The Hornet’s Nest. Patricia Cornwell

stately white brick house with its copper roof, he stopped. He sat and stared. The only

lights on were for the benefit of burglars, because nobody in the family was home, or

ever would be.

He thought of a mother, a father, and three young children, gone in one violent minute,

life lines randomly intersecting in exactly the horribly wrong way, and all was lost.

Brazil had never heard much about rich people dying in car wrecks or shoot-outs. Now

and then their private planes went down, and he recalled there had been a serial rapist in

Myers Park back in the eighties. Brazil imagined a young male in a hood knocking on

doors,

his sole intention to rape a woman home alone. Was it resentment that fired such

cruelty? An up yours to the rich? Brazil tried to put himself in the mind set of such a

young violent man as he watched lighted windows flow past.

He realized the rapist had probably done exactly what Brazil was doing this night. He

would have browsed, stalked, but most likely on foot.

He would have spied and planned, the actual awful act incidental to the fantasy of it.

Brazil could not think of much worse than to be sexually violated. He had been scorned

by enough rednecks in his brief life to fear rape as a woman might. He would never

forget what Chief Briddlewood of Davidson security told him once. Don’t ever go to jail,

boy. You won’t stand up straight the whole time you’re there.

The wreck was right about where Selwyn and the various Queens Roads got confused,

and Brazil recognized the scene instantly as he approached. What he had not’ expected

was the Nissan pulled off the street. As he got closer, he was shocked to realize Officer

Michelle Johnson inside it, crying in the dark. Brazil parked on the shoulder.

He got out and walked toward the officer’s personal car, his footsteps sure and directed,

as if he were in charge of whatever was going on.

He stared through the driver’s window, transfixed by the sight of Johnson crying, and his

heart began to thud. She looked up and saw him and was startled. She grabbed her

pistol, then realized it was that reporter. She relaxed but was enraged. She rolled her

window down.

“Get the fuck away from me!” she said.

He stared at her and could not move. Johnson cranked the engine.

“Vultures! Fucking vultures!” she screamed.

Brazil was frozen. He was acting so oddly and atypically for a reporter that Johnson was taken aback. She lost interest in leaving. She did not move, as they stared at each other.

“I want to help.” Brazil was impassioned.

A streetlight shone on broken glass and black stains on pavement, and illuminated the

gouged tree the Mercedes had been wrapped around.

Fresh tears started. Johnson wiped her face with her hands, her humiliation complete as

this reporter continued to watch her. She heaved and moaned, as if overwhelmed by a

seizure, and was aware of the pistol that could end all of it.

“When I was ten,” the reporter spoke, ‘my dad was a cop here. About your age when he

got killed on duty. Sort of like you feel you’ve been. ”

Johnson looked up at him as she wept.

“Eight-twenty-two p.m.” March twenty-ninth. A Sun day. They said it was his fault,”

Brazil went on, his voice trembling.

“Was in plain clothes, followed a stolen car out of his district, wasn’t supposed to make a traffic stop in Adam Two. The backup never got there. Not in time. He did the best he

could, but…” His voice caught, and he cleared his throat.

“He never had a chance to tell his story.”

Brazil stared off into the dark, furious at a street, at a night, that had robbed him of his

life, too. He pounded his fist on top of the car.

“My dad wasn’t a bad cop!” he cried.

Johnson had gotten strangely quiet, and felt empty inside.

“I’d rather be him,” she said.

“I’d rather be dead.”

“No.” Brazil bent down, at her eye level.

“No.” He saw her left hand on the steering wheel, and the wedding band she wore. He

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