Where the Dead Lay

by David Levien

  “I tell you to keep shit quiet, and this is what you bring me?” Pomeroy’s voice came through the phone. Behr moved away from Ratay.

  “I couldn’t call it in,” Behr said. “You said ‘no contact.’ It was the best I could do.”

  “A goddamned reporter?” Pomeroy said.

  “Yeah, one—and one the department’s already in business with. One you can trust. That was the trade-off so you wouldn’t end up watching it on TV.”

  “You know what it’s gonna cost me to buy time on this?”

  The truth was, after seeing what he had in that house, Behr didn’t care all that much.

  “What else do you have for me? You must have something else,” Pomeroy demanded.

  “Not yet,” Behr said. He knew Pomeroy was looking for something solid, not some weak theories and rumors about a family.

  “Are you jaking it on this, Behr?” Pomeroy barked.

  “Does it look like I’m jaking it?” Behr barked back. They were almost to the point where the cell phones were unnecessary.

  “Then find me these fucks before they act,” Pomeroy hissed, backing down the volume.

  They stood there, Behr and Pomeroy, the gulf of the street between them, cell phones pressed to their ears. Before Behr could think of anything else to say, Pomeroy hung up, pocketed his phone, and entered the house with angry strides.

  “What the hell was that?” Ratay asked when Behr rejoined him.

  “Nothing,” Behr said. He changed gears. “So your contact asked you to hold the story?”

  “He did. And I will. Not as long as they want me to, but for a minute or two anyway. There’ll be a giveback too, of course.”

  “Right.”

  “Not to mention the giveback to you for putting me in this,” Ratay went on.

  “File it,” Behr said, “no sweat on that.”

  “You want to tell me what you’re working that got you here?” Ratay asked.

  “I would, Neil, but I can’t.”

  “I figured,” the reporter said, and looked at him with eyes that seemed to bore right through him. Behr felt like the man knew the whole deal, and in a sense he did. He may not have had the specifics, but he certainly knew that these things generally concerned the same type of players—morally bankrupt animals— who were after similar ends—monetary gain, and some way to fill the empty pits of their souls.

  They stood there for a moment, then Ratay spoke. “Hey, Frank, not that it’s any of my business …”—Behr knew what was coming—“but is everything all right with you and Susan? She seems like she’s walking around under a rain cloud.”

  “I don’t know, man,” Behr said, feeling unable to hide the truth at the moment, “we’re in different places on the track. That’s become clear lately.”

  Ratay nodded his understanding.

  “She’s great,” Behr continued.

  “She is, indeed.”

  “I just… don’t know if it’s the right thing for everyone right now.”

  Ratay sighed out a mouthful of cigarette smoke, dropped the butt, and toed it into the ground. “Well, don’t be too quick to write it off, you’ve still got some life left in you.”

  Behr gave a grim nod. “Less every day,” he said. Should he go on and tell Ratay what he really thought? That it was a shit world, lousy with fear and not knowing and death, full of people in a constant state of panic and desolation, the more they learned the more the truth swam away, and that was why so many of them turned to God, even though He didn’t do much back for them. None of it would be new to Ratay, and Behr didn’t imagine Ratay would want that for Susan, especially if he knew her current condition.

  The reporter didn’t argue with him, and instead seemed to be arguing with himself over his pack of Camels and whether he should light another. Then a man in a suit with a gold badge hanging around his neck stepped out of the house. Ratay put away the cigarettes. “There’s my guy. Time for the horse-trading.”

  He crossed the street and Behr went to his car.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Death was all around him. He’d seen it in the dark of that house last night, and he’d seen it in the day, which he slept through, his dreams plagued by monstrous images that defied description. He still felt it upon him when he awoke, shaken and exhausted. It drove him to the place where killing was honed. Behr showered and dressed and put on his gun and recognizing the urge to use it, grabbed his range bag, and loaded it with the shells he’d recently bought. He went cross-town to Eagle Creek Park, to where the Indianapolis Metro Police shot.

  The range was closed to the public during the week, and the parking lot was near empty. Before he even reached the range—a series of tables acting as bench rests beneath a slanted roof—he could hear it was quiet. Day shift was still on duty. Technically he didn’t have privileges at the facility, but occasionally an ex-cop could get a break when things were slow. There were plenty of places to shoot around town, but Behr preferred this one. Perhaps it was just habit, perhaps because for a few minutes he could feel like a cop again.

  Behr walked up and smelled the cordite and solvent in the air, odors that were long trapped in the dirt and the cinder-block walls that formed a corridor running toward the bulldozed earth backstop fifty yards downrange. Sitting at a picnic table a short distance away from the firing line was the range officer, a guy he knew, Barry Gustus. In front of Gustus, resting on a newspaper, were a cup of coffee and a disassembled Glock .40 caliber with which he was tinkering.

  “Hey, Catcher,” Behr said, crossing to him.

