Fuzzy Navel (2 page)

Courtesy of

The ink on the card is slightly smeared, and the edges have a fine perforation to them. The killer probably printed it himself using his home computer and those blank business card sheets available at office supply stores.

I frown, not liking this at all. In my experience, killers who leave messages aren’t likely to stop any time soon. I have a bad feeling that there’s more to this than hiring a mercenary to avenge a rape.

I stare back at the apartment, viewing the line of site. Perhaps two hundred yards. With the proper rifle, not a difficult shot at all. My mom, a former Chicago cop herself, used to have a Winchester Model 70 she’d inherited from her father. During my teenage years we’d go on afternoon excursions down to southern Illinois farmland and regularly hit ears of corn from four hundred yards, and probably farther, with thirty-aught-six rounds. She’d sold the gun de cades ago – not much use for long arms in an urban environment.

Herb gives the card the same treatment he gave the bullet, holding it at arm’s length to read it. Glasses are in his future.

“TUHC?”
His voice registers the same displeasure I feel. “I hate it when they leave us notes.”

My cell buzzes. I free it from my inner jacket pocket and slap it to my face.

“Daniels.”

“Lieutenant? This is Bobalik, Homicide from District 20, Ravenswood. Heard you got a sniper.”

“News travels fast.”

“Let me guess – one shot to the head, through the window from a few hundred yards away, vic was a sex offender?”

News must travel even faster than I thought.

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“I’m at a scene on Leavitt,” she says. “Victim’s name is Chris Wolak. Same MO.”

“Got a time of death?” I ask.

“Call came at a few minutes after five.”

Ravenswood is a Chicago neighborhood about five miles away from us, but Bobalik’s victim died at the same time ours did. I frown at the obvious conclusion.

“It gets better,” Bobalik says. “Guess what happened in Englewood at the same time?”

“One more dead pervert,” I say, quoting the card.

I fill Bobalik in on the details, then hang up and relate everything to Herb.

“Three snipers,” he says. “Jesus. Why don’t we ever get the normal cases? A guy gets drunk, shoots his neighbor for playing his radio too loud?”

I look at the business card again and wonder the same thing.

O
N THE CAR RIDE to Ravenswood my phone rings again. I inwardly cringe, hoping it isn’t another sniper death. The fates smile; it’s my fiancé.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?” Latham asks.

I picture him in his office, wearing a snazzy suit. Red hair. Green eyes. Boyish smile. Broad shoulders and trim waist. That leads to me picturing him without the suit. I almost say something dirty, but don’t want Herb to hold it over my head for the rest of my life.

“Your timing is perfect,” I say into the phone. “Are you calling to accept my mother’s kind invitation?”

“I’ll do my best to cram in as much of Mom’s home cooking as I possibly can.”

I live with my mother in the suburb of Bensenville. That’s a big no-no for Chicago cops (living outside the city, not living with your mother). But the mortgage is in her name and so far I haven’t been caught. I love Chicago, but Mom wanted a more laid-back lifestyle and I wanted to keep an eye on her because she’s getting up there in years. So we bought a cute little ranch house in a woodsy area and I braved a daily one-hour car ride to and from the Job.

It’s about as much fun as it sounds. To make up for the commute, I get to experience the joy of weeding, painting, home repairs, cutting the lawn, tarring the driveway, cleaning the gutters, and countless other homeowner tasks that I so enjoyed living without when I had an apartment in Wrigleyville.

But at least Mom is happy.

Since Latham proposed, Mom has been inviting him over more and more, foisting food, drink, and conversation on the poor guy. It isn’t easy for Latham. Not just the travel back and forth from the city, but he had a bout with botulism earlier this year and hasn’t fully recovered. He still retains some residual paralysis in his legs, and an aversion to food in general.

Thankfully, the paralysis doesn’t extend to his other parts.

“It will be a few hours,” I say. “I’ll be tied up until at least seven or eight. Can we eat at nine?”

“That’s fine. I’m on my way there now. I promised Mary we’d play some rummy.”

“Mom guilted you into coming early?”

