J. Konrath - Fuzzy Navel

“I need a favor, Herb.”

“No problem. I’ll make a copy for you.” He taps his jacket pocket, which held the Kingston Trio CD. “And yes, it’s got ‘Tom Dooley’ on it.”

I lean closer. “I need you to cover for me, for a few hours. The deputy chief wants answers. The Feds are coming, probably to compare this to every other sniper incident in the past seven hundred years. Plus I’m going to have to tell the same story again for IA.”

“Are you going to tell them I stole folk rock?”

“No. I’m going to tell them to talk to you first. I just got a weird call from my mother, and something’s not right. I have to run home. And as you’re well aware…”

Herb finishes for me. “You live in the suburbs, even though you’d be fired if they found out, and even though there were many perfectly nice single-family homes in my neighborhood.”

“I’ll be two and a half hours, tops. Just make sure they don’t go to my old apartment.”

Because then they’ll know I don’t live in the city anymore.

“Take three hours,” Herb says. “I use a lot of adjectives when I tell stories.”

I pat his shoulder. “Thanks, Herb. Good luck with those stitches.”

“If my wife asks, I didn’t get shot. Tell her I was bitten by a monkey.”

“Sure. She’ll buy that.”

“She’s terrified of monkeys.”

“Wouldn’t a dog be more realistic?”

“She loves dogs. If it’s a monkey, I’ll get sympathy sex.”

I speak to the deputy chief and inform him I have a family emergency, but he can debrief my partner at the hospital. I promise I’ll be back within an hour. Which is an outright lie, because I live an hour away.

During the ride to the suburbs I obsess about my mother. If something happened to her, why hasn’t Latham called? Or perhaps the emergency has to do with Latham, and Mom is too shocked to go into details.

I’m overwhelmed by mental snapshots of death: car accidents, strokes, heart attacks, earthquakes, floods. Are they en route to the ER? Is that why they couldn’t pick up the phone? It can’t be a fire, because the answering machine keeps going on – a fire would destroy the line.

Is it something to do with my father? Mom never forgave Dad for leaving us, and while I’ve been trying to rebuild a relationship with him, she refuses to acknowledge his existence. Maybe Dad had shown up at my house, which would cause Mom to go supernova.

Or is this something more insidious?

I look at my cell, find the call from the Heathrow Facility. The caller ID indeed reads HEATHROW , but maybe that can be faked. I dial 411, get the same number, and let them patch me through. I speak to three different people, all of whom confirm that Alexandra Kork is dead as dead can be.

Okay. I’m being paranoid. Even if Alex were alive – and she isn’t – she still didn’t know where I live.

Maybe Mom saw the sniper shootings on television and is simply worried about me. Not picking up the phone is a guarantee I’ll rush home.

Or maybe Latham has some sort of surprise planned. I think of the mariachi band he hired when he proposed, and a smile breaks through my mask of worry. He truly is a sweetheart.

I get off the expressway on Route 20, heading for York Road. What ever the emergency is, I’ll find out soon enough.

My thoughts momentarily shift to the shooter. Finding sex offenders is a snap – thanks to Megan’s Law, anyone can log onto the Internet and access the National Sex Offender Registry and get their names and addresses. But if this is some sort of warped vigilante group, why kill cops? Did the sniper simply get carried away? Or is he really out of his mind? And are his two partners just as unbalanced?

I turn left down my twisty road, heading home. I hear the dead leaves crackling under my tires, see glimpses of the moon through the canopy of trees, and wonder what Mom loves about this neighborhood so much. Can it even be called a neighborhood? We’ve never met our nearest neighbor, who lives a quarter of a mile away. Come Halloween, I wonder if parents drive their children house to house for trick-or-treating. If I had kids, I’d drive them – to the city.

Thinking of children makes me think of Latham, and I get sort of gooey inside. I pull into the driveway and park next to his car, convinced that this emergency probably has to do with Mom fudging points in their card game, or burning the apple pie. I do a quick mirror check, finger comb my hair, and hop out of my Nova.

The front door is locked, and the front room is dark. I notice a light in the kitchen through the bay window. I unlock the door and go in.

“Mom? Latham?”

I smell food. Stew, and some sort of baked goods. Maybe I’m right about the pie after all.

Mom is in the kitchen, sitting at the table. It takes me a second to realize she has duct tape over her mouth and around her arms, and then something appears in my peripheral vision, something blindingly fast.

I duck, but not quickly enough, and get knocked to the floor, my vision all lopsided and swirly.

“Welcome home, Jack.”

I can’t focus, but I recognize the voice.

Alex is alive.

And that means we’re all going to die.

JACK’S MOMENT of realization is priceless. It’s an expression of fear and helplessness, and it’s so raw and honest that I feel like a peep-show voyeur watching it.

I want to hit her again, to turn her fear into pain. But there isn’t any need to rush. Better to play it safe, make sure she’s restrained first.

“Handcuffs,” I say.

Jack doesn’t answer. I don’t think she’s trying to defy me. I think she’s so scared she can’t even speak. I give her a kick in the ribs to help with her articulation.

“Handcuffs,” I repeat. “You’ll have plenty of time to be scared speechless later.”

“Purse,” she says.

I follow her eyes, see an ugly clutch on the floor. I keep the gun on her and walk over to it. There are handcuffs inside, but no gun.

“Where’s that little toy Colt you carry around?”

“Internal Affairs. Had a shooting to night.”

I wonder if she’s lying, then notice that she has blood on her skirt, her shirt. Looks like Jack has had a busy night.

It’s about to get busier.

“Cuff your hands behind you,” I say, tossing her the bracelets.

She complies, sneaks a look at Mom. I wait for Jack to say something like “Let her go, this is between us” or “If you touch her, I swear I’ll kill you” or something equally meaningless. She surprises me by saying nothing. Perhaps she knows it won’t do any good. Or perhaps she’s saving her energy because she knows she’ll need it later. For screaming.

I allow them their mommy/daughter moment, then wrap my hand in Jack’s hair and jerk her to her feet. It doesn’t take much effort. At Heathrow, I was able to catch up on two things – soap operas and exercise. The last time I’d encountered Jack, I’d been soft.

There isn’t anything soft about me now.

I check to make sure Jack’s hands are cuffed, then shove the revolver into the back of my pants. I’m still holding her hair, and I bring her face close to mine, letting her see the scars up close.

“See what you did to me? For a while, I wished you’d killed me. I bet you’re wishing the same thing right now, aren’t you?”

Jack stares back at me, but her eyes are glassy. She’s fighting to keep it together.

“It took a long time for the pain to go away,” I continue. “The state doesn’t have the best plastic surgeons, as you can see. They had to graft on some skin from my leg. It actually grows stubble. Can you feel it?”