by David Levien
“Frank. Do you have some information?”
“No, ma’am. Like I said, it’ll be quite some time, most likely, before I do. That’s if I do,” Behr said.
“Then what do you need? Think I told you everything already and I got to get Katie to her program,” she said. The young girl appeared next to her grandmother, all bundled up in a coat and scarf.
“Something I should have asked for the first time I was here: I could use a DNA sample on your daughter, and permission to check it against unidentified bodies.”
“Oh, dear,” Kerry Gibbons said.
“Or barring that, one on you and the little girl to crossmatch. It could be an old toothbrush, a pillowcase that we could recover some hairs off of, a sports mouthpiece, a razor, a whistle—anything with saliva on it. I don’t suppose her doctor might have an old blood sample?” Behr wondered.
“Okay,” she said, “wait here for a minute.” Kerry Gibbons disappeared back inside the house for a moment, leaving Behr alone with the little girl. She ran over to her jungle gym and stood at the base of the slide.
“Lift up,” Katie said, looking at Behr. He took it to mean she wanted to go down the slide, and he picked her up and set her at the top for a quick trip down.
“Whee,” the girl said, as if by rote, without much joy in her voice. “Again.”
Behr obliged. He looked at the girl’s pale white skin, her raisin eyes, her runny nose. Losing her mother was a tough deal, but having her grandmother was a break in her favor. She was starting out somewhere close to even, and Behr wondered where she’d end up.
It was the fourth or fifth time down the slide when Kerry Gibbons emerged from the house. “Here you go,” she said, extending a Ziploc bag that held a blue plastic Goody hairbrush pretty well covered with blond strands. “That’s my daughter’s. Probably some of mine and Katie’s in there too. But like you said …”
“It should work,” Behr said. Then he had her sign the standard release he’d printed out.
“Any way I can get that back after the test?” Kerry Gibbons asked. “It was hers after all.”
“Sure,” Behr said.
“Did you end up finding that Jonesy?” the woman wondered.
“Yes, Jonesy’s been found,” Behr said. Her eyebrows rose in interest at this, but his tone discouraged further questions, and she didn’t ask any.
“Well …” she said.
“Oh, one other thing.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m getting some pretty good courtesy extended from the police, so it’d be good if you ran any further inquiries into the case through me,” Behr said.
Kerry Gibbons took his measure with eyes that seemed to know all the angles, and when she was done she must’ve arrived at an acceptable sum. “Okay, Frank,” she said. “Will do. You’re my investigator.”
17
“Should I drop you right fucking now and save the run up?” asked Gene Sasso, the stocky and now bald owner and bartender of the Trough.
Sasso was not happy to see him. In case Behr missed the scowl on his face, Sasso reached under the bar and came up with a sawed-off baseball bat to make the point doubly clear.
Behr hadn’t been to the bar, in fact hadn’t seen Sasso, in close to seven years. He’d last been there in the middle of a period of heavy drinking, self-disgust, and all-around antisocial behavior. Behr had gone from rowdy-patron status, beyond old-friend-in-a-bad-way dispensation, and had even careened past oh-no-it’s-him-again standing.
“Not here for any trouble, Gene,” Behr assured him. He didn’t think Sasso really meant to hit him, but he wasn’t completely sure. Somewhere in the no-man’s-land of his mid-fifties, Sasso was still strong-looking and had a beard going that helped cover the ravages of countless late nights, first as a cop, then as a tavern owner.
“You never come for any, but the shit manages to show up just the same when you’re around,” Sasso said. “All six of my pool cues ended up broken last time you were in. Same for a bunch of my customers.”
“That was a long time ago. And I didn’t break ’em all,” Behr said.
“I’m counting the last three that got busted over your back. And then there’s that …” Sasso pointed at a badly patched piece of drywall between the doors to the men’s and ladies’ rooms.
“Some of your clientele are real assholes, what can I tell you. Didn’t I pay for the damage?” Behr wondered.
