Hornet's Nest

  West wasn't. The next day when she got to work, Hammer was waiting for her deputy chief, and everybody seemed to know it. West left her Boj angles breakfast with out even opening the bag. She dropped everything and hurried down the hall. West almost ran into Hammer's outer office and felt like giving Horgess the finger. He very much enjoyed West's negative reaction to being summoned like this.

  "Let me call her," Horgess said.

  "Let me let you." West didn't disguise how surly she felt.

  Horgess was young, and had shaved his head. Why? Soon he would dream of hair. He would lust after it. He would watch movies starring people with hair.

  "She'll see you now," Horgess said, hanging up the phone.

  "I'm sure." West gave him a sarcastic smile.

  "For God's sake, Virginia," Hammer said the instant West walked in.

  The chief was gripping the morning paper, shaking it, and pacing.

  Hammer didn't wear pants often, but today she was in them. Her suit was a deep royal blue, and she wore a red and white striped shirt and soft black leather shoes. West had to admit, her boss was stunning. Hammer could cover or show her legs without gender being an issue.

  "Now what?" Hammer railed on.

  "Four businessmen four weeks in a row.

  Carjackings, in which the killer changes his mind, leaves the cars?

  Robberies? A weird hourglass symbol spray-painted on the victims' groins? Make and model, names, professions. Everything but the damn crime-scene photos right there for all the world to see! "

  The headline was huge:

  BLACK WIDOW KILLER CLAIMS FOURTH VICTIM

  "What was I supposed to do?" West said.

  "Keep him out of trouble."

  "I'm not a babysitter."

  "A businessman from Orlando, a salesman from Atlanta, a banker from South Carolina, a Baptist minister. From Tennessee. Welcome to our lovely city." Hammer tossed the paper on a couch.

  "What do we do?"

  "Letting him ride wasn't my idea," West reminded her.

  "What's done is done." Hammer sat behind her desk. She picked up the phone and dialed.

  "We can't get rid of him. Got any idea how that would look? On top of all the rest of it?" Her eyes glazed as the mayor's secretary answered.

  "Listen, Ruth, get him now. I don't care what he's doing." Hammer started drumming polished nails on the blotter.

  West was in a worse mood when she left her boss's office. It wasn't fair. Life was hard enough, and she was beginning to wonder about Hammer. What did West know about her, anyway, except that she had come to Charlotte from Chicago, a huge city where people froze their asses off half the year and the mob had its way with public officials. Next thing, Hammer sailed here, that housewife husband of hers tagging along.

  T^ Brazil wasn't pleased with his circumstances, either. He was punishing himself again this morning, pounding up bleacher steps in the stadium where the Davidson Wildcats lost every football game, even some they hadn't played, it seemed. He was going at it and didn't care if he had a heart attack or was sore tomorrow. Deputy Chief West was a lowlife cowboy, and as insensitive as shit, and Chief Hammer wasn't at all what he had fantasized. Hammer could have at least smiled or glanced at him, and made him feel welcome last night. Brazil headed back up the steps again, sweat leaving gray spots on cement.

  ^/^ Vft Hammer wanted to hang up on the mayor. She had had just about enough of his unimaginative way of solving problems.

  "I understand the medical examiner believes these murders have a homosexual connection," he was saying over the phone.

  "That's one opinion," Hammer answered.

  "The fact is that we don't know. All the victims were married with children."

  "Exactly," he slyly said.

  "For God's sake, Chuck, don't pile this on me so early in the morning." Hammer looked out the window and could almost see the bastard's office from where she sat.

  "Point is, the theory is helpful," he went on in his South Carolina drawl.

  Mayor Charles Search was from Charleston. He was

  Hammer's age and often considered what it might be like to bed her. If nothing else, it would remind her of things she seemed to have forgotten. Her place, for starters. If she wasn't married, he would swear-she was a lesbian. He sat in his leather judge's chair, headset on, and doodled on a legal pad.

  "The city, out of town businesses, won't be as bothered by this ..."

  he was trying to say.

  "Where are you so I can break your neck," Hammer said over the phone.

  "When was your lobotomy? I would have sent flowers."

  "Judy." This doodle was really good. He focused on it, putting his glasses on.

  "Calm down. I know exactly what I'm doing."

  "Of course you don't."

  Maybe she was a lesbian, or bisexual, anyway, with a grating Midwestern accent. He reached for a red pen, getting excited over his art. It was an atom with orbits of little molecules that looked weirdly like eggs. Birth. This was seminal.

  V> To make matters ever so much worse this morning, West had to go to the morgue. North Carolina didn't have the best system, it was West's opinion. Some cases were taken care of locally, by Dr. Odom and the police forensic labs. Other bodies were sent to the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill. Go figure. It was probably all about sports again. Hornets fans stayed in town, Tarheels got their lovely Y-incision in the big university town.

