Signature Kill

by David Levien

  “Who’s this?” Behr asked, holding it up.

  “Kendra’s dirtbag of an ex-boyfriend, Pete,” Kerry said.

  “Pete what?” Behr asked.

  “Lambrinakos. He’s a Greek.”

  The last picture was also from graduation day, the mortarboard and tassel atop her head, blond hair pushed back, diploma displayed proudly.

  “That was a great day. Kendra was in the top quartile of her class.”

  Behr looked up.

  “Yeah, quartile. We’re not just a bunch of dummies in this part of town,” Kerry said. “Wish she could’ve hung in at community college, things would’ve been different.” Then the woman picked up a folder from the coffee table, which was cluttered with knickknacks and television remotes and TV Guides.

  He took the folder from her and felt right away from its weight and thinness that there wasn’t going to be much of use inside. He flipped it open to find a copy of the police report from eighteen months prior.

  Gibbons, Kendra, White Female, age 23, resident of Millersville, reported missing. Subject’s mother notified IMPD her daughter had gone to East Washington Street corridor. (Subject’s purpose of visit appears to have been prostitution.) Two witnesses (statements attached) saw Gibbons that evening before 9:00 P.M. No other witnesses saw Gibbons talking with anyone/getting in vehicle. Recovered in the vicinity: One female high-heel shoe, lavender color, Nine West brand, size 7. Mother unsure if shoe was her daughter’s. Confirmed she was a size 7%, but could wear a 7 depending on the make/style of shoe. No DNA recovered from shoe. No further information at this time.

  Behr flipped to the witness statements. One was from a Village Pantry clerk. Kendra Gibbons had bought a pack of More 120s and Tropical Fruit Trident from the convenience store that evening around 8:00. Store security camera footage confirmed it. No other customers were in the store at the time. An acquaintance, a woman named Samantha Williams, with the notation “also known prostitute,” gave a statement that she’d seen Kendra across the street and waved to her, but had then “met a friend” and “gotten a ride from him.” Behr made a mental note to himself to talk to her.

  The police report was dust—even finer than dust—it was motes of pollen on the wind. He’d read many of them in his day, enough to know that when they started off this flimsy they never did get closed. Never. Behr finished reading and looked up at Kerry Gibbons, pretty certain that his being there was one of the poorest ideas he’d had in quite some time. As if sensing his lack of will Kerry Gibbons started talking.

  “Just so you know, that money’s currently residing in escrow in an interest-bearing account. It goes to whoever provides information leading to arrest or conviction. No funny business.”

  Behr nodded.

  She dug around on the table and came up with a statement from PNC Bank and handed it to him. The statement showed $97,500.

  “I’ll find a way to make up the difference and get it all the way up to a hundred if anything comes of it.”

  Behr was thinking about how to extricate himself from the house and this stone loser of a scenario, and was contemplating whether or not he should try some direct marketing by calling his past clients to see if they needed his services. He tipped back his cup and drained it, placed the folder on the table, and stood to say his goodbyes when a little girl came out of a back room. She was perhaps two and a half years old, her blond hair in pigtails, overalls printed with a pattern of strawberries, and her right Mary Jane unbuckled.

  “Hey there, baby girl,” Kerry Gibbons called out to her granddaughter. “This little mermaid is Katie.”

  “Gamma.” The girl’s bright blue eyes shone as she ran over to them. She glanced at Behr and stopped, but apparently had no great fear of strangers because she didn’t shrink back at his presence.

  “It’s okay, sweetie, I’m talking to the man about your dear mother,” Kerry Gibbons said.

  “Mommy,” the little girl said, her voice a song. Gears started churning around in Behr’s guts.

  “She doesn’t know who that means anymore, I’m afraid. She was so small when Kendra went missing.”

  “And her father?” Behr asked. He wondered instinctively if it was a custody dispute gone bad.

  “ ‘Father’ is just a word, you know. There were a lot of men it could’ve been who made my little sweetie, but none of ’em were anything close to a real daddy to her.”

