Fuzzy Navel Read Online Free PDF Page A

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