  The Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner's office was on North College Street, across from the award- winning new public library. West was buzzed in at the glass entrance. She had to give the place credit. The building, which was the former Sears Garden Center, was brighter and more modern than most morgues, and had added another cold room the last time US Air had crashed another plane around here. It was a shame that North Carolina didn't seem inclined to hire a few more MEs for the great state of Mecklenburg, as some sour senators were inclined to disparage the state's fastest-growing, most progressive region.

  There were only two forensic pathologists to handle more than a hundred homicides a year, and both of them were in the necropsy room when West arrived. The dead businessman didn't look any better now that Dr. Odom had started on him. Brewster was at the table, wearing a disposable plastic apron and gloves. He nodded at her as she tied a gown in back, because West didn't take chances. Dr. Odom was splashed with blood, and holding the scalpel like a pencil as he reflected back tissue. His patient had a lot of fat, which always looked worse inside out.

  The morgue assistant was a big man who was always sweating. He plugged an autopsy saw into the overhead cord reel, and started on the skull.

  This West could do without. The sound was worse than the dentist's drill, the bony smell, not to mention the idea, awful. West would not be murdered or turn up dead suspiciously in any form or fashion. She would not have this done to her naked body with people like Brewster looking on while clerks passed around her pictures and made comments.

  "Contact wounds, entrances here behind the right ear." Dr. Odom pointed a bloody gloved finger, mostly for her benefit.

  "Large caliber. This is execution style."

  "Exactly like the others," Brewster remarked.

  "What about cartridge cases?" Dr. Odom asked.

  "Forty-fives, Winchester, probably Silvertips," West replied, thinking about Brazil's article again and all that he had revealed.

  "Five each time. Perp doesn't bother picking them up, doesn't care. We need to get the FBI on this."

  "Fucking press," Brewster said.

  West had never been to Quantico. Her dream had always been to attend the FBI's National Academy, which was rather much the Oxford University of police training. But she'd been busy. Then she kept getting promoted. Finally, the only thing she was eligible for was executive training up there, for God's sake. That meant a bunch of big-bellied chiefs, assistant chiefs, and sheriffs, out on the firing range trying to make the transition from . 38 specials to semiautomatic pisto
ls. She'd heard the stories. All these guys blasting away, dumping brass into their hands, and taking the time to stuff it neatly in their pockets. Hammer offered to send West last year. Forget it.

  West didn't need to learn a thing from the FBI.

  "I'd like to know what their profilers would have to say," West said.

  "Forget it," Brewster said, chewing a toothpick and swiping Vicks up his nose.

  Dr. Odom picked up a big sponge, and squeezed water over organs. He grabbed a tan rubber hose, and suctioned blood out of the chest cavity.

  "He smells like he was drinking," said Brewster, who could no longer smell anything except childhood memories of colds.

  "Maybe on the plane," Odom agreed.

  "What about those guys at Quantico?" He eyed Brewster, as if West had never brought up the subject.

  "Busy as jumping beans," Brewster replied.

  "Like I said, forget it.

  They got what? Ten, eleven profilers and are about a thousand cases behind? Think the government's going to fund shit? Shit no. Too damn bad, too.

  "Cause those profilers are damn good."

  Brewster had applied to the FBI early on, but forget that, too. They weren't hiring, or maybe it had to do with the polygraph test he wasn't about to take. He sniffed more Vicks. God, he hated death. It was ugly and it stunk. It was a tattletale. Like this fellow's dick, for example. The guy looked like a balloon with this little knot, so all his air didn't get out.

  West was angry, her face hard, as she stared at the fleshy nude body opened up from neck to navel, and blaze orange paint no amount of scrubbing would wash away. She thought of his wife and family. No human should ever have to come to such a grim place and be put through something like this, and she felt fresh anger toward Brazil.

  She was waiting for him when he trotted out of the Knight-Ridder building, his notepad in hand as he headed to his car and a story.

  West, in uniform, climbed out of her unmarked Ford, and she strode toward Brazil like she might tackle him. She wished she could have bottled that dead smell and sprayed it in Brazil's face, and rubbed his nose in the reality West had to live with every day. Brazil was in a hurry and had a lot on his mind. A Honda was on fire in the Mental Health parking lot, according to the scanner. Possibly, it was nothing, but what if someone was in it? Brazil stopped. He was startled as West jabbed a finger into his breastbone.

  "Hey!" He grabbed her wrist.

  "So how's the Black Widow reporter today?" West coldly said.

  "I just came from the morgue, you know, where reality's laid out and carved up? Bet you've never been there. Maybe they'll let you watch someday.

  What a good story that would be, right? A man not old enough to be your daddy. Red hair, hundred and ninety-seven pounds. Guess what his hobby was. "

  Brazil released West's arm. He groped for words but didn't have any.

  "Backgammon, photography. He wrote the newsletter for his church, wife's dying of cancer. They got two kids, one grown, other a freshman at UNC. Anything else you want to know about him? Or is Mr. Parsons nothing but a story to you? Little words on paper?"

  Brazil was visibly shaken. He started walking off to his old BMW as the Honda in the Mental Health parking lot burned and he no longer cared. West wasn't going to let him off so easy. She grabbed his arm.

