Signature Kill (2 page)
Authors: David Levien
“It’s the last day,” Lester said, taking off his cap and rubbing up his steel wool hair. “I can do this if you want to get on over the hill and look for them forkies or something.”
Behr gave some thought to his $400 nonresident antlered deer license that would go unfilled.
“Nah, I’ll help you and we can drag him down together.”
“It’ll be dark before long,” Les said. “You won’t get a shot.”
“Probably not.”
“I thank you.”
“Want me to dress him?” Behr offered and pulled the drop point skinner off his belt.
“If it’s no trouble,” Lester said. “These damn eyes …”
Behr nodded and removed his coat, then pushed up his shirtsleeves. “Seemed fine when you squeezed off on this old boy.”
He rolled the deer onto his back and made the first cut from sternum to crotch, his blade parting the white belly fur and whiter layer of fat beneath it before the red of muscle and blood leapt forth. Once the buck was opened up, Behr reached up into the warmth and wetness of the cavity and removed the organs. After splitting the pelvis, Behr cut the heart free. It came out thick and heavy and purplish in his hand, and he set it off to the side before he tilted the carcass downhill to drain. As the garnet fluid soaked into the dry ground, Behr looked at the battered forehead and broken brow tine on the old buck.
“See the Roman nose on this one? He was a fighter,” Lester said.
Behr absently rubbed his own nose with his upper arm. Had he not liked his shot? he wondered. He’d made many as difficult and some much more so. Maybe he’d seen too much gunfire recently, or perhaps an awareness of the damage a gun like the one he had brought could do was still just too fresh. He wasn’t sure and it didn’t matter. He hadn’t fired and hadn’t filled his tag after four days of hunting.
“Couldn’t believe you didn’t take him before he came on down toward me,” Lester said. “You’re in for some meat after I get him to the butcher.”
“Thanks, Les,” Behr said.
“Hell, you rattled him right in.”
Behr used the remainder of his water bottle to rinse the blood and gore from his hands and forearms. Lots of guys wore rubber gloves when field dressing these days, to prevent picking up infection, but not Behr. It wasn’t how he was taught. And he’d yet to catch a disease from a deer. He couldn’t say the same for people.
The sun throbbed crimson and dropped down over the hill, flattening out the light in the meadow to a pale purple as they each took a hind leg and dragged the deer a half mile to Lester’s truck.
It’s happening again …
The words come from a place deep within him. He feels that stuff down there, bubbling and stirring, as the thing inside him that is
other
looks to push up and outward. He has to take it for a ride.
It’s happening again and before long the red curtain will come down once more … Soon
.
So soon it is almost confusing.
He should be at work by now, but he finds himself turning toward Irvington instead. He’ll have to make up the time on his own. His bosses just want results, they care less about his coming and going and being punctual as long as the work gets done. And he has seniority. Besides, he doesn’t know this neighborhood. Yet.
The streets are filled with cars this morning as people go to their jobs, the sidewalks populated with mothers and their children on the way to school, along with the occasional jogger bundled in a sweatshirt moving down the road, blowing cold clouds of breath. He rolls along, as slowly as he can without getting in the way, without becoming noticeable.
He turns the corner onto East Lowell, and sees a lone woman walking. In her late twenties or early thirties, she has blond hair streaked with light reddish brown the color of ground cinnamon. She isn’t out for a healthful stroll, he can see by the cigarette in her hand and the black leather jacket and jeans that look like they were worn to a bar the night before.
Dirty girl, dirty girl …
He slows, trolling behind her for a bit. She is petite, with a light stride. Young.
Go to work. Now
. A voice inside tries to instruct him. But it is weak. Certainly not strong enough to win out, and it will soon fall mute.
He no longer feels the car around him. All is silent. He is flying, floating along next to her. He is near her, with her,
of
her …
Finally, his senses return. The steering wheel is in his hands, the seat beneath him, and the pedals under his feet once again. He speeds up and pulls abreast of her for just a moment before continuing on, her presence and her location filed away automatically in his mind. A certain fluttering sensation arrives in his gut—the one that comes along when he’s found a new project.