  “Well if it isn’t…,” Gustus said, standing and shaking Behr’s hand. Cops can be pretty creative when they’re solving cases, but they spared their imaginations the workout when it came to nicknames. If a guy had body odor he was going to be called “Stinko,” “Pig Pen,” or if there was a clever type around, “Rosie.” Gustus had been on first response at an apartment building fire a dozen years back. Flames and smoke were leaping out of a fourth-story window and a father was holding a toddler, both nearly overcome by the smoke. Gustus ran beneath the window, the father took a desperate chance, and dropped his child. Gustus caught that kid and instantly became “Catcher.” He got his choice of posting after that, and gun guy that he was, he picked R.O.

  “Can I get out there and tear up some paper?” Behr asked.

  “Sure, sure,” Gustus said. The look on his face made Behr wonder if the door Pomeroy had opened for him included the range, whether Pomeroy had put out hushed word that he was okay, or if Gustus merely didn’t mind.

  “Care to join me?” Behr asked. It was a self-motivated offer. He never failed to learn something shooting next to Catcher. Whether it was stance, sight picture, or breathing. The R.O. was an expert marksman who probably shot fifty thousand rounds a year. He was a master on a PPC course and moved through the stations with a powerful practiced economy and lightning speed. His targets could hardly look better if he used a hole-punch on them. He was one of the most dangerous men in the city.

  “I’m taking a break,” Gustus said. “My lead level.”

  “Where are you at?”

  “Forty.”

  “Damn,” Behr said. Forty micrograms per deciliter was disturbingly high, especially for a guy who shot outside most of the time. It was the downside of that much practice, breathing in lots of lead. Behr’s lead level was probably a five. He could shoot a tight group at twenty-five feet. He was smooth enough changing mags if he ever played around with an automatic and was almost as fast using speedloaders with his revolver. He could keep them all on the paper at fifty feet, but his pattern was nothing to write home about. Of course he’d never heard of a street shootout being decided at fifty feet. Gustus gave him a nod toward the range.

  Behr put on his eye and ear protection and entered the shooting area. He set up in the first station, using the small staple gun in his bag to affix a body silhouette target to a slab of cardboard on a wood stand at twenty-five feet. He unpacked his target ammunition
, glanced over at the wall, and half smiled at the plastic-laminated pages he saw taped there. They hung in many ranges, locker rooms, and briefing rooms he’d been in during his career. They were the “Rules to a Gunfight,” as set forth by the U.S. Marine Corps:

  1.

  Always bring a gun to a gunfight.

  2.

  Bring more than one.

  3.

  Bring all of your friends who have guns.

  4.

  Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.

  5.

  Bring ammo. The right ammo. Lots of it.

  6.

  Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.

  7.

  In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.

  They went on and on, slightly comic in tone, but in a way that didn’t undercut the truth therein. A man could do worse than to follow them. Behr loaded up with wadcutters and settled into his shooting stance. It was muscle memory, instinct. The pressure in the ball of his right foot, his left thumb snug against the gun frame, steadying it. He began slowly, methodically firing in the space between breaths. The gun bucked in his hand and he was surrounded by the familiar acrid scent of gunpowder. He popped open the cylinder and dropped the warm brass into his hand, deposited it into a coffee can, and reloaded.

  He continued on, thinking without thinking, firing round after round, creating a thick cluster of center mass hits on the target. Despite the roar of the weapon, he operated in a place of noiseless concentration. He didn’t think anything could have replaced his focus on the Aurelio murder, but now he realized that after a string of bad deals he’d worked in his day, the pea shake was among the worst he’d seen. He changed targets and shot five boxes’ worth of the dirty-burning target ammo, the gun frame now searing hot and streaked with powder residue. He considered what he had, and what he had learned from Austin. A family. Was it possible some family was acting in concert? He resolved to go deeper into the backgrounds of the owners of the properties that had changed hands. Maybe there was some connection, a thread that would lead somewhere else.

  Behr’s anger rose up again, through the calm the shooting had provided. Some more of the rules, from way down the list, found their way into his head:

  Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun whose caliber does not start with a “4.”

  And its counterpart: Nothing handheld is a reliable stopper.

  Contrary to popular belief, and television and movie depictions, gunshot wounds rarely killed instantly. They didn’t always render an adversary unable to pull his trigger and shoot back, either. Plenty of law enforcement had died waiting for the bad guy to bleed out and getting fatally shot for their patience.

  Behr began the rhythmic sequence of the Mozambique Drill. A double tap, center mass—the kind of hits that deliver major neurocirculatory damage and will kill eventually if not immediately—followed by a carefully placed headshot. Specifically right between the eyes. The final shot instantly shuts down the attacker’s nervous system. No chance for return fire. The method was also known, for obvious reasons, as Body Armor Defeat.

  Behr performed the exercise, dropped his brass, reloaded, and repeated. After three go-rounds, Behr noticed that cops had started arriving on the range. He turned and saw them sauntering in, range bags over their shoulders, salty with their youth and the power of belonging. There were a half dozen of them, with more cars rolling in. He wiped down his gun with a silicon chamois and set it aside to cool while he packed up the rest of his stuff.

