“Oh, all right. C ’ mon.”
Behr followed her over to the body, and Jean shooed away the cops, crime scene photographers, and medical assistants.
Body wasn ’ t quite the word for what lay at their feet. It was skeletal, with brown scraps of flesh hanging off the shinbones and ribs like old banana peels. The hair and facial skin were largely eroded. The eyes were gone, the nose as well. The jaw jutted out and the teeth grinned in a silent scream. The corpse was on its right side and curled, so Behr couldn ’ t tell how tall the person had been, but he or she couldn ’ t have been much over five feet. A wave of dread rolled through him at the possibility that this could be Jamie Gabriel. It vied with a feeling of hope, one that Behr tried to reject, that it was Jamie and that he would have his answer.
“Did it happen here?”
“I don ’ t think so. The position shows placement, and the grass has grown up through the body, so he ’ s been here for some time.”
“He?” Behr steeled himself for the information.
“Yeah. White male. The hyoid bone shows some damage, so it might be a strangulation.”
“How old?”
“Around twenty.”
Behr breathed again. “You sure on the age?” Jean shrugged, a gesture loaded with information. It told of her thousands of hours of study and experience in unraveling the secrets the dead hold. It was committed and sure, and yet it surrendered to the utter mystery of her trade. “What ’ s your outside minimum age?”
“Tough to tell. There ’ s been so much weather degradation. Seventeen, sixteen at the youngest.” Alive or dead, Jamie Gabriel ’ s fifteenth birthday wasn ’ t until the next year.
“Thanks, Jean.”
“Well, I hope that’s what you needed to know.”
“I should go.”
“Yah.”
No closer to an outcome in his case but glad of it, Behr took a last look at the remains on the ground and turned to leave.
As he drove out of the park, a gleaming Crown Vic was coming down the one-lane road toward him. It was piloted by a man holding an aluminum travel coffee cup to his lips. Behr and the opposing driver locked eyes through their windshields as they squeezed by each other. The man driving the Crown Vic was Captain Pomeroy.
Numbers streamed through Carol Gabriel ’ s mind as she pulled her running shoes from the back of the closet and tied them on her feet. Awful statistics she ’ d come to know. More than eight hundred thousand were currently listed as missing persons across the country. Eighty-five to 90 percent of them were children. Two thousand cases a day were logged into the National Crime Information Center. Most of them were family related — a divorced parent violating custody orders — and 90 percent of them were recovered without incident. But there were still so many of them who were kids, and who weren ’ t recovered. Of those, the ones who weren ’ t recovered, 40 percent were determined dead. One was the number of the missing that she cared about. And four hundred and fifty-six was how many days Jamie had been gone. It was a sickening figure that made her feel weak even as she stretched for her run of two miles.
She started at a light trot, about a nine-minute-mile pace, the mottled asphalt passing beneath her. The cold made her breath cloud. Two thousand was the number of flyers she had posted showing her son ’ s picture and listing his height, weight, description, and what she believed he was wearing that morning. Four gross was the amount of buttons she ’ d had made and distributed, all bearing Jamie ’ s face and their phone number. Zero was the number of calls they had received for the effort. The sweat was starting to come now, despite the chill in the air, sliding down her chest, collecting on and spilling over her brow. She wanted to stop, to double over and gasp already, but she pushed on by force of will. She ’ d never liked running, it had always been Paul ’ s idea of fun, or recreation, or cleansing. For her it was a chore.
Two-thirds was the percentage of couples that went on to divorce after losing a child. This number bounced around in her mind as she put one heel in front of the other. The shared failure, the constant reminder of grief that the other provided, was just too much for marriages to sustain. She knew she was one of the doomed majority now. The feeling between her and Paul had been shocked and paralyzed in an instant, and then had slowly decayed, and had finally fossilized.
