way, especially when he leaned in and whispered that nothing had changed, they were still on track, and Uncle Larry could keep shit locked down on his end. They’d kicked everyone out of the bar at closing time and played poker and kept on drinking. And when they’d gotten home they’d made so much noise, the four of them, that Mom had come out of the bedroom. At first she’d been pissed they’d woken her, but then Dad had started singing “Dixie Chicken” and dancing her around the kitchen until she’d started laughing. Finally, she’d pulled out the frying pan and had started cooking, and they told stories and ate until they all went to pass out. It was like old times, when they were kids, but with whiskey, and for a while their troubles seemed far away.
Now Dean rose and staggered through the silent house to the kitchen, where he drank from the tap and belched and drank some more. The water momentarily diluted the poison inside him and he wiped a layer of clammy sweat from his face with a dish-towel. Then he turned and saw the greasy frying pan, and the plates scattered across the table, dirty with chunks of meat and sodden bread and smeared with ketchup. He went to the front door, for some fresh air and the morning paper.
“Bodies Found in Near Northside House ID’d as Father and Son,” screamed the Star’s headline. It was the address of the last pea shake they’d taken down. Dean’s stomach elevator-dropped. He was awash in dread as he read the account of the discovery of the dead boy. A child. It rang in Dean’s head. His hands began to shake and his blood turned to ice. A low moan escaped his belly as the enormity of what they’d done settled on him. He’d killed a kid. Then, from an even deeper place, came a spasm, and a roiling wave of vomit splattered down on the front step from where he’d just picked up the paper.
THIRTY-SIX
He stood along the riverbank and listened to the black water rush by below his feet. The better part of a bottle of Maker’s Mark rolled to its own current within him. His life was over-at least life as he knew it-killed by a pain he could not even estimate. He reached to his belt and felt the gun there, hard and unyielding. Its existence mocked him. He gripped its cold handle and lightly touched the trigger, where that precious small finger had somehow found its way. With a brusque fury he yanked the gun free and hurled it into the night with a force that tore things deep in his shoulder. He couldn’t hear the splash for the howl that erupted from within him.
Darkness lifted like smoke from the water as Behr came back to the present. He had trudged along the muddy bank of the White River for several miles, scanning the shallows with his light, which he now clicked off as dawn had arrived. He hadn’t been this close to the White in years, since that night when it was finally all over for his boy and he’d driven out to fling the 9mm Tim had died by into its waters. Behr had never wanted to see that weapon again, same as the face that stared back at him when he looked in the mirror. He did his best to shake off the memory and continued on.
Wherever there is money, there is violence. It was a truth. In business the violence is in the boardroom, in illegal business the violence is in the street. Despite the fact that he was hard tired and the left side of his head felt like it had a railroad spike lodged in it, Behr knew he had a long night ahead of him. After leaving Cottrell, he went home and worked quickly. He needed a piece of information and some supplies. The information didn’t take him long to obtain now that he knew what he was looking for.
He found it in the state marriage license database and was able to back it up with an old announcement in a local news archive, and then tax and school records. Bustamante, Victoria, and Bustamante, Lawrence, the police lieutenant, were not married, they were brother and sister. Twenty-three years earlier Victoria had married Terrence Schlegel in a ceremony at Garden of Gethsemane Church in Speedway. They had three sons, Charles, Dean, and Kenneth, twenty-two, twenty, and eighteen years of age, who had attended area schools. Terry Schlegel, the father, was listed by the Alcoholic Beverage Commission as the permittee of the Tip-Over Tap Room. Behr selected “Print” and jotted further notes while the machine whirred to life. Then he’d begun putting together the supplies he needed-a map, flashlight, boots, and a thermos bottle full of coffee. The threat that the man he now knew was Dean Schlegel had made to Ezra was not idle, nor abstract, Behr believed. He marked the map with a highlighter, starting at the southernmost likely point in the area, where railroad tracks touched or intersected the White River. He steeled himself and drove out to the first spot, an area near West Troy Avenue that was fairly industrial in character, and then he started in.