  “So it wasn’t Lambrinakos?”

  “Hell no. Whoever it was isn’t in the picture—that’s the way we seem to do it ’round here—so I’m all she’s got now.”

  Behr felt himself slide back into his chair.

  “Do you have children, Mr. Behr?” Kerry asked.

  It was a question that pained him, one he’d once hated but now withstood. “Two. Two boys. I’m raising the one I have left,” he said.

  “Oh, I see,” Kerry Gibbons said, a sense of warm knowing rising up from her own reservoir of pain. He watched her get up and swing the girl around by the arms, causing the child to erupt in delighted giggles.

  “So, you think I could get a copy of that billboard photo and the names of those friends of your daughter’s?” Behr asked.

  “Sure, but I don’t think they know nothing. I’ve spoken to ’em a million times about it.”

  “It’ll be different when I talk to them,” he said.

  8

  He’s blazing through his work when his mind stops. All of a sudden the cost projections sitting in front of him swim away, the figures and notations just inkblots on paper and marks on a screen. The stark fluorescent light spilling down from above him becomes intense, like a crossbow bolt through the temple. The lines and numbers roll and wave before his eyes. His mind is in Irvington. He is thinking of Cinnamon. She is a shade darker than his usual type, but there is something about her … He wipes his palms on his trousers and stands. It’s near lunchtime, a perfect opportunity to see if she is out on the streets. He closes the documents on his desktop and grabs his keys.

  9

  “What’s it about?”

  The tall, thin, dark-complexioned woman blocked the door with her body. The smell of nutmeg and baking apples reached Behr from inside.

  “Kendra Gibbons,” he answered.

  When she heard the name, the woman’s face fell.

  Behr was at the home of Elisa Brook, a woman Kerry Gibbons had said was her daughter’s best friend. He’d come armed with her address, a copy of the thin police file, which was no more than a waste of paper, and the name “Jonesy,” apparently a local protector or pimp of girls in the profession according to Gibbons. Besides that, Behr didn’t have much else with him besides a mild sense of futility.

  Elisa Brook may have been close to Kendra, but missing her friend wasn’t the sole cause of her dismay at the moment. She pushed a strand of dark hair away from her face and cast a half glance back over her shoulder into the house. A baby stroller was visible in the entryway next to her.

  “I heard that you used to work together. That you shared some contacts in that world,” Behr said.

  “Look, can we do this some other time? My husband’s at home. I’m recently married and he’s not a hundred percent clear on my … past employment history.”

  “Well …” Behr began. He didn’t like rescheduling an interview with someone who was looking to avoid him. It generally turned into more canceled appointments, and his trying to catch up with the subject. The pattern was often repeated until it became a test of wills. He usually won the battle, but he preferred to avoid it in the first place if he could.

  “You have any information on where she might’ve gone?” Behr asked. Even though Kerry Gibbons thought her daughter was dead, Behr had the odds as being much better that the girl had just taken off in search of the mythical “better life.”

  “Oh, I don’t think she went anywhere,” Elisa said.

  “No?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Her daughter, ob
viously.”

  “Uh-huh,” Behr said. “Plenty of young women have run away, leaving a child in the care of their mother.”

  “Not Kendra,” the woman said.

  “I see. Who’s Samantha Williams? You know her?” Behr asked in reference to one of the witnesses in the police report—the remaining one, the Village Pantry clerk, had recently returned to his native Bangladesh. So far Behr had been unable to locate the woman. All the Samantha Williamses listed in the vicinity were either too old or too young to be the likely candidate.

  “Don’t have a clue,” the woman said.

  “You know if Kendra had a boyfriend? Maybe one from out of town?” Behr had of course started his efforts by researching Pete Lambrinakos, the Greek ex-boyfriend Kerry Gibbons had mentioned. He and Kendra had broken up two years back, before she went missing, and he’d been jailed in Toledo on car theft, evading arrest, and past warrants at the time of the disappearance. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a new boyfriend in the mix. “Or a client from out of town who something romantic had developed with?” he continued. “Did she talk about wanting to get away to someplace?”

