The Hornet’s Nest. Patricia Cornwell

“No one loves our police department more than I do. But you do realize, I hope, there are

two sides to every story?”

“Usually more sides than that, sir, it’s been my experience,” said Brazil.

tw Hammer was in her outer office, having a word with Horgess, while she waited for

West and a videotape that she prayed might reveal what Mungo seemed to think it did.

Maybe her luck would turn for the better for once.

“Fred, enough,” Hammer said, standing at the corner of his desk, hands in the pockets of her tobacco brown pants.

“It’s just I feel so bad. Chief Hammer. Can’t believe I did something like that. Here you trusted me, and I’m supposed to make your life better, be a faithful retainer. And look

what I did when things got a little stressful,” Horgess said in his same sad, hate-me tone.

This was sounding all too much like Seth, and the last thing Hammer needed at present

was an office husband as pitiful as the one in room 333 at Carolinas Medical Center.

“Fred, what do we say about mistakes? As part of our vision statement?” she quizzed

him.

“I know.” He could not look at her.

“First, we allow a mistake if you were trying to do the right thing when you made it, and

second, if you tell someone that you made the mistake. And third, if you are willing to

talk about your mistake to others so they won’t do the same thing.”

“I haven’t done two and three,” he said.

“No, you haven’t,” Hammer had to agree as West walked in.

“Two isn’t necessary because in this instance, everybody already knows. No later than

seventeen hundred hours, I want a commentary by you for the Informer, telling everyone

about your mistake. On my desk.” She looked at him over the top of her glasses.

Tw/9 Mayor Search did not know the first thing about a community policing vision

statement or any other vision statement, for that matter, that did not slaughter people for

making mistakes, especially of the egregious nature that caused Hammer such

embarrassment. This was not about to happen to him because the mayor knew how to handle people, including the media.

“It absolutely is untrue that the city is unsafe,” he stated to Brazil, and the office seemed to have gotten airless and hot, and maybe smaller.

“But five businessmen from out of town have been murdered in the last five weeks,”

Brazil said.

“I don’t know how you can …”

“Random. Isolated. Incidents.” Sweat rolled down his sides. Search felt his face getting red.

“Downtown hotels and restaurants claim business has dropped more than twenty

percent.” Brazil wasn’t trying to argue. He just wanted to get to the bottom of this.

“And people like you are only going to make that worse.” Search mopped his forehead,

wishing Cahoon had never passed this goddamn assignment along to him.

“All I want is to tell the truth, Mayor Search,” Billy Budd, Billy Graham, said.

“Hiding it won’t help resolve this terrible situation.”

The mayor resorted to sarcasm, laughing at this simple boy’s simple logic. He felt that

bitter juice seep through his veins, the bile rising, as his face reddened dangerously, his

rage a solar flare on the surface of his reason. Mayor Search lost control.

“I can’t believe it,” he laughed derisively at this reporter who was nothing in life.

“You’re giving me a lecture. Look. I’m not going to sit here and tell you business isn’t

suffering. I wouldn’t drive downtown at night right now.” He laughed harder,

unstoppable, and drunk with his power.

^ By six p. m. ” at happy hour, West and Raines were on their way to being drunk at

Jack Straw’s A Tavern of Taste, next to La-dee-da’s and Two Sisters, on East Seventh

Street. West had changed out of her uniform, and was casual in jeans, a loose denim

shirt, and sandals.

She was drinking Sierra Nevada Stout, the beer of the month, and still in a state of

disbelief over the videotape she had watched with Hammer.

“Do you have any idea how this makes me and my investigative division look?” she said

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