Hornet's Nest (23 page)

“Are we sure it’s the senator?” Brazil managed to ask.

Hammer gave him her upset eyes again. “Not sure enough for you to release that yet.”

“Okay,” he said. “As long as you don’t give it out to someone else first.”

“Never. You do the right thing, so will I.” She said the usual. “Call me tomorrow at five
P
.
M
. I’ll give you a statement.”

She walked off. His eyes followed her as she left the crime scene and ducked under tape, walking briskly through the strobing blue and red night. Television crews, radio reporters, and mobs of reporters darted at her like barracuda. She waved them off and got into her chief’s car. Brazil prowled some more, disturbed in a way he did not understand as he got closer to where the senator had been killed. Raines and other paramedics were carrying the body to the ambulance, and the Ace twenty-four-hour towing and recovery truck was rolling in to haul the Maxima to the police department.

The ambulance beeped as it backed up, carrying the dead senator to the morgue while cameras caught it all. Brent Webb watched Brazil with jealous eyes. It wasn’t fair Brazil got such special treatment and could wander around the crime scene with a flashlight as if he belonged there. Brazil’s privileged position, his golden touch, would end soon
enough, Webb knew. The television reporter smoothed his perfect hair and lubricated his lips with lip balm. He looked sincerely into the camera and told the world the latest tragic news as a Norfolk-Southern train loudly lumbered past.

B
razil’s flashlight swept gravel and weeds at the edge of rusty railroad tracks as the last train car loudly rumbled through the dark, hot night. Coagulating blood glistened bright red in the strong beam, illuminating a dingy washcloth and bloody quarters, pennies, and dimes that must have come out of pockets when the murdered senator’s pants were pulled down. Blood and gore clung to kudzu, and there were fragments of skull and brain. Brazil took a deep breath, looking down dark tracks, the skyline huge and bright.

Seth had images of his own blood and gore and savored the imagined reaction of Chief Wife when she walked into his room and found him on top of his bed, where he sat up now drinking beer, the .38 revolver in his lap. He could not take his eyes off the gun, which was loaded with one Remington +P cartridge. Intermittently, Seth had been spinning the cylinder for hours as he watched “Friends,” “Mary Tyler Moore,” and other reruns, and tested his luck. It wasn’t good. So far, out of perhaps a hundred dry runs, he had committed suicide successfully but twice. How could that be possible? Didn’t this go against the law of averages? He figured the cartridge should have lined up fatally at least
twenty times, since it was a five-shot revolver, and five divided into one hundred was twenty.

He had never been good in math. Seth had never been good in anything, he decided. Everyone would be better off without him, including his wimpy sons and his emasculating wife. She’d benefit the most, walking in, finding him slumped over, shot in the head through a pillow, blood everywhere, finished, end of story. No longer a problem. No more taking fatso Seth places and being ashamed, while younger men still looked at her with interested eyes. Seth would show her. Take that. Let his final chapter haunt her the rest of her big-shot days.

He would never go through with it, Hammer was quite sure of this. Certainly, when she had slid open her vanity drawer and found the .38 missing, it had occurred to the top police officer in Charlotte that her depressed, self-destructive spouse might have a clue as to the gun’s whereabouts. And for what? Self-protection. Hardly. Seth rarely remembered to set the burglar alarm. He did not like to shoot and had never carried a gun, not even in Little Rock when he was a member of the NRA because most people were. Hammer deduced and worried as she drove.

The fool. Wouldn’t this be his last and greatest revenge? Suicide was a mean and skulking act, unless one was dying anyway and desired an earlier flight out of pain and suffering. The vast majority of people killed themselves for payback purposes. Some of the nastiest notes Hammer had ever read were the last comments of just such people. She had not much sympathy because there wasn’t a soul she knew who didn’t bump over bad stretches of life’s highways now and again, struggle over long, lonely miles where it entered the mind that maybe one should run off the road, be done with it. Hammer was not exempt. She was well aware of her own spells of destructive eating, drinking, not exercising, laziness. They happened, and she picked herself up and went on. She always chose a better lane and got healthy again. She would not die, because she was responsible, and people needed her.

She walked into her house, not knowing what she would find. Locking the door, she reset the alarm. The TV was loud in Seth’s bedroom across from the kitchen. For a moment, his wife hesitated, tempted to walk back and check, but she couldn’t. Suddenly, she was afraid. She headed to her own part of the house, her heart filled with dread as she freshened up in the bathroom. It was late, but she didn’t change into her nightshirt yet or pour herself a Dewar’s. If he had done it, there would be people all over her property within minutes. There was no point in getting out of her clothes or smelling like booze. Judy Hammer began to cry.

