Signature Kill

by David Levien

  Then, when it was time, Behr went ahead and dug into his own pocket and paid for a few large boxes of coffee and six dozen doughnuts. Until a half hour ago he’d had no idea whether he had nearly enough or would be tossing the bulk of it in the trash. More important, he had taken a pair of pan-tilt-zoom wide-angle surveillance cameras he owned, and borrowed two more, and wired the place. He’d rigged one over the spread of food, another at the door, and one near the photo display, with the fourth set to capture the audience while seated. The digital images would download directly to his laptop.

  Behr had arrived early that afternoon, made the preparations, and braced himself for the humiliation of a poor turnout. Quinn showed up a while later and displayed more than a dozen of his photos printed at sixteen by twenty inches. They used a room divider to block off the exhibit from the main seating area, because unlike the one in the Star, these shots included graphic images of the victims.

  Mistretta got there a bit later, looking too good in a black dress and short leather coat, a laptop case slung over her shoulder. Behr introduced her to Quinn and they’d made small talk until people started to show up. Behr had begun clicking a handheld counter as the attendees entered, and saw the numbers had stopped at seventy-eight. Thirty-five women, twenty-seven men, young adult to middle-aged. The rest were teenagers and the elderly.

  Should I be looking for the strong ones, the smart ones, the sick ones? He didn’t know.

  Sergeant Odoms had rolled in with only moments to spare before the announced start time, just when Behr thought he might need to get up and do the talking. Big and serious in his dark uniform, Odoms didn’t seem eager to be a part of the thing.

  “Thanks for coming out,” Behr said, introducing himself and shaking his hand.

  “Anything for Lieutenant Breslau,” Odoms said, an unnecessary reminder of how much a law enforcement career was built upon contract and favor bartering. Behr couldn’t help but remember how poor a job he’d done of that when he’d been on the force.

  “You have any questions about the type of remarks?” Behr asked, trying to be helpful. It hardly mattered what Odoms said, Behr just needed something to draw them in with and keep them stationary for long enough to get their plates and picture and for Mistretta to eyeball their behavior for telltale signs.

  “I think I’ve got it, pal,” Odoms said. “I’ve done this plenty. Usually at nursing homes and schools.”

  “Good,” Behr said.

  “I’ll talk about the crimes for ten minutes, rattle some stats, then take questions. I’ll finish with precautions and send them to the photos.”

  And that’s just what Odoms had done.

  “Do the police have any leads?” asked a man in the front row with the affect of a high school football coach.

  “None that we can share with the public right now,” Odoms responded.

  “What are you doing to catch the perpetrator?” a middle-aged woman asked.

  “We’re devoting tremendous departmental resources to this, believe me,” Odoms said.

  “Oh, well that’s a comfort,” a man in a Craftsman work jacket said. “Talk about incompetent!” There was a murmur of agreement in the crowd.

  “All right, folks, that’s not what this is about.” Odoms scowled. “Tell it to your councilman.”

  “How many more women have to die before you’re gonna do something about it?” a middle-aged woman with glasses called out. This sentiment got even more support.

  Odoms’s face set in a mask of tightly controlled disgust, and his eyes, hot with anger, found Behr where he stood.

  Half a dozen more questions and comments, variations of the first, followed before Odoms said with finality:

  “Anyone else? No? Good.”

  There was a mass scraping of chairs and shuffling of feet toward the photo display. Some attendees left straightaway, but most stayed and started viewing the pictures. Sergeant Odoms was among the first to go. Behr tried to catch him on the way, calling out, “Thanks and I’m sorry, John.”

  “Yeah, that’s fucking great, Behr,” Odoms said over his shoulder and disappeared out the door.

  Behr, along with Mistretta, had wanted to shock people with the display, and specifically determine who wasn’t shocked. Now he watched, as most of them grew wide-eyed and pale from what they were seeing. There were murmurs of “Oh my,” and “my God,” and many less polite exclamations.

