Where the dead lay

THIRTY-SIX

He stood along the riverbank and listened to the black water rush by below his feet. The better part of a bottle of Maker’s Mark rolled to its own current within him. His life was over-at least life as he knew it-killed by a pain he could not even estimate. He reached to his belt and felt the gun there, hard and unyielding. Its existence mocked him. He gripped its cold handle and lightly touched the trigger, where that precious small finger had somehow found its way. With a brusque fury he yanked the gun free and hurled it into the night with a force that tore things deep in his shoulder. He couldn’t hear the splash for the howl that erupted from within him.

Darkness lifted like smoke from the water as Behr came back to the present. He had trudged along the muddy bank of the White River for several miles, scanning the shallows with his light, which he now clicked off as dawn had arrived. He hadn’t been this close to the White in years, since that night when it was finally all over for his boy and he’d driven out to fling the 9mm Tim had died by into its waters. Behr had never wanted to see that weapon again, same as the face that stared back at him when he looked in the mirror. He did his best to shake off the memory and continued on.

Wherever there is money, there is violence. It was a truth. In business the violence is in the boardroom, in illegal business the violence is in the street. Despite the fact that he was hard tired and the left side of his head felt like it had a railroad spike lodged in it, Behr knew he had a long night ahead of him. After leaving Cottrell, he went home and worked quickly. He needed a piece of information and some supplies. The information didn’t take him long to obtain now that he knew what he was looking for.

He found it in the state marriage license database and was able to back it up with an old announcement in a local news archive, and then tax and school records. Bustamante, Victoria, and Bustamante, Lawrence, the police lieutenant, were not married, they were brother and sister. Twenty-three years earlier Victoria had married Terrence Schlegel in a ceremony at Garden of Gethsemane Church in Speedway. They had three sons, Charles, Dean, and Kenneth, twenty-two, twenty, and eighteen years of age, who had attended area schools. Terry Schlegel, the father, was listed by the Alcoholic Beverage Commission as the permittee of the Tip-Over Tap Room. Behr selected “Print” and jotted further notes while the machine whirred to life. Then he’d begun putting together the supplies he needed-a map, flashlight, boots, and a thermos bottle full of coffee. The threat that the man he now knew was Dean Schlegel had made to Ezra was not idle, nor abstract, Behr believed. He marked the map with a highlighter, starting at the southernmost likely point in the area, where railroad tracks touched or intersected the White River. He steeled himself and drove out to the first spot, an area near West Troy Avenue that was fairly industrial in character, and then he started in.

The night air had been chill next to the river, and his boots and pants quickly became soaked up to the knees, yet he’d warmed as he alternately walked the tracks and the bank. He was aware of how easily he could miss what he was looking for. He could walk right by it. He could be looking in all the wrong places. His instincts and his source could be wrong altogether. Still, he carried on until he’d felt satisfied that the first spot held nothing. He hiked back to his car and drove on to the next location, a place where the tracks ran next to Waterway. He covered both sides of the river and found nothing but loose refuse, a cache of beer and soda bottles, and rusted car parts. Next he parked on South West Street between Raymond and Morris, where he slid down a steep gravel and dirt pitch next to a railroad bridge that crossed over the water.

The mud along the bank sucked at his hopes as it did his feet, but he kept on. He kept on although all he found was an array of trash and detritus similar to that littering the other spots. Then, when he was nearly through with the area, he stumbled across the carcass of a large dead dog. The hindquarters of the animal lay in the water, a weak current lapping against it until the dark fur had grown matted and wet. The dog’s one visible eye had gone green and opaque in death and was turning gelatinous. Behr looked it over, checking for tracks that would indicate from which direction it had come. He couldn’t spot any sign, but finding the body buoyed him to continue.

He decided, though it seemed a bit unlikely due to its proximity to the city, to move on and try a spot in the shadows of the White River Parkway Drive, near the Chevy plant, continuing on his south-to-north route. When he parked he saw that despite being only several minutes’ drive from downtown, there was a certain abandoned quality to the area, perhaps due to the hour, which made a dump possible. He had gone over a quarter mile from the tracks and had neared a sloppy, marshy area along the bank when he stopped. He saw the cluster of dark green plastic contractor bags in the distance ahead of him. He wouldn’t have thought much of it except for the way they were all stacked together. They couldn’t have landed that way if they’d been thrown from a passing train. The location represented a lot of effort for some illegal dumping. The bags were all neatly cinched with large plastic twist ties. Behr walked slowly across the expanse toward the bags, dread rising within him. The water here was dank and fetid. He became acutely aware of the slurping sound the mud made under his feet.

