by David Levien
“Detective Petrie for now.”
“Don ’ t know him. Is Cale here?” Cale was a lieutenant, a veteran Behr went way back with.
“Vacation, I think.”
“Who ’ s down from the coroner ’ s?”
“Gannon.”
Behr smiled. “Good. She ’ ll vouch for me.”
The kid shrugged, showing fatigue, and pointed. “Pull your vehicle onto the shoulder.” Behr did it and got out.
“Have someone radio back that you ’ re cleared or I ’ ll have to come find you.”
Behr nodded, then tried to make his last question sound breezy. “Captain Pomeroy ’ s on his way, right?”
“Yep.”
Behr made his way to the scene at a more than casual pace.
There was a semicircle of backs standing in tall grass twenty yards from the road. They were ringed around what Behr knew was the body. There were the familiar sounds of a crime scene: radio static, boots on gravel, keys and flashlights swinging on belts, hot coffee being gingerly sipped, the rustle of nylon parkas. Evidence collection kits, looking like orange tackle boxes, were open, tamping down winter-yellow grass at their feet. A few yards off, speaking on a cell phone, was Dr. Jean Gannon, a sturdy woman just past fifty, dressed in cargo pants and a polar fleece top. She began shaking her head at Behr ’ s approach.
“Uh-huh, and send down those dental records, too. Bye.” She closed her phone. “Oh, shit, you ’ re not here. You are not here.”
“I am, babe, get used to it,” Behr said. She smiled despite herself. “Can you make me bona fide?”
“Hal, let ’ em know at the perimeter that my guest found me,” Jean called out to a cop nearby.
Behr had worked with Gannon a bit when she first joined the M.E. ’ s office. She ’ d been a housewife and mother before going back to school and starting her career in her forties. Her husband left her after her first year, thanks to the job and its long hours. “He was leaving me, anyway, the job just gave him an excuse,” she ’ d said when Behr consoled her. She loved her work, and they ’ d built a friendship over long discussions about forensics.
“So you were out for a morning bike ride and figured you ’ d say hi?”
“Yeah, about like that. I ’ m on a case and your rise and shine might have something to do with it.”
“Don ’ t tell me you ’ re on a case.” Her brows pinched together in regret. “You know you ’ re persona non grata and veal piccata.”
“Okay, I ’ m not on a case, then. Can you tell me what you ’ ve got?”
Jean looked up the road in concern, scanning the cluster of uniforms there.
“He ’ s not here yet,” Behr said of Pomeroy.
“Oh, all right. C ’ mon.”
Behr followed her over to the body, and Jean shooed away the cops, crime scene photographers, and medical assistants.
Body wasn ’ t quite the word for what lay at their feet. It was skeletal, with brown scraps of flesh hanging off the shinbones and ribs like old banana peels. The hair and facial skin were largely eroded. The eyes were gone, the nose as well. The jaw jutted out and the teeth grinned in a silent scream. The corpse was on its right side and curled, so Behr couldn ’ t tell how tall the person had been, but he or she couldn ’ t have been much over five feet. A wave of dread rolled through him at the possibility that this could be Jamie Gabriel. It vied with a feeling of hope, one that Behr tried to reject, that it was Jamie and that he would have his answer.
“Did it happen here?”
“I don ’ t think so. The position shows placement, and the grass has grown up through the body, so he ’ s been here for some time.”
“He?” Behr steeled himself for the information.
“Yeah. White male. The hyoid bone shows some damage, so it might be a strangulation.”
“How old?”
“Around twenty.”
Behr breathed again. “You sure on the age?” Jean shrugged, a gesture loaded with information. It told of her thousands of hours of study and experience in unraveling the secrets the dead hold. It was committed and sure, and yet it surrendered to the utter mystery of her trade. “What ’ s your outside minimum age?”
“Tough to tell. There ’ s been so much weather degradation. Seventeen, sixteen at the youngest.” Alive or dead, Jamie Gabriel ’ s fifteenth birthday wasn ’ t until the next year.
“Thanks, Jean.”
“Well, I hope that’s what you needed to know.”
“I should go.”
“Yah.”
No closer to an outcome in his case but glad of it, Behr took a last look at the remains on the ground and turned to leave.
