by David Levien
That’s when he realized the sun had gone down. And that he hadn’t fed Trevor for a while and Susan would be home from work soon, so he put the pages he was reading back into a file folder and got Trevor’s jacket. The boy was his little mascot these past few weeks, staying with him during the day while he worked instead of going off to day care. It could be distracting once in a while, but it was money saved and good time spent.
“All right, buddy, time to go home,” Behr said, rubbing his face in an attempt to wipe off what he’d been reading. “Let’s go see Mommy.”
Susan was just taking off her coat when Behr walked in, Trevor in one arm, a bag of takeout food in the other.
“Hey, babe,” he said.
“My men,” she said, smiling and taking Trevor for hugs and kisses.
“I got Boston Market,” he said.
“Who’s better than you?” she asked.
“Hell if I know.”
Later, they lay in bed, the sheets bunched up between their feet, she in her pajamas, and he in his clothes. They had begun fooling around, but she’d pulled away.
“There’s something about the routine of this that’s starting to make me feel cheap, Frank,” she said.
“That’s not the intention,” he told her.
“Yeah, but it’s getting to be the result.”
“You know that’s not the way I see you. Not the way I feel about us,” he said.
“Okay.”
He was moments away from that inner alarm binging and causing him to get up and return to his endless cases of gore and pain when she spoke.
“What are we doing, Frank?”
“You mean why do you two live here and I don’t?”
“Yeah.”
The silence between them was his only answer. Then she spoke.
“I don’t know much, beyond the obvious, about why your marriage failed. But from what you’ve told me, your ex said it was because you just couldn’t get out from under the sadness. The grief. The misery.”
Behr had too much to say about all that she’d just brought up, so he simply nodded in the dark.
“And has that changed yet?”
“Hold on. You don’t think my life is different? With you? And him?”
“Your life is different, but you still haven’t gotten out from under.”
She was right. He wasn’t out from under. Somehow solving this case and claiming the reward represented a new start. But for now he was still caught in a riptide of crap, and like an experienced ocean swimmer he was swimming parallel to shore until it let go. But he didn’t say any of that to her. He couldn’t. Instead he swung his feet to the floor and started getting dressed.
21
The air inside the garage already has the close, shrine-like feel he yearns for. Everything out in the world is too clean now. That’s the problem with this age. It is all plastic and sterile. But not in here. In this space the air smells of sacred fluids: urine, blood, and semen. They will run together onto the floor. Some of them already do, darkening the concrete. It is elemental.
When they arrived, he had pulled his car in, unloaded Cinnamon, and moved the car back out. Now it is dark and quiet inside, a moment of calm. He goes to the sofa, which is covered by an old blanket, and stands over her. Her hands and feet are bound. Her jacket, shirt, and brassiere lie on the floor along with her shoes, socks, and jeans. He’d cut those off immediately. She wears only panties, pale and pink colored. Outside, the world carries on, people walking around clinging to the myth of escape, desperately seeking the safe, the happy, the normal. But reality is inside, here, between them.
It is time …
22
Bodies, and parts of bodies, intact and taken apart, naked and partially clothed and bound and tied and posed, some identified, some unidentified, going back years and years and years surrounded him.
Picture time for Behr. He’d pinned police department victim photos, both in stark black and white and in lurid color, on bulletin boards and along the walls of his office, and they were quickly becoming plastered across the surfaces of his brain. Motel rooms, wooded areas, roadsides, Dumpsters, a warehouse, a fifty-five-gallon drum, parks, including the most recent find along the tree line of Northwestway. That one was the most bizarre tableau and seemed to have been staged with great care.
Behr had run through the half dozen sets of photo printer ink cartridges he’d picked up for the project. He was aware that now, along with his time, he was spending his own money combing cold cases, but so far none of the unidentified bodies announced themselves as Kendra Gibbons. He was also aware, painfully so, that he had nothing substantive that connected her to any of these past cases.
“Huh,” Behr said aloud, as he stood back and appraised the shots in total. He’d hung them in chronological order, and he had begun to recognize a very clear difference in them, a progression, starting about six years back. The difference was in the quality and in the impact of the photos. At first he ascribed it to the advent of digital photography and the new, sharper lenses that came along with it. But he soon realized the distinctions went beyond that. There was a skill level at play, lighting-wise and compositionally, even in the overall density of image, in the more recent photos that far outstripped the prior ones. Behr moved closer and noticed a tiny photo credit in most of the recent batch that read “D. Quinn.” He stepped back again and understood what made the difference.
When looking at crime scenes, Behr had been trained to concentrate on the edges. The investigator can’t ignore the central piece—the body, or the blown safe, or the looted car—but too many investigators got sucked into that element. It was only natural. It was, after all, the reason for the investigation. But the mind tended to become overwhelmed by it. It caused a type of tunnel vision that shut out other pertinent information. So one was advised to instead focus on the periphery, where a pen might’ve been touched or a drinking glass used, or a bottle or a footprint or a tool might’ve been left by the criminal. Behr realized that the pictures of the more recent scenes seemed to be shot with this aesthetic. The bodies were in the photos, of course, and they were central, but they weren’t dead center in the frame, and the surrounding spaces were included in a highly detailed manner. Behr stared and studied the more recent batch for hours. He pulled up a chair and continued. He didn’t see anything that helped. He knew he might not for a long time, if ever. But at least he knew there was a chance.