Sasso just looked at him, and Behr supposed the answer was no. Not that anyone would notice. At the time the Trough had opened, it looked like the interior wasn’t quite finished, and it hadn’t made any progress since, although that had been nearly ten years ago. The place currently sported a thin crowd of day drinkers seated along the dozen mismatched stools that lined the bar. The assortment of battered tables and chairs was unoccupied, as was a pool table that almost shined because the felt was worn to the slate.
After a moment, Sasso stowed the bat and reached into his shirt pocket for a flash drive, which he held up.
“How you got a world-beater like Breslau to give you this, I’ll never know,” Sasso said.
“My charm is underrated,” Behr answered.
“Charm? Fuckin’ please,” Sasso said, and almost smiled despite himself. He’d always had a soft spot for Behr, even back when Behr was a complete newbie and they’d first been paired up. They’d spent countless nights cruising the streets of what used to be referred to as the “Spaghetti Bowl”—the place where a bunch of interstates and main thoroughfares twisted together. They mopped up blood and hauled in DWIs, barroom brawlers, and wannabe gangsters. And while they rode, Sasso kept up that steady patter of “rules to live by.” Like “The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get,” and “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”
“What do you want with it anyway?” Sasso asked, putting the drive on the bar top. “Shouldn’t you stick to the neck brace and rusty zipper cases?”
“Probably.”
“Department wouldn’t give you the files directly?”
Behr shook his head.
“So you figured ‘use your old T.O.’?”
“Yeah,” Behr said, “I know you keep good ties.”
“Yes, I do. Because people—regular people—keep up friendships, relationships, warm human contact.”
“Uh-huh,” Behr said.
“Like I tried to do with you, long after you gave it up.”
“I didn’t give it up,” Behr said. “It just … went.”
Back after his first son had just died, Behr seemed to systematically burn down everything around him. He hoped that time was past.
“I wouldn’t wish what happened to you on my worst enemy. But it’s been a while now, Frank. I gave you all the space you asked for, and then some. And you had plenty of chances to come find me, buy me a drink, and make things right. Instead you did what you did, you let a quarter of a lifetime go by, and now you show up for this.” Sasso put a finger on the flash drive and slid it across the bar.
“Thank you,” Behr said, taking it. “And I get it, Gene. I’ll come buy you that drink one day.”
Sasso nodded, and Behr, not knowing what else to say, left.
18
Nothing like the smell of formaldehyde in the morning, Frank Behr thought to himself as he entered the brown brick building that housed the coroner’s office, though the place didn’t smell only like formaldehyde. Truth was it smelled like overcooked ground beef.
“How are you? Frank Behr to see Jean Gannon,” Behr said to the middle-aged woman sitting at the reception desk. He hadn’t been in touch with his friend Jean, a forensic pathologist for the city, in a while and it’d be good to catch up in person before he asked for her help. Behr had a small sack of chocolate truffles and a few airplane-size bottles of Grand Marnier in one coat pocket, the bag holding the hairbrush in the other. It was his custom to bring Jean gifts when she was doing him off-the-books favors. The fact that he had cle
arance on this one didn’t stop him from keeping up the tradition.
“Jean’s not here,” the receptionist told him.
“Not here as in out getting a coffee, or not at work today?” Behr wondered, glancing at the trophy case across the lobby that held macabre souvenirs of past deaths—a piece of plastic a child had choked on, a length of rebar that had impaled a construction worker, a paper-like hood of dried facial skin, including the nose, of a burn victim. Morgue workers had a specialized sense of humor.
“Not here at all anymore,” she answered. “Jean took early retirement a few months ago and left the office.”
“What?” Behr uttered. He wasn’t surprised often, but this got him. Jean had loved her work. The sense of time moving by was a blow to him. Then there was the fact he no longer had a connection in the coroner’s office.
“I know,” the receptionist said, then rolled her chair to a bulletin board and took down a business card. “Here,” she said, passing it to him. “This is where she’s working now.”
The card read: Scanlon Brothers, Mortuary and Funeral Home.
