Fuzzy Navel (3 page)

L
EAVITT STREET BUZZES with activity. As in the previous crime scene, cops and onlookers surround the house, a walking, talking wall. The media already arrived, two news vans sending live feeds to their networks. I park in the center of the street, since nothing is getting through anyway. Herb extricates himself from my car with much grunting, but I refrain from making any jokes involving power bars or extra energy.

It’s dark now. Dark and cold. The streetlight in front of the house isn’t working, but there are enough emergency vehicles with their headlights on to provide adequate illumination.

We push through the crowd, duck under the cordon, and head for the house. This one is bigger than the two-flat we just left, a single-family home with a giant bay window in front. Through the open blinds I can see cops milling around inside. Herb and I don our booties and go in, seeking out Detective Bobalik to get an update.

She directs the crime scene from the front room, standing a few feet away from Chris Wolak’s body on the floor. I pause, taking everything in. Ten, maybe twelve police officers in the room, most of them CSU. Decor is retro Norman Bates, stuffed ducks and pheasants and animal heads adorning the walls and shelves. A computer desk, the monitor showing porn. A large leather sofa. A framed picture of a smiling man holding the antlers of the buck he shot. An entertainment stand, TV, DVD, stereo. I examine the bay window, find the bullet hole, see the crowd outside looking back at me.

Bobalik is short, wearing glasses, and has really good hair, the kind that moves when she moves.

“I want ALS done before the ME arrives,” she says to her team. “Bruen, organize the door-to-door. Let’s move, people, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here.”

I walk to her, my hand extended in greeting, and then her head explodes.

It looks a lot like someone kicking a pumpkin. The top of her scalp comes off, spins through the air, and bounces off the TV. A fine mist of blood rises up around her shoulders and hangs there even after she crumples to the floor.

“Down!”
I yell.

A tug at my waist. Herb tackling me even as I dive for the carpet.

Another shot.

The bullet rips through Bruen’s chest, blood erupting from the exit wound, splashing the wall several feet behind him.

Screaming. From in the house. From the street outside.

I look right. Herb on the floor, between me and the window.

The carpet below me is cold and damp.

Another shot.

A CSU member falls, the round slicing through the sofa he hides behind, taking a hunk out of his neck.

I look left. The victim, Chris Wolak, face-to-face with me, except there isn’t much face left. A white male, in his thirties, a hole in the back of his head, just like Rob Siders.

I’m lying in his blood.

Another shot.

A detective. On the floor next to me, only a few feet away. The bullet enters his hip, exits up through his neck. A long way for a slug to travel through tissue.

We’re not safe on the floor.

I scream, “Get away from the window!”

A uniform stands up, runs for the hallway.

Another shot.

A miss.

He makes it to the end of the hall.

Another shot.

He dives to the floor.

No – he doesn’t dive. Blood volcanoes out of his back.

Herb gets to his feet, attempting to make the same run.

“Herb!” I yell.

He gets two steps down the hall.

Another shot.

The bullet smacks the wall, stripping off wood paneling.

Two more steps.

Another shot.

Over Herb’s head, destroying a dome light.

Two more steps, and he’s next to a door.

Another shot.

Herb falls through the doorway.

“Herb!”

Silence.

I roll, away from the vic, hands tucked to my chest.

Bump into Bobalik. Roll over her.

Another shot, tearing up the carpet where I was a second ago.

I continue rolling, angling toward the window.

Then I ram into the wall. The wall the window is on.

Out of the line of fire. Safe.

I reach up for the turning rod on the blinds, twist it, closing the slats on the window nearest to me, blocking the sniper’s vision.

Another shot. Through the window.

Then another, higher up.

The blinds fall off the wall, clatter to the floor.

“Herb!”
I yell with everything I have.

Herb doesn’t answer.

Another shot.

Then another.

The gunfire isn’t hitting the house. I open up my clutch, remove a lipstick, one that has a tiny mirror on the case. My back to the wall, I angle the mirror so I can see out the front window.

Most of the gawkers and media have fled. Cops are behind cars, weapons drawn. Handguns and shotguns, nothing long enough to hit a shooter two hundred yards away. Some are shrugging on bulletproof vests – Type IIIA – which won’t offer any protection against high-velocity sniper rounds. A.338 will punch through them like they’re tissue paper.

Another shot.

I watch a patrolman’s head snap back – he’s behind the trunk of the patrol car, and the bullet slices right through the metal.

I turn back to the room. Five cops down in here, plus the original victim. Five more cops tucked into corners and behind furniture. Plus me. And Herb, if he made it.

I know it will take a minimum of ten minutes for the Special Response Team to gear up and arrive. They’ll have rifles, and heavier body armor.

But in the meantime, we’re ducks in a pond.

I try again.
“Herb!”

A second passes.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Then, “Jack!”

I blow out a pent-up breath, a million kinds of relieved.

“Are you okay?” I yell.

“Yeah! My wife called, hysterical. Saw us on TV. She said she’d hold you personally responsible if I’m killed.”

I wonder if I should call Latham. Perhaps I won’t have another chance.

