by David Levien
“Well, they’re all a bit different, but I’ve seen plenty of shit.”
“You don’t mess with the Vicks?”
“Nah.”
“You’re used to it.”
“I save the crying and the puking for later,” he said, “but on the scene, I owe them …” Quinn waved his camera at the remains. “The least I can do for them is keep it together while I’m working.” The sentiment echoed Behr’s own feeling of duty at a murder scene and he nodded his agreement. “Ahh, the truth is: there’s not so much crying or puking. Not anymore. Fifteen years is a long time to be doing this shit.”
“Right,” Behr said. “I see you’ve got a real thorough approach to it.”
“I generally try to shoot from the same level the viewer would see the scene. No going up ladders or lying on my back, or other bullshit I’ve seen guys try.” Quinn lowered the camera, reached into a pocket, and changed his camera’s memory chip. “Some shooters try to reinvent the wheel. I like to limit the scope, so the viewer’s eyes don’t have to move much. I frame so the viewer’s field of vision approximates my own while on the scene. That way they can experience being here. I hope. I just got it in my head this would be the most helpful to the detectives going over the photos later. I’ve been told it is.”
“I’ve noticed your work’s in a different league than the guys before you,” Behr said.
“Ah,” Quinn brushed it off, “they were good.” He held up his camera. “I’ve got this thing. Digital. I can outshoot my predecessors ten to one at no cost to get my shots. Imagine Tiger Woods with a wooden driver versus Ben Hogan with a Burner.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, you know Locard’s principle?” Quinn began, focusing for his next shot.
“Yeah,” Behr began. He’d read about the pioneering French criminologist from the early 1900s back in college. “Said anyone who enters a crime scene takes something of it with him and leaves something of himself behind. Especially the criminal.”
“Right,” Quinn said. Locard was referring to physical evidence—fingerprints, hair fibers, blood, soil—and beyond physical evidence, his theory included the methodology and psychological imprint of the killer. Behr believed the exchange went even further. Investigators on scenes like this one took horrible memories away with them, and left a small piece of their well-being behind each time too.
“That’s what I’m trying to do with my camera,” Quinn said, flashing a few frames. “I know I’m not actually going to capture a carpet fiber or DNA in my shots. But it’s metaphor, you know? If I do my job well enough, there’ll be something in the pics that helps solve it.”
“I appreciate the ambition,” Behr said.
Quinn finished, slung his camera, and began breaking down his other equipment, as the coroner’s crew who’d be handling the body parts, dressed in paper biohazard jumpsuits, hoods, and rubber gloves, moved in.
“That’s a hell of a shot there,” Behr remarked. The team looked like Roswell scientists huddled over alien remains.
Quinn gave it a glance. “Yeah. Can’t shoot it though. If I did, it could be subpoenaed in cases of alleged mishandling of evidence or whatever. Better not to even take it.”
“You photographed Northwestway?” Behr asked.
“I did indeed.”
“Related?”
“Look, that’s not my field …”
“But?”
“But I’d have to say so.”
“Because of the mutilation.”
“Yeah. I mean, you’ve got the low probability that there’s more than one of these animals out there dumping bodies in this condition. It’s not my area of expertise. I leave that to the detectives and number crunchers. But beyond that, there’s the visual impression. It hit me the exact same way there as it did here.”
“How would you describe it?”
“Like one of those fancy restaurants that serves everything stacked up in a tower on the plate. You’ve got to knock it all down before you can even eat that shit. They’re trying to create a big impression. That’s what this guy’s trying to do,” Quinn said. “But what the fuck do I know, right?” he added.
Maybe plenty, Behr thought. Then he asked: “You mind if I get in touch? Maybe talk to you more about Northwestway, and some of your other scenes?”
“Yeah, thing is, I’m kind of busy,” Quinn said, covering his face with his camera.
Behr realized that despite the friendly chatter, he was just some donkey investigator bothering a guy at work.
“Got ya,” he said and turned toward the body, where Breslau now stood, his legs spread and planted, arms crossed at his chest, like some sentry of the dead. Breslau looked up and waved Behr and Quinn over.
