by David Levien
Behr shut the lights and let himself out the side door. He half expected to find a ring of police cruisers awaiting him, but there were none. He’d been in the garage close to four hours and it was nearing 10:30. The house was dark, but he stayed close to the garage so as not to make any silhouette. When he’d gotten all the bags outside, he fastened the heavy padlock in place behind him and wiped it down.
The last piece had to do with his car. It was parked around the corner, a long, heavy haul with the bags, especially the thick plastic sack containing the torso, which he’d cinched around his waist. If he was spotted or had gotten a parking ticket, it would be a problem. He would be caught by the very same means by which he’d hoped to catch Abler.
He bent his knees, lacing his fingers through the handles of the mason’s bags, and stood, the dead weight yanking down on the muscles of his back and legs. He made the carry, straining to stand erect, as if not burdened, in case anyone saw him, his arms and legs quivering from the effort, the leather handles cutting into his palms. He turned the corner and reached his car, where he found the windshield blessedly free of tickets. Sweating and panting, he untied the burden around his waist and leaned against the trunk, then opened it with a hand that shook from the exertion. He loaded the bags inside, slammed the trunk lid shut, and drove away.
On his way out of town, before he hit the interstate, but a good five miles away from Abler’s house, he stopped at a Citgo station to fill his tank and do what he wished he’d done before going to Abler’s house: he passcode-locked his phone, wiped it, and hid it behind the toilet in the men’s room. He couldn’t afford to ping any cell towers where he was going. He paid cash for the gas and the largest cup of coffee and bottle of Gatorade they had and set out, going north and west.
75
The only sound in the waning moments of the darkness was that of the entrenching tool’s blade rasping against frozen ground. Behr had made the Iowa state line in under six hours. He’d gone on and reached his destination, the vast woodlands he’d hunted with Les Dollaway, forty minutes after that, with just under two hours left before sunup in which to work. Behr had seen where the key to the gate that blocked the dirt access road was stashed when Les used it a few months back, and it was still there when he arrived. He drove in slow, without headlights, to a spot not far from where Les had collected his buck. If the landowner spotted him for some crazy reason, Behr would try to sell the story that after hunting the spot with Les the prior season he thought he’d scout game movement for the next year so he didn’t face the embarrassment of not filling his tag again.
Behr cut into the cold hardened dirt with the E-tool, and the vibrations of the handle hurt his hands. He wished he’d had a pickax, but there weren’t any at Abler’s and he wasn’t about to go shopping. He shed his coat and steam came off of him in thick clouds in the cold night air. Once he was below the top crust, the ground was warmer and began to yield more easily, so he could use the shovel, and he picked up speed. He dug until he hit four feet. He didn’t have the patience, time, or strength to go any deeper, and the plum-colored sky over the eastern ridge told him the party was almost over.
He dropped the plastic and mason’s bags in with no fanfare and even less emotion. The last thing that went into the hole, besides what was left of his conscience, was the entrenching tool, its handle wiped down. Then he used the shovel to fill everything back in and smooth out the topsoil as best he could. He moved some heavy rocks and armfuls of dead leaves and bramble over the dug-up earth, and he felt pretty confident that after a snow or two, and certainly by spring, no one out on the land would notice that the earth had been disturbed.
He was back in the car with the key in the ignition before he realized he’d left his coat behind. He went and retrieved it, trying to shake off the cobwebs and avoid the single mistake that would doom him. The old shovel got jettisoned in a roadside ditch before he was back on the interstate, and he launched the Mag Pug into the Mississippi River from the I-74 bridge near Bettendorf.
He pushed it as far as he could with what he had left in the tank and was well into Illinois before he had to stop. He paid for another tank of gas with cash, along with a pack of doughnuts and another large cup of coffee.
With the midday sun searing his eyeballs, he considered stopping at every roadside motel he passed, but he forged on, because if he didn’t stop at one then there’d be no proof he’d even been by. With an effort that was more physically draining than anything he’d undertaken in his life, including the Chicago Marathon the time he’d run it in weather that had been freakishly hot and humid, he finally wheeled his car up to his place and shut it off. No one from the IMPD was there to meet him. No one was there at all. He walked into his silent house and used his landline to check his cell phone voice mail, but there were no messages. He took a scalding shower, the soap and water stinging his torn and blistered hands. Then he crawled into his bed and collapsed into a black, featureless sleep.