Hello, Cinnamon …
Behr cracked the window and allowed some winter air to blow into the car as he drove home along I-74.
The trip back from bluff country was six hours plus. He’d planned on leaving before sunup so he could get home comfortably during daylight, but the bottle of single-barrel bourbon Les had pulled out to celebrate his successful hunt had slowed Behr down by an hour that morning and the light was starting to fade by the time he neared Indianapolis and home.
He and Les had passed a pleasant final evening. They’d hung the buck on a gambrel to drain at the landowner’s barn until morning, when Les would take it to the butcher. Then they’d cleaned up and had gone for dinner at the good local restaurant they’d saved for the last night and talked about their lives over T-bones.
“I love them,” Behr said of Susan, his girlfriend and the mother of his son, Trevor, “that’s a fact. But it became clear pretty quick that that’s not enough to make things go smooth between her and me.”
“Well …” Les said.
“She moved out with Trevor after three months, when I’d healed up and my wing was working again,” Behr continued. He moved the arm and tested the clavicle that had been pulverized by buckshot half a year back.
After surgery, Behr had spent countless agonizing hours on “The Rack,” which was what he called the continuous passive-motion chair he’d rented, painfully regaining the mobility in his shoulder
joint, as well as doing isometric exercises for strength. He was about ready to graduate to real weight training again and looked forward to it despite knowing how much fresh pain was coming his way.
“My place was never intended to be a home. We were all supposed to move to the new place together. But I … my job … if you can call it that—hell, I’ve only caught two cases in the past few months—doesn’t particularly lend itself to a happy family.”
“Well …” Les said again, tilting back his bourbon.
“So there’s the money thing on top of the rest.”
“Sure don’t help.”
“It never mattered before, but now … a little breathing room would be nice. To be able to provide all the things for ’em that they should have,” Behr said. “But I’ve tried the kind of jobs that make that happen, and you know …” Behr didn’t really have to go on. Les had been in the service as a young man and had then spent his life running a construction company, and his knowing, darting eyes had seen it all.
“Frank, if there’s one thing I’ve learned,” Les said, “it’s that pleasing everyone is pretty damn near impossible, but pissing everyone off is a piece of cake.”
Behr could only raise his glass to that. They laughed and pushed their plates away and accelerated the bourbon.
Behr clicked on his blinker and exited onto 465 to skirt Indianapolis and head toward his place when a woman’s face on a large billboard filled his windshield. She was a bit younger than Susan, also a blonde, though the woman on the billboard had more dark roots in her hair. The sign wasn’t an advertisement. There were words in block print along the bottom that read:
D
O YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO
K
ENDRA
G
IBBONS
? R
EWARD FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO ANSWERS, ARREST, CONVICTION:
$
100,000
.
Good luck with that
flashed through Behr’s mind. The woman’s eyes were sparkling and alive. There was the hint of someone’s arm wrapped around her shoulder. Perhaps the picture was taken at a party and cropped. The billboard was visible in the passenger window for a moment, and then it was gone from Behr’s peripheral vision and thoughts, his concentration fixed in front of him. He decided not to head home, but to go see Trevor instead.
Behr knocked on Susan’s door and entered to find her preparing dinner.
“Hey! You’re back,” she said, turning her face toward his for a kiss before resuming the chopping of red peppers. Even though they were living separately, they were doing their best to try to make it work. A wok was on low sizzle on the stove and smelled delicious.
“There he is,” Behr said, crossing to the Pack ’N Play where his son, Trevor, sat, banging away with a block on a shape-sorter toy. The boy smiled up at him. “That’s a triangle, son. It goes in this slot.” Behr helped him and the wooden piece dropped away, then he picked the boy up and turned toward Susan. “Trying to fit the wrong peg into the round hole—just like his old man.”