“Not at all. I enjoy spending time with your mother. Besides, we play for money. I’ve already won her pension, now I’m going for her Social Security.”

I smile. “Mom told me she was up sixty bucks.”

“She cheats, Jack. She looks all cute and harmless, but she’s a wily one. I think she deals from the bottom of the deck.”

Can a woman ask for anything more than her future husband hanging out with her mom? Plus he’s caring, funny, attractive, and he puts up with me. Good sex sealed the deal.

“See you later,” I say. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Jack.”

“Love you more.”

“No, I love you more. See you to night.”

He makes a kissing sound and I grin and make a kissing sound back, then we hang up. I glance at Herb, who does a good job of ignoring me by occupying his mouth with a chocolate power bar. Herb insists he snacks on these for energy, even though he has more than enough energy already stored in the extra eighty pounds of fat he carries around.

“That probably doesn’t have much fiber in it,” I offer.

Herb licks some chocolate off his fingers. I once asked Herb what the difference was between power bars and regular candy bars, and he told me that power bars had more calories.

“For energy,” he’d said.

When he had his heart attack a while back, he was the only one who seemed surprised.

“I thought we had an unspoken agreement, Jack.” He’s taken on a superior tone. “You don’t question my eating habits, I pretend to ignore it when you make kissy-face on the phone.”

“I don’t make kissy-face on the phone.”

“Yes you do. And for your information, this power bar does contain fiber. It’s in the caramelized peanuts.”

I snort. “The wrapper has more fiber.”

“I’m eating that next.”

This long-dead horse has been beaten many times, so I change the subject. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking about the last crime scene?”

Herb’s turn to snort. “Yeah. Welcome to amateur night.”

I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. “What kind of shooter grinds the engraving off the bottom of his bullets? Think about the misfires.”

“He should be more worried about shooting himself in the face while he’s filing it down. A pro would simply pick up his brass.”

“A pro would also know we would find the slug. Hell, anyone who watched TV knows the word
ballistics
.”

I left the cartridge with Rogers to take to the crime lab. He ID’ed it by sight, without needing to use acid etching to bring out the markings. A.338 Lapua Magnum. A caliber specifically designed for sniping, and hopefully unique enough to be able to track. I have a team doing just that.

“And did you see his hide?” Herb shakes his head. “Can you imagine the guy, squatting in a bush, facing the sidewalk?”

If you want someone dead, it’s relatively easy to ring his doorbell and shoot him in the chest when he answers. Much easier than shooting him from two hundred yards down the street at a scheduled time.

“This isn’t just about the death,” I say. “This is a game. A bunch of knuckleheads playing soldier, getting their kicks shooting sex offenders long distance.”

I leave the next part of my thought unspoken – that a knucklehead could kill you just as easily as a pro. In some cases, they’re even more dangerous. Soldiers are taught patience and discipline. An amateur takes unnecessary chances and makes big mistakes, exposing more people to risk. This TUHC group might be easier to track down than an expert hired gun, but they might also hurt a lot of innocents before that happens.

My phone rings again. I find it on my seat without taking my eyes off the road.

“Daniels.”

“Is this Jacqueline Daniels?”

A female voice, rote and professional.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is the Heathrow Facility, you’re on the list of people to inform.”

The Heathrow Facility is a maximum security center for the criminally insane. I’ve sent a few people there over the years. The arresting officer is always called if one of the inmates dies. They’re also called when an inmate is released, or escapes.

“Who is this regarding?” I ask.

“Alexandra Kork.”

A feeling overwhelms me, like the shower has gone from hot to cold. Kork is one of the most dangerous people alive. I’d met her under another name, and her entire family consisted of psychopathic killers. She almost murdered me, and several people I cared about, in horrible ways.

“What about Kork?” The words are hard to get out, sticking in my throat like chicken bones. A dozen thoughts run through my mind at once, the most pressing being
Please don’t tell me she escaped.

“Alexandra Kork died this morning.”

I blow out air through my mouth, and my shoulders sag.

“It appears to be a suicide,” the woman continues. “She set herself on fire with some aerosol spray.”

