David Levien - City of the Sun

He flashed his license, which he kept in a billfold with his old three-quarter shield. Then he took out the school picture of Jamie. “This is him. Maybe you saw him riding his bike?” She looked at the picture of the kid, with his cute little cowlick, and that did it. She swung the door open.

“I ’ m afraid I don ’ t know anything about the case,” she said, her voice tremulous with the effort of walking down the hall. “But I ’ ll answer any questions I can.” She led him into the living room and a stabbing prickle went down Behr ’ s spine at what he saw there — stacks and stacks of newspapers. The room was filled with them, the Star, years ’ worth of them, unread. Many yellowing. Mrs. Conyard saw Behr looking. “I always mean to read the paper at night, but I end up watching television…” Behr nodded to keep her going. “I like solving the puzzles on Wheel and I end up putting it off to another day.” With the amount of unread papers she had in there, Behr wouldn ’ t have been surprised if she believed Carter was still in office.

“You know, Mrs. Conyard, I wonder if I could look through your papers, see if you got yours that day?”

“Sure, sure, go ahead,” she told him. Behr was already kneeling and poring over the stacks for the dates close to the day of the disappearance. “I keep meaning to get rid of the old ones… Maybe they ’ ll be good for something.”

There was a loose sort of left-to-right organization to the papers. Within ten minutes Behr had found October of the correct year and saw what didn ’ t completely surprise him. She had all the papers leading up to the day, but no paper from the day Jamie went missing. There was no paper for two days after that, either. Mrs. Conyard remembered the interruption in service. It was disconcerting to her. Then the delivery service resumed, on the third day. “A little brown man. In a car. That ’ s the way they do it now,” she told him.

“That ’ s progress,” Behr said, looking not at her but through the nearby stacks of papers to make sure that none were misfiled. None were. Her order was fairly meticulous.

“You know what?” Mrs. Conyard told him, memory ’ s light breaking across her face. “Now I do remember the police stopping by and asking questions.” Behr nodded his support for her recollection, which unfortunately contained no other hard information. She hadn ’ t seen any suspicious cars or people then or since. “It ’ s a very safe neighborhood. That ’ s why I ’ ve stayed all these years since my husband died.”

She moved across the room to a portrait of her late husband that rested on the television. “This is Mr. Conyard…my John…” She held it out for Behr ’ s inspection. He looked it over and planned his exit.

Behr spent the next several hours in his car, parked on Tibbs, on the cell phone with the circulation department of the Star. It took a good while before he got the right person, a Susan Durant, who had been there many years and had a handle on things, and a memory to boot. She recalled them losing their delivery boy. It was a sad day at the paper even though no one remembered ever having met him. And there was a near mutiny in Circ. when the story only got under-the-fold coverage. She checked the logs and saw that the resident at 5 Tibbs had complained and been credited for no delivery on October 24. Several others from later in the route had made the same call. Susan also confirmed that there was no delivery in place for the next two days. All the customers on the route were credited for those days as well.

“Nope, there weren ’ t any complaints from anyone on the route prior to 5 Tibbs,” Susan Durant said from her downtown office, causing Behr to get that prickle down his spine again, as if he felt he was drawing a bead on where something might have happened to Jamie.

“I owe you an Italian dinner, Susan,” Behr offered for her time and effort on the phone.

“Oh, I don ’ t do carbs, Frank,” Susan said with regret, then added encouragingly, “but we could make it a rib-eye.”

“A steak it is, Susan.” He promised to call her when things wound down on the case.

Behr turned off his phone and settled in to wait for a Mr. Louis Cranepool, resident of 1 Tibbs Avenue, to return from work. As he waited, Behr ran scenarios in his head. In the case of a missing kid, the parents always got a hard, and often the first, look from police. Behr was sure that within the police file — the official one, not the copy — there was a report showing that the Gabriels had been thoroughly investigated, maybe even polygraphed. There were circumstances in which Behr would ’ ve begun by looking more deeply into the mother and father as well. Veracity of grief was no indicator of innocence in crimes within a family. But having sat with them, Behr recognized the completely blinding condition of not knowing what had happened to their son from which the couple suffered. This was much harder to fake. He felt the burled walnut of his custom steering wheel flex under his palms. He looked down and noticed his hands were white-knuckled across it. He relaxed his hands and tried to keep them from becoming fists as he considered what Cranepool ’ s involvement could be.

It was just after 4:00 when a gold Taurus pulled into the short driveway of 1 Tibbs. A squat man in a brown suit wrestled his briefcase from the passenger seat, climbed out of the car, and headed for his door.

Behr strode across the man ’ s patch of lawn, cutting him off before he had his key out.

“You Louis Cranepool?” Behr snarled. He reared up and used his size on the man. There were many tools of influence at the interrogator ’ s disposal when conducting an interview. Beatings and chemicals were the most severe, and usually illegal, though chummy manipulation yielded nearly as much in Behr ’ s estimation. Chances were this guy had nothing to do with anything, but Behr had only this one time to make a first impression. He decided to try to rattle him, to see if anything shook loose.

“I am.” Cranepool swallowed, taking in the huge man standing between him and his door. “What do you want?”

“You know what I ’ m here about.” Behr let the words settle. “Jamie Gabriel.” If the name did mean anything to Cranepool, then Behr never wanted to sit across a poker table from him. “Your paperboy.”

Cranepool narrowed his eyes in thought. “The one who used to deliver here? Kid who went missing?”

“That ’ s right.” Behr nodded, beginning to modulate his intimidation, already leaning toward the belief that Cranepool wasn ’ t involved. Behr shifted into a more neutral policelike tone, hoping for at least a piece of information. “The date was October twenty-fourth last year. I ’ m assuming you told the police everything you know about it, which was nothing, yes?”

“Uh-huh,” Cranepool said, his fear abating, but only slightly.

“Do you recall if you got your paper on the morning of the twenty-fourth?”

“I did.” Cranepool answered too quickly. “I didn ’ t mention that to the police. I didn ’ t think to and they didn ’ t ask.”

“It was a long time ago. You ’ re sure?”

“I ’ m sure.” Cranepool nodded.

“How?”

“I trade my own portfolio and I check the stock page every night. I missed the paper the next day and had to buy it at the gas station for two days running while they replaced deliverymen.”

Behr involuntarily glanced toward the street. “Now I ’ m on the Internet and I get updates throughout the day,” he half heard Cranepool continue in the background. Behr refocused and asked half a dozen followups, to which Cranepool shook his head. Behr nodded his thanks and began backing off across the lawn the way he had come. Cranepool hurried inside with relief while Behr made his way to the street.