  Behr drifted over and joined Quinn, who was just breaking off a conversation with a Goth-looking college-age girl with spiky blond hair as he leaned against a room divider and watched people react to his photos.

  “So, yeah, I like to close off a stop, to get some more contrast from time to time. And I’ll use a tripod for wides because the department requests it, but I prefer to hold the camera, to make it an extension of myself,” he said.

  “Well, cool, thanks,” the girl said and moved for the door.

  “Closest I’m gonna get to a gallery show, or a fan, in my line of work,” Quinn said, turning to Behr, betraying perhaps a trace of bitterness.

  “Glad you’re enjoying yourself,” Behr said.

  “Watching people shit themselves? Definitely.”

  Behr cut across the room toward Mistretta, where she was set up in a corner watching the crowd and currently engaged in conversation with a man with thinning hair in his early forties and dressed in an inexpensive gray business suit.

  “… dangerous times for women in this city,” Behr heard the man say. “I live in Broad Ripple too, so if you ever need a ride home, or company when you’re out, look me up.” Then he handed Mistretta his card. “You could consider me your personal Guardian Angel.”

  “Thanks, Bill, I’ll keep it in mind,” she said with finality, and the man wandered away.

  “Who am I following out of here?” Behr said, taking Bill’s place.

  “Me, when we go to a bar,” she said.

  “Could he be our man?” Behr asked of the guy who’d just walked off.

  “If I was profiling a lame-o with an orange belt in tae kwon do, maybe. Only thing Bill’s guilty of is using weak-ass pickup material,” Mistretta said, tearing the card in two and letting it flutter to the floor. “Why’s everybody so fucking hatty?”

  Behr took a glance and saw what she meant: at least two dozen attendees wore baseball hats and Irish Eight Piece caps, and even some fedoras, which had been back in style for two years, which also meant they were just getting to Indianapolis.

  “Can’t ask them to take ’em off,” Behr said.

  “You sure?” she wondered.

  “You seeing anything? Would our guy be last to leave or would he get out early?”

  “Not sure. This part’s interpretive, not frigging exact,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know.”

  For another moment things seemed as natural as could be expected, but then everything changed. A menacing figure under a baseball hat and dressed in a Carhartt coat slid in the door, surveyed the room, and moved toward the display. Behr recognized him right away and fell back behind a pillar in order to not be seen. The man’s arm was in a sling. He was Jerold Allen Prilo. Behr’s eyes locked onto him as he moved among the other viewers. Behr didn’t know if he was imagining it, it was hard to tell at this distance, but he could swear Prilo wore a slight smirk.

  “Listen, I know you never liked my Prilo idea …” Behr said to Mistretta.

  “Thought you gave up on it too,” she said.

  “I did. But he’s here.”

  “Son of a bitch,” she said. “Where?”

  “Big guy over there in the tan coat. The one wearing a sling on his arm.”

  They looked and saw him, his broad shoulders rolled forward and looming above other attendees, as he browsed the photographs. Behr felt his heart pounding at the presence. There was a literal wolf in the barnyard. Behr left Mistretta and circled around to get a better look. Prilo seemed like just another citizen in the crow
d, but Behr had the distinct impression that he was there to stalk. Perhaps having a premonition he was being watched, Prilo looked up and surveyed the room, a sickly grin on his face now plainly visible, and then his eyes met Behr’s. Before he could duck away, Behr felt himself get recognized.

  “Shit,” Behr muttered, and moved toward the man.

  The smile ran away from Prilo’s face and then he turned and headed quickly for the door. He was gone before Behr reached him. Behr saw him from the doorway, lumbering off into the night. The whole thing just felt wrong. In fact, Prilo’s presence was as wrong as wrong got. Behr considered chasing him down, but it was a public meeting and Prilo—his past excepted—had done nothing actionable. Besides, Behr knew where he lived and the event was almost over.

  Before long the place had emptied, and Behr, Quinn, and Mistretta were the only three left.

  “Well, nobody fell down on the floor and confessed,” Quinn said, as he broke down his prints.

