Patricia Cornwell: Hornet's Nest

A detective, Ella reckoned. They took each of her arms, like she was going to Easter Sunday and dressed in something fine.

"Why you out here drinking like this?" The lady in uniform meant business but she wasn't harmful.

Ella wasn't sure where out here was. She didn't have a way to get places. So she couldn't be far from her apartment in Earle Village, where she had been sitting in front of the TV when the phone had rung earlier this evening. It was her daughter with the awful news about Efrim, Ella's fourteen-year-old grandson, who was in the hospital.

Efrim had been shot several times this morning. Everyone supposed the white doctors tried all they could, but Efrim had always been stubborn. The memory brought fresh hot tears to Ella's eyes.

Ella told the lady cop and the detective all about it as they situated her into the back of a police car with a partition to make sure Ella couldn't hurt anyone. Ella mapped out Efrim's entire short life, going back to when Ella held him in her arms right after Eorna birthed him.

He was always trouble, like his father. Efrim started dancing when he was two. He used to act big beneath the streetlight out front, with those other boys and all their money.

"I'm going to get your seatbelt on," the blond detective said, snapping her in and smelling like apples and spices.

The old woman reeked of stale bad hygiene and booze, triggering more images for Brazil. His hands were shaking slightly and not as facile as usual. He didn't understand what the woman was muttering and gumming and crying about, and every breath smelled like the inside of a Dumpster in the heat. West wasn't helping a bit now, standing back and watching, making Brazil do the dirty work. His fingers brushed the old woman's neck and he was startled by how smooth and warm it was.

"You're going to be all right." Brazil kept saying what couldn't possibly be true.

West was not naive. She knew patrol was a problem. How could it not be with Deputy Chief Goode heading it? That beat cops might be a little too rough or simply unprofessional in general wasn't a shock, but West couldn't stomach it. She approached the two patrolmen, both older and miserable in their jobs. She got in Smith's face and remembered being a sergeant and putting up with dead wood like him. As far as she was concerned, he was so low on the food chain, she wouldn't slop hogs with him.

"Don't let me ever see or hear of anything like this again," West said in that low tone that Brazil found scary.

West was close enough to see stubble that looked like sand, and a firestorm of broken blood vessels caused by what Smith did when he wasn't in a patrol car. His eyes were lifeless on hers, for his building had been vacant for years.

"We're out here to help, not hurt," West whispered.

"Remember? That goes for you, too," she added to his partner.

V9 Neither cop had any idea about the boy riding with the deputy chief this night, and they sat inside the cruiser with its hornet's nests on the doors, watching the midnight-blue Crown Victoria leave. Their prisoner in back was quietly snoring.

"Maybe Deputy Chief Virgin finally found a boyfriend," said Smith as he peeled open two sticks of Big Red gum.

"Yeah," said the other cop, 'when she gets tired of Romper Room, I'll show her what she's missing with the big dogs. "

They laughed, pulling out. Moments later, the scanner announced more bad news.

"Thirteen-hundred block Beatties Ford Road," it said.

"Report of an ambulance held hostage by a subject with a knife."

"Glad we're tied up on a call," Smith said, smacking a mouthful of cinnamon.

W) It was West's bad luck that Jerome Swan had not experienced a pleasant evening. It had begun at a fuzzy hour before the sun had gone down in this rundown part of the city. West had no reason to be aware of the nip joint in the area known as the Basin, off Tryon Street, very close to the Dog Pound, where she had been heading for quite some time now. So when the call went out, she was trapped, really. Two marked units got there first, and then Captain Jennings arrived with his ride-along, City Councilman Hugh Bledsoe.

"Shit," West said when they rolled up on the scene.

"Fuck."

She parked on the side of the narrow, dark street.

"You see that tall man right there getting out of the car, the one in the suit? You know who that is?"

Brazil reached for the door handle, then thought better of it.

"I know exactly who it is," he said.

"Huge Bedsore."

West shot him a surprised look. It was true the cops had a pet name for their city councilman, but she wasn't clear on how Brazil knew about it.

"Not one peep out of you," West warned as she opened her door.

"Stay out of the way." She got out.

"And don't touch anything."

The ambulance was rumbling, and parked in the middle of the street with the tailgate open wide, light spilling out as red and blue flashed and strobed from cop cars. The men had convened near a rear tire to come up with a plan. West followed around to the back to assess the problem for herself, Brazil right behind her and dying to get in front. Swan was inside, as far back as he could get, wielding a pair of surgical scissors, his eyes bloody egg yolks filled with fury when the woman cop in the white shirt filled his vision.

He had knots on his head and was bleeding from the fight he had gotten into at the nip joint where he had been gambling and drinking Night Train Express fortified wine. When he was put in the ambulance, it was one of those times when he decided he really didn't feel like going anywhere just that second. Whenever this happened. Swan seized the environment. In this case, he grabbed the closest dangerous object he could, and yelled to the paramedics that he had AIDS and was going to cut every one of them. They jumped out and got the cops, all of them men, except for that one with the big tits peering in at him like she might do some thing.

West saw the problem plainly. The subject was holding down the lock to a side door that led out to the street, and the only way to get to him was for someone to climb inside the ambulance. This didn't require much of a plan. West went around to confer with the committee of officers still gathered by the same tire.

"I'm going to divert him," she said as Bledsoe stared at her as if he'd never seen a woman in uniform.

"The minute he takes his hand off the door, you guys grab him," she made sure they understood.

She got closer to the open back of the ambulance and made a face, waving a hand before her eyes.

"Who used pepper spray?" she called out.

"Even that didn't stop him," one of the cops let her know.

Next thing Brazil knew, West had climbed inside the ambulance and picked up an aluminum stretcher to use as a shield. She did this easily, and her lips moved. Swan didn't like whatever it was she was communicating to him. His eyes were on hers, arteries bulging in his neck as he twitched and challenged her with looks and utterances. She was halfway inside when he lunged. Swan was sucked out as if he opened the door of an airplane. Brazil went around to check and found him facedown on the street being cuffed by all those men with a plan. City Councilman Bledsoe watched, hands in his pockets. His eyes followed West as she walked back to her car. Then he stared at Brazil.

"Come here," Bledsoe said to him.

Brazil cast a furtive glance in West's direction, certain he might get left alone out on this dark, unfriendly road.

He was mindful that West had ordered him not to talk to anyone.

"You're the ride-along," Bledsoe stated as he got closer.

"I don't know if I'm the ride-along," Brazil answered. He was just trying to be modest, but the councilman took it the wrong way. He thought the kid was being a smartass.