David Levien: Where the dead lay

The sun was already climbing, a thick heat spreading itself over the city, as Behr went back around front and wrote out a note: “All Classes Canceled.” Once the cops were done, they’d lock the door, affix a crime-scene sticker, and leave, and people who hadn’t come that morning, or hadn’t heard the news, might keep showing up. Behr stuck the note to the front window and got out of there. He’d wanted to miss the morning students and assistant instructors. He’d talk to them all soon enough-when he interviewed them-but he wasn’t in the mood for hand-holding and hugs at the moment. Then, since he couldn’t canvass the neighborhood for witnesses, as the cops would be doing that and wouldn’t appreciate him stepping on their toes, he had started driving.

Behr pulled up in front of Aurelio’s house. It was a one-story brick bungalow with a Toyota parked in front. He needed to get in there and take a long look, but now wasn’t the time for that. Police would arrive within minutes, Behr anticipated. He weighed the risk for a split second before hurrying to get a pair of latex gloves out of the kit in his trunk. He tried Aurelio’s car, which was locked. So was the house, both the front and back doors. Behr peered in through the windows but couldn’t see much past the horizontal blinds. What he did see looked undisturbed. Behr stripped off his gloves and hurried back to his car. When the detectives went knocking on doors he didn’t need any neighbors ID’ing him.

Aurelio’s place was a mile and a half from the jiu-jitsu school, and it wasn’t unusual for him to jog that distance to get warmed up before training. That might have been the case today, which would explain why the car was still at home. Or he might have been taken against his will, Behr considered, getting back in his own car and turning over the engine. He was making the left back onto Baker as the first detective’s unmarked unit rolled toward Aurelio’s house…

Cruising around envisioning how the thing could’ve gone was a pointless exercise, but Behr couldn’t help himself. At least for those moments, in his mind, Aurelio was still alive. And when he was done, because he’d run out of things to do for the present, the finality of it was able to surge up into his chest. It was the old vault door asking to be opened, to be filled, to be slammed shut again. All the shit he’d seen on the street as a cop, and then as a private investigator afterward, needed some place to go. So he’d learned pretty quickly to make a spot for it. An empty box inside him where he could throw the pain, and drop the lid on it before it became intolerable. The tendency was to stop thinking of the victims as human beings altogether. Instead, they became a set of facts, an equation to solve, a clue, a piece of meat to be handled. This gave the investigator objectivity. It gave him the ability to reason. It made him powerful and knowing so he was ready in the moment when he had to interdict a perpetrator. Problem was, before long, the ability to discern was lost and a lot of other things ended up getting thrown in the vault as well. Good things, like wives and kids and friends. Just about everything really, and if you weren’t careful, or even if you were, you could end up zombied out, going through the motions in your life and the work, praying that mere competence would get you by.

The evolved cop, the one who distinguished himself, the one who made it all the way, managed to push the pain down someplace but not cut it off completely. He carried it and retained his connection to it, and what it meant. The victims remained human beings to the good cop, and despite the pain-or because of it- that became the cop’s salvation. Behr wasn’t sure in which group he’d spent most of his time on the job. He had his suspicions, especially at the end. But on this one, he swore, he would do it right. So he let the pain come. He let it come.

A loud, angry honk sounded behind him. Behr looked up and saw he was sitting at a green light. He glanced into his rearview mirror at the pickup truck behind him and raised a hand. “I’m going. I’m going,” he said and turned for home.

Susan Durant was in the bathroom peeing on the little plastic tab when she heard a car pull up and Frank’s heavy step sounded on the stairs. It was only supposed to take a minute for the results, but she didn’t have time. Besides, she had her suspicions about the answer and didn’t know how to handle her reaction. She finished up, flushed the toilet, dumped the contents of the small trash can, which contained the box and directions, into the CVS bag, and dropped the plastic tab in on top of it. She was in the living room smoothing her skirt over her hips when he entered. She turned from the mirror and smiled as the door closed behind him.

“Hey,” she said.

Frank didn’t answer.

“Is this skirt riding up? I put on three pounds the past month. You’re gonna have me fat and happy, Behr,” she said, hoping she sounded breezy.

He didn’t respond, and instead entered the kitchen. She heard his hand clattering among glass bottles as he fished around the makeshift bar on the counter. She reached the doorway in time to see him find a small bottle covered by a white paper wrapper. He emptied brown liquid into a glass, tried to add club soda from a bottle that was empty, then splashed tonic in the glass and drank. Susan stepped farther into the kitchen, still holding the plastic bag.

“You’re drinking, what’s wrong?” she asked.

Behr grimaced, finished, held up the bottle for her to see. Angostura. “Just bitters.” He launched the bottle into the sink, where it broke.

“Why are you back so early?”

“Aurelio’s dead,” he said. She absorbed the news, a dozen questions raised and checked in her mind.

“How?” she finally asked.

“Murdered. Shot. At the school,” Behr said, watching her try to understand. Then he looked at her more closely. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing.”

“No?”

“No. God, Frank, that’s horrible. I’m so sorry. How could this happen?”

Behr shook his head.

“Are you okay?”

He just stared at her. She went to him, put her arms around him. He didn’t return the gesture. He was a log. She stepped back and looked at him. His face was taut, heavy dark brows knit. His black eyes were distant, but focused, as if fixed on something departing far away on the horizon. He wasn’t even there in the kitchen with her, not really. She hadn’t seen him like this since the beginning between them, when he’d been fifty feet deep on a case.

“Was it a robbery?” she asked.

“No.”

“Was it a random thing? Could it have been an accident?”

Behr shook his head again.

“I mean… could he have been… what was he into?” she wondered aloud.

Behr stopped shaking his head and looked at her. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Just that if it’s not a fluke thing, then-”

“Then what? He was into some shit and had it coming?”

“Frank, no, that’s not what I… Not how it was supposed to sound-”

“Just lay off the theories then, all right? They’re not gonna help here.”

She looked at him. The tension was immediate, thick, and unfamiliar between them. They’d been getting along well this past year and change. Too well, maybe, like a couple of frigging songbirds. But now, with all the thorny Scotch, German, Irish, mid-western, and Pacific Northwestern blood in the room, an apology was a long way off. She stepped back. “I’m here for you if you want, but it’s pretty clear you don’t,” she finally said. “I’m going to work.”

“Fine,” he said, and nothing more.

After another moment she picked up her purse, kept the plastic CVS bag she was carrying, and headed for the door.