Hornet's Nest by Patricia Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page B

quiet as the police lady cuffed her again. The steel was cold but didn’t have the teeth it did a minute ago when the sons-a-bitches snaked her. She knew exactly what it was they wrapped around her wrists in back where she couldn’t see, and it bit and bit without relief, venom spreading through her, making her shake as she screamed. Her heart swelled up big, beating against her ribs, and would have broken had that blue car with the nice lady not pulled up.
    Ella Joneston had always known that death was when your heart broke. Hers had come close many times, going back to when she was twelve and boys in the projects knocked her down right after she’d washed her hair. They did things she never would speak of, and she’d gone home and picked dirt and bits of leaves out of braids and washed off while nobody asked. The police lady was sweet, and there was someone in plain clothes there to help her, a clean-looking boy with a kind face. 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 beenshot 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 Lorna 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.
     
    Neither cop had any idea about the boy riding with the deputy chief this night, and they sat inside the cruiser with