business ventures. Several other people Behr knew nodded to him from the bar; several he didn ’ t stared over at him, a lone big man taking a booth that seated four. None of them were going to complain though; Arch kept a shillelagh hanging behind the bar in full view and was willing to use it to keep order.
Behr knew how to cook. It was something he ’ d had to learn when things ended between him and Linda, but some nights he needed the hum and flurry of a place like Donohue ’ s. The fact was, he needed it more and more lately. Behr worked on his third beer and thought of her. Linda. He hadn ’ t spoken to her since January 6 three years back. She lived down in Vallonia now, near her folks. Behr had gotten out there several times a month for the first few years after they ’ d separated, but couldn ’ t win her back with anything he ’ d said or tried. Tim ’ s death was a chasm between them he couldn ’ t leap, no matter how much of a run-up he took. To do that, both of them needed to jump, to meet in the middle, in the dark space between. He knew that now. Knew it even though he ’ d failed and it was too late and he ’ d given up. She ’ d told him on that January 6 that she ’ d started seeing a man who owned a quick lube shop and a convenience store nearby. Behr had stopped going then, ceased trying. He ’ d heard they were living together now.
“He ’ s not a better man,” she ’ d told him. “He just doesn ’ t remind me of things.” This was intended as consolation, Behr supposed, but it felt like the opposite.
After he ’ d eaten, Behr drank three cups of coffee to blunt the beers ’ effect and began to outline a plan of action in his mind.
Step one. After Donohue ’ s, Behr rolled over to Market Square. He trolled through the darkened streets, coasting slowly in the Toronado like a fisherman trying to catch the big one on the first cast. He hoped to run across the boy on the streets, hungry but fine, ready to go home. He looked out his windows at the city that had been his home for two decades.
Indianapolis, the Circle City, was the twelfth largest in the nation. Because it had more interstates converging around it than anywhere else, it was known as the “Crossroads of America.” It was the Hoosier capital, host to the national track and field championships, home of the Indy 500 down at the Brickyard. Taxes were manageable, schools were good, real estate was valuable but still getable. Behr was aware of the Chamber of Commerce patter, and perhaps it had mattered to him twenty years earlier when he had just graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in criminology and had found openings on the Indianapolis police force down at the school ’ s placement office.
But as he drove, all that fell away and instead he began to see the predators, scumbags, and wasters who populated the city at night. Street cops, if they were going to last at all, quickly developed a sense of what is out there. Where regular people saw a guy in a tight leather jacket, a homeless man panhandling, a nervous woman, a cop saw a monster carrying a gun, a junkie ready to snap, a woman who ’ d just killed her husband. It was a skill you needed desperately at first, one that didn ’ t seem to come quickly enough. Thing was, Behr thought, you could never turn it off once it was there, no matter how much you wanted to.
He got into the streets named after states: Maryland, Washington, Georgia. He saw long-coated figures standing and talking, sitting in doorways, huddling, but no one whose age or size allowed them to be the boy he was looking for. He cruised past the Fieldhouse, dark and hulking, with no event tonight. He wound around Delaware and South, parked and walked through the Amtrak/Greyhound terminal and Union Station. The National Guardsmen were there, rifles slung, and some groups of older teenagers heading back to the suburbs. No kids. Behr showed the photos to some of the Reservists, who shook their heads.
He got back in his car and circled the RCA Dome before cutting across West Street. Like most times he ’ d been fishing, he ’ d come up empty. Tomorrow he ’ d have to start a real investigation. It was what the Gabriels were paying him for. It was what the kid deserved.
NINE
Behr began early, lowering himself into the blizzardlike maze of details. The Gabriels ’ bank accounts came up modest and tidy, as he expected they would. He went in and talked to the teacher, Ms. Preston, combed through newspaper archives for reported stories on the case, and then went to interview the soccer coach. Behr sat in his car a distance away and staked out a practice, checking to see if anyone was hanging around near the kids doing the same. He sat for an hour and a half, as the team moved up and down the field, bunching around the ball occasionally, causing the coach to blow his whistle and wave his arms, which returned them to better spacing. Behr raised his miniature Zeiss 12 Ч 25 and glassed the streets bordering the field; he saw he was the only one in the watcher category. Parents began showing up, and the kids ran, muddy-cleated, to waiting cars. Behr opened his door, swung his feet out, and started toward the field. The coach oversaw the last of his players leaving and was picking up the orange cones that marked the field when Behr got to him.
Coach Finnegan wore plastic-framed glasses, a fleece top, and a flexible knee brace on his right leg beneath baggy Umbro shorts. The guy had coached the Wayne Hornets for six years after moving there from Colorado Springs. Unlike the teacher, Andrea Preston, who was a pillar of the community, Finnegan, according to Behr ’ s background check, was divorced, delinquent on six alimony payments, and had once pleaded no contest to a bad check charge. Fines had been paid.
“Must be cold,” Behr said, pointing at the coach ’ s red legs.
“I always wear ’ em,” Finnegan said of his shorts, “even at the end of the year.”
“You ’ re Finnegan?” Behr asked as a formality.
“Uhm-hm. You?”
“I ’ m here about Jamie Gabriel.”
“He used to play for me.” The coach nodded. “Sad thing that happened. He was a striker.” The man ’ s face didn ’ t give anything away. “Any news?” he asked as an afterthought.
“I work for the family,” Behr told him by way of a nonanswer. He wasn ’ t going to tell this guy shit. For many cops and investigators the major obstacle to detecting deception and finding the truth was their own natural tendency to believe people. Behr had no such problem: he ’ d seen too much ugliness. He couldn ’ t help his prejudice, either. He reserved a little dose of suspicion for men who worked with children. Female teachers had his baseline trust. Male college professors made sense to him. But adult men who worked with young boys chafed just slightly at the part of him that doubted humanity. He knew this was stupid, and he ’ d seen countless female criminals prove it so. Behr appraised the soccer coach. Could his emotional or psychological issues have led him to do the unspeakable? The guy seemed like a regular ex-jock; he was probably beyond reproach.
“Ever seen anyone hanging around the field who shouldn ’ t be?”
“You mean when Jamie — ”
“Anytime. Before or since.”
“Haven ’ t. I ’ d question anyone like that,” the coach said, a real solid citizen.
“Ever have a player mention an adult was bothering him?”
“Only their relatives. Usual stuff. ‘ My father won ’ t let me play because of grades. ’ ‘ My mother ’ s boyfriend ’ s an asshole. ’ ”
“Gotcha.”
Finnegan toed down a hunk of loose turf. Behr looked over both ends of the field.
“How does transportation work?”
“Parents do drop-offs and pickups. Team van for road games or parents can drive if they want. Anybody who ’ s not a parent who ’ s picking up a player has to be prearranged with me by phone. More than a few times I ’ ve had to refuse an aunt or uncle and drive a kid all the way home because the mother or father forgot to call.” The coach offered this with a half-smile. He was looking for hosannas for his commitment to youth safety. Behr hated like hell to disappoint him.
He looked down at his notebook, closed it. “Well, that ’ ll do her. Call me if anything occurs.” He handed the coach a card and cut across the field toward his car.
Behr drove the paper route before six, as was Jamie ’ s custom, rolling slowly down Richards through the neighborhood. He went down Cypress, around Grace, Sixteenth Street, Perry, and then Tibbs. He passed a jogger as he turned onto Tibbs, a large guy in nylon shorts, high athletic socks, and a thick terry-cloth headband, huffing about a twelve-minute mile. Behr checked his notes as he made the next turn, onto Mooresville, then followed it to