When they got there they found a coroner’s assistant kneeling next to the body, holding the victim’s left leg in his gloved hands.
“Show ’em,” Breslau said. The assistant turned the leg and revealed a chunk of missing flesh the size of a quarter that was as deep as it was round.
“What do you think, trophy?” Breslau wondered aloud.
“Hmm,” Quinn said, as he focused and shot it. “Do a bite impression?”
“It’s not a bite,” the coroner’s assistant said.
Behr looked at the spot and tried to imagine the woman, alive, intact, and whole.
“You think?” Behr said. “I’d check Missing Persons for alerts on women with identifying marks.”
“Birthmarks, scars, tats.” Breslau nodded.
“Yeah, maybe he cut something off, to keep or to mask her identity. Give it a shot,” Behr said, and noticed Quinn’s eye come up from his camera’s screen and fix on him for a moment.
Soon the body parts were marked and bagged and loaded in a coroner’s vehicle, and then there was nothing left on the scene besides yellow “Do Not Cross” tape, and it was time for Behr to go after his suspect. He was just turning to leave when Quinn spoke.
“Bro,” he said, as his fingers went into his field jacket pocket and came out with a business card. “E-mail me if you want to talk, we’ll set it up.”
34
“Hey …”
He stops and turns and sees that it is Bob, his neighbor, calling out.
“How’s it going?” Bob says.
“Hello, Bob.” He grips his briefcase in his hand. This was no way to start a Monday morning.
“Man, the smell …” he says.
“Sorry, Bob, raccoons got into the garbage again, and I’ve been lazy about picking it up. I’ll do it now.”
“It smells like something died, man.” Bob speaks politely, but he is angry, the veins in his neck say so.
Maybe something did. He isn’t sure if he’s said it aloud. They stand there staring at each other for a long moment.
He knows how to stop the complaints. And he might one day. Until then Bob should count himself among the lucky. He doesn’t even know how lucky.
“Get some bungee cords for your damned cans or something.”
“Will do, Bob. I’ll take care of it right away.”
He stands there watching as Bob nods his thanks, walks back to his driveway, climbs in his car, and drives away.
35
Murderer Jerold Allen Prilo drove up to his home in an old silver Toyota Camry. Prilo lived in half of a divided two-family house. He parked in a little cutout along a rusted chain-link fence and got out. Prilo was big and strapping, without excess flesh on his frame, and had thinning hair wrapped around his pale crown. He wore Carhartt work clothes and heavy Red Wing boots. He crossed to his house carrying a canvas tool bag in one hand. He wore canvas gloves as well, which Behr found interesting.
Behr was parked across the street watching through binoculars. When he had arrived at the address, Behr had figured Prilo wasn’t in. There were no lights on in the house, no car in the driveway, so Behr had waited. With his cooler packed with sandwiches and drinks, he had sat for three hours. The day before, he’d called Center City Rapid, the local truck
ing company for which Prilo had worked since his release and since he couldn’t drive long haul anymore due to parole restrictions. A helpful routing manager had e-mailed Behr Prilo’s routes, so Behr checked them against murder sites while he sat. Neither the body-dump locations nor the places where victims were last seen mirrored the delivery routes exactly, but they were certainly close enough for a motivated individual to have diverted off course and visited. It could have all taken place during nonworking hours too. And Prilo didn’t have such a busy driving schedule that he didn’t also have a lot of free time. His schedule was part-time, patchy at best.
After about an hour and fifteen minutes inside, Prilo reemerged from his place, this time without the canvas tool bag, but still wearing the gloves.
What are those for, huh, buddy? Behr said aloud, starting his car and taking up a loose tail. Behr followed as Prilo drove around seemingly aimlessly for about half an hour. Finally, Prilo pulled into a Marsh’s parking lot and went inside. Behr considered following him in, but thought it was a bit aggressive, not to mention pointless. He didn’t need to surveil the guy browsing produce. Twenty minutes later Prilo emerged with several plastic grocery bags and Behr followed him home. It was dark by then, and Behr did a gut check before digging in to sit for the night. The idea that on night one Prilo would emerge and Behr would follow him on a body dump was beyond a long shot, but he had never succeeded at anything without adding a few layers of leather to his ass. So Behr sat and froze and reflected and grew bored and cramped and sat some more. He thought about the victims, and Mary Beth Watney, and Susan, and Trevor, and money, and Kendra Gibbons, and Lisa Mistretta. He thought about her too much. And while Behr went through three Red Bulls, Prilo didn’t go anywhere.