23
Serial killer.
Behr woke with the words in his head, the ones he had been unable to utter to himself the day before.
A serial killer of women.
He’d done his early-morning running and rehab—exercises with a thick band of rubber that caused the tissue and joint of his damaged shoulder to burn like napalm—and now stood in front of the grisly photo tableau that, along with the case files he’d been reading, told him that it was so. Whether or not Kendra Gibbons had met a similar fate, he had no idea. And he felt plenty foolish about it, because though he’d worked murders, he was no dedicated homicide cop. Then there was the fact that no one else, neither police nor journalists, had made the claim. He was alone on this. But it was in his head now and he couldn’t ignore it. That’s when the phone rang. It was the county forensics lab.
“I’m calling about the DNA sample that was submitted on the Northwestway Park body,” a technician said.
“Yes,” Behr said, feeling a jolt of anticipation about the result.
“It came back nonpositive.”
“Not a match,” Behr said. Disappointment at the lack of an answer mixed with relief that Kendra wasn’t officially dead.
“No match,” the technician repeated.
“Thanks,” Behr said and hung up. He gathered up the case files into a tall stack and began looking for a cardboard box.
“Welcome to the land of the dead,” Jean Gannon said, pulling off a pair of blue elbow-length rubber gloves with a snap. The basement mortuary area of Scanlon Brothe
rs Funeral Home was bright white tile, stainless-steel sinks, yellow tubing, and shining oversized refrigerators. The space was cool and immaculate, with the sharp tang of preservative chemicals in the air.
“How’s it going, Jean?” Behr said.
“You know what they say …”
“Business just keeps rolling in?” he said.
She nodded and draped a sheet over the body of an elderly woman that she’d been working on and turned back toward him. Jean looked five years younger than she had the last time Behr had seen her and he told her so.
“Thanks. For me?” she said, lifting a supermarket poinsettia plant off the top of the cardboard box in Behr’s arms.
“Office warming,” he said.
“Everything changes, huh—none of the usual treats?” she asked, thinking of the customary liquor and chocolates.
“Someone down at coroner’s is the beneficiary of those. Real surprise to find you gone.”
“It was time,” she said. “Even though I hadn’t been there forever, it was starting to feel like it. I was surprised that’s what happened on account of getting into it so late in life, but it did.” Jean had only gone to med school and begun her career after a life as a mother and a wife and a marriage that had crashed and burned.
“So the new job agrees with you.”
“It’s still wall-to-wall stiffs. But the good part, besides playing with makeup half the day, is that most of ’em get to me when they should. You know? Occasionally there’s a young mom or dad, or you know, a kid.” She winced. “But it’s mostly old folks whose time has come. Not at all like working at the other place. Down there it just smelled like …”
“Hamburger?”
She nodded. “I just couldn’t seem to wash it off of me.”
Behr had a momentary pang of guilt over what he was there for as he put the box down on her desk.
“Well, I’m sorry for what I brought then,” he said. “I tried to lay off you when I heard you’d quit, but I couldn’t.”
“It’s not the same when it’s on paper.” She shrugged, pointing to a chair. “Sit. Wait.”
An hour and fifteen minutes and two cups of coffee passed with some nods and murmurs of recognition from her as she reviewed the case files. Behr figured she’d worked some of the bodies over the years when she was with the coroner’s. Finally, Jean closed up the folders and removed her reading glasses. She leaned back and stretched in her desk chair.
“You are a messenger of delight, aren’t you?” she said.
“Nothing but,” Behr said. “What does it say to you?”
“My opinion? If these are random kills, the world has officially gone to shit, and if this was done by one person, you’re dealing with some kind of fucking monster.”
“Is that the clinical assessment then?” Behr said. “Glad to see all that higher education put to use.”
“Hey, I calls ’em as I sees ’em,” she said. “Seriously, what’s your interest with all this?”
He told Jean about the billboard and Kendra Gibbons and how he’d come to this point.
“Bit of a ‘Hail Mary,’ isn’t it, Frankie?” she asked. “But I guess that’s you in a nutshell.”
He let that one pass before he said, “Even though a lot of the details are different case to case, you see certain related factors like I do?”
She nodded. “You know it wasn’t exactly my bag, but there’s at least a few, if not more, common elements to these.” She patted the stack of files.
“Is there any direction you can point me in?” he wondered.
She twirled a pen around her fingers and thought for a minute.
“Not me. But I know someone who may be able to help you,” Jean said, taking out her cell phone and scrolling her contacts. “You may like her too. Most people are scared shitless of her, but you won’t be. She’s a criminal psychologist. From New York, relocated here a few years back. She’s got experience with this stuff. Worked with the FBI and NYPD.”
