City of the Sun

ELEVEN

Sometimes things happened quickly on a case, other times not so at all. Usually it was like banging against a slab of rock with a sledgehammer. Tiny chips flew here and there but seemed to lead nowhere, and then clunk, the whole thing came apart. That moment was a long way off as Behr sat in the dark and steeled himself to search places on the Internet that should not exist, that would not exist in a decent world. He ’ d gone late into the previous nights checking the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Web sites and others. He ’ d found Jamie ’ s picture posted there among thousands, his just one of the awkward-sweet faces of the missing, though no leads were listed. But tonight Behr was going to a far worse place. Like a predator lurking in cyberspace, he began to locate the sites dedicated to child pornography. Though they were relatively few and hard to find, there were still far too many of them. Some offered censored thumbnails, hoping to entice buyers into the elaborate processes of passwords and protected downloads. Revulsion and sweat bathed the back of Behr ’ s neck as he clicked on sample pictures. They were shot in badly lit rooms, where faceless men penetrated drugged and frail young boys and girls. Black circles and digital buzz-outs did little to mask what was going on. Behr felt his gorge rise but went on as best he could, trying to determine if any of the vacant-eyed youths were Jamie. Cold feverish rage grew within him. It took all of his will to restrain himself from smashing every single thing in his house. He wanted to barehand kill every one of the pale, flabby-bodied men on his computer screen. As a cop he ’ d encountered all manner of street filth, degenerates, and psychopaths. He ’ d seen corpses that had suffered grisly fates and living victims who had suffered worse, but none of it had the power to numb him to this. He went later and later into the night, discovering societies that advocated physical love — their word for it — between adults and children, until he went bleary-eyed. As he willed himself on, the unimaginable happened at fourA.M. His own son appeared to him like a revenant. Tim ’ s face began to appear superimposed over those of the young victims. It made his skin crawl, his scalp boil, and his blood surge in his temples. He found himself weak with rage. Sour vomit filled the back of his throat, and he barely reached the bathroom in time.

Behr was back on Tibbs before sixA.M. the next morning, looking for the jogger. His hair still wet from the scalding shower he had hoped would disinfect him, he sat in his car swilling Maalox and praying it would quiet his churning stomach. It was Saturday and by ten he believed the runner wasn ’ t going to show up, but he sat there until five in the afternoon, anyway. He repeated the drill on Sunday, trying to keep from his head the idea that the man could ’ ve been from a nearby neighborhood and hit Tibbs by coincidence, not custom. The guy could ’ ve been visiting from out of town. Sunday was a bust, too.

Monday, though, at ten after six in the morning, there he came, chugging up the street. He was in his early forties, barrel-bellied on spindly legs. Behr lumbered out of his car and ran up next to the man.

“Sorry to bother you,” Behr said, no real apology in his voice, as he jogged along with him like a moving brick building. “I ’ m investigating a disappearance.”

The man stopped his forward progress but kept moving in place, wiping his sweat-soaked sideburns, his breathing coming heavy. “A kid went missing here last October twenty-fourth. You know anything about it?”

“No, I don ’ t,” the man wheezed.

“Can I get a name?”

“Brad Figgis.”

The man, Figgis, didn ’ t know anything about it. “Time to time I saw a kid whiz by on his bike,” he did volunteer.

“Were you ever questioned by the police about this?”

“Nope. I ’ m not from around here.”

Behr looked the man over. He didn ’ t look like he could cover that much ground.

“How far you run?”

“My loop is four and a half. This is about halfway.”

“You remember anything unusual back then?”

Figgis sweated and thought, and slowly nodded.

“I remember a big old car out here a few days in a row. Parked right over there so I had to run around it. Then I never saw it again. It was a Pontiac or Lincoln. Big and gray.”

“Plates?”

“Nah. Didn ’ t catch that.”

“Why ’ d it strike you?”

“There were two guys in it. I couldn ’ t tell you what they looked like, only that they were eating. I thought they might ’ ve been landscapers or painters waiting to start work, but the car was wrong. Those types of guys seem to drive pickups or tiny Corollas. This car was huge. Slabs of gray fender. The kind that drinks gas.”

Behr took a number and an address off Figgis, and watched him puff away into the morning. Then Behr went home to hammer away at DMV databases.