David Levien - Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

Behr felt Decker torn free of his grasp as the four officers tackled the wild man to the ground and restrained him. Decker was in the process of wearing out-Behr certainly was-and his fury gave way to grief, and the howling sound that issued from beneath the pile of officers was more animal than human.

The scene got thick with official vehicles within moments: more police cars-marked and unmarked-an ambulance, and a coroner’s van. A hoard of officers descended to keep neighbors and a few arriving news crews back. Another group gathered around Decker. Sergeant Ryan and her partner had sat him in their cruiser and were attempting to comfort him, before they finally got him into an ambulance and Behr was oddly left alone for the moment when the dark Crown Vic that Breslau drove rolled up.

The lieutenant jumped out and crossed inside the perimeter to Behr, but this time his attitude was different from the other times they’d spoken.

“We’re in this thing now,” was the first thing Breslau said. “I just want you to know that. You can’t murder an officer’s wife. There’s no fucking way, and we’re going to make that clear … Now, who came after you?”

“I wish I knew. Believe me,” Behr answered.

“Bullshit,” Breslau grunted.

“You think I’d bullshit you on that ?”

“Then what do you have?” Breslau asked.

Behr gave him a thumbnail of what he’d learned, including what he’d just seen over in Thorntown. Breslau was silent, working his gum with his front teeth as he wrote it down in his notebook.

“I left here a few hours ago, and what happened to Teague was pretty fresh,” Behr said. “I must’ve just missed the guy.”

“Unless there’s more than one,” Breslau pointed out. It was a good point, one that a layer of objectivity provided. Behr should’ve thought that way on his own.

“What do you have on the guy who got burned?” Behr asked.

“A whole lot of nothing. He rented that apartment with cash. Security deposit was a money order. There are tracks to another apartment and another alias,” Breslau said. “Do you have anything else? Any ideas?”

“You’ve got to grab Shugie Saunders, Kolodnik’s political adviser. He’s probably in D.C.”

“I know who he is. Why would he want to cancel his own meal ticket?” Breslau said.

“Don’t do it, then, just let the city turn into a goddamned butcher shop,” Behr said. He’d never encountered human death in such a concentrated way, and it was preying on his remaining sense of balance.

“All right, don’t get fucking testy,” Breslau said. “I’m just saying how?”

“He found a better ride,” Behr said.

Breslau looked at him and nodded for him to continue.

“One of Kolodnik’s old partners. Lowell Gantcher.”

“You got reports, hard linkage, substantiation?” Breslau asked greedily.

“I’m working on it,” Behr said. “I got a woman who was the nexus between Saunders and Teague. Not Gantcher, specifically, but there must be some connection there, too.”

“What ‘woman’?”

“One who knows,” Behr said, seeing a cruiser pull up with Susan in it, “but not a very presentable witness.”

“Junkie?”

“Close. Escort.”

Breslau winced. “Not being a jerk off here,” he said, “but I can’t go bunge up some solid citizen with that. ”

“What the hell are you doing, then?” Behr asked.

“Exploring all the known business associates, digging into other shit. We’ve got to be exhaustive now,” Breslau said. “You know how it is.” Behr did. If it wasn’t a lack of resources these days, it was fear of being sued. It had law enforcement pretty well shackled.

Susan was out of the cruiser now, taking in the scene with confusion.

“I’m telling you, give Saunders a look,” Behr said. “ He’s not so solid that you can’t get away with it.”

Behr broke off and went to Susan.

“Frank …?” she said.

It was a disaster. He told her and stopped her from going inside. But she screamed and cried as he talked to her and tried to hold her. He gave her water, which she batted away, and tried to sit her in his car, which she refused. She hyperventilated and nearly collapsed, though he managed to catch her; and the paramedics on-site, who could do nothing for Gina, swooped in and gave her oxygen and checked the baby’s heart rate, which was elevated, but not dangerously so.

She finally calmed, but then said, “Gina made a run to Target for baby stuff for us, and was dropping off mine-” which set off another paroxysm of grief. Behr tried to ride the waves and noted when various arms of the police finished their work and departed. The homicide unit was done with the scene, having photographed it and tried for prints. He saw the coroners carry out the bagged body, the plastic higher in the middle from the baby bump, and he physically held Susan’s face, keeping her eyes on his so she wouldn’t see it. Not long after that they were done inside, and an officer gave him a wave.

“Babe, I need three minutes before I bring you in,” he said, because he knew that while the authorities do cart the bodies away, they don’t clean up.

Somewhere close to catatonia, she nodded, and he hurried away.

Passing by a departing deputy coroner, Behr paused to ask, “What did this?”

“Initial guess, based on the tissue damage, some kind of hand ax,” the deputy said, continuing on. Behr gathered himself and moved inside.

He had worked three months in a slaughterhouse one summer many years back, right before college, and beside the sights of shit-stained animal flanks and offal running in cement trenches, the sounds of electric saws and bolt guns, and the lifers who thought nothing was funnier than flicking blobs of fat and meat off the end of their boning knives into the necks of the newbies like stinging projectiles, the fecund smell of blood and fear was one he’d never forget. It was in his nose now, as he crawled about and went through three rolls of paper towels, soaking his knees while trying to blot up the coagulating fluid and make the entranceway passable. He splashed pine-scented cleaning solution onto the tiles, the grout in between them turning pink, in hopes of knocking down the odor. Sweat ran into his eyes and burned them until they teared.

When he had done what he could, he went and tried his best to clean his hands and then saw Susan in. Being inside where it had happened, seeing the broken walls and furniture, which had actually been damaged by Decker, and stepping over the still damp and not properly clean floor, set her off again. By now, though, her grief had lost some of its force to exhaustion and Behr got her into the bedroom, and sat her down on the bed where he stroked her hair for half an hour, hoping she would pass out.

The situation outside had calmed. The neighbors and other onlookers, including the news crews, had called it a day. There were only a few police cars left. One belonged to the last pair of officers at the location; the other was Decker’s. He had been carted away in an ambulance filled with his brother cops at some point. Behr had lost track of Breslau too and he, as well as his Crown Vic, was now gone. But there was another Crown Vic outside. This one was silver. It was his old boss’s car. Major Pomeroy. Behr walked outside and saw him behind the wheel on his cell phone. When Pomeroy saw Behr, he hung up and got out.

“Major,” Behr said, greeting the tall, silver-haired man. He hadn’t tended to the thin side, but now he was cadaverously so, as if the worries of higher command had counteracted all the big lunches and desk work of his captaincy and eaten away all nonessential flesh. His eyes were like dark agate marbles sunk in pale dough.