The night air had been chill next to the river, and his boots and pants quickly became soaked up to the knees, yet he’d warmed as he alternately walked the tracks and the bank. He was aware of how easily he could miss what he was looking for. He could walk right by it. He could be looking in all the wrong places. His instincts and his source could be wrong altogether. Still, he carried on until he’d felt satisfied that the first spot held nothing. He hiked back to his car and drove on to the next location, a place where the tracks ran next to Waterway. He covered both sides of the river and found nothing but loose refuse, a cache of beer and soda bottles, and rusted car parts. Next he parked on South West Street between Raymond and Morris, where he slid down a steep gravel and dirt pitch next to a railroad bridge that crossed over the water.
The mud along the bank sucked at his hopes as it did his feet, but he kept on. He kept on although all he found was an array of trash and detritus similar to that littering the other spots. Then, when he was nearly through with the area, he stumbled across the carcass of a large dead dog. The hindquarters of the animal lay in the water, a weak current lapping against it until the dark fur had grown matted and wet. The dog’s one visible eye had gone green and opaque in death and was turning gelatinous. Behr looked it over, checking for tracks that would indicate from which direction it had come. He couldn’t spot any sign, but finding the body buoyed him to continue.
He decided, though it seemed a bit unlikely due to its proximity to the city, to move on and try a spot in the shadows of the White River Parkway Drive, near the Chevy plant, continuing on his south-to-north route. When he parked he saw that despite being only several minutes’ drive from downtown, there was a certain abandoned quality to the area, perhaps due to the hour, which made a dump possible. He had gone over a quarter mile from the tracks and had neared a sloppy, marshy area along the bank when he stopped. He saw the cluster of dark green plastic contractor bags in the distance ahead of him. He wouldn’t have thought much of it except for the way they were all stacked together. They couldn’t have landed that way if they’d been thrown from a passing train. The location represented a lot of effort for some illegal dumping. The bags were all neatly cinched with large plastic twist ties. Behr walked slowly across the expanse toward the bags, dread rising within him. The water here was dank and fetid. He became acutely aware of the slurping sound the mud made under his feet.
He circled to the far side of the pile, carefully avoiding some footprints in the soft, wet ground, then paused and looked around. He peeled a blade free from his Leatherman tool, reached for the nearest bag, and sliced into the top. A thick wave of black flies rose up into his face as the bag gaped open and the smell hit him. He waved away the insects and saw the white of sawed-off bone, encased by pale, deteriorating flesh. The bag contained a pair of lower legs, the feet still shod in dress socks and black wingtips. He was pretty sure he’d found Bigby and Schmidt.
“Get Pomeroy on the line,” Behr said. He leaned against the quarter panel of his car talking to Karl Potempa at the Caro Group on his cell phone. He’d dialed as soon as his hands had stopped trembling.
“Who would that be?” Potempa intoned in his smooth voice, for which Behr wasn’t in the mood.
“Don’t fuck with me, get Captain Pomeroy.”
There was a brief hold during which Behr watched the sickly slate green of the White River burble by.
“Yeah?” Pomeroy’s voice came on, trying to hide his concern under a mask of irritation.
“We’re all on,” Potempa said, “and the line is secure.”
“Off West Washington and White River, on the southwest bank of the river.”
“That spit of land below Chevy?” Potempa asked. Behr could hear a pen scratching against paper.
“That’s right. Where it gets marshy. Against the hill below the track bed, that’s where you’ll find your A team. There are four trash bags-”
“Oh crap-,” Potempa croaked, his voice gone rough.
“Jesus Christ-,” Pomeroy added.
“Yeah, all of it.”
“What’s their… condition?” Potempa wondered, grasping for control.
“Their condition is all damn done. Chopped up and bagged. Feet, hands, heads. I didn’t dig around much, I didn’t want to disturb the scene, but it looks like they were bled and quartered somewhere else. Thanks for this, by
