck at her. Politics were what she hated most. They, honestly, were the bane of her existence. A hundred and five percent clearance rate.

  She wished Cahoon could be here in this Godawful place. This was what he needed to see. The Cahoons of the world lose it, wouldn't be able to handle it, would pale and flee. This gory dead businessman was not about appearances or economic development or the tourist industry.

  This overgrown, creepy thicket flickering with fireflies near railroad tracks, this Thrifty rental car, open and dinging, was about reality.

  Hammer spoke to no one as she approached tragedy, and blue and red lights lit up her hard, distressed face. She joined West and Brazil near the Maxima as Dr. Odom arranged another black pouch around another body. The medical examiner's gloved hands were bloody, and sweat dripped in his eyes as his heart beat slow and with force. He had dealt with the savagery of sexual homicide most of his life, but nothing like this. Dr. Odom was a compassionate man, but he was tough.

  He had learned long ago to keep himself in check and not relate too closely. It was sad but true that it was easier for him to be clinical when the victims were women or obvious gays not getting along or, in some cases, foreigners. It had been comfortable for him to categorize.

  Dr. Odom was feeling increasingly shaky about his homosexual serial-killing theory. This victim happened to be fifty-four-year-old state senator Ken Butler from Raleigh. The last thing Dr. Odom intended to imply, in any form or fashion, was that the much-beloved black leader was something less than mainstream. Dr. Odom also knew, from his vast experience, that homosexual politicians didn't cruise downtown streets looking for boys. They went to public parks and men's rooms, where they could always swear they were neither exposing them selves nor offering an invitation. They were urinating.

  Dr. Odom zipped the pouch over blood and naked flesh, covering the blaze-orange hourglass. He looked up at Hammer, and shook his head as he stood. His back was killing him. Brazil was staring into the Maxima, hands in his pockets to make sure he didn't inadvertently touch anything and leave his prints. That would be the end of his career. He might even become a suspect. After all, didn't he coincidentally happen to be in the area every time one of these bodies turned up? He nervously glanced around him, wondering if this might remotely occur to anyone. Dr. Odom was busy giving Hammer and West his opinions.

  "This is a fucking nightmare," the medical examiner was saying.

  "Jesus Christ."

  He ripped off his gloves, and wasn't quite sure what to do with them.

  He cast about, looking for a receptacle for biological hazards.

  Catching the eye of Denny Raines, he gave the paramedic a nod, and the big, handsome guy came through with his stretcher and crew. Raines winked at West, drinking in the sexy sight of her in uniform. She was pretty unbelievable, and Hammer was hot, too. Brazil's eyes fixed on Raines. Brazil got a strange feeling as he watched the over built ambulance attendant eyeing West and Hammer. Brazil wasn't sure what the problem was, but he was suddenly anxious and a little sick to his stomach. He wanted to get in Raines's face, beg him to start something so Brazil could finish it, or at least order Raines to leave the scene.

  "Well, it's all yours now," Dr. Odom went on to Hammer as stretcher legs clacked.

  "I'm not releasing a damn thing to the media. Never do.

  Any statement will have to come from you. "

  "We're not releasing his identity tonight." Hammer was adamant.

  "Not until he's been positively identified."

  There was no doubt in her mind. His driver's license was on the floor of the Maxima, on the passenger's side. Hammer recognized the senator's imposing stature, the gray hair and goatee, and heavy face.

  He hadn't survived
long enough to have tissue response to his horrendous injuries, no swelling or bruising. Butler did not look so different from when Hammer had seen him last, at a cocktail party in Myers Park. She was terribly upset and determined that it would not show. She approached Brazil. He was prowling around the car, taking notes.

  "Andy," she said, touching his arm.

  "I'm sure I don't need to tell you how sensitive this is."

  He got still, looking at her as if she were the reason people went to church every Sunday. She was God. Hammer was distracted as her gaze wandered inside the car, to the black leather briefcase stamped with the gold initials K. O. B. It was in back, open, as were an overnight bag and a suit bag, everything dumped out. She made a silent inventory of keys, a calculator, US Air peanuts and tickets, a portable phone, pens, paper, address book, Tic Tacs, lubricated Trojan condoms, shoes, socks, and Jockey shorts, all scattered by hard, heartless hands.