Brazil was thinking about the deal he had made with Hammer as he flew through his story. Still in uniform, he sat before his computer, fingers dancing as he typed and flipped through his notepad. He included incredible detail about this night’s Black Widow killing. With photographic total recall, he showed what was inside the car, describing bloody money, and what the police and medical examiner had done, and how violent death felt and smelled and looked. His piece was graphic and moving, but it did not include the victim’s identity. Brazil kept his word.

This was very stressful. The journalist in him screamed that he had to print the truth, whether or not it was known for a fact. Brazil was honorable. He could not betray the police. He assuaged himself with the reality that Chief Hammer would never screw him, and he knew that West wouldn’t. Brazil would get his quote tomorrow at five
P
.
M
., and no one, especially Webb, would catch on until they read it in the
Observer
the following morning.

Webb had just come on the air for the eleven o’clock news when Hammer walked into her husband’s bedroom. Her heart slowed a little when she saw no blood. Nothing, in the least, stood out. Seth was on his side, head deep in the pillow. Webb’s voice was unusually solemn, the killing the lead story.

“. . . the shocking revelation in this night’s tragedy is that the victim is believed to be Senator Ken Butler . . .”

Hammer turned to stone, riveted to the TV. Seth sat straight up in bed, startled.

“My God,” Seth exclaimed. “We just had drinks with him last month.”

“Shhhhhhhhh,” Hammer silenced her self-destructive husband.

“. . . once again, the peculiar symbol of an hourglass was spray-painted on the body. Butler was believed to have been shot at close range with a high-velocity hollowpoint ammunition known as Silvertips . . .”

Hammer snatched up the portable phone from the table by Seth’s bed, where there were three Miller Lite cans and a glass of what looked like bourbon.

“Where’s my .38?” she said to him as she dialed.

“Got no idea.” He could feel the revolver between his legs, which was not an ideal place for it. But it had rearranged itself when he had fallen asleep.

“. . . sources say his briefcase, tote bag, and suit bag were riffled through inside the rental Maxima. Butler had picked up the Thrifty rental car at five-fifteen this afternoon. His money was gone, except for bloody change found under his body. Blood money, as the Black Widow claims number five . . .” Webb’s voice lowered, resonating tragic irony.

Brazil was getting his fix of press room sound and fury and therefore was not at his desk to receiver Hammer’s call. He watched thousands of newspapers speeding on a conveyor belt. His front page headline was an inch high and blurred, but he could still read it from where he stood.

BLOODY MONEY—BLACK WIDOW CLAIMS NUMBER FIVE

He couldn’t quite make out his byline, but he knew it was there. Workers dozed in chairs, waiting for technical problems. Brazil watched one-ton newsprint reels eerily floating up from underground, carried slowly along tracks past barrels
of liquid alum and vats of yellow, red, blue, and black ink. Metal clanked as dollies carried newsprint that reminded him of giant rolls of toilet paper. He wandered to the mail room, staring at pallets of bundled papers, listening to the loud click-clicking of the Muller Martini machine feeding inserts into papers as a belt carried them into the counting machine. His enthusiasm had left him, for some reason. He felt listless. He was restless, nocturnal again, and still sort of off-line in a way he did not understand.

It was a sweet-sick feeling. His heart was heavy and ached, and when he thought of that beefcake paramedic winking at West and looking at Hammer with lust in his eyes, Brazil felt a tightness and a rage. He felt fright. He experienced the same weak, chilly sensation he associated with barely escaping a car accident or almost losing a tennis match. Was it possible either woman might like Raines, that meatloaf of a paramedic who had to have a meager mental bank account to spend so much time working out? Of late, Brazil recently had caught the rumors about Hammer’s pitiful marriage to a fat guy who was unemployed. A dynamic woman like her would have needs and urges. How did Brazil know that she might not go for it and decide to meet Raines somewhere?

It was important for Brazil’s peace of mind and spiritual development that he know Hammer had, in fact, driven straight home. He could not trust her unless he knew, with certainty, that she would not betray him and the world by stooping so low as to sneak around with Denny Raines. Brazil drove quickly through Fourth Ward. He was stunned to see an ambulance parked in front of Hammer’s house and her dark blue police car gleaming in the driveway. Brazil’s heart was boxing his ribs as he parked some distance away, staring in horror and disbelief. How in God’s name could she be so blatant?