She stopped dead. Blood pounded in her temples. Her breath wouldn ’ t come. Her legs were unable to carry her another step. She lacked the forward thrust to go through with the separation and divorce. She couldn ’ t imagine summoning the energy it would take to have the discussion. She stood there doubled at the waist; the only sounds her gasping and a cold wind blowing across the neighborhood.
Behr dropped the grocery bags on his kitchen counter and set about cooking up his breakfast. It took six eggs, a half pound of bacon, four slices of wheat toast, and a quart of orange juice to lay down his appetite, which had finally made a comeback. As he ate, he tried to decide which way his disappointment over the remains he ’ d seen at the park was leaning. Like he ’ d told the Gabriels at the beginning, an answer was the best they could all hope for. Still, as fatigue set in after the long night, he couldn ’ t help being glad it wasn ’ t Jamie who was left to rot out in Eagle Creek.
He took a long, scalding shower before getting into bed and set his alarm for six hours hence. It ’ d be 3:00 in the afternoon when it rang, if he slept that long, and time for him to give Tad, or a few of his coworkers down at the Golden Lady, another try. Behr closed his eyes, hoping that sleep would come quick and that when it did, it didn ’ t bring the dark wraiths of his past. He shook his head on the pillow to wipe away the memory of that skull out in the park, and the image of what his own son must look like nestled inside his mahogany box at St. John ’ s.
It was hours later, in the afternoon, but before the alarm went off, that he heard it. Someone was inside his place. Sleep had come, black and formless, but it was gone for good now. The sounds of tapping and a low cough came from his living room. He slid his feet out from under the sheets and put them on the floor. He eased open his night-table drawer and pushed back a few pieces of paper to reveal a squat hunk of metal: his Charter Arms Bulldog. 44. He ’ d carried a. 38 for almost ten years as a cop, and then he ’ d tried a 9 mm for the higher capacity; he ’ d seen what those calibers could do and the work they left undone. He preferred the heavier round now. Only five shots, the Bulldog was a belly gun, but most shootings were over in two, and if he couldn ’ t get it done with that many, he deserved whatever was coming back at him. Behr wrapped his fist around the handle and stepped quietly down the hall toward his living room.
There were two of them. White guys. Thirtyish. Short and solid, dressed in loose-fitting pullovers and baggy jeans. They both had similar facial hair: chin beards and mustaches. They were practiced at being quiet and weren ’ t even working that hard at it. One, with close-cropped hair, sat behind Behr ’ s desk looking at his computer monitor, occasionally clicking the mouse. The other sat in the television chair, some of Behr ’ s case files on his lap. The guy wasn ’ t going over them, though, and instead looked bored.
Behr stepped out of the hall and trained his gun on the one seated in his chair, but spoke to the one at the desk.
“Why are you here and who sent you?” Behr ’ s voice was calm, though he knew they were armed. He was really just putting on a show; even at a hundred yards he ’ d be able to tell they were cops.
The one at the desk leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and stretched, as if the conversation was taking place in the station bullpen. “I ’ m Nye, he ’ s Feeley.” The guy gestured with his chin to his partner. “Nice nap?”
Feeley, in the chair, snickered.
“That ’ s licensed, right?” Nye asked of Behr ’ s gun.
Plainclothes donkeys, Behr thought, and lowered the Bulldog, though he didn ’ t give an answer.
“Did you break my lock?” Behr asked, surprised at how heavily he ’ d been sleeping.
“It was open,” Feeley piped up in a reedy voice. His partner shot him a look.
“Your lock ’ s fine. Feeley ’ s got a good touch.”
Behr nodded his appreciation.
“Look, I know Pomeroy saw me at Eagle Creek this morning, but a call would ’ ve done it.”
Now Nye laughed a little. Behr knew the way Pomeroy worked. Whether he was corrupt or not couldn ’ t be proved, and was almost beside the point. He did, however, like to have two or three teams who cowboyed for him at all times. Guys willing to do the things a metro police captain needed done in order to keep his department