“He’s six months old, what’s your excuse?” Susan asked.
Behr didn’t answer and instead lifted Trevor, tossing him aloft, pretending to miss the catch, before grabbing him up. The boy squealed in delight. Behr stared into his eyes and thought of Tim, his first son, long gone now, as he did every time he saw Trevor. Surging joy and piercing pain mixed inside him. It was something he’d been unable to escape in the past six months and doubted he ever would.
“So how’d it go?” she asked.
“Good,” Behr said, turning toward her. “Weather was perfect. Les got a big one. I didn’t fill. But it was good.”
“All right, a long walk in the woods then,” she said.
“Pretty much,” Behr said, his attention pulled to the television,
which was tuned to the news. There were a slew of official vehicles behind Sandra Chapman, the reporter from WTHR, who was doing a stand-up from a familiar-looking park playground.
“Is that … that looks like Northwestway. What happened?”
Susan glanced over. “They found a body out there in the park. A woman. It’s been all over the news while you’ve been away.”
“Murder?” Behr asked.
“Yeah. Cut up in pieces. Awful.”
“Christ,” Behr said, turning away when the news switched back to the anchors and the next story, about a local high school basketball all-star team.
“I’m making stir-fry. You want to stay?”
“Sure.”
Behr sat at the table and bounced Trevor and watched Susan move about the kitchen as she finished preparing the meal. She was nearly back to her pre-baby weight, just a bit of extra fullness remained around her hips and breasts. Behr saw her wrestle with the cork on a bottle of Pinot Grigio.
“Trade you,” he said, handing her Trevor and opening the wine.
She poured and served, after putting the baby in a little bucket seat that rested on the table. Behr drank the white wine to keep her company even though he didn’t like it much. As they ate, they talked almost solely of Trevor and his activities and accomplishments, like rolling over and commando crawling, which were limited but endlessly fascinating to them. They finished eating and cleared the dishes, and then gave the boy a bath together. She fixed the milk while Behr read him
Show Me Your Toes
. Then Behr fed the boy the bottle, passing him back to Susan so she could burp him and put him down.
When all was quiet and they’d closed the door to his room, Susan bumped up against Behr in the hall with intent. He put his hand behind her head and pulled her in for a kiss. He tasted the wine on her lips and felt her respond. Soon they found their way to her bedroom and their clothes came off.
Afterward, once they’d dozed for a while, Behr’s mind returned to a state of restlessness. It was the crossroads moment of whether
to head home or to stay where he was and try to go to sleep for the night. None of this was unexpected. A cycle of domestic bliss that came to its ultimate, restive end was their routine of late. Another moment passed and Behr extricated his arm from beneath her and swung his feet to the floor.
“You have an early morning?” Susan asked from half slumber as he dressed.
“They’re all early,” he said. It was true. Even though he wasn’t currently working cases, his nights often dragged on late before he managed to get in bed, and he was up long before the sun.
“Lock the door on the way out,” she said.
“Yep,” Behr said, bending and kissing her on top of the head. He stopped in Trevor’s room. It smelled of baby lotion and diaper ointment. He stood over the boy and watched his tiny chest rise and fall rhythmically. Behr reached in and touched his son’s hair, which was smooth as corn silk, and then he left.
Irvington is quiet in the light of the moon. The streets that had been so busy in the morning now sleep. But he drives the grid, letting the layout of the neighborhood sink deep into his cortex: the houses and small apartment buildings, the alleys and cul-de-sacs, the fences, the garbage cans and detached garages. He turns onto East Lowell and thinks of her, his little Cinnamon, walking along with her cigarette. As he passes by the homes, only a few with lights on, a few others with televisions glowing behind window shades, he wonders in which one she lives. He’ll find out. It will take days or weeks, but it will happen eventually. It’s a question of luck and timing, of schedules and effort invested.
