Hornet's Nest (22 page)

The stress brought on by Niles’s addition to the family precipitated a self-destructiveness in West that had nothing to do with her growing isolation as she continued to get promoted in a man’s world. Her increased smoking, consumption of fat and beer, and her refusal to exercise were completely unrelated to her breaking up with Jimmy Dinkins, who was allergic to Niles, and frankly hated the cat to the point of pulling his gun on Niles one night when Dinkins and West were arguing and Niles decided to insert himself by pouncing on Dinkins from the top of the refrigerator.

West was still sweating, her breathing labored, as she led their prisoner back to the car. She thought she might throw up.

“You got to quit smoking,” Brazil said to her.

West stuffed the subject into the back of the car, and Brazil climbed in the front.

“You got any idea how much fat’s in Bojangles, and all that other shit you eat?” Brazil went on.

Their prisoner was silent, his eyes bright with hate in the rearview mirror. His name was Nate Laney. He was fourteen. He would kill these white cops. All he needed was a chance. Laney was bad and had been since birth, according to his
biological mother, who also had always been bad, according to her own mother. This bad seed could be traced back to a prison in England, where the original bad seed had been shipped out to this country around the same time the troops in the Queen City had been chasing Cornwallis down the road.

“I bet you never exercise.” Brazil did not know when to quit.

West gave him a look as she wiped her flushed face with a tissue. Brazil had just sprinted a hundred yards and wasn’t even breathing. She felt old and crabby, and sick and tired of this kid and his naive, self-righteous opinions. Life was entirely more complicated than he thought, and he would begin to see it for himself after he’d been out here a year or two with nothing but fried chicken places on every corner. Bojangles, Church’s, Popeye’s, Chic N Grill, Chick-Fil-A, Price’s Chicken Coop. Plus, cops didn’t make much money, certainly not in their early years, so even off-duty options for dining were limited to the pizza, burgers, and bar food that were plentiful in Charlotte, where citizens loved their Hornets and Panthers and NASCAR race-car drivers.

“When was the last time you played tennis?” Brazil asked as their prisoner plotted in the backseat.

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“Why don’t we go out and hit some.”

“You need your head examined,” she said.

“Oh come on. You used to be good. I bet you used to be in shape, too,” he said.

The massive concrete jail was in the heart of downtown. It had been built at the same time as the big new police department, in this city that enjoyed a crime clearance rate that exceeded the actual number of cases, according to some. There were many levels of security to go through at the jail, starting with lockers where police were to deposit their guns on the way in. At a desk, deputies checked all who entered, and Brazil looked around, taking in yet another new, scary place. A Pakistani woman in dark clothing and a veil was being processed for shoplifting. Drunks, thieves, and the
usual drug dealers were being herded by cops, while the sheriff’s department supervised.

In the Central Warrant Repository, West searched her prisoner, emptying his pockets of Chap Stick, one dollar and thirteen cents, and a pack of Kools. She shuffled through his paperwork. He was happy now, laughing, full of himself, checking to see who was watching Nate the Man.

“You able to read?” West asked him.

“My bond on there?” Her prisoner was jailing, wearing three pairs of boxer shorts, two pairs of shorts, the outer ones green, falling off, no belt, looking around and unable to stand still.

“’Fraid not,” West said.

Inside blue metal solitary holding cells, another young boy beyond redemption stared out with forlorn, killing eyes. Brazil stared back at him. Brazil looked at the Holding Area, where a cage was packed with men waiting to be transported to the jail on Spector Drive until the Department of Corrections transferred them to Camp Green or Central Prison. The men were quiet, peering out, gripping bars like animals in the zoo, nothing else to do in their jail house orange.

“I ain’t been in here in a while,” West’s prisoner let her know.

“How long’s a while?” West completed an inventory of Nate the Man’s belongings.

Nate Laney shrugged, moving around, looking. “’Bout two months,” he said.