“A profiler?” Behr asked.
“You could call her that.”
Jean dialed a phone number. “Hi, Lisa? Jean Gannon here,” she began. “Yeah. No, you heard correct. No longer with the office …” There was a pause and Jean laughed and said, “I’m over at Scanlon Brothers, making ’em look pretty before they get planted.”
Jean listened for a moment, and then spoke. “Look, I’m calling because my friend—he’s an investigator on a case—could use your type of help. It’s kind of a fun one.”
Jean listened again, pulling the phone away from her ear and covering the receiver. “She’s saying she’s busy and doesn’t really do this type of thing anymore.”
“So it’s a no-go?” Behr asked.
Jean shook her head and whispered, “Blah, blah, blah. It’s the same shit every time. She’ll do it.”
“Yeah, no, listen, I hear you. But this is a really good guy, my friend. You’ll like him. Just give it a look. For me, all right?”
Gannon nodded, then handed Behr the phone.
“Frank Behr here,” he said.
“Lisa Mistretta, nice to meet you over the phone,” a forthright voice with a hint of an East Coast accent said back. “What do you got?”
“A bunch of murders that I think are related.”
“We’ll see about that. You got case files?”
“A mess of ’em,” Behr said.
“If the files are too big to e-mail, send me hard copies along with a CD-ROM.”
“I’ll compress ’em and send ’em,” Behr said.
“Fine. Send the hard copies anyway, please. I don’t like fucking with my printer if I can avoid it. The thing has it out for me.”
“Sure,” Behr said. “How long before we have a follow-up meet or whatever?” Considering the volume of material he was sending, he imagined it’d be at least a week.
“Well, I won’t know that until I see what you send,” she said.
“Of course,” Behr said. “And—” He looked to Jean, handing her back the phone. “She hung up. You want to give me her info?”
Jean scribbled down an address and an e-mail and handed it to him.
“Really appreciate it, and owe you one, Jean,” he said, standing.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Why are people scared of her?” Behr wondered on his way to the door.
“You’ll see.”
24
I’ll never die.
The idea flashes in his mind.
No one who experiences this ever can.
A power surges through him like high-voltage electricity.
He’s spent the special time with Cinnamon, three hours’ worth, right after her end. There is something magical in the silence, in the utter void of her being. As always, when it is done, he is totally used up. A deep sense of exhaustion and peace creeps up through the soles of his feet and spreads through him. He covers her, there on the floor, and it is time to leave the garage. Cinnamon has to go through this next part alone.
He knows too much about it. The Latin words: rigor, algor, livor mortis. Her tissue will stiffen until her body is like a board, literally like stacked cordwood. She will cool, until she is as chill as the air, as cold as the concrete floor, but somehow feeling even colder to the touch. And her blood will pool in the lower planes of her body until the skin of her back is a beautiful speckled reddish purple. This is a time he prefers to be away, inside, eating a good meal, drinking tea, regathering his energies, poring over his books and planning for the work ahead. By the next night or so, when he goes back to her, she’ll be soft and supple once again. Then he will have his hours, perhaps a few days because it is winter, to finish the project before it is time to move her. He’s waited too long in the past, before he’d known better, only to see black flies and seething larvae boil over a ruined piece. He won’t make a mistake like that again. By now he knows exactly what he’s doing.
25
“You ready for me? ’Cause if you’re ready, I’m rea
dy.” It was Lisa Mistretta on his voice mail.
“That was quick,” Behr said when he called her back. It had been a day and a half.
“It was only a review, how fucking long should it take?” she asked, some amusement in her voice.
“Okay, where and when?” Behr asked.
She actually answered this time before hanging up.
“My place, at eleven, same address you sent the stuff.”
The house was a tidy brick job in Broad Ripple off East 61st, behind the bars and restaurants. Behr parked in the driveway in back of an amber-colored Infiniti SUV and could see Mission-style furniture in the living room beyond the house’s picture window. But standing in the doorway of the detached garage, an aluminum coffee cup in one hand, the other cocked on a curvaceous hip, was a woman with a mane of black hair. She wore tight jeans and a black turtleneck.
“This way, buddy,” she said. She only went about five foot five, but her attitude was much bigger. “So you’re Behr?” she said, sticking out her hand.
“And you’re Ms. Mistretta,” he said. Her grip was firm, her palm cool and smooth.
“Call me Lisa or you’ll remind me of my old lacrosse coach. The guy was half a fucking perv.”
“Frank.”
“Okay. Come on in, Behr.”
The car evidently lived outside, because the garage had been converted into a comfortable office. The concrete floor was covered with a plush white rug. A gray sofa and black leather chair offset a long brushed-steel desk topped by a high-tech computer. The shelves along the walls were lined with books, mostly clinical texts and medical journals. The only bright spots in the room were an orange beanbag that sat next to a low coffee table piled with the case files Behr had sent her, and Mistretta herself.