As he drove out of the park, a gleaming Crown Vic was coming down the one-lane road toward him. It was piloted by a man holding an aluminum travel coffee cup to his lips. Behr and the opposing driver locked eyes through their windshields as they squeezed by each other. The man driving the Crown Vic was Captain Pomeroy.
Numbers streamed through Carol Gabriel ’ s mind as she pulled her running shoes from the back of the closet and tied them on her feet. Awful statistics she ’ d come to know. More than eight hundred thousand were currently listed as missing persons across the country. Eighty-five to 90 percent of them were children. Two thousand cases a day were logged into the National Crime Information Center. Most of them were family related — a divorced parent violating custody orders — and 90 percent of them were recovered without incident. But there were still so many of them who were kids, and who weren ’ t recovered. Of those, the ones who weren ’ t recovered, 40 percent were determined dead. One was the number of the missing that she cared about. And four hundred and fifty-six was how many days Jamie had been gone. It was a sickening figure that made her feel weak even as she stretched for her run of two miles.
She started at a light trot, about a nine-minute-mile pace, the mottled asphalt passing beneath her. The cold made her breath cloud. Two thousand was the number of flyers she had posted showing her son ’ s picture and listing his height, weight, description, and what she believed he was wearing that morning. Four gross was the amount of buttons she ’ d had made and distributed, all bearing Jamie ’ s face and their phone number. Zero was the number of calls they had received for the effort. The sweat was starting to come now, despite the chill in the air, sliding down her chest, collecting on and spilling over her brow. She wanted to stop, to double over and gasp already, but she pushed on by force of will. She ’ d never liked running, it had always been Paul ’ s idea of fun, or recreation, or cleansing. For her it was a chore.
Two-thirds was the percentage of couples that went on to divorce after losing a child. This number bounced around in her mind as she put one heel in front of the other. The shared failure, the constant reminder of grief that the other provided, was just too much for marriages to sustain. She knew she was one of the doomed majority now. The feeling between her and Paul had been shocked and paralyzed in an instant, and then had slowly decayed, and had finally fossilized.
She stopped dead. Blood pounded in her temples. Her breath wouldn ’ t come. Her legs were unable to carry her another step. She lacked the forward thrust to go through with the separation and divorce. She couldn ’ t imagine summoning the energy it would take to have the discussion. She stood there doubled at the waist; the only sounds her gasping and a cold wind blowing across the neighborhood.
Behr dropped the grocery bags on his kitchen counter and set about cooking up his breakfast. It took six eggs, a half pound of bacon, four slices of wheat toast, and a quart of orange juice to lay down his appetite, which had finally made a comeback. As he ate, he tried to decide which way his disappointment over the remains he ’ d seen at the park was leaning. Like he ’ d told the Gabriels at the beginning, an answer was the best they could all hope for. Still, as fatigue set in after the long night, he couldn ’ t help being glad it wasn ’ t Jamie who was left to rot out in Eagle Creek.
He took a long, scalding shower before g
etting into bed and set his alarm for six hours hence. It ’ d be 3:00 in the afternoon when it rang, if he slept that long, and time for him to give Tad, or a few of his coworkers down at the Golden Lady, another try. Behr closed his eyes, hoping that sleep would come quick and that when it did, it didn ’ t bring the dark wraiths of his past. He shook his head on the pillow to wipe away the memory of that skull out in the park, and the image of what his own son must look like nestled inside his mahogany box at St. John ’ s.
It was hours later, in the afternoon, but before the alarm went off, that he heard it. Someone was inside his place. Sleep had come, black and formless, but it was gone for good now. The sounds of tapping and a low cough came from his living room. He slid his feet out from under the sheets and put them on the floor. He eased open his night-table drawer and pushed back a few pieces of paper to reveal a squat hunk of metal: his Charter Arms Bulldog. 44. He ’ d carried a. 38 for almost ten years as a cop, and then he ’ d tried a 9 mm for the higher capacity; he ’ d seen what those calibers could do and the work they left undone. He preferred the heavier round now. Only five shots, the Bulldog was a belly gun, but most shootings were over in two, and if he couldn ’ t get it done with that many, he deserved whatever was coming back at him. Behr wrapped his fist around the handle and stepped quietly down the hall toward his living room.
