Hornet's Nest by Patricia Cornwell

again. She slammed another nail into wood and felt bad about the way she had treated him. He had meant no harm, and her mood had nothing to do with him, really.
     
    Niles could have done with the same consideration. He was in the window over the kitchen sink, looking out at his owner in a flood. She was swinging something that looked like it might hurt Niles if he got in her way. Niles had been minding his own business earlier, walking in circles, kneading the covers, finding just the right warm spot to settle on his owner’s chest. Next thing, he was an astronaut, a circus acrobat shot out of a cannon. It was just a darn good thing he could land on his feet. He stared through streaming water at someone entering the yard from the north. Niles, the watch cat, had never seen this person, not once in his ancient feline life.
    • • •
    Brazil was aware of a skinny cat watching him from a window as he trespassed and West hammered, calling out to someone named Raines.
    “Look, I’m sorry, okay?” she was saying. “I’m in this mood.”
    Brazil carried three thick Sunday papers wrapped in a dry-cleaning bag he had found in his closet. “Apology accepted,” he said.
    West wheeled around and fixed him in her sights, hammer mid-swing. “What the hell are you doing here?” She was startled and taken aback and did her best to sound hateful.
    “Who’s Raines?” Brazil got closer, his tennis shoes getting soaked.
    “None of your damn business.” She started hammering as her heart did.
    He was suddenly shy and tentative in the rain as he got closer. “I brought you some extra papers. Thought you might . . .”
    “You didn’t ask me.” She hammered. “You didn’t give me a warning. Like you have some right to investigate my life.” She bent a nail and clumsily pried it out. “Ride around all night. The whole time you’re a spy.”
    She stopped what she was doing to look at him. He was soaked and dejected, wanting her to be pleased. He had given her the best he knew.
    “You got no fucking right!” she said.
    “It’s a good story.” He was getting defensive. “You’re a hero.”
    She went on, enraged and not certain why. “What hero? Who cares?”
    “I told you I was going to write about you.”
    “Seems to me that was a threat.” She turned back to her fence and hammered. “And I didn’t believe you meant it.”
    “Why not?” He didn’t understand any of this and didn’t think it was fair.
    “No one has before.” She hammered again and stopped again, trying to stay mad but not doing a good job of it. “I wouldn’t have thought I was all that interesting.”
    • • •
    “What I did is good, Virginia,” he said.
    Brazil was vulnerable and trying not to be. He told himself that what this hammer-wielding deputy chief thought didn’t matter in the least. West stood in the rain, the two of them looking at each other as Niles watched from his favorite window, tail twitching.
    “I know about your father,” West went on. “I know exactly what happened. Is that why you run around playing cop morning, noon, and night?”
    Brazil was struggling with emotions he didn’t want anyone to know about. West couldn’t tell if he was angry or close to tears as she chipped away at him with her own investigation into his past.
    “He’s plainclothes,” she said, “decides to pull a stolen vehicle. Number one violation. You don’t do that in an unmarked car. And the asshole turns out to be a felon on the run, who points his gun close range. Last thing your father said was, ‘Please God no,’ but the fucker does it anyway. Blows a hole in your daddy’s heart, dead before he hits the pavement. Your favorite newspaper made sure Detective Drew Brazil looked bad in the end. Screwed him. And now his son’s out here doing the same thing.”
    Brazil sat on the swampy lawn, staring hard at her. “No, I’m not. That’s not the point. And you’re cruel.”
    West didn’t often have such a powerful