W
est and Brazil ended their ride with breakfast at the Presto Grill. He was wide-eyed and ready for adventure. She was worn out, a new day just begun. She went home long enough to notice a tube of Super Glue in her shrubbery. Nearby was an open Buck knife. She barely remembered hearing something on the scanner about a subject exposing himself in Latta Park. It seemed glue was involved. West bagged possible evidence, getting an odd feeling about why it might have landed in her yard. She fed Niles. At nine
A
.
M
., West accompanied Hammer through the atrium of City Hall.

“What the hell are you doing with a summons book in your car?” Hammer was saying, walking fast.

This had gone too far. Her deputy chief had been out all night in foot pursuits. She had been locking people up.

“Just because I’m a deputy chief doesn’t mean I can’t enforce the law,” West said, trying to keep up, nodding at people they passed in the corridor.

“I can’t believe you’re writing tickets. Morning, John. Ben. Locking people up. Hi, Frank.” She greeted other city councilmen. “You’re going to end up in court again. As if I can spare you. Your summons book gets turned in to me today.”

West laughed. This was one of the funniest things she’d heard in a while. “I will not!” she said. “What did you tell me to do? Huh? Whose idea was it for me to go back out on the street?” Her sleep deficit was making her giddy.

Hammer threw her hands up in despair as they walked into a room where a special city council meeting had been called by the mayor. It was packed with citizens, reporters, and television crews. People instantly were on their feet, in an uproar, when the two women police officials walked in.

“Chief!”

“Chief Hammer, what are we going to do about crime in the east end?”

“Police don’t understand the black community!”

“We want our neighborhoods back!”

“We build a new jail but don’t teach our children how to stay out of it!”

“Business downtown has dropped twenty percent since these serial killing–car jackings started!” another citizen shouted.

“What are we doing about them? My wife’s scared to death.”

Hammer was up front now, taking the microphone. Councilmen sat around a polished horseshoe-shaped table, polished brass nameplates marking their place in the city’s government. All eyes were on the first police chief in Charlotte’s history to make people feel important, no matter where they lived or who they were. Judy Hammer was the only mother some folks had ever known, in a way, and her deputy was pretty cool, too, out there with the rest of them, trying to see for herself what the problems were.

“We will take our neighborhoods back by preventing the next crime.” Hammer spoke in her strong voice. “Police can’t do it without your help. No more looking the other way and walking past.” She, the evangelist, pointed at all. “No more thinking that what happens to your neighbor is your neighbor’s problem. We are one body.” She looked around. “What happens to you, happens to me.”

No one moved. Eyes never left her as she stood before all and spoke a truth that power brokers from the past had
not wanted the people to hear. The people had to take their streets, their neighborhoods, their cities, their states, their countries, their world, back. Each person had to start looking out his window, do his own bit of policing in his own part of life, and get irate when something happened to his neighbor. Yes sir. Rise up. Be a Minuteman, a Christian soldier.

“Onward,” Hammer told them. “Police yourself and you won’t need us.”

The room was frenzied. That night, West was ironically reminded of the overwhelming response as she and Brazil sped past the stadium rising eerily, hugely, against the night, filled with crazed, cheering fans celebrating Randy Travis. West’s Crown Victoria was directed and in a hurry as it passed the convention center where a huge video display proclaimed WELCOME TO THE QUEEN CITY. In the distance, cop cars went fast, lights strobing blue and red, protesting another terrible violation. Brazil, too, could not help but think of the timing, after all Hammer had said this morning. He was angry as they drove.

West knew fear she would not show. How could this happen again? What about the task force she had handpicked, the Phantom Force, as it had been dubbed, out day and night to catch the Black Widow Killer? She could not help but think of the press conference and its excerpts on radio and television. West was tempted to wonder if this might be more than coincidental, as if someone was making a mockery of Charlotte and its police and its people.

The killing had occurred off Trade Street, behind a crumbling brick building where the stadium and the Duke Power transfer station were in close view. West and Brazil approached the disorienting strobing of emergency lights, heading toward an area cordoned off by yellow crime-scene tape. Beyond were railroad tracks and a late-model white Maxima, its driver’s door open, interior light on, and bell dinging. West flipped open her portable phone and tried her boss’s number again. For the past ten minutes, the phone had been busy because Hammer had one son on call waiting and the other on the line. When Hammer hung up, her phone immediately rang with more bad news.