At 7:20 in the clear morning, Prilo broke the monotony by exiting his house with his tool bag. Behr followed as Prilo drove to the Center City Rapid lot and picked up a Mitsubishi Fuso light-duty box truck. Then Behr trailed along as his subject made a pickup of cardboard boxes at a computer company and drove them to a long-range trucking firm’s yard before off-loading them. There were a few more pickups and drops, but by then Behr was so tired he was ready to drive into a telephone pole, so he called it.
Years back Behr could sit surveillance for three days straight before breaking, but right now he needed to sleep and piss and not in that order. That was getting old, all boiled down. Behr got home and regrouped and slept and he was back on Prilo’s house by 5:30 that evening, in time to see the man moving about his kitchen. It was another night in for Prilo, another sitting outside for Behr, and the next day passed in the same way as well.
Behr was home the next morning, hurrying to get himself organized and go back to work on Prilo after a quick shower, when his phone rang. It was Susan.
“Day care’s got an infestation of bedbugs.”
“Really? That’s nasty,” Behr said. “Where’d they come from?”
“Funny, they didn’t say,” Susan said, “but I’ve got work. Can you take Trevor? You haven’t seen him in days.”
It was the truth. He hadn’t seen Trevor since the boy had gone to his grandparents’ for the weekend. He hadn’t seen Susan since their conversation in bed, and his subsequent moment with Lisa Mistretta. He knew himself better than to pretend it was a coincidence.
He had to get back on Prilo, but he had no choice.
“I’ll be over to get him,” Behr said and hung up.
Even though it wasn’t by the book, Behr ran the heater on stakeout now. Because while it was one thing to leave an infant strapped into a car seat with toys and an iPod playing “Baby Einstein,” it was going a little far to freeze him too.
After collecting Trevor, Behr had managed to get back to Prilo’s place in time to pick him up going to work. He’d followed him on his routes for a while, before Prilo returned his truck and got in his personal car. He then returned home for several hours.
Along with a wave of happiness, Behr felt like an asshole every time he glanced back in the rearview, or turned around to give Trevor a bottle, but he just couldn’t bring himself to break off the sit. Trevor was a trouper too: he hardly complained while in his seat, or lying on the backseat while Behr changed his diaper. The kid had sitting surveillance in his blood. Maybe it really was hereditary.
Trevor was napping in his car seat and Behr was calculating the cost of things like orthodontia and college when Prilo hurried out of his house, got in his car, and screeched away.
Interesting development, Behr thought, and tailed him out east to some warehouses on 30th Street. The buildings were abandoned low-slung brick jobs that stretched for several hundreds of yards. There were no lights showing through from inside rows of casement windows that were broken in a pattern resembling a jack-o’-lantern’s smile. The parking lot was deserted, too, when Prilo pulled in. Behr slowed to a stop out on the road on the other side of the fence and used his binoculars to see Prilo park, root around in his trunk for something, and then head inside the partially open loading bay of one of the buildings.
Something’s going down inside that building.
Behr felt it. And he needed to know what. He sat there for a long moment considering what he should do. He could wait for Prilo to come out and resume the tail. Or he could peel off and take Trevor to Susan now, but that would be twenty-five or thirty minutes round-trip without counting time for explanations. He could call the cops and have them come down and enter the building and see what they found. The problem was: he didn’t even know what to call in.
Man with a dark past inside a building? Behr glanced back in the rearview mirror and saw that Trevor had nodded off to sleep. He put the car in gear, took his foot off the brake, and eased into the lot.