  Gustus appeared next to him and called out, “Cease fire, guns down,” although Behr had already done so and no one else was shooting. A good R.O. always sticks to protocol. Gustus went downrange and dragged two racks of steel-plate targets into place at thirty-five feet.

  “Man-on-man plate match,” Gustus said to Behr upon his return. Each rack consisted of five heavy steel discs, two painted white on each side of the middle one, which was painted red. It was a speed and accuracy contest with two shooters going head to head, the faster advancing tournament style until there was a winner.

  “I’m outta here,” Behr said.

  “You can stay and play if you want,” Gustus offered. “Most guys use autos, but it’s a five-shot course, so the revolver will do. You’re allowed to reload if you have misses, but you usually can’t win if you have to.”

  Behr glanced at the cops putting on shooting glasses and ear protection. Several of them were stripping down to tank tops and taking off their duty rigs to replace them with quick-release holsters and paddle-style magazine holders. He didn’t really recognize any of them until a new arrival caught his eye. As the officer peeled off his dark blade sunglasses, Behr saw it was Dominic, the prick from Aurelio’s academy. Dominic saw Behr, too, and they stared at each other for a long, charged moment.

  “Sure, Catcher,” Behr said, already feeling like a fool, “I’ll give it a try.”

  “All right,” Gustus said loudly when everything had been organized and the shooters had been divided into brackets. “Fire as fast as you want, as much as you want. Just drop the red plate last and beat the guy next to you or you’re eliminated. Fifty-buck kicker to the winner.” There were a few yelps of anticipation at the money prize.

  Behr stood at the line, set to go. Standing a few positions down the line was his opponent, a large pale kid whose name tag read “Weltz.”

  “Load and make ready,” Gustus called out, and Behr felt an instantaneous surge of adrenaline race through him. Weltz racked the slide on his service auto and kept the muzzle pointed down-range. Behr made his preparations as well. In the ensuing pause he felt his heart pound and moisture leap to his palms. But this was just a taste of what happened to the heart and the senses if a weapon needed to be used in a tactical situation. The physical and psychological changes were many. Hearing can shut down. Time slows. The urge to spray and pray sets in, and fine motor skills disappear as ancient fight-or-flight reflexes rush to the surface. Near and peripheral vision can deteriorate, and worse, the eyes tend to fix on the target. This is a problem because the human eye can only focus on one plane at a time, and that meant that if the target was sharp, the front sight would be blurry, leaving the shooter little chance of hitting said target. The only consolation is that the other guy is probably going through it all too, Behr thought, and you hope he hasn’t trained as much or as well as you have.

  “Come on, Weltz, you got him,” Behr heard from over his shoulder. “Watch out if you win, this guy’s sensitive.” It was Dominic, making him feel nice and welcome.

  “Commence fire,” shouted Gustus.

  Behr raised the Bulldog and pulled the trigger. The first plate went down. When shooting for speed, rhythm was the key. Behr strived for tempo over rapidity, and the second plate went down. He heard staccato fire next to him as Weltz banged away. If all the shots were hits it would be over, so Behr assumed there were some misses thrown in. Behr broke his pattern as he skipped the middle red plate, but tried to regain the timing and took the next two in succession. He made a loop with his gun that felt exaggerated, but was actually very small, as he moved for the center red plate and fired, emptying his gun and dropping it. Silence fell as both of them were done. Behr looked over and saw all of Weltz’s plates were down.

  “Behr!” he heard Gustus yell from behind them. A groan went up among the cops. Behr dumped his brass and stepped back off the line.

  “Fucking thing’s firing low,” Weltz muttered of his weapon. “Put two into the rail.”

  Gustus pulled two cords attached to the target racks and the steel plates popped back up. The next pair of shooters took their places.

  It continued that way for half an hour, everyone getting his turn, shooters moving on, others getting eliminated. No one talked to Behr as he kept winning. The second guy he flat-out beat. The third had a misfire and had to work his slide to ch
amber a new round, and by then it was over. Dominic was winning, too. The kid was good. His tempo sounded like a Japanese drummer’s. He hunched forward over his sights, using his weight to keep the muzzle stable, and his aim was sure. Behr had a feeling where it was going, and that’s where it went. He and Dominic lined up against each other for the final.

  “You want to borrow a real gun?” Dominic asked, sliding shells into the magazine of his Wilson Combat .45. The gun probably cost three grand, almost ten times what Behr’s did.

  “It’s the Indian, not the arrow,” Behr said, arousing some catcalls of mockery, all the while trying not to think about how good he’d feel if he beat him.

  Gustus called out the commands, and they made ready and began. By now his adrenaline had leveled and he was in a pocket of solid concentration. It was Behr’s best round of the day. He was pretty sure he was ahead when he swung back for the red plate that would end it. Maybe he wanted to win too badly and was pushing too much, but he pulled the trigger while the gun was still on the way up, and the round hit the base of the last plate, perhaps two inches too low to knock it over. His five-shot was empty. He was dumping brass when he heard Dominic finish and looked over to see the cop with his left fist raised in the air.