Hard Eight by Janet Evanovich Page B

you okay?” I asked again.
    His eyes focused, and he reached for me, grabbing a handful of shirt. “Did I hit him?”
    “Yeah. You hit him with your face.”
    “I knew it. I knew I’d be good under pressure. I’m pretty tough, right?”
    “Right.” God help me, I was starting to like him.
    I dragged him up and got him some paper towels from the kitchen. Bender was long gone, along with my cuffs. Again.
    I retrieved the useless stun gun, packed Kloughn into the CR-V, and took off. It was a cloudy, moonless night. The projects were dark. Lights burned behind drawn shades but did nothing to illuminate lawns. I drove along the streets surrounding the projects, searching the shadows for movement, staring into the occasional uncurtained window.
    Kloughn had his head tipped back with the towels stuffed up his nose. “Does this happen a lot?” he asked. “I thought it would be different. I mean, this was pretty fun, but he got away. And he didn’t smell good. I didn’t expect him to smell that bad.”
    I looked over at Kloughn. He seemed different. Crooked, somehow. “Has your nose always curved to the left?” I asked him.
    He gingerly touched his nose. “It feels funny. You don’t think it’s broken, do you? I’ve never had anything broken before.”
    It was just about the most broken nose I’d ever seen. “It doesn’t look broken to me,” I said. “Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a doctor look at it. Maybe we should make a quick stop-off at the emergency room.”

 
FIVE
     
     
     
     
    I opened my eyes and looked at the clock: 8:30. Not exactly an early start to the day. I could hear rain spattering on my fire escape and on my windowpane. My feeling on rain is that it should only occur at night when people are sleeping. At night, rain is cozy. During the day, rain is a pain in the gumpy. Another screwup on the part of creation. Like waste management. When you’re planning a universe you have to think ahead.
    I rolled out of bed and sleepwalked to the kitchen. Rex was done running for the night, sound asleep in his soup can. I got coffee going and shuffled to the bathroom. An hour later I was in my car, ready to start the day, not sure what to do first. Probably I should pay a condolence visit on Kloughn. I’d gotten his nose broken. By the time I’d dropped him at his car, his eyes were black and his nose was being held straight by a Band-Aid. Problem is, if I go see him now, I run the risk of having him latch onto me for the day. And I really didn’t want Kloughn tagging along. I was fairly inept when left to my own devices. With Kloughn tagging along, I was a disaster waiting to happen.
    I was sitting in my lot, staring out the rain-smeared window, and I realized there was a plastic sandwich bag attached to my windshield wiper. I opened the door and snatched the bag off the wiper. There was a note-size piece of white paper folded four times inside the bag. The message on the paper was written in black marker.
    Did you like the snakes?
    Wonderful. Just the way I wanted to start my day. I returned the note to the bag and put the bag in the glove compartment. On the seat beside me were the two FTA folders Connie had given me. Andrew Bender, still at large. And Laura Minello. I’d go out and capture one of them this morning, but I didn’t have any handcuffs. And I’d rather poke myself in the eye with a fork than get another pair of cuffs from the office. That left Annie Soder.
    I put the CR-V in gear and drove to the Burg. I parked in front of my parents’ house, but I knocked on Mabel’s door.
    “Who did Evelyn hang out with when she was a kid?” I asked Mabel. “Did she have a best friend?”
    “Dotty Palowski. They went all through grade school together. High school, too. Then Evelyn got married and Dotty moved away.”
    “Did they stay friends?”
    “I think they lost touch. Evelyn kept more and more to herself after she married.”
    “Do you know where Dotty is now?”
    “I don’t