I push back the maudlin thoughts, focusing on how to escape. I glance at the door, so far away. Then I lock eyes with a stag head, hanging on the wall.

Chris Wolak is a hunter. He’ll have long guns.

“Herb! Check to see if there are any rifles in there.”

“Hold on.” The pause lasts forever. Then, “Found a gun locker. Need to break it open.”

Another shot.

A crime scene techie, crouching behind the entertainment stand, wails like a siren, clutching the remainder of his foot. The pain must be unimaginable.

“Keep your head down!” I order the techie.

His keening cry goes on and on, and he rocks back and forth with his knee pressed to his chest, his head peeking out over the coffee table.

“Keep your-!”

Another shot.

The techie slumps to the ground, bleeding from the shoulder. A bad wound, gushing fast. He won’t live until the SRT arrives. He needs medical help now.

I’m not the type who prays, but I beg the universe for Herb to find a rifle.

M
UNCHEL PAUSES TO ADD another hash mark to the butt of his rifle, using a black permanent marker. That makes nine so far. The number pleases him, but he’s angry at himself for missing that fat cop, the one who came late to the party. Moves pretty fast for a porker. He arrived with that good-looking split-tail who parked in the middle of the street. That pisses Munchel off. Why should cops be able to park wherever the hell they want to? It’s bullshit.

Munchel checks his watch, figures he has a few more minutes before reinforcements arrive. Maybe he’ll have another chance at Fatty, and the double-parker.

His cell rings. Swanson again. Munchel picks up.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Swanson is yelling, his voice high pitched and girlish. Not a soldier’s tone at all.

“Hi, Greg. You at the rendezvous point, sucking down a cool one?”

“You asshole! You’re live on CNN!”

“Cool.”

Munchel pulls the bolt back, ejecting the empty cartridge, then jams it forward to force another round into the chamber of his TPG-1. He peers through the Leupold scope. All the cops in the street are hiding or have run off. Of course they have. An entire platoon is no match for a single skilled sniper. Munchel can shoot the petals off a daisy at three hundred yards. Killing cops at less than two hundred is child’s play.

“What if they catch you?” Swanson whines like a baby.

Munchel’s voice is pure Stallone. “If they take me, it won’t be alive.”

Munchel puts his face against the cheek pad. Aims. Fires. Another head shot. He rubs his shoulder – it’s getting sore, even with the built-in recoil damper – then he uses the marker to draw the tenth kill line on the stock.

“We’re going after perverts, not cops!”

Munchel looks down, sees he’s dropped the cell phone. Swanson is still bitching. He picks it up.

“You say something, Swanson?”

“You’re going to ruin it for us!”

“Relax,” Munchel purrs. “I’ll make sure I kill all the witnesses.”

“You dumb son of-”

Munchel hangs up. He doesn’t need Swanson, or anyone else, telling him what to do. James Michael Munchel
knows
what to do. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter who they are.

The memory comes, unbidden, and Munchel frowns.

“Military bastards,” he says to himself.

He doesn’t like to dwell on his rejection by the armed forces, but he dwells on it every day. All those stupid tests he had to fill out, being told by the recruiter that there were no wrong answers. A bald-faced lie. Obviously there were wrong answers, or else he’d be in a foxhole in Baghdad right now, killing insurgents.

Munchel chambers another round, imagines it’s Osama in the crosshairs, not some stupid pig.

That makes eleven, plus the original target. He doubts any marine sniper could do better. Another hash mark on the rifle. Pessolano will probably have a shit-fit when he sees how he marked up his precious gun. Maybe Munchel can buy the rifle from him. He respects Pessolano, because Pessolano actually toured, saw combat in Desert Storm. Pessolano always wears yellow shooting glasses, those high-contrast ones that block out blue light. Pessolano is hard-core, but he needs to lighten up. Him and Swanson both.

Munchel looks in the suitcase, finds the pair of yellow glasses he bought from that late-night infomercial. He slips them on, but they make everything too bright and give him an eyestrain headache. He takes them off again. Real snipers don’t need fancy sunglasses.

Another glance through the scope, and Munchel grins.

Fat Boy is back. And it looks like the cop found a rifle. Some dinky little model, but a rifle nonetheless.

This might be interesting.

Munchel works the bolt, takes aims, and squeezes the trigger.

M
Y PARTNER’S LEG crumples beneath him when the bullet hits. He cries out, pitching forward, the rifle slipping from his grasp and taking flight.

Herb tumbles to the floor. The gun remains airborne, spinning like a Frisbee, the barrel aiming my way.

I bunch up my shoulders and cover my face – not much protection against a dropped weapon, but a reflex action.

The rifle bounces onto the floor without going off. But it’s ten feet away from me, directly in the line of fire.

So is Herb.

I tug out my.38, aim where I’d seen the muzzle flash over a hundred yards away, and fire twice.

My bullets won’t hit the mark. A snub-nose revolver isn’t accurate beyond twenty feet. But Herb needs time to crawl back into hiding, assuming he can still move.