  "Are we sure it's the senator?" Brazil managed to ask.

  Hammer gave him her upset eyes again.

  "Not sure enough for you to release that yet."

  "Okay," he said.

  "As long as you don't give it to out to someone else first."

  "Never. You do the right thing, so will I," she said the usual.

  "Call me tomorrow at five p.m. I'll give you a statement."

  She walked off. His eyes followed her as she left the crime scene, and ducked under tape, walking briskly through the strobing blue and red night. Television crews, radio reporters, and mobs of reporters darted at her like barracuda. She waved them off and got into her chief's car. Brazil prowled some more, disturbed in a way he did not understand as he got closer to where the senator had been killed. Raines and other paramedics were carrying the body to the ambulance, and the Ace twenty-four-hour towing and recovery truck was rolling in to haul the Maxima to the police department.

  The ambulance beeped as it backed up, carrying the dead senator to the morgue while cameras caught it all. Brent Webb watched Brazil with jealous eyes. It wasn't fair Brazil got such special treatment, and could wander around the crime scene with a flashlight as if he belonged there. Brazil's privileged position, his golden touch, would end soon enough, Webb knew. The television reporter smoothed his perfect hair and lubricated his lips with lip balm. He looked sincerely into the camera and told the world the latest tragic news as a Norfolk-Southern train loudly lumbered past.

  Brazil's flashlight swept gravel and weeds at the edge of rusty railroad tracks as the last train car loudly rumbled through the dark, hot night. Coagulating blood glistened bright red in the strong beam, illuminating a dingy washcloth and bloody quarters, pennies, and dimes that must have come out of pockets when the murdered senator's pants were pulled down. Blood and gore clung to kudzu, and there were fragments of skull and brain. Brazil took a deep breath, looking down dark tracks, the skyline huge and bright.

  Seth had images of his own blood and gore, and savored the imagined reaction of Chief Wife when she walked into his room and found him on top of his bed, where he sat up now drinking beer, the. 38 revolver in his lap. He could not take his eyes off the gun, which was loaded with one Remington +P cartridge. Intermittently, Seth had been spinning the cylinder for hours as he watched "Friends," "Mary Tyler Moore," and other reruns, and tested his luck. It wasn't good.

  So far, out of perhaps a hundred dry runs, he had committed suicide successfully but twice. How could that be possible? Didn't this go against the law of averages? He figured the cartridge should have lined up fatally at least twenty times, since it was a five-shot revolver, and five divided into one hundred was twenty.

  He had never been good in math. Seth had never been good in anything, he decided. Everyone would be better off without him, including his wimpy sons and his emasculating wife. She'd benefit the most, walking in, finding him slumped over, shot in the head through a pillow, blood everywhere, finished, end of story. No longer a problem. No more taking fatso Seth places and being ashamed, while younger men still looked at her with interested eyes. Seth would show her. Take that.

  Let his final chapter haunt her the rest of her big-shot days.

  tw He would never go through with it. Hammer was quite sure of this.

  Certainly, when she had slid open her vanity drawer and found the. 38 missing, it had occurred to the top police officer in Charlotte that her depressed, self-destructive spouse might have a clue as to the gun's whereabouts. And for what? Self-protection. Hardly. Seth rarely remembered to set the burglar alarm. He did not like to shoot and had never carried a gun, not even in Little Rock, when he was a member of the NRA because most people were. Hammer deduced and worried as she drove.

  The fool. Wouldn't this be his last and greatest revenge? Suicide was a mean and skulking act, unless one was dying anyway and desired an earlier flight out of pain and suffering. The vast majority of people killed themselves for payback purposes. Some of the nastiest notes Hammer had ever read were the last comments of just such people. She had not much sympathy because there wasn't a soul she knew who didn't bump over bad stretches of life's highways now and again, struggle over long, lonely miles where it entered the mind that maybe one should run off the road, be done with it. Hammer was not exempt. She was well aware of her own spells of destructive eating, drinking, not exercising, laziness. They happened, and she picked herself up and went on. She always chose a better lane, and got healthy again. She would not die, because she was responsible, and people needed her.

