Patricia Cornwell - Hornet's Nest

She did not want to see remnants of a life no more. His favorite coffee mug. The Ben amp;: Jerry's Chocolate Chip

Cookie Dough ice cream he'd never had a chance to eat. The antique sterling-silver letter opener he had given her the Christmas of 1972, still on the desk in her study.

Cahoon heard the bell from his master suite upstairs, where his view above sculpted boxwoods and old magnolia trees included his building encrusted with jewels and topped by a crown. He threw back fine monogrammed sheets, wondering who on earth would dare to drop by his home at this obscene hour. Cahoon went to the Aiphone on the wall, and picked up the receiver. He was startled to see Chief Hammer on the video monitor.

"Judy?" he said.

"I know it's late, Sol." She looked into the camera and spoke over the intercom.

"But I need to talk to you."

"Is everything all right?" Alarmed, he thought of his children. He knew Rachael was in bed. But his two older sons could be anywhere.

"I'm afraid not," Hammer told him.

Cahoon grabbed his robe from the bedpost, and flung it around himself.

His slippers patted along the endless antique Persian runner covering stairs. His index finger danced over the burglar alarm keypad, turning off glass breakers, motion sensors, contacts in all windows and doors, and bypassing his vault and priceless art collection, which were in separate wings and on separate systems. He let Hammer in. Cahoon squinted in the glare of bright lights that blazed on whenever anything more than a foot tall moved within a six-foot radius of his house. Hammer did not look good. Cahoon could not imagine why the chief was out so early in the morning, so soon after her husband's sudden death.

"Please come in," he said, wide awake now and more gentle than usual.

"Can I get you a drink?"

She followed him into the great room, where he repaired to the bar. Hammer had been inside Cahoon's mansion but once, at a splendid party complete with a string quartet and huge silver bowls filled with jumbo shrimp on ice. The CEO liked English antiques and collected old books with beautiful leather covers and marbled pages.

"Bourbon," Hammer decided.

That sounded good to Cahoon, who was on a regimen of no fat, no alcohol, and no fun. He might have a double, straight up, no ice. He pulled the cork out of a bottle of Blanton's Kentucky single barrel, and didn't bother with the monogrammed cocktail napkins his wife liked so much. He knew he needed to be medicated because Hammer wasn't here to hand him good news. Dear Lord, don't let anything bad have happened to either of the boys. Did a day go by when their father didn't worry about their partying, and flying through life in their sports cars or Kawasaki one-hundred horsepower Jet Skis?

Please let them be okay and I promise I'll be a better person, Cahoon silently prayed.

"I heard on the news about your…" he started to say.

Thank you. He had so much amputated, Sol. " Hammer cleared her throat.

She sipped bourbon and was soothed by its heat.

"He wouldn't have had a quality of life, had they been able to clear up the disease. I'm just grateful he didn't suffer any more than he did." She typically looked on the bright side as her heart trembled like something wounded and afraid.

Hammer had not and could not yet accept that when the sun rose this morning and each one after the next, there would be silence in her house. There would be no night sounds of someone rattling in cupboards and turning on the TV. She would have no one to answer to, report to, or call when she was late or not going to make it home for dinner, as usual. She had not been a good wife. She had not even been a particularly good friend. Cahoon was struck speechless by the sight of this mighty woman in tears. She was trying hard to muster up that steely control of hers, but her spirit simply could not take it. He got up from his leather wing chair and dimmed the sconces on dark mahogany that he had salvaged from a sixteenth-century Tudor manor in England. He went to her and sat on the ottoman, taking one of her hands.

"It's all right, Judy," he kindly said, and he felt like crying, too.

"You have every right to feel this way, and you go right on. It's just us, you and me, two human beings in this room right now. Who we are doesn't matter."

"Thanks, Sol," she whispered, and her voice shook as she wiped her eyes and took another swallow of bourbon.

"Get drunk if you want," he suggested.

"We have plenty of guest rooms, and you can just stay right here so you don't have to drive."

She patted Gaboon's hand, and crossed her arms and drew a deep breath.

"Let's talk about you," she said.

Dejected, he got up and returned to his chair. Cahoon looked at her and braced himself.

"Please don't tell me it's Michael or Jeremy," he said in a barely audible voice.

"I know Rachael is all right. She's in her room asleep.

I know my wife is fine, sound asleep, too. " He paused to compose himself.

"My sons are still a bit on the wild side, both working for me and rebellious about it. I know they play hard, too hard, frankly."

Hammer thought of her own sons and was suddenly dismayed that she might have caused this father a moment's concern.

"Sol, no, no, no," she quickly reassured him.

"This is not about your sons, or about anyone in your family."

"Thank God." He took another swallow of his drink.

"Thank you, thank you, God."

He would tithe more than usual to the synagogue next Friday. Maybe he would build another child care center somewhere, start another scholarship, give to the retirement center and the community school for troubled kids, or an orphanage. Damn it all.

Cahoon was sick and tired of unhappiness and people suffering, and he hated crime as if all of it were directed at him.

"What do you want me to do?" he said, leaning forward and ready to mobilize.

"Do?" Hammer was puzzled.

"About what?"

"I've had it," he said.

Now she was very confused. Was it possible he already knew what she had come here to tell him? He got up and began to pace in his Gucci leather slippers.

"Enough is enough," he went on with feeling.

"I agree with you, see it your way. People being killed, robbed, and raped out there. Houses burglarized, cars stolen, children molested. In this city. Same is true all over the world, except in this country, everybody's got a gun. A gun in every pot. People hurting others and themselves, sometimes not even meaning to. Impulse." He turned around, pacing the other way.

"Impaired by drugs and alcohol. Suicides that might not have happened Were there not a gun right there. Acci…" he caught himself, remembering what had happened to Hammer's husband.

"What do you want me want us at the bank to do?" He stopped and fixed impassioned eyes on her.

This wasn't what she'd had in mind when she'd rung his doorbell, but Hammer knew when to seize the day.

"You certainly could be a crusader, Sol," she thoughtfully replied.

Crusader. Cahoon liked that, and thought it time she saw he had some substance, too. He sat back down and remembered his bourbon.

"You want to help?" she went on.

"Then no more shellacking what really goes on around here. No more bullshit, like this one hundred and five percent clearance rate. People need to know the truth. They need someone like you to inspire them to come out swinging."

He nodded, deeply moved.

"Well, you know, that clearance rate crap wasn't my idea. It was the mayor's."

"Of course." She didn't care.

"By the way," he said, curious now.

"What is it really?"

"Not bad." The drink was working.

"Around seventy- five percent, which is nowhere near what it ought to be, but substantially higher than in a lot of cities. Now, if you want to count ten-year-old cases that are finally cleared, or jot down names from the cemetery, or decide that a drug dealer shot dead was the guy responsible for three uncleared cases…"