He circled to the far side of the pile, carefully avoiding some footprints in the soft, wet ground, then paused and looked around. He peeled a blade free from his Leatherman tool, reached for the nearest bag, and sliced into the top. A thick wave of black flies rose up into his face as the bag gaped open and the smell hit him. He waved away the insects and saw the white of sawed-off bone, encased by pale, deteriorating flesh. The bag contained a pair of lower legs, the feet still shod in dress socks and black wingtips. He was pretty sure he’d found Bigby and Schmidt.

“Get Pomeroy on the line,” Behr said. He leaned against the quarter panel of his car talking to Karl Potempa at the Caro Group on his cell phone. He’d dialed as soon as his hands had stopped trembling.

“Who would that be?” Potempa intoned in his smooth voice, for which Behr wasn’t in the mood.

“Don’t fuck with me, get Captain Pomeroy.”

There was a brief hold during which Behr watched the sickly slate green of the White River burble by.

“Yeah?” Pomeroy’s voice came on, trying to hide his concern under a mask of irritation.

“We’re all on,” Potempa said, “and the line is secure.”

“Off West Washington and White River, on the southwest bank of the river.”

“That spit of land below Chevy?” Potempa asked. Behr could hear a pen scratching against paper.

“That’s right. Where it gets marshy. Against the hill below the track bed, that’s where you’ll find your A team. There are four trash bags-”

“Oh crap-,” Potempa croaked, his voice gone rough.

“Jesus Christ-,” Pomeroy added.

“Yeah, all of it.”

“What’s their… condition?” Potempa wondered, grasping for control.

“Their condition is all damn done. Chopped up and bagged. Feet, hands, heads. I didn’t dig around much, I didn’t want to disturb the scene, but it looks like they were bled and quartered somewhere else. Thanks for this, by the way,” Behr said.

“Have you developed any information on whom-,” Pomeroy started in.

“Whoa,” Behr said. “You asked me to find ’em. They’re found. An ex-Treasury and a fifteen-year Philly PD, like they just ran into Bill the Butcher. You wanna know ‘who,’ that’s a different deal and I pass.”

There was a long beat of silence, then an audible sigh. “All right. West Wash and White River.”

“Yeah,” Behr said, “bring your galoshes,” and he hung up on them.

Behr retired to a vantage point near the Chevy plant grounds where the tracks split and he was able to park and watch the personnel arrive, sirens wailing in the distance. Uniforms and plainclothes, Violent Crime, Crime Scene, and Coroner, they all descended on the site. Pomeroy, other brass, and some blue suits that must’ve been Caro boys arrived, too. They all executed their tasks with the diligence and instinct of worker ants.

Then a navy blue Cadillac STS rolled up and Potempa picked his way across the mud over to the hub of the activity, where he shook hands with Pomeroy before taking a look. When he caught a glimpse inside the bags he sagged back, and Pomeroy caught him by the elbow to keep him upright.

When it was finally close to done, when the body parts had been packed up and Potempa had been seen back to his car by a uniform and had driven away, Pomeroy broke off from the rest and made his way along the tracks toward where Behr waited. The captain scrambled up the loose gravel lining the railway bed and was breathing quickly by the time he made it to Behr. Behr could see by his shoes that Pomeroy hadn’t realized he was serious about the galoshes.

“There was a castable footprint down there. I’m assuming your crew saw it.”

Pomeroy breathed and nodded. “Listen,” he started, breathed again, swallowed, and then continued, “you can’t be done with this.”

What he’d found had Behr thinking it was time for him to leave it alone. “You or the Caro boys should do it yourselves.”

“Just tell me what you have.”

Behr broke it all down for him, winding his way through what had previously seemed random. When Behr got to the part about the Schlegels and the connection to Lieutenant Bustamante he expected disgust, or at least surprise from Pomeroy. Instead, all he got was a dull nod. “So you might want to have IAD grab a look at him.”

“They already are,” Pomeroy said.

“You knew?”

Pomeroy didn’t speak to the question, but instead asked one. “You have a next move?”

“This isn’t just local shit. Pros from Detroit or Chicago or Cleveland or somewhere are likely involved. There’ll be nothing. No way to find ’em. And if I did, what the hell would I do then? You want me to build a case or try and take ’em down? Either way, it’s not what I do,” Behr said. He shut his mouth, a little embarrassed at how easy it had all come out.

“It may be pros. May be. If it is, you’re right. You won’t find ’em. But they didn’t come down here on their own, and you know it. I want who hired them.”

Behr didn’t move. “I think we know-”

“The linkage. Get me the local linkage,” Pomeroy demanded.

“You want the linkage,” Behr repeated. He was close enough to Pomeroy to see small patches of rosacea on his cheeks below the man’s unwavering eyes.

“Get me the linkage.”