Behr drove down near the loading bays and saw the door Prilo had entered through was suspended partially open by some tangled chain. He couldn’t see very far inside due to the darkness, but all looked quiet. He took another look in the rearview. Trevor was still asleep. Behr turned up the heater, reached into the glove box for a Mini Maglite, and eased the car door open. He stepped out into the cold afternoon air and gentled the door shut. He moved away from his car, over the cracked asphalt toward the chest-high landing by the open mouth of the loading bay.
Clicking on the flashlight, Behr swept the beam around the loading bay. He saw nothing inside but some old, broken wooden pallets littering the floor. He put the flashlight between his teeth and vaulted himself up to the level of the bay, then crouched and went inside. Daylight behind him, Behr found himself in the half darkness of the defunct company’s shipping department. Abandoned racks and box chutes and more pallets were scattered about. He saw a set of stairs leading to a door that was slightly ajar, one that seemed to give entry into the main part of the building’s interior.
Behr looked back. He could still hear the hum of his running car engine, and if he bent his knees he could just see the hood. He felt a sense of dread in his next steps as his car went out of sight, but felt powerless to check the urge to advance. He walked a dozen more paces, then paused and listened. The engine was very faint, nearly inaudible now. The space smelled like bird shit, and he saw scores of pigeons lining the window ledges above him. He could no longer hear the car as he progressed into growing darkness. But his eyes adjusted to the low light and he continued. He cleared a towering set of storage racks and felt the first blow. Deep and numbing, a bolt of pain exploded in his upper back.
He stumbled forward, turning, and saw what it was: Jerold Allen Prilo, mouth clamped shut, coming at him with a claw hammer in one hand, a hook-bladed carpet knife in the other, and cold murder in his eyes. Most of the puffed-up pains in the ass that Behr dealt with in the course of his work were merely antisocial. They wanted to posture, bluff, and threaten on their way to working themselves up to actual violence. This was different. This encounter was asocial. Prilo came at him without a word, without a sound, his arms pinwheeling. He wasn’t trying to prove himself, or impress anything upon Behr. No, Prilo wa
s trying to kill him.
Prilo advanced another few strides and Behr retreated. He knew this backing away would only result in failure, in his maiming or death, but he picked up a valuable piece of information as he did: Prilo was not light on his feet. The man’s work-boot-shod feet stomped straight forward with inchoate fury. Behr flashed desperately on Trevor, alone in the car, and what would happen to the boy should he be incapacitated, and should Prilo be the one to walk out of the warehouse. He lunged away at an angle, forcing Prilo to turn. Behr cut toward him and threw a looping overhand right, clipping Prilo below the ear. Prilo straightened and renewed his attack, swinging the claw hammer at Behr’s head. Behr tucked his chin behind his shoulder, taking the blow along his upper triceps, then wrapped Prilo’s hammer arm under his and stood up, straightening it and popping the capsule of the elbow.
Prilo grunted in pain, and Behr heard the pleasing sound of the hammer coming loose and hitting the floor with a steel-on-concrete clang.
He won’t be chopping anybody up with that arm for a while, Behr thought.
But before he could react further, Prilo took the opportunity to slash at Behr’s face with the knife in his remaining good hand. Behr managed to get his arm up to block it, but took the blade along the outside of his forearm. The cut was long and somewhat deep and Behr sucked in breath between clenched teeth. Only the sleeve of his thick canvas coat saved it from being disastrous. Behr had kept Prilo’s arm wrapped under his and used it to jerk the man into two punches, and was happy to discover his slashed arm was still functioning. He used it to neutralize Prilo’s knife hand by gripping the wrist, and drove a knee to the body that doubled Prilo over. Behr quickly enclosed Prilo’s neck in an arm-in guillotine choke. It was solid and deep and Prilo was able to fight on for only another moment before dropping to his knees. This allowed Behr to increase his leverage and sink the choke in deeper. He felt his surgically repaired collarbone grind and strain, but hold. Then Behr took a risk and released the choke and Prilo’s arm, shifting to a straight guillotine. He regripped and cranked the choke hold. The pain in his sliced arm was intense, but he tried to ignore it as a distressed gurgling noise emitted from Prilo, and within seconds the man went limp and was facedown on the concrete and out.