  "Get your goddamn hands off me," Brazil said. He jerked his arm free, unlocked his car door, and got in.

  "You screwed me, Andy," West told him.

  Brazil cranked the engine, and squealed out of the parking deck. West returned to the LEG and didn't go straight to investigations because she had a few of her own. She stopped off at the Records Room, where women in their own special uniforms ruled the world. West really had to court these girls, especially Wanda, who weighed somewhere between two-fifty and three hundred pounds and could type a hundred and five words a minute. If West needed a record or to send a missing- person report off to NCIC, Wanda was either a hero or hell on earth, depending on when she was fed last. West brought in a bucket of KFC once a month, and sometimes Girl Scout or Christmas cookies, depending on what was in season. West approached the counter, and whistled at Wanda, who loved West. Wanda secretly wished she was a detective and worked for the deputy chief.

  "Need your help," West said, and her police belt was making her lower back ache, as usual.

  Wanda scowled at a name West had scribbled on a slip of paper.

  "Lord have mercy," she said, shaking her head.

  "If I don't remember that like it was yesterday."

  West couldn't be certain, but thought Wanda had gained more weight.

  God help her. Wanda took up two lanes of traffic.

  "You sit on down." Wanda pointed with her chin, as if she were Chinese.

  "I'll get the microfilm."

  While Wanda's minions typed, stacked, and racked, West went through microfilm. She had her glasses on and was hurt by what she saw when she got to old articles about Brazil's father. His name, too, was Andrew, but people had called him Drew. He had been a cop here when West was a rookie. She had forgotten all about him, and had never made the connection. Christ, but now that she was looking at it, the tragedy came back to her and somehow put Brazil's life in focus.

  Drew Brazil was a thirty-six-year-old robbery detective when he made a traffic stop in an unmarked car. He was shot close range in the chest, and died instantly. West took a long time looking at articles, and staring at his picture. She headed upstairs to her division and pulled the case, which no one had looked at in a decade, because it had been exceptionally cleared, and the dirtbag was still on death row. Drew Brazil was handsome. In one photograph, he wore a leather bomber jacket that West had seen before.

  The scene photographs clubbed her somewhere in her chest. He was dead in the street, on his back, staring up at the sun on a spring Sunday morning. The . 45 caliber bullet had almost ripped his heart in half, and in autopsy photographs, Odom had two thick fingers through the hole to demonstrate. This was something young Andy Brazil need never see, and West had no intention of talking to him ever again.

  Chapter Five.

  Brazil was looking up articles, too, in the Observer file room. It was amazing how little had been written about Virginia West over the years. He scrolled through small stories, and black and white photographs taken back in a day when her hair was long and pinned up under her police hat. She had been the first female selected as rookie of the year, and this impressed him quite a lot.

  The librarian was impressed, too. She peeked at Andy Brazil about every other second, her heart stumbling whenever he walked into her domain, which was fairly regularly. She'd never seen anyone research stories quite the way this young man did. It didn't matter what he was writing about, Brazil had to look something up or ask questions. It was especially gratifying when he spoke to her directly as she sat primly at her neat maple desk. She had been a public-school librarian before taking this job after her husband had retired and was underfoot all the time. Her name was Mrs. Booth. She was well past sixty and believed that Brazil was the most beautiful human being she had ever met. He was nice and gentle, and always thanked her.

  It shocked Brazil to read that West had been shot. He could not believe it. He scrolled faster, desperate for more details, but the lamebrain who had covered the incident had completely missed an opportunity for a huge lA story. Damn. The most that Brazil could pin down was that eleven years ago, when West was the first female homicide detective, she had gotten a tip from a snitch.

  A subject West had been looking for was at the Presto Grill. By the time West and other police arrived, the subject was gone. Apparently, West answered another call in the same neighborhood, and the same subject was involved, only now he was really fried and irritable. He started firing the minute West rolled up. She killed him, but not before he winged her. Brazil was dying to ask her about it, in detail, but forget it. All he knew was that she took a bullet in the left shoulder, a flesh wound, a graze, really. Was t
he bullet as hot as he had heard? Did it cook surrounding tissue? How much did it hurt? Did she fall, or bravely finish the gunfight, not even realize until she held out a hand and it had blood on it, like in the movies?

  The next day Brazil drove to Shelby. Because of his tennis prowess, he had heard of this small, genteel town in Cleveland County, where Buck Archer, friend of Bobby Riggs, who had lost to Billie Jean King in the Battle of the Sexes, was from. Shelby High School was a well-kept brick complex, and home of the Lions, where students with money got ready for college in big cities like Chapel Hill and Raleigh. All around was farmland and cow towns with names like Boiling Springs and Lattimore. Brazil's BMW rumbled around to the tennis courts, where the boys' team was holding a summer camp. Kids were out with hoppers of chartreuse balls. They were whacking serves, overhead smashes, cross-court shots, in pain and sweating.