Four minutes later, she drove out of her Fourth Ward neighborhood in a hurry as West folded the phone and handed it to Brazil. He returned it to the leather case on his belt, where there was plenty of room since volunteers packed light. Brazil was pleased to attach anything to his belt that was
road legal
, a Charlottean term, the etymology of which could be traced back to NASCAR gods and the rockets they drove, not one of which, in fact, was permitted on life’s highways unless it was chained to a trailer. Brazil envied what most cops complained about. Backaches, inconvenience, and being encumbered did not enter his mind.

Of course, he carried a radio with channels for all response areas, the antenna stubby and prone to probe very short officers’ armpits. Brazil also wore a pager no one ever called, a Mini Mag-Lite with two thousand two hundred candlepower in its black leather holster, and West’s cellular phone, because he was not allowed to carry the
Observer
’s cellular phone when he was in uniform. Brazil had no gun or pepper spray. His ultra duty belt was without expandable baton, nightstick ring, double magazine holders, handcuffs, or double cuff case. Brazil lacked a long flashlight case or Pro-3 duty holster or clip holder, and had not a single molded belt keeper or for that matter a silent keyholder with Velcro wraparound flap.

West had all this and more. She was fully loaded, and Niles could hear her coming from the far reaches of the city. Minute by minute, the seven-pound Abyssinian waited for the sound, listening for the beloved clanking and creaking and heavy landings. His disappointment was becoming chronic and broaching unforgivable as he sat in his window over the sink, watching and waiting and increasingly fixated by the USBank Corporate Center (USBCC) dominating the sky. Niles in his earlier lives had been intimate with the greatest erections in all of civilization, the pyramids, the magnificent tombs of pharaohs.

In the fantasies of Niles, USBCC was the giant King Usbeecee, with his silver crown, and it was simply a matter of
time before his majesty shook loose of his moorings. He would turn right and left, looking at his feeble neighbors. Niles imagined the king stepping slowly, heavily, feeling his way, shaking earth, for the first time. He aroused Niles’s fearful reverence because the king had no smile, and when his eyes caught the sun and turned gold, they were overpowering, as was the mighty monarch’s sheer weight. King Usbeecee could step on
The Charlotte Observer
, the entire police department, all of the LEC and city hall. He could crush the entire force of armed officers and their chief and deputy chiefs, the mayor, the newspaper’s publisher, reducing all to precast dust.

Hammer got out of her car and wasted no time striding through her detectives and uniformed police. She ducked under the tape with its bright yellow warning that always made her ache and full of fear, no matter where she saw it. Hammer was not in the form she would have liked, having even more on her mind than usual. Since her ultimatum to Seth, her quality of life had radically disintegrated. He had not gotten up this morning and was mumbling about Dr. Kevorkian, living wills, and the Hemlock Society. Seth had pontificated about the silliness of assuming that suicide was selfish, for every adult had the right to be absent.

“Oh for God’s sake,” his wife had said. “Get up and go for a walk.”

“No. You can’t make me. I don’t have to be in this life if I don’t want to be.”

This had prompted her to remove all firearms from their usual spots. Hammer had collected many over the years and had strategically tucked them in various places around the house. Still at large when West had called was Hammer’s old faithful Smith & Wesson stainless steel five-shot .38 special with Pachmeyer grips. Hammer was fairly certain it was supposed to be in the drawer of her vanity in her bathroom. She was almost positive this was where it had been last time she had rounded up weapons and locked them in the safe before the grandbabies came to town.