There were two of them. White guys. Thirtyish. Short and solid, dressed in loose-fitting pullovers and baggy jeans. They both had similar facial hair: chin beards and mustaches. They were practiced at being quiet and weren ’ t even working that hard at it. One, with close-cropped hair, sat behind Behr ’ s desk looking at his computer monitor, occasionally clicking the mouse. The other sat in the television chair, some of Behr ’ s case files on his lap. The guy wasn ’ t going over them, though, and instead looked bored.
Behr stepped out of the hall and trained his gun on the one seated in his chair, but spoke to the one at the desk.
“Why are you here and who sent you?” Behr ’ s voice was calm, though he knew they were armed. He was really just putting on a show; even at a hundred yards he ’ d be able to tell they were cops.
The one at the desk leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and stretched, as if the conversation was taking place in the station bullpen. “I ’ m Nye, he ’ s Feeley.” The guy gestured with his chin to his partner. “Nice nap?”
Feeley, in the chair, snickered.
“That ’ s licensed, right?” Nye asked of Behr ’ s gun.
Plainclothes donkeys, Behr thought, and lowered the Bulldog, though he didn ’ t give an answer.
“Did you break my lock?” Behr asked, surprised at how heavily he ’ d been sleeping.
“It was open,” Feeley piped up in a reedy voice. His partner shot him a look.
“Your lock ’ s fine. Feeley ’ s got a good touch.”
Behr nodded his appreciation.
“Look, I know Pomeroy saw me at Eagle Creek this morning, but a call would ’ ve done it.”
Now Nye laughed a little. Behr knew the way Pomeroy worked. Whether he was corrupt or not couldn ’ t be proved, and was almost beside the point. He did, however, like to have two or three teams who cowboyed for him at all times. Guys willing to do the things a metro police captain needed done in order to keep his department running. They ’ d deliver messages, administer beatings, find evidence, or make it go away. It was as much a part of American law enforcement as a flag patch sewn on a uniform sleeve. “You ’ re not a friend of the department. And that goes for your friends, too.”
Behr flashed on Jean Gannon with regret. “What ’ d Pomeroy do to her?” he wondered aloud.
“Nothing much. Just tore her a new one.”
“And he sent you here to tell me to stay away?”
Nye and Feeley looked across the room at each other. “He wants to know what you ’ re working on.” Behr noticed that neither of them had mentioned Pomeroy by name or rank. They didn ’ t blink at the sight of him holding a gun, either. They were well trained as far as Rottweilers went.
“I ’ m not working on anything. It was an old thing. Just wanted to check if you had an ID on your body.” Behr wasn ’ t in the business of helping other people do their jobs, and when it came to Pomeroy, the customer-service window was all the way closed.
“Uh-uh,” Nye said.
“No?” Behr asked, mildly surprised his answer wasn ’ t good enough.
“Forget the skelly at the park. We got a bouncer with his guts shot out, and we got you at the Golden Lady making said bouncer nervous a few hours before it happened.” Behr took the words like bad medicine. He looked over at Feeley, who just sat there nodding.
“What time was he shot?”
“ ’ Round near morning. Right in his apartment,” Nye said, before glancing back with some interest at something on the computer monitor.
The hairs raced up the back of Behr ’ s neck. It must have been right after he ’ d left. The shooter had probably waited and watched him go.
“So what are you working on, man?” Feeley wheezed from the chair.
Donkeys, Behr thought of his visitors and didn ’ t say a word.
“Come on, Frank, you must be working a case…unless you ’ ve gone perv on us.” Nye pointed to the monitor. Behr realized the cop had been checking the Web sites he ’ d been surfing.
“Don ’ t be a fucking idiot,” Behr barked. It had the effect of a slap to Nye ’ s face. The cop jerked the computer ’ s plug out of the power strip.
“You can get fifteen years for even visiting these sites. We can subpoena this and take it in.”
“I ’ ll get a lawyer. Illegal search. Breaking and entering. Stuff like that.”
“Still, you won ’ t see this for a long time,” Nye said of the computer.
