Where the dead lay

TWENTY-FIVE

A dead end was what Behr had. Two dead ends and a headache, more accurately, he thought, as he sat in his car on Pennsylvania outside the red brick building that housed the Star. And worse than all that was the ruined situation with Susan on his hands. He knew he should’ve called her, or e-mailed her, or texted her many times over the past days. He’d wanted to, but he didn’t know what to say, and all he seemed to be able to do was witness his own glacial drift toward silence. He hoped to change that now, although the dark clouds that hung low in the sky masking the summer sun echoed his mood. Fishing through the packed cartons in Bigby’s and Schmidt’s rooms, a realization settled on him, grim and unassailable: he was on some kind of autopilot, executing what seemed like sound investigative moves on one case, but he wasn’t thinking straight on another, and it had gotten his face smashed and it could’ve been worse. Brody could’ve broken his arm or choked him out, or he could’ve been gang stomped. Or he could’ve shot someone in that gym and he would’ve been done-off the streets and serving time for it. He’d allowed Dannels’s suggestion to dovetail with his own loose theories, then added the desire for easy revenge, and let it steamroll his intellect toward a conclusion, rather than seeing it for what it was-conjecture. Jean Gannon’s words about staying pro echoed in his mind. He suddenly knew what she meant.

He checked his nose in the rearview mirror. It had sounded worse than it was. It hadn’t bled, and there was only some swelling across the bridge, discoloration, and darkening beneath his eyes. The subsequent breaks are never as bad as the first one, and since that day in freshman football, he’d experienced too many to remember.

He badly needed information and facts. The thing was, it was never easy to tell which piece of a case was most important. They were all time-consuming, necessary. And it wasn’t even the need to discover all of the pieces, but to assemble them into the proper picture that was the hard part. It took external pressure to get it started. Threat-pressure, ask-pressure, desire-pressure, all applied in the right ways at the right time, to those who had the answers, until something popped loose. In order to do it, he needed to get clear. And to do that, he needed to talk to Susan, because she was a big part of his clarity, or lack thereof. He’d seen enough movies, read enough books, and heard enough country songs to know he’d done everything about as wrong as he could with her when she’d given him the news that he’d already suspected. Things were broken between them now, and it had him feeling like he had a hacksaw blade wedged in the middle of his chest. Or it could have been Brody’s knuckles driving into his sternum during the body lock that caused that.

A knocking on his window brought him out of the reverie. Behr turned and looked into the black eyes and glowing cigarette tip of Neil Ratay, the crime reporter. Behr lowered the window. “Hey, Neil,” he said.

“Frank.”

“Been reading you,” Behr said.

“I thank ye,” Ratay said with a nod.

“What’re you leaving out?” Behr asked. It was a question that used to be pro forma when he was on the force and would run into a reporter at a bar. Ratay shot out a little laugh. He’d heard the question plenty in his day, too.

“All right,” Ratay said. He took a last drag and fired the butt across the hood of Behr’s car into traffic. “The abandoned house with the bodies. It wasn’t really a derelict. It was a pea shake.”

“Really?” Behr said, allowing himself to sound surprised. “How do you know?”

“Well, for one, it wasn’t stripped.” He didn’t have to explain to Behr that it didn’t take long for a truly abandoned house in certain parts of Indianapolis to be set upon like a carcass in the Sahara. Urban vultures descended, removing sinks, tubs, radiators, ductwork, appliances, molding, and wood flooring. They even tore out wiring and copper piping for sale or use elsewhere. “And they’ve found other evidence.”

“Gambling instruments?” Behr asked.

Ratay nodded.

“What’s it about?” Behr wondered. “Turf war?”

“I don’t know,” Ratay shrugged, leaving Behr sure that he did know more. “As always, we will see…”

“Guess we will,” Behr said. It must have been some bargain that Pomeroy had struck for the reporter to sit on what he knew. Behr could only guess at what future “get” he’d been offered. It was a hell of a chit for him to hold. Behr used to have a few like it a long, long time ago.

“So, here to pick up Miss Susan?” Ratay asked and looked at him in a way that made him wonder if the reporter knew the specifics of their situation or was just a reader of situations in general. Either way, Behr felt like he was on a slide under a microscope.

“Yeah,” Behr said.

“I’m headed in. Take ’er easy,” Ratay said.

“Any way I can,” Behr answered, and with a knock on the car’s roof Ratay moved toward the Star’s building with long, unhurried strides.