That sounds like Kork. She’d kill herself in a horrible way like that.

“Are you sure it’s her?” I ask. “One hundred percent sure?”

“The body was badly burned, but we confirmed it with dental records.”

I picture Alex’s face, pretty as a model’s when I met her. Not pretty at all after we tangled. She’d gotten close, fooled me completely, made me doubt myself unlike I ever had before.

One of the things I’ve learned as a cop is that everyone considers themself the hero in the story of their life. Even bad guys who killed children and blew up hospitals believed they were good guys. Everyone can justify their actions. Everyone believes they’re in the right.

Kork was different. She knew she was the bad guy, that her actions were evil. It didn’t bother her at all. Or maybe it did. Maybe she finally realized what an awful person she was, and couldn’t cope with it.

“Ms. Daniels? Are you still there?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s no next of kin listed. Would you like us to release her remains to you?”

“No. The state can bury her. Thank you for calling.”

I hang up and pop a few more antacids.

“Are those mint flavored?” Herb asks.

“Alex Kork is dead,” I tell him. “Suicide at Heathrow.”

“World is a better place without her in it. Gimme one of those antacids.”

I pass the roll to Herb, thinking about the last words Alex had said to me.

“You beat me this time. But it isn’t over.”

It’s over now, Alex. You’ve haunted me in countless nightmares, but you won’t haunt me anymore.

Not ever again.

“W
HERE’S THAT PSYCHOTIC CAT you have?”

Mary Streng stares hard at Alex Kork. The woman who broke into their house is taller than Jacqueline, with broader shoulders. Her body is angular rather than curvy, and Mary can see the muscle striations in her bare forearms. Alex has straight black hair, shoulder length. This woman might have been pretty once, but the left side of her face, from her chin to her missing eyebrow, is a knot of pink scar tissue, puckered with patchwork skin graft zigzags and pockmarks from countless stitches.

“At the vet,” Mary answers. “Bitten by a dog.”

Alex winces. No – it only looks like a wince because the ruined half of her face stays immobile. It’s actually a smile.

“That’s a shame. Such a cute kitty, being mauled by a big, bad canine.”

“He’ll be fine,” Mary says. “The dog isn’t expected to recover.”

Alex sits on the sofa next to Mary. She’s tucked her gun – a small-caliber revolver – into the back of her jeans, which rankles Mary.

I’m an old lady, and she doesn’t consider me a threat,
Mary realizes.

It’s true, and it hurts. Sharp as her mind still is, her body has grown old and weak. Osteoporosis is shrinking her. Rheumatoid arthritis has turned her hands into agonizing claws. Her figure, once a perfect hourglass, is now shaped more like the box the hourglass came in. What she would give to be young again, just for a minute, to show this young punk-

“Are you sizing me up?” Alex asks.

Mary lowers her eyes.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, Mom. Or I’ll start knocking you around.”

Mary stares at her, projecting defiance instead of fear. Alex’s face twitches into a half smile. Up close, the scars are white and look like rubber.

“I know you used to be a cop,” Alex says. “I bet this really makes you feel helpless.”

Mary doesn’t answer. Jacqueline has told her all about Alex and her nightmarish family. Like most cops, her daughter kept her fears hidden away. But Mary knew that Jack feared Alex. And now she can see why. This scarred woman sitting next to her doesn’t have a soul. Something, some vital part, is missing from Alex. The part that makes her a human being.

Mary had only seen it once before, more than forty years ago, on the Job. A homeless man had killed his friend over half a bottle of wine. Mary had hit the offender with her billy, over and over, but he wouldn’t go down. He just continued to stare at her with those black, bottomless eyes. Eyes without a trace of humanity. Eyes that dared her to kill him.

The same eyes Alex has.

“I bet it hurt,” Mary says, “when my daughter tore your face off.”

Mary doesn’t see the blow coming – it’s too fast. But she feels it, the fist connecting with her mouth, the explosion of pain in her lips, her head snapping back. She had been punched before, in the line of duty, but never so hard or so viciously.

Then Alex is standing over her, running a hand through Mary’s gray hair in a warped parody of kindness.