  “She didn’t have a boyfriend,” the woman said, crossing her arms. She really wanted Behr to leave, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I’d like to learn a little bit about Jonesy.”

  Elisa grew even more agitated at mention of the name.

  “Ooh, he is not someone I’ve kept up with,” she said.

  “Maybe you can give me some background on him then, and an address where I can find him.”

  “He lives with his girlfriend—girlfriend of the moment slash wife type or common-law something or other, but you did not hear it from me.”

  Behind her, inside the house, a toddler walked by behind a toy lawn mower that popped colored balls inside a clear dome as she pushed it.

  “My daughter. She plays with Kendra’s daughter sometimes. Used to anyway. My husband isn’t her father.”

  “I see,” Behr said. If she turned out like her mother the little girl would have heavy eyebrows and a light mustache by the time she was thirteen, but she was as cute as a gingerbread cookie right now. And then the twice-mentioned husband appeared in the doorway beside his wife. He was stocky and powerful looking, with the first few buttons of his starched dress shirt open and a gold chain around his neck.

  “The pie is browning,” he said to his wife, and then turned to Behr and asked: “What’s up?”

  Behr said nothing.

  “The pie is fine. He’s a salesman,” Elisa Brook said.

  “What do you sell?” the husband wondered.

  There was a quiet desperation in the woman’s eyes that found Behr. The modest rambler on the quiet street must’ve been a huge step up from nights spent climbing in and out of truck cabs on Pendleton Pike.

  “Encyclopedias,” Behr said.

  “Yeah? People still use them?”

  Behr shrugged.

  “Where are your samples?”

  “Not printed books that take up your shelf space. Online. We sell an access code to the website,” Behr said.

  “Don’t you guys usually just do e-mail blasts?” the husband continued.

  Behr didn’t want to jam the woman up but wasn’t sure how long he was going to continue with the pretense.

  “We don’t like to spam potential customers,” he answered, patience near an end.

  “Well, that’s good to hear. Kid’s only three. Doesn’t even read yet, so thanks anyway.”

  “I’m gonna slide him a couple of referrals,” Elisa Brook joined in. “He said I get a free access code if I give him five names.” When it came to lying, there was nothing like a hustler who’d perfected her craft on the stroll. Her delivery was as smooth as polished glass.

  “Whatever,” the husband said and walked away.

  Elisa Brook nodded her thanks but didn’t speak it. Instead she quickly got into what Behr had come for.

  “I’m out of the life. Have been for over a year. It’s apple pies and bullshit now, but it’s better for my daughter and me. Kendra was my homegirl. We were down. We had so much fun together—she could be a real wild child. But what happened to her—what happened to some of the other girls—it freaked the crap out of me.”

  “What happened to Kendra? What other girls?” Behr asked.

  “I don’t know. She just went gone. Others too, over the years. Plenty of ’em come and go. Lots of the time they tell you they’re leaving to try L.A. or Miami. Vegas. Other times they just pack up and go. This is different. The feeling started spreading around that girls were getting into cars and never coming back. Jonesy, and guys like Jonesy, were supposed to prevent that kind of thing, but they weren’t a broke-dick bit of good. What was I supposed to do?” She lifted her palms. “So I bailed.”

  “Where can I find him—Jonesy?” Behr asked. “I have a number and I texted him but got no response. And what’s his real name?”

  “He rolls a new number every few weeks. He won’t text you back if he doesn’t recognize your number anyway. His first name is Adam. Adam Jones. He’s got a place on Rural and Sixteenth.”

  “Rural Sherman?” Behr asked. It was one of the worst parts of the city.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” she said, and gave him the house number.

  “Thanks,” Behr said. “Good luck with that pie.”

  She just nodded and closed the door on him.