Twenty minutes later Susan exited the building. Her hair flashed in the evening sunlight, but it looked like she bore a weight across her shoulders. She turned left, walking away from where he was parked. He started up the car and rolled up beside her at a trolling pace.

“Take you for a Ritter’s?” he asked. She looked over and saw him and stopped.

“I’ll follow you,” she answered.

They sat down outside Ritter’s with their frozen custards as the twilight settled around them. The cars going by created a steady, soothing drone.

“Didn’t have dinner yet,” she said.

“Better than dinner,” he responded, working the top scoop in his waffle cone with a spoon.

“Yeah.” They shared a smile, the first one in a while.

“You look beautiful,” he said, and she did. Despite a slight shadow across her eyes, her skin shined, and he thought she looked like she’d been bathed in milk.

“Thanks,” she said, though simple compliments weren’t going to do it for her. She ate more of her custard, the plastic spoon scraping softly against the side of the container. “Have you been working Aurelio?”

He nodded. “And another thing.”

“You making any progress?” she asked. He grimaced and left his spoon in his mouth for a long time after a bite, unwilling to speak, and she figured the rest. “But you got this working it?” She ran the back of her finger over the purple and swollen bridge of his nose. He just shrugged. “Oh, Frank.” It seemed part of her wanted to reach out for him, another part of her wanted him to reach for her, and something else in her wanted to get far, far away to where she’d be free and easy. She stayed though. She sat there on that bench next to him and ate her ice cream.

“It’s nothing,” he finally said. “What about you? How you feeling? You all right at work… considering?”

“Yeah. Just a little tired.”

“You want another custard?”

“Nah, this one’s making me nauseous as it is.”

“Something else then? A proper meal.”

She couldn’t stand the concern oozing out of him. It made her feel silly. “It’s just because it’s so sweet. Forget it.”

“Okay,” he said.

She wished things were normal between them, so they could just talk, and after another moment, that’s what she went ahead and did. “Frank, I’m sorry, and don’t take this wrong… but how good a friend was he?”

Behr didn’t answer for a long while. He looked into her eyes and saw she wasn’t trying to insult him or diminish Aurelio. She was trying to give him perspective, which was what he needed. She was wondering when she would have him back. He thought about her question. How could he answer it? What constituted a friend? Aurelio wasn’t his oldest friend, or his closest or best. That would’ve made things clear. They hadn’t gone to school together, or been on the force together. He had none of the usual markers, just a feeling. He saw other questions behind her first one: Could he walk away from it? Could he leave it to others? To no one? But something about Aurelio’s death had pierced him. The man was no saint, he wasn’t saving orphans, he was just a regular guy who’d earned a living the way he saw fit. But in another way he was a pilgrim for strength and good, a missionary spreading his art. And someone had chosen to take his existence from him.

“It just seems like there’s a line that needs to be held,” Behr said.

She nodded, and neither of them spoke for a moment.

“Can we talk about us for a second?” Susan said.

“Sure,” Behr said, then her faced pinched as if her custard had gone off. “Uch, listen to me, I sound like one of those annoying ladies on Oprah.”

“No you don’t,” Behr told her.

“Things feel bad,” she said, her voice flat and grim.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“We’ve got some decisions to make. I shouldn’t have run out of the car like that, but we’ve got to deal with this thing.”

He nodded.

“When I’d just graduated college and was dating some meaningless guys, my mother used to say to me, ‘You’ll never be younger or prettier or more wanted than you are right now.’”

“Sounds more like a madam than a mother.”

“Don’t talk that way about her, Frank,” she said, without anger.

“Sorry,” he said.

“She was trying to steer me to the ‘eligible’ guys. But you’re right, it never meant much to me. I was looking for what I wanted, not for what someone else wanted for me. And then, later, I wanted you.” She stopped for a moment, and put down her spoon before continuing. “But I’ve gotta know if this is how it’s going to be.”

“You know I don’t make a big living, Suze,” he said.

She shook it off with a toss of her head. “We both do okay. Better together,” she said. “But that’s not what I meant. I’ll admit I found it romantic or exciting, in the beginning, when we first met and you were fifty feet deep on that thing. But I mean, now, is this how it’s going to be when you’re on a case?”

He blew out a lungful of air. “If I’m doing background checks and asset searches, and crap like that, no. But if it’s something real… this is how it gets. How I get.”

She nodded, and stood. “Then I guess you’ve got to ask yourself… is life something you’ve got to face essentially alone, or can you share it? Really share it? ’Cause I won’t do it like this.” She tossed her ice cream container into the gaping mouth of a trash can.