He’s seen enough for now. It is time to clear out, but he can’t go home. Not yet. Instead he steers north toward the airfield and parks in the near-empty lot of Lover’s Lane. The adult bookstore’s red neon sign shines down on the hood of his car. He gets out and whiffs the jet fuel on the cold night air, and then he goes inside, where the chemical smell of bleached filth takes its place.
There are only a few people shopping at this hour—two other men around his age, and one much older. The clerk strokes his ponytail, a worn paperback copy of
Game of Thrones
facedown on the counter, as he speaks to the only other customers, a young couple who already have their cylindrical purchase in a black plastic bag.
He moves past them into the store, beyond the expensive lingerie
and high-heel shoes, down the rows of DVDs and sex toys. The shop is a little high-end for his taste, but there aren’t many like it left anymore. The Internet has replaced them and threatens to render them obsolete altogether, just like it will do to people one day. But he’s grown up with magazines, and they are still what he prefers, and this is where to get them. He thinks of the hundreds he has in his garage, maybe a thousand. The frozen images and the slick feel of the paper in his hands bring him back to his childhood. He still remembers the day when he was eight years old and discovered the cache of blue magazines at Grandfather’s house. His young body and mind had exploded in excitement at the sight of the pages.
All the pretty women, with their cone-shaped breasts and tight-fitting girdles, standing with a leg up on the bed, or bent over chairs, as they looked back at the camera. His heart had pounded at the images. He understood then, deeply and immediately, that it would always be the images for him. What he didn’t understand was what the magazines were doing there in Grandfather’s study in the first place. Did
Grandfather
look at them? The question didn’t stay in his mind long, because soon, mixed in with the others, he’d discovered some old-school crime journals.
Startling Detective, True Crime, Police Tales
. They were even better than the porno books.
While he didn’t dare take the nudie magazines, he had cadged two issues of
Detective Dragnet
. Leather-gloved hands were wrapped around the neck of a startled-looking young blonde in her underwear on the cover of one issue. He had to have it, and another with a similar scene. He was shocked and relieved that Grandfather had never discovered them missing or at least hadn’t pursued where they’d gone.
But then, weeks later, Mother had. She thought he’d stolen them from a newsstand, and he’d kept Grandfather’s secret.
You little thief …
Then came the smack and thump of her open hand.
You little thief …
His head hit the wall.
You little thief …
It went on. Oh, how it had gone on.
He didn’t cry at the beating, he never did, even though that made Mother go after him worse, and he hadn’t been able to get out of bed and go to school for a week afterward. But it was worth it.
There is a jingle as the young couple exits the shop. He reaches the “literature” section, passes by what he doesn’t want,
Hustler, Genesis, Club
, and the like—fluffy crap—and then rounds the aisle and finds what he is looking for: the vintage stuff.
Stalked, Captured
, and
Fettered
. He waits for the familiar flutter in his stomach, the tingle in his limbs, at the sight of the buxom young women on the covers, shackled, gagged, staring pleadingly out at the reader. The colors are supersaturated, the lighting stark and procedural. The images pop in a highly detailed way. His reaction to the covers has hardly waned over the years. He gathers up a few issues he doesn’t already own and goes to the register to pay.
While the clerk makes change of his fifty-dollar bill, his hand goes into his pocket and his fingers slide around the smooth souvenir there. It was white once, years ago, but has aged down from exposure to air and his touch. He used to carry the piece every day, though now he takes it out only when he’s feeling a certain way. It is a length of bone, the first proximal phalange from someone very special that he’d known briefly long ago. It is both a reminder of the past and a promise of the future.
“Have a good night,” the clerk says, perhaps recognizing him from his other visits, perhaps not. At some point he needs to stop coming to places like this. There are cameras and it isn’t wise to continue. Of course, he’s thought that for years and years and nothing has happened, nothing has changed. The fact is: he’s invisible.
“Thank you,” he says to the clerk.
He leaves the store and heads for home.