“Maybe later I’ll show you how much it hurts,” Alex says.

And Mary Streng realizes she’s going to die.

It isn’t as scary as she thought it might be. She’s lived a long, full life. She’s done everything she ever set out to do. She’s made some mistakes, of course. Some big ones. A failed marriage. A child out of wedlock, put up for adoption when she was still a teenager. A feud with her mother that never got resolved before she died. But Mary managed to forgive herself, to learn from her errors, to keep on going. She knew she could meet death – even an unpleasant death – with grace and dignity and no regrets.

But this isn’t just about her. Alex also wants to kill Jacqueline.

That scares Mary to the core. Mary would die for her daughter. She’d also want to die if her daughter were killed. Parents aren’t supposed to outlive their children, and Jacqueline is too good a person to be murdered at the hands of this lunatic.

She has to warn Jacqueline. Has to make sure Alex can’t get her.

“Do you bake?” Alex asks.

“What?”

“I know it’s a stereo type, that all old women bake. But do you?”

“Yes,” Mary says.

“What do you bake? Cookies? Bread?”

Mary doesn’t like these questions. They seem too intimate. She forces herself to say, “I make pies.”

“What kind of pies?”

“Peach. Cherry. Apple. I was going to make an apple pie today, for after dinner.”

“You’ve got all of the ingredients?”

Mary nods.

“Okay, let’s do it,” Alex says. “Let’s make a pie.”

Alex takes Mary’s hand, leads her into the kitchen. Mary doesn’t understand where this is going, what Alex’s ulterior motive is. But she has no choice other than to let it play out.

“What do we do first?”

“There’s some dough, in the refrigerator.”

Alex opens up the large stainless steel door and takes out a bowl with a wet towel covering the top. Mary stares at the gun in the back of Alex’s jeans. She needs to get closer.

“This the dough?” Alex asks.

Mary nods. “Yes.”

“It’s done rising, or what ever?”

“Yes.”

“What else do we need?”

“Apples. Brown sugar. Lemon juice. Flour.”

“You want to lend a hand here, Mom? This pie isn’t going to make itself.”

It’s silly. Mary has been slapped, punched, and threatened, and she stayed stoic. But a simple act of baking makes her eyes well up with tears.

Maybe it’s the perversion of a normally enjoyable activity. Mary loves to bake. It’s one of the simple joys of life. But being forced to by this murderer makes the whole experience seem tainted, dirty.

Alex acts normal the whole time. She rolls out the dough. She slices the apples. She’s chatty and cheerful and asks many questions about the process. But she never lets down her guard and gives Mary a chance at the gun.

Jacqueline loathes baking, has no patience for it. Mary hasn’t baked with her daughter since she was twelve years old. That fact makes this experience even worse. Mary should be bonding with her daughter, not with a psycho.

“Why do you bake if it makes you so sad?” Alex asks.

Mary wipes her face with the back of her hand, furious with herself for showing weakness.

“Or are you just upset because this is the last pie you’ll ever make? There’s a last time for everything, Mom. At least you can savor it, knowing it’s the last time.”

“The oven is done preheating,” Mary says. “Put the pie on the bottom rack.”

Alex obeys. Then she pats the excess flour off of her shirt and laughs at the cloud it makes.

“You never baked with your mother?” Mary asks.

“I might have. I don’t remember. When I was small, Father tied her to a beam in the basement and whipped her until she died.” Alex pops a stray apple slice into her mouth. “He made me help him, made me beat her.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been horrible.”

“Not really. He let me rest when I got tired.”

Alex turns away, looks past the living room, out the large bay window facing the street. “Does Jack still drive that shitty Nova?”

Mary doesn’t answer, sees a car coming up the driveway.

Not Jacqueline’s.

Oh, no. It’s Latham.

Mary takes a deep breath, ready to scream out a warning, but Alex is on her, tearing at her house dress, pulling off a sleeve and shoving it past her split lips, wadding it into her mouth. Then the gun is out again, pressed up against Mary’s temple, and they both wait in silence for Latham to come in.