76
Behr bolted up in his bed, disoriented and racked with pain, a good fourteen hours later. It was the middle of the night again, and he didn’t know what continent he was on. Then his actions of the past days seeped back on him like a waking nightmare, and he knew with a bitter certainty in his gut that it would be happening just like this, in varying installments, for a long, long time to come. His body stiff and sore, ribs and neck and head aching, and emotions raw, Behr got up and ate three peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and drank an entire pot of coffee, then he flexed his clawlike hands and realized he had a bit more digging to do.
The Floral Crown Cemetery was empty and quiet at five in the morning, and not nearly as spooky as he expected it to be. Compared to what he’d just gone through, nothing really ever would be again, he imagined. He’d climbed the fence and come in on foot because the gate was locked, but it didn’t take long for him to find the plain headstone. He read the inscription by the red glow of his Maglite. DANIELLE CRAWLEY (1989–2014), A GOOD SISTER AND FRIEND. He used a gardening trowel to dig a narrow cylindrical hole two feet into ground that wasn’t as tough as that of the Iowa woodlands. In it he buried the jar containing the piece of her leg that made her complete. It wasn’t much, but maybe it was something. That summed things up pretty well at the moment.
He was bending down, leaving a padded envelope at the front door of the brick bungalow in Millersville, when it swung open, surprising him. He saw pink sweatpants and fuzzy slippers and looked up to find Kerry Gibbons standing there, an unlit cigarette in her mouth.
“Frank Behr. Thought I heard a car,” she said.
“Sorry to disturb you.”
She waved this away. “I was up. Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again. Figured you’d given it up like the rest. What’ve you got there?”
Behr handed her the envelope wordlessly. Kerry Gibbons opened it and saw what was inside. Several hues of feeling, from grief to anger to love and finally resolution, played across her face in an instant as she touched her daughter’s shoe, and then she looked to him with a knowing squint in her eyes.
“Are you putting in for the reward then?” she asked.
“Well, no one’s gonna be standing trial. There won’t be any conviction,” Behr said. “It’d be hard to explain to your donors.”
“I see.”
“A while back you said you just wanted to know what happened …” Behr said, his words trailing off.
“I can tell by your face I don’t really want to anymore, do I now?”
“No, you don’t. In fact, it’s best I don’t tell you anything.”
She took a deep breath and felt in her sweatpants pockets for a lighter but came up empty.
“You want to come in for coffee?” she asked.
“Thanks all the same,” Behr said, starting to turn away.
That’s when she grabbed him and hugged him. He felt her slight body shaking with emotion. Or maybe that was his.
He watched the sun rise over the Citgo and wait
ed a little more than an hour for it to open. The lax cleaning schedule of the facilities worked in his favor, because he found his phone tucked behind the toilet right where he’d left it. Right where he’d temporarily “lost” it, that is, if anyone had tracked its whereabouts.
77
“Came to say hi and thanks and to get my gun back,” Behr said. “You’re not going to need it anymore.”
“So all is clear for real this time?” Mistretta asked, somehow surprised and not so all at once. Her hunger for the details hid behind the question, but they both knew he couldn’t satisfy it.
“Hell, I don’t know if all is clear, but I think you’re gonna be all right for now.”
“You know, we could talk about it,” she offered.
He weighed the offer. He knew he could tell her everything. That she’d lap up the particulars. He imagined the charged sex that would follow, how at first it would seem life affirming. The confession would create a bleak bond between them that could last for a long time, for years, for forever. But underneath that bond would be darkness and death. Maybe it wasn’t fair, since it was just her job, but he felt it had leeched into her, and that’s what she had become to him. It wasn’t what he wanted. Not now. He craved light and life. He wasn’t sure he was able to have that, or how to go about deserving it, but it wasn’t here for him. He made his decision.
“Probably not a good idea,” he said.
She smiled briefly. Her smile radiated affection and concern but mostly melancholy for what his words meant, and what they weren’t going to share together. She disappeared into the house for a moment and returned with the pistol, which he took from her.
“Glad you didn’t need it,” he said, “and to have met you, even though …”
“Yeah, despite the circumstances. I get that a lot.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” he said.