“Here,” Behr said, placing the chocolates and Grand Marnier on the desk.
“What’s that for?” the receptionist asked.
“That’s for you,” Behr said.
“Thanks!” She smiled. “What’d you say your name was?”
“Frank Behr …” he said, and leaned in for some small talk. The receptionist was a long way from a forensic pathologist he had history with, but he had to start somewhere.
Next stop was the Indianapolis–Marion County Forensic Services Agency—otherwise known as the place that did DNA testing. It shared a building down on South Alabama with the jail. He was there to drop the hairbrush, which he produced along with his license and the release form when he got to the buttoned-down-looking young clerk.
“I need you guys to run DNA on these hairs against the Northwestway Park victim. I’ve got clearance from Lieutenant Breslau, IMPD, and the family,” he told the young man.
“All right,” the clerk said, and took the information from Behr, which he attached to the bag that held the hairbrush. “Just so you know, DNA can only be recovered from hairs with the bulb still attached. There might be some here, but it’d be better if you plucked the hairs.”
Thanks, CSI, Behr almost said. Instead he opted for: “That’s not an option. How long will it take?”
“Things are kind of backed up,” the clerk said. “It’s going to be a couple of weeks at least.”
“Anything you can do to help it through the system would be much appreciated,” Behr said. “I know Lieutenant Breslau feels the same way.”
Truth was, he didn’t know how Breslau felt, but it wasn’t the first time a little bullshit had been spread around this particular building, and it wouldn’t be the last.
“We’re on it,” the clerk said to Behr’s departing back.
19
The day has been bright yet cold, the sun promising but failing to warm the air. He sits outside Cinnamon’s house in his car. He’s spent a good part of the afternoon there when he should’ve been at work, but the project has taken him over now. He’s tracked her enough over the past few weeks to know her routine: She takes a walk in the morning and comes back from the White Hen Pantry with a big coffee and a fresh pack of cigarettes. She smokes one along the way home. In the afternoon it’s down to the Prime Time Package store and a walk back with a brown paper bag that looks about the size of a quart bottle of beer. She doesn’t appear to have a car. He can’t be sure if she lives alone or if others are in the house, though he hasn’t seen anyone. He doesn’t know what else she does during the day. He supposes she goes out occasionally. He can’t sit there all day long though. He has to appear at his office at some point. He considers knocking, or going in the back door, but he develops a slightly different idea. He doesn’t know from where it has come, only that it arrives fully blown and seems like it will work. He feels his heart surge with the joy of creation when he thinks of it. Her front door swings open and she emerges, zipping her tight leather jacket, her breath a cloud around her, and it has begun.
She walks up the block and he turns on his ignition and drives past her. He keeps the car at a normal speed, perhaps even slower than the limit. He has time. He drives to Prime Time Package and parks in the lot along the far side of the building. He’s circled the store many times and learned there are no cameras back there. Dusk has usually fallen by the time she reaches the store, and today is no exception. The blazing orange orb of the sun drops behind the trees, and within moments the day goes from brilliant to bruised. He parks, but leaves the car unlocked and enters the store.
Cases of beer are stacked all along the entrance, and since the brand doesn’t matter, he doesn’t bother going any deeper into the store. He picks up a case of Stroh’s in cans and puts it down at the register, then gathers two twelve-packs of Labatt Blue in bottles. The clerk, a Pakistani, comes around and rings up the purchase. He pays cash, and he spots her through the window between the specials signs, coming toward the store. He pockets his change and stacks the twelve-packs on top of the case.
“Do you want bags for the bottles?” the clerk asks.
“No,” he answers.
He heads for the door. He needs to be outside before she arrives, everything hinges on that. He puts his back into the bar and eases the glass door open, then turns toward her. He feels his heart thumping lightly in his chest as he faces her, in person at last. She is even smaller than he’d thought, height-wise. Her frame is compact and well formed. Her eyes sparkle above rings of black eyeliner along her bottom lids. A cloud of cigarette smoke hovers around her. Her hair catches the day’s remaining light. Then he speaks.