  She walked into her house, not knowing what she would find. Locking the door, she reset the alarm. The TV was loud in Seth's bedroom across from the kitchen. For a moment, his wife hesitated, tempted to walk back and check, but she couldn't. Suddenly, she was afraid. She headed to her own part of the house, her heart filled with dread as she freshened up in the bathroom. It was late, but she didn't change into her nightshirt yet or pour herself a Dewar's. If he had done it, there would be people all over her property within minutes. There was no point in getting out of her clothes or smelling like booze. Judy Hammer began to cry.

  wfl Brazil was thinking about the deal he had made with Hammer as he flew through his story. Still in uniform, he sat before his computer, fingers dancing as he typed and flipped through his notepad. He included incredible detail about this night's Black Widow killing.

  With photographic total recall, he showed what was inside the car, describing bloody money, and what the police and medical examiner had done, and how violent death felt and smelled and looked. His piece was graphic and moving, but it did not include the victim's identity. Brazil kept his word.

  This was very stressful for him. The journalist in him screamed that he had to print the truth, whether it was known for a fact. Brazil was honorable. He could not betray the police. He assuaged himself with the reality that Chief Hammer would never screw him, and he knew that West wouldn't. Brazil would get his quote tomorrow at 5 p. m. " and no one, especially Webb, would catch on until they read it in the Observer the following morning.

  v9 Webb had just come on the air for the eleven o'clock news when Hammer walked into her husband's bedroom. Her heart slowed a little when she saw no blood. Nothing, in the least, stood out. Seth was on his side, head deep in the pillow. Webb's voice was unusually solemn, the killing the lead story.

  '. the shocking revelation in this night's tragedy is that the victim is believed to be Senator Ken Burton. "

  Hammer turned to stone, riveted to the TV. Seth sat straight up in bed, startled.

  "My God," Seth exclaimed.

  "We just had drinks with him last month."

  "Shhhhhhhhh," Hammer silenced her self-destructive husband.

  '. once again, the peculiar symbol of an hourglass was spray-painted on the body. Burton was believed to have been shot at close range with a high-velocity hollowpoint ammunition known as Silvertips. "

  Hammer snatched up the portable phone from the table by Seth's bed, where there were three Miller Lite cans and a glass of what lo
oked like bourbon.

  "Where's my.38?" she said to him as she dialed.

  "Got no idea." He could feel the revolver between his legs, which was not an ideal place for it. But it had rearranged itself when he had fallen asleep.

  "Sources say his briefcase, tote bag and suit bag were rifled through inside the rental Maxima. Butler had picked up the Thrifty rental car at five-fifteen this afternoon. His money was gone, except for bloody change found under his body. Blood money, as the Black Widow claims number five. " Webb's voice lowered, resonating tragic irony.

  Brazil was getting his fix of press room sound and fury, and therefore was not at his desk to receive Hammer's call. He watched thousands of newspapers speeding on a conveyor belt. His front page headline was an inch high and blurred, but he could still read it from where he stood.

  BLOODY MONEY BLACK WIDOW CLAIMS NUMBER FIVE

  He couldn't quite make out his byline, but he knew it was there.

  Workers dozed in chairs, waiting for technical problems. Brazil watched one-ton newsprint reels eerily floating up from underground, carried slowly along tracks past barrels of liquid alum, and vats of yellow, red, blue and black ink. Metal clanked as dollies carried newsprint that reminded him of giant rolls of toilet paper. He wandered to the mail room, staring at palates of bundled papers, listening to the loud click-clicking of the Muller Martini machine feeding inserts into papers as a belt carried them into the counting machine. His enthusiasm had left him, for some reason. He felt listless. He was restless, nocturnal again, and still sort of offline in a way he did not understand.

  It was a sweet-sick feeling. His heart was heavy and ached, and when he thought of that beefcake paramedic winking at West and looking at Hammer with lust in his eyes, Brazil felt a tightness and a rage. He felt fright. He experienced the same weak, chilly sensation he associated with barely escaping a car accident or almost losing a tennis match. Was it possible either woman might like Raines, that meatloaf of a paramedic who had to have a meager mental bank account to spend so much time working out? Of late, Brazil recently had caught the rumors about Hammer's pitiful marriage to a fat guy who was unemployed. A dynamic woman like her would have needs and urges. How did Brazil know that she might not go for it, and decide to meet Raines somewhere?