  “Is that what was supposed to happen?” Mistretta asked while she plugged Behr’s phone into his computer and synced the license plate photos. “I just came for the free doughnuts—which this crowd mowed through.” There were only crumbs left on the table.

  “May as well have,” Behr said, in the midst of removing and packing up the PTZ cameras. “We did have a bona fide murderer in the room.”

  “Who?” Quinn asked.

  “Name Jerold Allen Prilo sound familiar?”

  “He was here?” Quinn said. “You think he’s pay dirt?”

  “Let’s just say Behr’s idea about him is a lot less gamey right now,” Mistretta said, as she zipped her computer into its case. “Is it drunk o’clock yet?”

  Quinn and Behr caught eyes and smiled.

  51

  The place smells like old incense, lies, and God, as do all churches and their basements and all meetings of men. He sits there in a folding chair, an anger that seems infinite bubbling within him, as some big cop prattles on with words he can’t even hear. Now it is time to view someone else’s photographs of his work. He gets to his feet and shuffles along in a herd of frightened fools toward the little exhibit—if it can be called that.

  He’d gotten there early by forty-five minutes and had waited down the street in his car until he saw people start showing up. He couldn’t afford to get too close or to be inside with a sparse turnout, or possibly be asked to show ID or give his information while someone stood over him watching. He counted thirty people—it appeared the meeting would be well attended after all—before he got out and joined the stream of bodies entering. He wears khaki pants, an olive drab canvas coat, and an unmarked tan baseball cap. He may as well be cloaked in a force field of invisibility. He’s had this sensation many times before—that no one can really see him. He finds a seat at the edge of the middle, and before long other people have filled in around him and swallowed him up. He looks on as a dark-haired slutty-looking woman and large man speak to each other off to the side, and then watches the police officer when he arrives. Later on, another man, who is clearly the photographer, since he’s been busy tweaking his display along the far wall of the space, joins them. Then the cop finishes warning people about things that don’t concern them, with ways to protect themselves that won’t work, and it is time to view the pictures.

  It is worse than he imagined.

  He keeps his coat on and cap pulled low throughout the presentation, and still wears them as he walks past photographs that supposedly depict his work, but which actually reduce it, ruin it, turn it all to shit. It is infuriating. The pictures were shot straight on, the digital images too clean and too bright, and the colors stark and unfiltered.

  It shouldn’t be like that, he thinks. The images bear no relation to what he is really doing. How can this joker call himself a photographer?

  D. Quinn. That’s the name digitally burned onto the lower left-hand corner of the prints. So it must be Quinn himself who stands there showing off his camera to some girl. The young man, dressed in cargo pants, a fisherman’s sweater, and an earring, with a padded bag over his shoulder, disgusts him. He seems more concerned with playing the role of artist than the work itself.

  But despite it all—despite the shooter’s limitations—just seeing anew what he has done is magnificent. It stops him in his tracks and makes his heart beat powerfully and causes his blood to surge. His works are his prayers, his testament to his own godliness and immortality, and that comes through. He almost doesn’t notice how the time has passed and that the crowd has started to break and file out. It is all ending so soon, but it won’t do to be caught alone and too interested in the display, so he bends his head, tugs the brim of his cap downward, and walks quickly toward the door along with two couples, seeming, to all outside appearances, one of their group.

  He goes back to his car and waits down the street for a long while until the place has cleared out completely. The last to leave is Quinn, who walks out with two other people, the big man and the small, dark-haired woman. They get into separate cars—the woman is parked directly across from him, but seemingly unaware of his presence behind the wheel. He stays with Quinn, following him as he drives off in a silver Toyota Prius. He isn’t surprised when the photographer parks in front of a trendy-looking bar and grill he’s never heard of called Kilroy’s. He is more surprised to see the small, dark-haired woman and the large man from the church meet Quinn in front and see them enter as a group. He adjusts himself in his seat. Finishing the project in his garage can wait, this cannot.