“Let’s not be, okay, Behr?” she said. “Let’s make this unique for our never being sorry.” He was surprised to see her eyes moisten.
“Good, let’s not.” He nodded. They embraced briefly. He felt her body pushing against him, but he pulled back. Then he turned and left.
It was several days later, when the lurid images that were playing in his head, when the quickened breath and the pounding heartbeat he knew to be symptoms of posttraumatic stress, started to relent a bit, that he finally knew it was time.
He got there early, before she’d be leaving for drop-off at day care and then heading on to work. He was so focused on her door, on what would happen after he knocked on it, on what he would say, that he missed the unmarked cruiser.
The plainclothes officer intercepted him when he was halfway across the street.
“Hold up,” the man said.
Behr’s heart sank as he pictured jail for the rest of his life, and his growing son’s face seen only through glass until he stopped coming to visit altogether. Behr turned to meet the figure, and then he saw it was Gary Breslau.
“Where’ve you been?” Breslau asked.
“I’ve been around. Laying low. Resting,” Behr said.
“Uh-huh,” Breslau said.
“How’s Quinn doing?” Behr asked.
“They’ll fit him for prosthetics soon. That’s the easy part. He’s still making about as much sense as a bowl of alphabet soup. Docs say there’s still some hope for improvement.”
Behr just nodded.
“And the Gibbons case?” Breslau asked.
“I’m done with it. Gotta start making some money.”
“I see,” Breslau said. “I noticed the billboard came down on 465. Family got tired of renting it?”
Behr shrugged.
“So you didn’t end up banking anything on the missing-girl job?” Breslau asked, giving Behr an interrogation-room stare.
“Not a dollar. Would’ve had to bring you a suspect to arrest for that.”
“Yet I’ve got this strange feeling I’m not going to have any more young blondes turning up cut to pieces anytime soon. Am I right about that, Frank?”
“Well … you know what happens, these guys get caught for other crimes. They get old and get sick and die. There are lots of reasons they stop …”
“What the fuck are you telling me?”
“Nothing. The chute got opened, I rode the thing the best I could. It dead-ended.”
“You forget I’ve got a picture of an unidentified guy that you sent me, one that I could go public with. Cops have a professional obligation to follow up on leads. We can’t be expected to chase ’em all down, but what if I pursued this one? Someone would come forward and identify him. What would I find if I did that?”
“A dead lead,” Behr said. “I don’t think you’d find much of anything at all.”
Breslau just stared at him for a long moment.
“Listen to me, Behr, one of these days you’re gonna get sucked down into this whirlpool of shit you create, and when you do, you’re going all the way down.”
Breslau grabbed a handful of Behr’s shirt. It wasn’t a threatening gesture this time, just an attention-getting one, so Behr allowed the hand to remain.
“And I’m not going to be anywhere near it. Steer clear of me from now on. No more favors. Don’t ask me for any, don’t do any. You roger that?” Breslau said, his voice nearly a snarl.
“Copy,” Behr said. “Are we done here?”
“Yeah,” Breslau said, releasing his grip. “You and me are done.” Then the lieutenant stalked off to his car and gunned it away.
Behr stood there alone in the street. He had nothing. No cases, no money, no family, and whatever passed for his soul buried by the shovelful on the edge of an Iowa field. Nothing, save for one thing—Susan was safe. His son was safe. Mistretta was safe. So was the rest of Indianapolis for just this morning or just this moment because he had done the one thing he was able to in the world, which was put monsters in the ground. And he had a door. One door to knock on, and maybe walk through.
She stood there dressed in her work clothes, without any makeup, her blond hair pulled back, looking young and fresh and beautiful. She was everything he wasn’t. The baby was playing on the living room floor behind her. Distrust and exasperation came to her eyes when she first saw him, but whatever she read on his face made it go away in an instant. There was only silence between them, the sound of a kid’s show on the television in the background.
“Oh, Frank,” she finally said, “you look like you’ve been through it.”
“I have,” he said. “Can I please come in?”
She gave him a sad, kind smile, and with a gesture that proved no act of mercy was a minor one, she opened the door and let him inside.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Levien is the author of the Frank Behr novels: Thirteen Million Dollar Pop, Where the Dead Lay, and City of the Sun. He has been nominated for the Edgar, Hammett, and Shamus Awards, and is also a screenwriter and director. He lives in Connecticut.
