David Levien - Where the dead lay

The murdered man could have been the boy’s father, or an uncle, or maybe there was no relation, and Behr deduced that the boy had been left behind undiscovered after the killing. Or perhaps he had been discovered and left behind anyway. The bile had risen in the back of his throat when he’d seen the figure lying there, when he’d touched the boy’s papery skin checking for a pulse that was long gone. He didn’t know whether he’d been hours, days, or a week too late, he just knew he hadn’t found his way to the house in time, and that the thought of his failure would never leave him.

The stretchers were loaded into a coroner’s van, which drove away. There was more flash photography inside the house, and the group on the street started to disassemble. Behr turned his gaze from the house and found Neil Ratay, the black circles under his eyes behind his glowing cigarette tip visible in the coming dawn. The reporter, not the police, had been whom Behr had called, and the first to arrive on the scene.

“What’s happening?” Ratay had said when he had reached the dark, quiet street.

“You’re working the pea-shake stories. I need you to do something for me, and you’ll get something for it,” Behr said. Then he had told him to call in the bodies to a police contact he could trust, to request the units and the teams, but to have it done by cell phone, to keep it off department radios and thus off the police scanners that would have brought every news organ in town into it. Behr told Ratay to claim he’d been tipped to the scene by a source he couldn’t name and that he’d found the door open. And then he let the reporter into the house for his look.

“I don’t know what to tell you to prepare you for it-,” Behr began.

“Don’t,” Ratay said, and plunged in through the now unlocked front door with Behr’s flashlight. He exited moments later, pale and unsteady, just before the first units arrived. He had lit his first cigarette with trembling hands and hadn’t stopped smoking since. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other during all the police activity, mainly because Behr had fallen back away from him so they wouldn’t be seen together, but also because there was nothing to be said.

Now, preparing to leave, Behr approached.

“I guess ‘thanks’ isn’t the word, but-,” Ratay started.

“Yeah,” Behr said, “same to you.”

Then Behr saw a silver Crown Vic roll onto the set. A familiar figure got out. Captain Pomeroy crossed to an officer Behr didn’t recognize, and they exchanged a few words. Pomeroy moved to the edge of the activity and took out his cell phone. Behr was wondering if he had even been seen. Then his phone rang.

“Yeah,” Behr answered.

“I tell you to keep shit quiet, and this is what you bring me?” Pomeroy’s voice came through the phone. Behr moved away from Ratay.

“I couldn’t call it in,” Behr said. “You said ‘no contact.’ It was the best I could do.”

“A goddamned reporter?” Pomeroy said.

“Yeah, one-and one the department’s already in business with. One you can trust. That was the trade-off so you wouldn’t end up watching it on TV.”

“You know what it’s gonna cost me to buy time on this?”

The truth was, after seeing what he had in that house, Behr didn’t care all that much.

“What else do you have for me? You must have something else,” Pomeroy demanded.

“Not yet,” Behr said. He knew Pomeroy was looking for something solid, not some weak theories and rumors about a family.

“Are you jaking it on this, Behr?” Pomeroy barked.

“Does it look like I’m jaking it?” Behr barked back. They were almost to the point where the cell phones were unnecessary.

“Then find me these fucks before they act,” Pomeroy hissed, backing down the volume.

They stood there, Behr and Pomeroy, the gulf of the street between them, cell phones pressed to their ears. Before Behr could think of anything else to say, Pomeroy hung up, pocketed his phone, and entered the house with angry strides.

“What the hell was that?” Ratay asked when Behr rejoined him.

“Nothing,” Behr said. He changed gears. “So your contact asked you to hold the story?”

“He did. And I will. Not as long as they want me to, but for a minute or two anyway. There’ll be a giveback too, of course.”

“Right.”

“Not to mention the giveback to you for putting me in this,” Ratay went on.

“File it,” Behr said, “no sweat on that.”

“You want to tell me what you’re working that got you here?” Ratay asked.

“I would, Neil, but I can’t.”

“I figured,” the reporter said, and looked at him with eyes that seemed to bore right through him. Behr felt like the man knew the whole deal, and in a sense he did. He may not have had the specifics, but he certainly knew that these things generally concerned the same type of players-morally bankrupt animals- who were after similar ends-monetary gain, and some way to fill the empty pits of their souls.

They stood there for a moment, then Ratay spoke. “Hey, Frank, not that it’s any of my business…”-Behr knew what was coming-“but is everything all right with you and Susan? She seems like she’s walking around under a rain cloud.”

“I don’t know, man,” Behr said, feeling unable to hide the truth at the moment, “we’re in different places on the track. That’s become clear lately.”

Ratay nodded his understanding.

“She’s great,” Behr continued.

“She is, indeed.”

“I just… don’t know if it’s the right thing for everyone right now.”

Ratay sighed out a mouthful of cigarette smoke, dropped the butt, and toed it into the ground. “Well, don’t be too quick to write it off, you’ve still got some life left in you.”

Behr gave a grim nod. “Less every day,” he said. Should he go on and tell Ratay what he really thought? That it was a shit world, lousy with fear and not knowing and death, full of people in a constant state of panic and desolation, the more they learned the more the truth swam away, and that was why so many of them turned to God, even though He didn’t do much back for them. None of it would be new to Ratay, and Behr didn’t imagine Ratay would want that for Susan, especially if he knew her current condition.

The reporter didn’t argue with him, and instead seemed to be arguing with himself over his pack of Camels and whether he should light another. Then a man in a suit with a gold badge hanging around his neck stepped out of the house. Ratay put away the cigarettes. “There’s my guy. Time for the horse-trading.”

He crossed the street and Behr went to his car.

Death was all around him. He’d seen it in the dark of that house last night, and he’d seen it in the day, which he slept through, his dreams plagued by monstrous images that defied description. He still felt it upon him when he awoke, shaken and exhausted. It drove him to the place where killing was honed. Behr showered and dressed and put on his gun and recognizing the urge to use it, grabbed his range bag, and loaded it with the shells he’d recently bought. He went cross-town to Eagle Creek Park, to where the Indianapolis Metro Police shot.

The range was closed to the public during the week, and the parking lot was near empty. Before he even reached the range-a series of tables acting as bench rests beneath a slanted roof-he could hear it was quiet. Day shift was still on duty. Technically he didn’t have privileges at the facility, but occasionally an ex-cop could get a break when things were slow. There were plenty of places to shoot around town, but Behr preferred this one. Perhaps it was just habit, perhaps because for a few minutes he could feel like a cop again.