“I got too much,” he says. “It was on sale. Help me carry it to my car and I’ll give you a six-pack?”
She looks at him for a moment, as he strains against the armful of beer, and shrugs.
“Sure, noodle arms,” she says, and the corner of her mouth rises in a quarter smile. She puts the cigarette between her lips, reaches out and takes the twelve-packs off the top, and he begins walking around the corner toward the parking lot. She follows.
“I’m just over here,” he says, mild and unimpressive, as he heads to his car. Loose gravel and old broken glass crunch under their feet as they cross the lot. He walks along with her, his exterior calm, but inside his true self is savage as a meat ax.
“Not too sure about your taste in beer. Stroh’s? Can I get a six of the Labatt at least?” she asks.
“Sure,” he says.
There are no other cars in the lot. He fishes in his pocket for his keys and pops the trunk. He puts the case of cans inside and steps back, giving her room to deposit the twelve-packs.
“So, should I just take—” she begins speaking but stops. She stiffens as she sees the lengths of duct tape and nylon cord, precut and tied, in the trunk. She can’t know what they are for, only that it feels wrong. But that is all she has time to consider. He punches her in the back of the head, a short, sharp blow just at the base of her skull, and she sags as she goes out. Her cigarette hits the ground, and he pushes her right in on top of the beer and swings her legs into the roomy trunk. He secures her hands and feet with the lengths of cord, puts a strip of tape across her mouth, and closes the trunk. From the street, a passing motorist would merely glimpse a man placing packages in his car. He gets behind the wheel and drives away, euphoric, into the falling darkness.
20
Trevor was on the floor on a play mat that was festooned with boinging, buzzing, and clicking gadgets that had probably been scientifically engineered by a team in a lab to stimulate a child’s senses. The boy was ignoring most of that, however, and was instead engaged in what looked like a wrestling sit-out drill. From time to time Behr would glance over to see one of Trevor’s limbs give out and plant him on his face upon the padded cotton mat. It didn’t seem to faze his son though.
Behr surveyed h
is place, which had turned into a command post for his task force of one. The idea that his missing woman had gotten into the car of someone hunting women was a long shot, but Behr woke up thinking about the reward most days now. The idea of the money played in his head, while the actuality of his bills piled up and his savings dropped, and it was causing him to work long and hard. After he’d gotten the flash drive from Sasso, he’d run his laser printer like a coal engine for two days straight, stopping only to go to Staples for another box of paper and a new printer cartridge. He’d then set about reading and organizing what he’d printed. He’d put up a large city map so he could pushpin the locations of bodies and murders, as well as a bulletin board for other important facts. The case files themselves went into stacks by year. An index card timeline of all the cases stretched around the walls at eye level. There was another box for witness statements from the other cases. Breslau hadn’t been particularly judicious but had been generous with what he’d sent. Behr had fifty-seven unsolved cases going back roughly eighteen years to sift through.
So he concentrated his focus on the cases resembling his. Young women, known prostitutes, those who may have been prostitutes, and those who were at-risk types and could’ve been in similar situations to the prostitutes. Those most like Kendra Gibbons. Over the first few days of reading, he tossed a dozen of the cases—the drug-related killings, women who were older than fifty, women killed in office settings. He booted the domestic violence cases that hadn’t been successfully prosecuted. Then there were the shooting victims, the African American, Asian, and Latina victims, blunt trauma cases, vehicular homicide, and an apparent poisoning. That pared the number down to thirty-seven dead Caucasian women, between the ages of eighteen and forty-six, who’d been killed by stabbing or strangulation by currently unknown assailants and had been found either intact or partially or fully dismembered over the past sixteen and a half years.
It was a lot to contend with, a formless sea of information. But out of that formlessness, a shape had begun to emerge. Behr couldn’t recognize it with his conscious mind, but he felt it floating at the edges of his perception like a ghostly figure. There was a term for what he was looking at, but not one he was yet prepared to utter …