Fuzzy Navel

But before I can get to her the kitchen becomes a firing range, bullets zinging into cabinets and countertops. Glasses and plates shatter, pots and pans ding-dong with ricochets. Alex and I kneel on the ground and cover our heads, and McGlade pulls food and drawers and shelves out of the refrigerator as fast as he can, trying to fit himself inside, which is like trying to stuff a pot roast into a tube sock.

“Jack!” Mom cries from the bathroom. It’s a cry of concern, not pain.

“Stay there, Mom!”

The shooting eases up again. I look around for something to hit Alex with, and then I glance up and she’s standing over me, holding up the tabletop micro wave oven, ready to cave my skull in.

“Hey, pork chop face!” Harry says.

Alex turns.

“Got milk?” Harry asks. Then he smacks her in the head with a full jug of moo juice, hitting her so hard that she spins 360 degrees before sprawling out onto her back.

Her eyes are closed. She’s out cold.

Harry points to the milk all over the floor.

“Now promise me you won’t be crying over this, Jack.”

I can’t help myself. I have to grin at that.

“I promise, Harry.”

“Good. Now bring me that goddamn cat. I want my foreskin back.”

9:08 P.M.

HERB

“WHERE IN THE HELL is your partner?”

Herb stares at Blake Crouch, Chicago ’s deputy chief, and says, “I don’t know.”

Crouch resembles a mole, with a long, sharp nose and tiny black eyes. Came from out of state, so he didn’t rise up through the ranks like much of the brass. Because of this, Herb suspects, Crouch thought he had to be a hard-ass to gain respect. Hence his nickname, Deputy Grouch. Someone needed to lecture this man about flies and honey and vinegar. Someone other than Herb, who spent an hour getting stitches in his leg and then even longer tap dancing with the Grouch in the ER, waiting for Jack to return.

Herb had called Jack on her cell and at home, several times each. No answer. Which worries him. Jack is the poster girl for being responsible. Being incommunicado isn’t like her at all.

“I’m going to send a team to the lieutenant’s apartment,” the Grouch says. “If I find out she’s deliberately hiding something…”

Herb shakes his head, his jowls wiggling.

“She’s not hiding anything, sir. It went down like I said.”

“I still need her statement. There’s blood in the water, and the sharks are circling the wagons.”

Herb has no idea what that means, and he guesses the Grouch doesn’t either. But he can’t let the deputy chief find out that Jack lives outside the city.

“She’s not at her apartment,” Herb says. “She’s with her mother. Her elderly, sickly mother.”

“Her mother is sick?” the Grouch asks.

“Very sick.”

“Which hospital is she in? I can meet-”

“She’s sick in the head,” Herb says.

“Is it pyromania?” the Grouch asks.

“Huh?”

“I had an aunt with pyromania. She’d knit sweaters, then set them on fire.”

Herb tries to judge if the Grouch is being fu

“I think she’s just failing mentally,” Herb says. “Jack ran out to the suburbs to check on her.”

“Do you know where?”

Herb shakes his head. The Grouch gets in close, so close his pointy nose almost touches Herb’s. Herb rears back slightly, afraid he’ll lose an eye.

“I will bring your partner before a disciplinary committee if I don’t hear from her within the hour. So if you have any clue where she might be, Sergeant, I suggest you find her.”

“Jack saved lives today,” Herb says, his voice steady.

“I don’t care if she saved the mayor’s daughter from being eaten by sharks…”

What is with this guy and sharks?

“… I want her debriefed right now. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Herb says.

The Grouch backs off a few feet.

“Good. Now I’ve got to talk to the media. They’re having a field day with their cockamamie theories.”

“Are they jumping the shark?” Herb asks i

The Grouch doesn’t respond, already walking away from Herb’s hospital bed. Herb looks for nurses, then discreetly picks up his cell phone, which isn’t allowed in the ER. He can’t reach Jack at either number.

Herb knows his partner well. If Jack’s phones are off, that means something really serious is happening, something so serious it is making Jack neglect her responsibility here. Though Herb made up the story about Jack’s mother failing mentally, he knows she has some health problems. Could that be what’s taking Jack so long?

Herb tries the two hospitals nearest to Jack’s suburban home. Neither has admitted Mary Streng, or any elderly Jane Doe. He calls Dispatch, has them check suburban 911 calls. While he’s on hold, he digs into his pocket stock and eats a power bar. For energy. He considers drinking the bag full of bran-fortified breakfast shake, but dismisses the idea. Dispatch comes back, informs Herb there haven’t been any calls from Jack’s house.

The Novocain numbness makes it difficult to put his pants back on because he can’t feel if his leg is in the hole, and he can’t really see it either, thanks to a belly forged by de cades of poor dietary choices. But he manages, and then he straps on his empty holster – IA took his gun to rule out friendly fire from the crime scene – and puts his jacket on.

Then Sergeant Herb Benedict heads to the suburbs to find his partner.

9:09 P.M.

MUNCHEL

JAMES MICHAEL MUNCHEL takes another sip of Gatorade from his canteen, wipes the sweat off his eye, and peers through the scope again. So far, he’s been the lucky one. He has the kitchen covered, and that’s where most of the action has taken place.

From what he’s figured out, the tall bitch with the messed-up face is causing all sorts of problems for the female cop, the guy next to the refrigerator is stuck there because he has some kind of James Bond mechanical hand that won’t let go, and there’s a cat in the house in serious need of a distemper shot.

Munchel could have ended it for all of them, at any time. But he didn’t. He made sure his shots came close without hitting any of the targets. Scaring them, but not wounding them. He’s having too much fun for this to end.

That tight-ass Swanson is looking to kill everyone, then high tail it out of here, quick and dirty. But this should be savored. There’s a real-life drama going on inside the cop’s house. It’s far more interesting than Munchel’s everyday life, punching a clock at the English muffin factory. Munchel is the gluer there. His job, for eight mind-numbing hours from ten p.m. until six a.m., five days a week, is to add glue chips to the melter, which is then picked up by the roller, which paints glue on the flat cardboard blanks prior to them being folded into muffin packages. His work is literally about as much fun as watching glue dry.

He’s going to miss his shift to night. Maybe he’ll even be fired. But he doesn’t care. Right now he feels like he’s watching a movie. No, like he’s starring in a movie. Starring in it and directing it. He decides who dies first, who dies last. He has the power.

“Did you hit anyone yet?” Swanson, through the radio.

“Negative,” Pessolano answers.

Munchel hits the talk button. “I came close. They’re hiding. Don’t have a shot.”

He squints through the scope. The chick cop is right in his crosshairs. All he needs to do is pull the trigger, and it’s game over.

But where’s the challenge in that?

That gives Munchel an idea. A way to make this even more interesting, and to get the same adrenaline rush he got in Ravenswood. But he needs to get back to Pessolano’s pickup truck, which is parked in the woods half a mile away.