The Hornet’s Nest. Patricia Cornwell

“This is my first day on the beat.”

She couldn’t suppress her growing dismay over what she had been saddled with this

night. A dog barked and began chasing her car.

Suddenly, it was raining hard.

“So what’d you do for a year?” she investigated further.

“The TV magazine,” Brazil added to his resume.

“A lot of overtime, a lot of stories nobody wanted.” He pointed, releasing his shoulder harness.

“It’s that one.”

“You don’t take your seatbelt off until I’ve stopped the car. Rule number one.” West pulled into a rutted, unpaved driveway.

“Why are you making me change clothes? I have a right …” Brazil finally spoke his

mind.

“People wearing what you got on get killed out here,” West cut him off.

“Rule number two. You don’t have a right. Not with me. I don’t want anyone thinking

you’re a cop. I don’t want anyone thinking you’re my partner. I don’t want to be doing

this, got it?”

Brazil’s house hadn’t been painted in too long to tell the color. Maybe it had been pale yellow once, maybe eggshell or white. Mostly now it was gray and flaking and peeling,

like a sad old woman with a skin condition. An ancient, rusting white Cadillac was

parked in the drive, and West decided that whoever lived here didn’t have taste, money,

or rime for repairs and yard work. Brazil angrily pushed open the car door, gathering his

belongings as he got out, and halfway tempted to tell this deputy chief to get the hell out

of here and not come back. But his BMW was still in Charlotte, so that might pose a

problem. He bent over, peering inside at her.

“My dad was a cop.” He slammed the door shut.

tw West was typical brass, typical anybody who had power, Brazil fumed as he strode up

the walk. She didn’t give a shit about helping somebody else get started. Women could

be the worst, as if they didn’t want anybody else to do well because no one was nice to

them when they were coming along, or maybe so they could pay everybody back,

persecute innocent guys who’d never even met them, whatever. Brazil imagined West at

the net, a perfect lob waiting for his lethal overhead smash. He could ace her, too.

He unlocked the front door of the house he had lived in all his life.

Inside, he unbuttoned his uniform shirt and looked around, suddenly conscious of a dim,

depressing living room of cheap furniture and stained wall-to-wall carpet. Dirty ashtrays

and dishes were wherever somebody had forgotten them last, and gospel music swelled

as George Beverly Shea scratched How Great Thou Art for the millionth time.

Brazil went to the old hi-fi and impatiently switched it off.

“Mom?” he called out.

He began tidying up, following a mess into a slovenly old kitchen where milk, V8 juice,

and cottage cheese had been left out by someone who had made no effort to clean up or

hide the empty fifth of Bowman’s cheap vodka on top of the trash. Brazil picked up

dishes and soaked them in hot sudsy water. Frustrated, he yanked out his shirttail and

unbuckled his belt. He looked down at his name tag, shiny and bright.

He fingered the whistle on its chain. For an instant, his eyes were filled with a sadness he

could not name.

“Mom?” he called out again.

“Where are you?”

Brazil walked into the hallway, and with a key that no one else had a copy of, he

unlocked a door that opened onto the small room where he lived. It was tidy and

organized, with a computer on a Formica-topped desk, and dozens of tennis trophies and

plaques and other athletic awards on shelves, furniture, and walls. There were hundreds

of books in this complicated person’s simple, unassuming space. He carefully hung up his uniform and grabbed khakis and a denim shirt off hangers.

On the back of the door was a scarred leather bomber jacket that was old and extra large,

and looked like it might have come from some earlier time. He put it on even though it

was warm out.

“Mom!” Brazil yelled.

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