  10

  The streets of Irvington are ghost-town quiet during the middle of the day, save for delivery trucks. UPS, Coca-Cola, U.S. Mail, Frito-Lay, Brown’s Fuel Oil, FedEx. The drivers are the only people he sees. They park in front of stores—small markets, gas stations, Mail Boxes Etc., a Beverage Barn—but there aren’t any people out. Only the Kroger shows signs of life as some housewives push their carts from the store to their cars.

  He rolls along the streets, feeling it start to bubble down there inside of him, the thermal geyser. The thin crust that keeps things in place breaks away inside of him under the force of the building pressure, and the hot lava starts sliding around. Other is up and about. He feels his breath coming shallow. An hour passes, and then another.

  Where are you, Cinnamon, where are you?

  Eventually he points the car back toward his office, but he knows it isn’t going to let him rest now. He knows it because he’s felt it like this before. He knows where it will end up. Once the bubbling starts, it’s just a question of where he points it, because it is going to blow …

  11

  Jones, Adam, a.k.a. “Jonesy.”

  White male, age 32.

  Height: 6′2″.

  Weight: 290.

  Eyes: black.

  Hair: bald.

  Tattoos: multiple. See attachment.

  Arrests: Assault. Extortion. Resisting arrest. Attempted murder (charge dropped, insufficient evidence). Assault. Larceny. Promoting prostitution. Public intoxication. Possession. Parole violation. Assault.

  Time served: Four years, eight months, three separate terms. Released—overcrowding. Suspended sentence. (No credits for good behavior during time served.)

  There was a booking photo of the man: flat black eyes that radiated hate above a black goatee and mustache ringed around sneering lips. A face a mother had probably slapped.

  Elisa Brook had given Behr the full name, and with it he’d been able to run a full P-check on him. The portrait that had come back was one of what his former brother officers in the Indianapolis Police Department would call a “Radar Delta Bravo,” or Regulation Douche Bag. That was the style in which the man lived as well.

  Behr sat across from a decrepit ranch-type house on Rural and 16th. An ancient Corvair was up on blocks in the stripe of driveway next to it. An oxidizing jungle gym was where the grass should have been. The swing on the jungle gym dangled by a single chain, just yards away from a toppled death-trap refrigerator, its door still on. A hyena-like dog beset by an advanced case of mange paced the area inside the rusted
chain-link fence. There was a brand-new DirecTV dish mounted on the south side of the buckling roof, of course. People are the same the world over; they’ll live in squalor as long as they have a flat screen and channels.

  The place was a survival course for the children living inside, of which there were two, as far as Behr could tell from his surveillance, both young boys, poorly dressed for the weather. He hadn’t seen any sign of Jonesy over the past two days. The guy had either been inside the whole time or away. Behr wasn’t sure exactly what to look for besides the face either. Six foot two and 290 was certainly large, but it could be flab or it could be jacked, and there was a big difference.

  Behr had door-knocked the dump on day one, and a massive mocha-skinned woman had answered, a hearty baby clad only in a diaper cocked on her hip. Before he could even run a pretext on the woman, who was Samoan or Hawaiian or Fijian as far as he could tell, she started right in.

  “He don’ do nothing.”

  “Ma’am—”

  “He not here and he don’ do nothing.”

  “Okay, look—”

  “He don’ violate his parole and he don’ do a damn-damn thing.”

  The woman was practically violent in her assertions. Behr tried to peek into the house and learn something of value while she ranted, which was difficult for two reasons: the first was her size—she filled almost every inch of the doorframe—and the second was the mess inside. The living room was like an interior version of the yard.

  Behr didn’t even bother with his “assessor with a potential reduction in property tax” gambit. Instead he retreated and found an inconspicuous vantage point down the block from which to monitor the house. Proper discipline on a stakeout required engine off, windows closed, no music. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was a protocol that was best followed. Cops and Treasury agents with windows down and radios on had been rewarded with bullets in the back of the head. A closed window didn’t offer much protection, maybe bullet deflection at best, but it was better than a muzzle pressed against the temple. It got bitter cold in the car before long, but it beat extreme heat.