The Hornet’s Nest. Patricia Cornwell

again, he was going to lose one of the few things he’d ever been good at. Damn. The

ladies on court one noticed a marked deterioration in their own games as they continued

to watch with envy the young man on court four hit balls so hard they sounded like

baseballs cracking against bats.

v^y W Chief Hammer’s concentration was in and out, too.

She was presiding over an executive staff meeting in her private conference room, in her

sizeable corner of the third floor. Windows overlooked Davidson and Trade, and she

could see the mighty US Bank Corporate Center topped by its silly aluminum headdress,

which oddly brought to mind a wild man with a bone in his nose, perhaps from some

Little Rascals episode from long years past. At exactly eight this morning as Hammer

was carrying her first cup of coffee to her desk, the CEO of that sixty-story erection had

called her.

Solomon Cahoon was Jewish, and the Old Testament factored into his mother’s choice of

names for her firstborn male child. Her son would be a king who would make wise

decisions, such as the one this Friday, when he had informed his police chief that she

would hold a press conference to let citizens know that the serial killings in Charlotte

were homosexual and of no threat to normal men visiting the Queen City on business.

Northside Baptist Church would be holding a prayer vigil for victims’ families and the

souls of those killed. Police were following very good leads.

“Just a reassurance thing,” Cahoon had relayed to the chief over the phone.

Hammer, and her six deputy chiefs, along with people from strategic planning and crime

analysis, were discussing this latest commandment delivered on high. Wren Dozier,

deputy chief of administration, was especially incensed. He was forty with delicate

features and a soft mouth. Unmarried, he lived in a section of Fourth Ward where

Tommy Axel and others had condominiums with dusky rose doors. Dozier had known

he would never be promoted beyond captain. Then Hammer had come to town, a woman

who rewarded people for good work. Dozier would take a bullet for her.

“What a bunch of shit,” Dozier said as he slowly and angrily twirled his coffee mug on the table.

“So what about the other side of this, huh?” He met eyes all around.

“What about the wives and kids back home? They’re supposed to think the last thing Pop

did was pay for a homosexual encounter out on some city street somewhere?”

“There’s no evidence to support such a thing,” West said, and she was unhappy, too.

“You can’t say something like this.” She stared at Hammer.

The chief and Cahoon could agree on nothing, and she knew he was going to have her

fired. It was all a matter of time, and would not be a first, either. At her level, it was all politics. The city got a new mayor, who brought along his own chief, which was what

had happened to her in Atlanta, and would have in Chicago, had she not left. She really

could not afford to get reshuffled again.

Each city would get only smaller, until one fine day she ended up right where she’d started, in the economically languishing one-horse town of Little Rock.

“Of course I will not get up in front of reporters and spread such crap,” the chief said.

“I won’t.”

“Well, it can’t hurt to remind the public that we are following leads and are on the case,”

said the public information officer.

“What leads?” said West, who headed investigations, and should be privy to such things.

“If we get any, we’ll follow them,” said Hammer.

“That’s the point.”

“You can’t say that, either,” worried the PIO.

“We have to leave out the ;/ we get any part of …”

Hammer impatiently cut her off.

“Of course, of course. That goes without saying. I didn’t mean literally. Enough of this.

Let’s move on. Here’s what we’re going to do. A press release.” She regarded the PIO

over reading glasses.

“I want it on my desk by ten-thirty and out to the press by midafternoon so they can meet

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