City of the Sun

TWELVE

Mornings were the worst for the Gabriels, and without coffee Carol was sure she ’ d have curled into a ball, dried up and blown away. She ’ d never been the early riser type. In college, she ’ d worked scrupulously to schedule her classes after ten. Then, when she ’ d gotten married and Paul had to wake up at quarter to six every day for work, she ’ d grown to feel so guilty at sleeping past him that she ’ d forced herself awake to make coffee and breakfast while he took a run. Then she ’ d sit at the kitchen table and make a pretense at conversation, but all she really wanted was to get back in bed.

That all changed with Jamie. The moment he was born she was filled with energy, a purpose, for which she had never known to even hope. When he was a baby and his crying filled their apartment, and later their first small house, she would get up to attend to him. There was no bitterness, no black exhaustion in her step as she walked to his crib. When he got older and could sleep through the night before popping up to play at six or so in the morning, Carol felt that she barely needed sleep anymore. And by the time Jamie reached school age, Carol was getting up before he was. She faced the morning like a drill instructor, with energy and gusto, with near aggression. She ’ d rouse Jamie, corral him into the bathroom for a face washing and teeth brushing, get him into appropriate clothes, hustle him down for breakfast and take his lunch order, then putting it together and snapping it into his lunchbox, before he had finished his orange juice. She walked him to school with a bounce in her step. Rain or shine, each day felt like a gift.

But now…Now Carol suspected the truth — that the energy had really been all Jamie ’ s. His youth, the relentless brand of spirit unique to young boys, was what had given her her power. Because now that he was gone, she sat at the kitchen table unable to do anything but wrap her fingers around her mug of inky coffee. There was a sense of stagnancy to her life worse than any hangover she ’ d endured during her partying days. The mornings were a nettlesome chore just to get through these days, a wall she didn ’ t know if she ’ d be able to climb. Waiting for Paul to leave for work set her teeth on edge.

Carol kicked herself for her irritation at Paul this morning. He was pottering around endlessly, looking for something. She knew, on a rational level, that she should have more patience. Paul had found a way to keep going to work, to keep selling policies so that they could continue paying for the house. For several months she believed that that was the most important thing, because if Jamie ever returned he would know where to find them. If it had been left to her, they ’ d be living on the streets behind a Dumpster due to her inactivity. But all that didn ’ t matter anymore, because he wasn ’ t ever coming back. And this morning her nerves were unraveling like badly done knitting.

“What is it you ’ re looking for?” she asked, recognizing the overtired timbre to her voice.

Paul stopped and looked at her in surprise that she ’ d spoken to him before he ’ d been to work and back and it was dark outside.

“For those cereal-box toys. I had a dozen of them. I was saving them.” He stood there holding the latest toy — a small spinning top — in one hand, a bowl of sugared flakes in the other.

“Oh, those. I threw them away when I was cleaning out the drawers the other day,” she said, and got the strangest impression that her husband was going to cry.

“Why? Why ’ d you do that, goddamnit?” he said, as angry as she ’ d ever seen him. It made her remember: He ’ d been saving the prizes for their son. Their son, who was never going to return. She ’ d had something on her mind for several weeks, and now seemed like as good a time as any to mention it.

“Paul?” she said. “Paul, forget about the tops and things.” He looked to her. “Paul, I want to talk. There ’ s something I want to do.” He was expectant but said nothing. “I want to buy…I want us to get a plot. To put up a headstone for Jamie. I want to have a funeral and a place we can go to mourn. To remember him.” Everything in her married life told her that her husband would nod and acquiesce to her wish, so she looked on in shock when he slammed the cereal bowl he was holding against the countertop. It exploded in a shower of ceramic and sugared cereal flakes.

“No,” he said. “No. No. No. No.” Then his face came apart in tearless sobs.

It was pounding rain outside and the gutters were overflowing as Behr banged coffee and scoured DMV databases. Reading the numbers and addresses — dry, desiccated information — was a reprieve from his recent computer use. The sound of the rain brought him back to where he ’ d grown up, outside Everett, where this wouldn ’ t even be considered a drizzle but more of a light mist. After he ’ d gotten a criminology degree on a football scholarship, he ’ d learned that the Indianapolis P.D. was hiring and that the city had only fifty days of rain per year, which was about two hundred less than he was used to. The odd thing now was that he missed the rain most of the time.

What he ’ d learned from Figgis, the jogger, had increased his dread about the mission he was on, and Behr buried himself in the minutiae of the task in order to avoid it. A lone degenerate out to grab a kid would be bad enough. But the presence of two men, if that ’ s what they ’ d been there for, hinted at a more dark-hued thing: organization. Most likely the car that his jogger had mentioned was stolen, and Behr hoped to stumble across a report of a matching model on a motor-vehicle theft list. His hopes remained at low ebb as he covered the databases for Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and western Ohio. No old Lincolns and only one Pontiac — an ’ 84 Sunfire outside of Chicago — were reported stolen in the days leading up to the event. The Sunfire was a small, two-door model, Behr knew. There were dozens of reports of stolen license plates during the same time period. This led him to believe it much more likely that the car had been purchased, not stolen, and then had stolen plates put on it. Even if a witness like Figgis had written down the plate number, it would lead nowhere. In the name of thoroughness Behr checked all the title transfers closely preceding October 24. It was a banner sales week for large used sedans. And the pink slips registered at the DMVs were only a fraction of the cars that had changed hands for cash, he knew.

As far as the two men went — men without description — he realized he ’ d never figure out the way the car had come into their possession. The car data began to run together until his eyeballs spun like slot-machine wheels. The exercise was a bust. Behr leaned back and let the data wash together on the computer screen and join with the rain on the window. While it had given him a brief jolt of momentum, practically speaking, the car was a dead end.

With all the advances in car theft, Behr considered, I ’ d probably have a better time finding the kid ’ s bike…

“The bike,” he said aloud. It gave him pause. Why not try to find the goddamn bike? Behr reached for his car keys.