City of the Sun by David Levien Read Free Book Online Page A

what they were now and that God
had
judged. They were nights of sin and she was being punished for them.
    There was something about the way the man punched. He wasn’t trained. He didn’t have form. He moved around the bag flat-footed and didn’t put his full weight behind his shots. But there was real emotional content in his blows and no quit in his routine.
    “You’re carrying your hands too low. Your jaw’s open for a counter-right.”
    Paul Gabriel dropped his hands all the way, stepped around the edge of the bag, and saw that it was the detective, Behr, standing in the open door of the garage.
    “That happens when you only practice on a bag without leather coming back at you.”
    Gabriel shrugged, pulling off his gloves. He did throw both hands with commitment, that was the important thing, and Behr supposed that at this point the man didn’t much care if he was open to countershots.
    “Mr. Behr. I didn’t expect to see you. How’d you find me?” Paul stepped toward him.
    Behr shook his head. Gabriel nodded. Stupid question.
    “Make it Frank. You still want to do this?”
    Gabriel did nothing, said nothing, but his whole being answered in the affirmative.
    “I read the file. Your son’s dead. That’s the assumption we’ll have to work from.”
    Gabriel breathed deeply and braced himself against the diamond-hard words.
    “I’ve been coming to grips with that.” The truth was, he’d been trying to come to grips with that since the beginning but was unwilling to come any closer to doing so without
knowing
. “My interest is in finding who did it, learning something about it. It’s the only way we’ll be able to make peace with the situation.”
    “No promises. No guarantees,” Behr said.
    “No, sir.”
    They shook hands, Behr’s mitt enclosing Paul’s wrapped hand. “Call me Paul.”
    “Paul.”
    “My wife’s inside. Come meet her.”
    The abandoned heavy bag swung slowly as the dust motes settled in the garage.
     
SEVEN
     
    IT WAS WORSE than he thought. Behr was on a comfortable chair in the couple’s living room. He had a half-downed cup of coffee next to him and a photo album on his lap. The parents sat across from him silently, watching, waiting, and doing the one thing he told them not to do, and knew they couldn’t help: hoping.
    “A case like this is a huge slippery wall that’s tough to get a grip on,” Behr said. He could see that the first time he’d read the file. He selected a batch of photos of the boy, Jamie, spanning a period of years, and carefully removed them from the album.
    “The idea is that these might indicate a range, a projection of how he’s aged over the past year or so,” Behr volunteered. Paul and Carol nodded. He really needed the variety to show to coroners and cops who might’ve encountered a body in a condition that couldn’t be predicted. Maybe some tiny characteristic in one of the photos would correspond to what was left of the boy.
    “Now, you two don’t have any enemies, people who were looking to hurt you?” He knew it was unlikely but asked anyway. The couple’s faces were blank, and they looked at each other and grew even blanker. “Have you fired any domestic help, had a run-in in the workplace? You’re in insurance. Any angry beneficiaries who were denied payouts on policies?”
    “No. Nothing like that.”
    Behr nodded. The room went quiet. This was only the first of what was going to be many clipped, unsatisfying conversations. He knew it well, and also knew that there was no way around it.
    “I’ll need information on what he did. Where he went to school, his teachers. Did he play sports—”
    “He played soccer,” Paul said.
    “I’ll need his coach’s name, his teammates.” Behr spoke to the father, who nodded.
    Silence pressed into the room again. Behr realized they’d reached the part of the initial interview he dreaded most. The answer to his next question would reveal whether he was near the beginning or