  52

  “Oh-ho, say hello to the regular,” Gene Sasso said, turning around from stacking glasses.

  Frank Behr had just walked into the tail end of a quiet Wednesday night at the Trough.

  “I said I’d come by for a beer,” Behr announced, taking a seat at the bar, “and here I am.”

  “Well, I’m some lucky guy,” Sasso said. He pulled a Heineken Light on tap for Behr and slid it over.

  “Thanks,” Behr said, taking a sip. He’d spent the last few days crunching the license plates he’d gotten at his meeting. He had turned up no connections to the crime scenes and no known felons, besides Prilo, in attendance. He’d also gone over the video he’d shot. Plain faces, strange faces, even one guy who looked like he had his eyebrows drawn on, but no one was wearing a sign that said “Murderer.”

  “How are you doing with that case?” Sasso wondered. Behr had been torn by a desire to resume his surveillance of Prilo, or to confront him, but with reams of data to check, he felt he had to be thorough. Now he wasn’t sure what to do next.

  “Coming up as empty as my pockets,” Behr said.

  “Of course you are. That’s why you come crawling back to your old training officer, right?”

  “Is that why I’m here?” Behr asked. “Thought it was for the cold beer and fine ambience.”

  “I don’t know why the hell you’re here,” Sasso said. “Hope you’re not looking to drink on credit.”

  “Certainly wouldn’t pick this place if I was,” Behr said.

  Sasso slung a dishrag over his shoulder and leaned his elbows on the bar top. “So where are you at?”

  Behr walked him through everything, up to the community meeting and Prilo’s appearance there.

  “I saw something about that in the Star, and wondered if it was legit or a bogey,” Sasso said.

  “It was as legit as I could make it,” Behr said.

  “But it was a bogey all the way,” Sasso said, laughing.

  “Pretty much.” Behr laughed too.

  “Until a murderer walked in.”

  “Right. I’ve been running all the plates, doing geographic profiling, running a circle hypothesis.” It was a theory that suggested that serial offenders didn’t go too far from home and lived within a sphere whose diameter was equal to the distance between the two farthest offenses. Generally ten square miles.

  “Right,” Sasso said. “But I’m not sure that theory holds in a car town like Indiana
polis. People drive twenty, forty miles a day here and still feel like they never went anywhere.”

  “That’s where I’ve ended up with it,” Behr said. “I’ve got body dumps twenty-seven miles apart.”

  “Besides, even if the guy was there at your meeting, he could’ve ridden with a friend. Or walked. Or parked somewhere else. You probably don’t even have a plate on him,” Sasso said.

  “That’s starting to settle in on me. Another few hours of work and I’ll be through all of it, including the dozen or so who registered on the website.”

  “So you really don’t have squat,” Sasso said. “Except Prilo.”

  “Except Prilo,” Behr agreed. “Even my expert, who was plenty skeptical at first, is ready to buy.” After the meeting, Mistretta cautioned him not to lean too far into one theory or to settle, but couldn’t disagree that Prilo’s presence slanted things heavily in his direction.

  “Occam’s razor says you shouldn’t bother looking much further.”

  “I don’t know if his showing up makes me like him more for it, but it makes me like him a lot for having some connection, for knowing something real.”

  Behr drained his glass and fell silent while Sasso refilled it from the tap.

  “Did I hear right about you having a kid?” Sasso asked.

  “You heard right. A son.”

  “Holy shit, great news. How’s that all going?”

  It was a short dagger to Behr’s gut. He tried to hide it. He considered spilling his mistakes and regrets and asking for advice on how to put it all back together. But Sasso was just his old training officer and, at the moment, his bartender, and barely a friend anymore; he wasn’t his father confessor.

  “Going good,” Behr said.

  He felt Sasso read him, almost say something, decide not to, and then reach for the tap and draw himself beer.

  “Here’s to not knowing jackshit,” Sasso said, raising a glass.

  “Yep,” Behr said.

  “And to your son.”

  They touched glasses and drank.