Behr shrugged. He didn ’ t care. He hardly needed it now. Knowledge and dismay collided in his chest. While his progress must ’ ve been real, had struck a nerve, it was all gone now. His case had fallen apart. He was angry and in no mood for the pair currently in his living room.
“We ’ re waiting,” Nye tried again.
“You think I did the bouncer?”
“No. But our guy wants to know why you ’ re in it.”
“I ’ ve said all I ’ m gonna say.”
Feeley stood up from the chair and planted his feet wide. “We ’ re supposed to bring you down for a talk if you acted this way.”
Behr put his gun down on top of a bookshelf and dropped into a left-foot-forward stance. “Better get some more guys.”
NINETEEN
Paul left a client’s office on Jackson Place, having sold a three-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar whole life policy, and walked toward South Street, where he ’ d parked. A small sea of people, mostly parents and grandparents, with their children and grandchildren, filled the streets. They moved toward the Fieldhouse on Pennsylvania, which was lined with an even larger crowd. Paul smelled the fecund odor of hay and animals and urine even before he reached the edge of the crowd and saw it. The circus was in town. He stood and watched the “Pachyderm Parade,” a line of elephants, trunk to tail, bearing female riders in red, white, and blue sequined leotards, as it moved up the street. Children in the crowd called out in enthusiastic greeting; the elephants trumpeted randomly in return. The sight stilled Paul. He ’ d brought Jamie here several years back. Not to the parade when the circus had just arrived, but to the show itself.
He was paralyzed by memory as the elephants ’ wrinkled brown-gray hulls trundled by. The circus had been a dubious proposition for him and Jamie. When Paul was a kid, he ’ d never liked them. There was something disturbing about the volume and commotion. He ’ d loved animals, but there was a frustrated, pathetic quality to the ones in the show. The drugged, impotent cats were sadder than anything else. Only the horses, white with flowing manes, which ran around the ring with riders standing on their backs, were really worth seeing. But he hadn ’ t wanted to project his prejudices on his son. Perhaps
his boy would appreciate what millions of other kids did about the circus. So they had come, just the two of them, to the matinee show. Jamie, about five years old at the time, had held Paul ’ s hand and whipped his head about at the crowds and the barkers selling cotton candy, green glow-sticks, and souvenirs.
They ’ d found their seats and then it started. There was one mad portion, early on in the spectacle, when scores of clowns burst into the ring and began circulating up through the screaming, glow-stick-waving crowd. Many of the clowns carried tall, fake cakes in outstretched hands. Wild music played and the clowns staggered around, comically losing and regaining the balance of the cakes, much to the delight of the youngsters. One particular bald, white-faced, red-nosed fellow, in the classic plaid hobo ’ s outfit, came running down their row shaking hands with the kids. As he approached, Paul felt Jamie curling into him. All of the kids reached out for the white-gloved hand the clown offered, only to have their arm pumped up and down until it seemed the children ’ s laughter would never stop. Jamie burrowed in deeper under his arm as the clown drew nearer, hiding his face completely in Paul ’ s chest when it was his turn. The clown danced around for a second, trying to entice Jamie into a handshake. Jamie was intractable, though, and eventually the clown ran off.
As soon as he ’ d gone, Jamie peeked back out and looked around.
“It ’ s okay, son, I ’ m not a big fan of clowns, either,” he ’ d said, admiring his son ’ s stubbornness.
“No.” Jamie had shaken his head. “I want one with a cake.” None with a cake showed up and the bit ended, and then the tiny poodles came out to jump and flip. Jamie never explained why he wanted to shake one clown ’ s hand and not another ’ s. Paul hadn ’ t asked. He had been content, then, to not understand everything about his mysterious and fascinating boy.
Paul stepped back out of his memories just as the last of the elephants, and an Uncle Sam on stilts bringing up the rear, passed by. He looked at the crowd, at the children bundled against the cold March. The sky was slate gray, as if the sun had just quit. He felt the chill of evil lying over it all and knew no amount of coats and mittens would make these children safe. Despite the cold, he found himself soaked in sweat, his chest heaving with emotion. This was his life now, the sun frozen over and dark as day.