A madness invaded Brazil’s otherwise sound mind. He got out of his BMW and strode toward the house of the woman he worshiped but no longer respected or would ever speak to or think of or wonder about again. He would air his righteous thoughts, but there would be no violence unless
Raines started it. If so, Brazil would sock him to Oz, ace him, smash him. He tried not to think about Raines’s size, or that the paramedic did not appear to be scared of much. Brazil was having second thoughts when Hammer’s front door opened.

Raines and another paramedic wheeled out a stretcher bearing a fat older man. Chief Hammer followed and seemed in shock, and Brazil was stunned and baffled in the middle of Pine Street. Hammer was distraught as practiced hands loaded her husband into the ambulance.

“You sure you don’t want me to ride with you?” Hammer asked the fat man.

“I’m sure.” The fat man was in pain and sluggish, perhaps from whatever was dripping into him intravenously.

“Well, have it your way,” Hammer told him.

“I don’t want her coming,” the fat man instructed Raines.

“Not to worry.” Hammer sounded hurt as she walked back to the house.

She stood in the doorway, watching the ambulance drive off. Squinting, she noticed Brazil on her dark street, staring. She recognized him, and it all came back to her. Oh Christ. As if she didn’t have problems enough.

“I tried to get you earlier. Give me a chance to explain,” she called out to him.

Now he was completely baffled. “Excuse me?” He stepped closer.

“Come here.” Hammer wearily motioned to him.

He sat on her porch swing. She turned out the light and sat on the steps, certain this young man must think she was the biggest, most dishonest bureaucrat he had ever encountered. Hammer knew this might be the night her controversial community policing project would go to hell along with everything else.

“Andy,” she began, ”you’ve got to believe that I said nothing to anyone. I swear I kept my promise to you.”

“What?” He was getting a very bad feeling. “What promise?”

She realized he did not know. “Oh God,” she mumbled. “You didn’t hear the news tonight?”

“No, ma’am. What news?” He was getting excited, his voice rising.

Hammer told him about Channel 3 and Webb’s scoop.

“That’s impossible!” Brazil exclaimed. “Those are my details! How could he know the stuff about the bloody money, the washcloth, any of it! He wasn’t there!”

“Andy, please lower your voice.”

Lights were blinking on. Dogs were barking. Hammer stood.

“It’s not fair. I play by the rules.” Brazil felt as if his life were over. “I cooperate with you, help as much as I can. And get crucified for it.” He got up, too, the swing moving, slowly swaying, and empty.

“You can’t stop doing what’s right just because others do things that are wrong.” She spoke quietly and from experience as she opened the door that would lead her back inside her fine home. “We’ve done some pretty wonderful things, Andy. I hope you won’t let this ruin it.”

Her face was kind but sad as she looked at him. He felt the ache in his heart, and his stomach was doing something strange, too. He was sweating and chilled as he stared at her, unable to imagine what it must have been like for her children to be raised by such a person.

“Are you all right?” Hammer thought he was acting oddly.

“I don’t know what my problem is.” He wiped his face with his hands. “I think I’ve been trying to get sick or something. It’s none of my business, but is your husband all right?”

“A flesh wound,” she replied, weary and depressed again as moths fluttered past, into her house, where soon they would die from pesticide.

Misfires rarely occurred with double-action revolvers. But when Hammer had demanded that Seth return the .38 to her, he had gotten angry and mean. He’d had enough of being bossed around by this woman, who next would begin searching him and his bedroom. There was no way out. Unfortunately, she’d walked in before he’d had a chance to stash the gun in a place she couldn’t find it. Worse, Seth had been
sleeping in a drunken position that had resulted in tingling and numbness in his right hand. When he had decided to send this same hand down to his crotch to fish out the revolver, it had not been a wise move. It was also Seth’s bad luck that the one time he did not want the cartridge lined up with the firing pin was precisely then.

“His left buttock,” Hammer was explaining to Brazil, who was inside the house with her now, because she could not leave her front door open all night.

Brazil looked around at vibrant oriental rugs on polished hardwood floors, at fine oil paintings and handsome furniture in warm fabrics and rich leathers. He was standing in the foyer of Chief Hammer’s splendid restored home, and no one else was around. It was just the two of them, and he began sweating profusely again. If she noticed, she did not let on.