Hammer had many concerns. She was depressed and coping the best she could as anxieties from her press conference, which had involved national media, continued to pluck at her. Politics were what she hated most. They honestly were the bane of her existence.
A hundred and five percent clearance rate.
She wished Cahoon could be here in this god-awful place. This was what he needed to see. The Cahoons of the world would lose it, wouldn’t be able to handle it, would pale and flee. This gory dead businessman was not about appearances or economic development or the tourist industry. This overgrown, creepy thicket flickering with fireflies near railroad tracks, this Thrifty rental car, open and dinging, was about reality.

Hammer spoke to no one as she approached tragedy, and blue and red lights lit up her hard, distressed face. She joined West and Brazil near the Maxima as Dr. Odom arranged another black pouch around another body. The medical examiner’s gloved hands were bloody and sweat dripped in his eyes as his heart beat slow and with force. He had dealt with the savagery of sexual homicide most of his life, but nothing like this. Dr. Odom was a compassionate man, but he was tough. He had learned long ago to keep himself in check and not relate too closely. It was sad but true that it was easier for him to be clinical when the victims were women or obvious gays not getting along or, in some cases, foreigners. It had been comfortable for him to categorize.

Dr. Odom was feeling increasingly shaky about his homosexual serial killing theory. This victim happened to be fifty-four-year-old state senator Ken Butler from Raleigh. The last thing Dr. Odom intended to imply, in any form or fashion, was that the much-beloved black leader was something less than mainstream. Dr. Odom also knew, from his vast experience, that homosexual politicians didn’t cruise downtown streets looking for boys. They went to public parks and men’s rooms, where they could always swear they were neither exposing themselves nor offering an invitation. They were urinating.

Dr. Odom zipped the pouch over blood and naked flesh, covering the blaze orange hourglass. He looked up at
Hammer and shook his head as he stood. His back was killing him. Brazil was staring into the Maxima, hands in his pockets to make sure he didn’t inadvertently touch anything and leave his prints. That would be the end of his career. He might even become a suspect. After all, didn’t he coincidentally happen to be in the area every time one of these bodies turned up? He nervously glanced around him, wondering if this might remotely occur to anyone. Dr. Odom was busy giving Hammer and West his opinions.

“This is a fucking nightmare,” the medical examiner was saying. “Jesus Christ.”

He ripped off his gloves and wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. He cast about, looking for a receptacle for biological hazards. Catching the eye of Denny Raines, he gave the paramedic a nod and the big, handsome guy came through with his stretcher and crew. Raines winked at West, drinking in the sexy sight of her in uniform. She was pretty unbelievable, and Hammer was hot, too. Brazil’s eyes fixed on Raines. Brazil got a strange feeling as he watched the overbuilt ambulance attendant eyeing West and Hammer. Brazil wasn’t sure what the problem was, but he was suddenly anxious and a little sick to his stomach. He wanted to get in Raines’s face, beg him to start something so Brazil could finish it, or at least order Raines to leave the scene.

“Well, it’s all yours now,” Dr. Odom went on to Hammer as stretcher legs clacked. “I’m not releasing a damn thing to the media. Never do. Any statement will have to come from you.”

“We’re not releasing his identity tonight.” Hammer was adamant. “Not until he’s been positively identified.”

There was no doubt in her mind. His driver’s license was on the floor of the Maxima, on the passenger’s side. Hammer recognized the senator’s imposing stature, the gray hair and goatee and heavy face. He hadn’t survived long enough to have tissue response to his horrendous injuries, no swelling or bruising. Butler did not look so different from when Hammer had seen him last, at a cocktail party in Myers Park. She was terribly upset and determined that it would not show.
She approached Brazil. He was prowling around the car, taking notes.

“Andy,” she said, touching his arm. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how sensitive this is.”

He got still, looking at her as if she were the reason people went to church every Sunday. She was God. Hammer was distracted as her gaze wandered inside the car, to the black leather briefcase stamped with the gold initials K.O.B. It was in back, open, as were an overnight bag and a suit bag, everything dumped out. She made a silent inventory of keys, a calculator, USAir peanuts and tickets, a portable phone, pens, paper, address book, Tic Tacs, lubricated Trojan condoms, shoes, socks, and Jockey shorts, all scattered by hard, heartless hands.