Patricia Cornwell: Hornet's Nest

"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.

The light was flashing on the answering machine by his bed, and he hit the play button. The first message was from the newspaper credit union, and he impatiently hit the button again, then three more times, skipping past hang-ups. The last message was from Axel. He was playing guitar, singing Hootie 8c the Blowfish.

"I only wanna be with you… Yo! Andy, it's Axeldon't axe-me. Maybe dinner? How 'bout Jack Straw's…?"

Brazil impatiently cut off the recording as the phone rang. This time the caller was live and creepy, and breathing into the phone as the pervert had sex with Brazil in mind, again without asking.

"I'm holding youuu so haarrrddd, and you're touching me with your tongue, sliiiidiiing…" she breathed in a low tone that reminded Brazil of psycho shows he sometimes had watched as a child.

"You're sick." He slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

He stood in the mirror over his dresser and began brushing hair out of his eyes. It was really bugging him, getting too long, streaks from the sun catching light. He had always worn his hair one of two ways, short or not as short. He was tucking an obstinate strand behind an ear when suddenly the reflection of his mother boiled up from behind, an obese, raging drunk, attacking.

"Where have you been?" his mother screamed as she tried to backhand her son across the face.

Brazil raised an arm, warding off the blow just in time. He wheeled around, grabbing his mother by both wrists, firmly but gently. This was a tired, old drama, an endless rerun of a painful play.

"Easy, easy, easy," he said as he led his besotted mother to the bed and sat her down.

Muriel Brazil began to cry, rocking, slurring her words.

"Don't go.

Don't leave me, Andy. Please, oh pleassseee. "

Brazil glanced at his watch. He looked furtively at the window, afraid West might somehow see through shut blinds and know the wretched secret of his entire life.

"Mom, I'm going to get your medicine, okay?" he said.

"You watch TV and go to bed. I'll be home soon."

It wasn't okay. Mrs. Brazil wailed, rocking, screaming hell on earth.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry! Don't know what's wrong with me, Andyeeee!"

"W West did not hear all of this, but she heard enough because she had opened car windows to smoke. She was suspicious that Brazil lived with a girlfriend and they were having a fight. West shook her head, flicking a butt out onto the weed-choked, eroded drive. Why would anyone move in with another human being right after college, after all those years of roommates? For what? She asked no questions of Brazil as they drove away. Whatever this reporter might have to say to explain his life, she didn't want to hear it. They headed back to the city, the lighted skyline an ambitious monument to banking and girls not allowed. This wasn't an original thought. She heard Hammer complain about it every day.

"W West would drive her chief through the city, and Hammer would look out, poking her finger and talking about those businessmen behind tall walls of glass who decided what went into the paper and what crimes got solved and who became the next mayor. Hammer would rail on about Fortune 500 yahoos who didn't live anywhere near here and determined whether the police needed a bicycle squad or laptops or different pistols. Rich men had decided to change the uniforms years ago and to merge the city police with the Mecklenburg County's Sheriff's Department. Every decision was unimaginative and based on economics, according to Hammer.

West believed every bit of it as she and Brazil cruised past the huge, new stadium where David Copperfield was making magic, and parking decks were jammed with thousands of cars. Brazil was oddly subdued, and not writing down a word. West looked curiously at him as the police scanner rudely announced this modern city's primitive crimes, and the radio softly played Eiton John.

"Any unit in the area," a dispatcher said.