I press my back against the wall again, not wanting to leave my head exposed longer than necessary, and see Herb dashing across the carpet on all fours like a coked-up squirrel. Maybe those power bars have something to them after all. He makes it back through the doorway, leaving a spotty trail of blood.

“How bad?” I call to him.

“Calf! I’ll be okay! Did you get the rifle?”

I stare at the weapon. Ten feet away might as well be a hundred.

“I’m working on it!”

I survey the room. Other than the injured techie, who is rapidly bleeding out, only four people are still alive: two uniforms, two plainclothes. I’m ranking officer, but I’m not about to order any of them to go after the rifle. Especially since I’m the closest one to it.

I imagine the sniper. Probably crouching in a bush, as the other had. Peering through a scope, his sites locked onto the fallen rifle, waiting for someone to try for it.

I’ve used scopes before. At distances longer than fifty yards, the slightest movement by the shooter throws them off target. If I distract him, then move quickly, I’ll have two or three seconds before he finds me again.

Theoretically at least.

Or I can sit tight and wait for the cavalry to arrive. But I don’t know if the injured cop can last that long. And I’ve had enough of people dying on my watch.

I look to my left, see a small end table. Metal, solid, manageable. I kick off my heels and holster my gun. Then I lift the table above my head, aim at the window where the last bullet went through, and heave it hard as I can.

Before it hits the glass I’m in motion… bending down for the rifle… hearing the window shatter… grabbing the barrel and hugging it to my chest… digging my bare heels into the carpet to change direction in case the sniper was tracking me… skidding…

Falling onto my ass.

The pain travels from my coccyx straight up to my neck like a lightning bolt, prompting instant tears and an immediate surge of panic.

I’m sitting directly in the sniper’s sights. And he has an even clearer view of me now, because the window sports a large hole where the table broke though.

Though I don’t remain still for longer than a second, it feels like a week, and my ears burn and my forehead gets hot where I imagine a bull’s-eye to be, where the shot is going to hit.

The shot doesn’t come.

I pull the gun closer to my body, drop my right shoulder, and quickly roll back to my original hiding spot alongside the window.

Herb says, “I had seven heart attacks watching you do that.”

I look down the hallway, lock eyes with Herb in the mirror reflection of a music CD he’s holding out the doorway. He’s using it like I’d used the lipstick, to see around the corner.

Rather than respond, I do a quick inspection of the weapon. A Dakota rifle. Fixed sights. A twenty-four-inch barrel. Bolt action. I check the magazine. Three.458 rounds, plus one already chambered. I tuck the butt into my armpit and sight through the scope, aiming at the ceiling.

The lens is cracked, and bent to the left side.

“Scope’s dead,” I call to Herb. “Any more back there?”

A pause. Then, “No.”

“Bullets?”

“I didn’t see-”

The
crack
of the shot makes me flinch, and the CD disintegrates in Herb’s hand. I look around the room at my men. They’re hunkered down, terrified. I need to get them out of here. But I can’t if they’re too scared to move.

“Looks like our sniper isn’t a music fan,” I say. The joke sounds forced, mostly because it is.

“I can’t blame him,” Herb says. “I don’t like John Denver either.”

I unscrew the scope from its mount and toss it aside. Then I swing the barrel around, toward the street.

“Hold up another one.”

“I could only find his greatest hits album.”

I suck in air, blow it out hard, my cheeks billowing.

“How about Neil Diamond?” I yell.

I rest the tip of the barrel on the windowsill, an inch away from the glass. Not the best way to steady a rifle, but all I can manage given the situation.

“No Neil. Is Jim Croce okay?”

“That’s fine.”

“
Time in a Bottle
, or
You Don’t Mess Around With Jim
?”

I’m about to tell Herb I don’t care, but I reconsider. “
Time in a Bottle,
” I yell.

I was never a fan of sappy love songs.

I stare down the street, waiting for it. The sniper’s muzzle flashes before I hear the shot. The CD explodes.

“I couldn’t save
Time in a Bottle
,” Herb says.

I line up the sights, fixing them slightly above my target, knowing the bullet will travel in a parabolic arc.

“I’m going to fire four shots, four seconds apart,” I tell the room. “So you have between twelve and sixteen seconds to get the injured, and yourselves, out of the house. There’s an ambulance on the corner of Leavitt and Leland. You can get there using parked cars for cover. Understood?”

I count five
yeses
, including a weak moan from the injured techie. One voice is conspicuous in its absence.

“You too Herb.”

“No way. I’m liking this CD collection too much. When was the last time you heard the Kingston Trio?”

“That’s an order, Herb.”

“I’m not leaving.”

Goddammit. If Herb died his wife would kill me.

“Fine. Hold up the other Croce CD, then stay hidden. We go after I fire my first round. Everyone get ready.”

I hold the rifle tight against my armpit and rest my chin on the stock, sighting down the barrel. I test the trigger pull, apply enough pressure to barely move it. Then I wait, breathing slow and easy so it doesn’t throw off my aim.

It doesn’t take long. The killer can’t resist showing off his marksman skills, and he blows away the second Croce CD.

“Go!” I tell the room.

Then I squeeze the trigger.