The Hornet’s Nest. Patricia Cornwell

ambulances were teal and white, the colors of the Hornets and much of what filled

Charlotte with pride.

The entire hospital staff knew that a V. I. P had arrived. There would be no waiting, no

bleeding in chairs, no threatening, no shortcuts or neglect. Seth Hammer, as he had been

erroneously registered and referred to most of his marriage, had been taken straight into

the

ER.

He had been rolled in and out of many rooms. He wasn’t certain he understood the pretty

surgeon’s vernacular, but it seemed, according to her, that although the bullet’s

destruction of tissue had been significant, at least no major arteries or veins had been hit.

However, because he was a V. I. P, no chances could be taken. It was explained that

medical personnel would do arteriography, and shoot him

full of dye, and see what they found. Then they would give him a barium enema.

Hammer parked in a police slot outside the emergency room at not quite four a. m.

Brazil had filled twenty pages in his notepad, and knew more about her than any reporter

who had ever lived. She fetched her large pocketbook with its secret compartment, and

took a deep breath as she got out. Brazil was struggling with his next question, but had to

ask.

It was for her own good, too.

“Chief Hammer.” He hesitated.

“Do you suppose I could get a photographer here to maybe get something of you on your

way out of the hospital, later?”

She waved him off as she walked.

“I don’t care.”

The more she thought about it, the more she realized it didn’t matter what he wrote. Her

life was over. In the course of one short day, all was lost. A senator had been murdered,

the fifth in a series of brutal slayings committed by someone the police were no closer to

catching.

US Bank which owned the city, was at odds with her. Now her husband had shot himself

in the ass while playing Russian roulette. The jokes would be endless. What did this

suggest about where he assumed his most vital organ was, after all? Hammer would lose

her job. What the hell. She may as well offer her two cents worth on her way out the

door. Brazil had just gotten off a pay phone, and was walking fast to keep up with her.

“We’ll also be running the Black Widow story, if there’s a positive ID,” he nervously

reminded her.

She didn’t care.

“I’m wondering,” Brazil pushed his luck, ‘if you’d have a problem with my slipping in a few details or two that might trick the killer. ”

“What?” Hammer glanced blankly at him.

“You know, if I messed with him a little. Well, Deputy Chief West didn’t think it was a good idea, either,” he conceded.

The enlightened chief caught on to what he was suggesting, and was interested.

“As long as you don’t release sensitive case details.”

She fixed on the triage nurse in her console, and headed there. No introduction was

necessary.

“He’s on the way to the OR right now,” the nurse said to the police chief.

“Do you want to wait?”

“Yes,” Hammer decided.

“We have a private room the chaplain uses, if you’d like a little quiet,” the nurse said to this woman who was one of her heroes.

“I’ll just sit where everybody else does,” Hammer said.

“Someone might need that room.”

The nurse certainly hoped not. Nobody had died in the last twenty-four hours, and this

had better not change on her shift. Nurses always got the raw end of that deal. Doctors

suddenly vanished. They were off to their next bit of drama, leaving the nurses to take

out tubes, tie on toe tags, wheel the body to the morgue, and deal with bereft relatives

who never believed it and were going to sue. Hammer found two chairs in a corner of the

reception area. There were maybe twenty distressed people waiting, most accompanied

by someone trying to comfort them, most arguing, others moaning and bleeding into

towels, or cradling broken limbs, and holding ice on burns. Almost all were weeping, or

limping to the restroom, and drinking water from paper cups, and fighting another wave

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