Behr left the ER with twenty-two stitches in his arm, instructions not to work out for five days, a prescription for Vicodin, and a blister pack of samples. Besides that, he felt like he had nothing else in his life but his case. The medical resident who had sewn him up had been curious about the nature of the injury, and he’d kept asking even after Behr had told him, truthfully, that a carpet knife had caused it. Behr had expected this, so while he was waiting he’d placed his wallet, open to reveal his retired police tin and P.I. license, on the bedside table next to his phone and keys. The doctor’s eyes finally found the small badge, and he stopped asking and finished with the sutures.
Behr wasn’t prone to carrying his gun regularly. The places he generally went weren’t that dangerous, and he was big and trained and willing and able to defend himself physically. But there was a moment he reached on certain cases when the time came to start carrying a weapon. That’s where he found himself now. In some ways he wished he’d made the decision before the moment with Prilo in the warehouse. He wouldn’t have any stitches in his arm. But then Prilo would be dead, and Trevor would have been with him and in the middle of all that, so perhaps it had worked out as well as it could have.
With the Vicodin sample in his bloodstream, and the exchange with Prilo rattling around in his head, Behr found himself in his car texting Lisa Mistretta, and then he found himself in front of her door with a bottle of Patrón Silver under his good arm.
“You must be starting to get the impression that I don’t have anything to do with my nights,” she said. “And you might not be wrong.”
“The way I keep showing up, you must be pretty sure I’m in the same boat.”
She was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt with her hair pulled back. She let him in and didn’t say anything when he took off his coat, revealing his bandaged arm. They were in the kitchen with drinks before either spoke again.
“You were right, I was wrong,” Behr said.
“You’re gonna find that’s a trend.” She smiled. “About what?”
“About Prilo,” Behr said. “He’s no good for this.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
Behr shrugged.
“Get the fuck out!” she said. “You talked to him?”
“Oh, it was some kind of talk,” Behr said, as he saw her eyes go to his injury.
“He did that to you?” she asked. Behr nodded.
“Stabbed you?”
“Cut me.”
“Tell me everything.”
She poured fresh drinks, and Behr relayed the details of the fight, her eyes flickering with excitement that she barely tried to hide. She poured refills, and they moved to the living room couch and got to the start of the “interview.”
“What’d he know?” she asked.
“Everything,” Behr said. “Nothing, as far as hard facts, nothing about Kendra Gibbons, but everything about our guy and what he’s doing.”
“Fuck me …” she said, for the first time of the evening, and shook her head and sipped her drink as her mind ran.
“He confirmed a repeat signature killer at work, and your assessment about the type.”
“He used the same language?”
“Not as academic as yours, but he’s got a PhD too, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“He said whoever’s doing this is putting the bodies out there, but also putting himself out there,” Behr said.
“He craves the attention.”
“That’s what Prilo said. He’s making a relationship with the world.”
She nodded, deep in thought, and they both fell silent.
“Hey, Behr,” she said, looking up. “How did you get him talking? After you fought and you choked him out. You kind of glossed over that part. I don’t imagine he was real willing.”
“No, he was pretty reluctant …”
“So?”
“Well, I had his hammer in my hand,” Behr said. “And he got convinced.”
That’s when he saw a desire in her eyes that matched the hunger he felt deep inside him. Their bodies came together. She was electric, her body supple and charged. She tasted like tequila and lime squeeze. Their mouths and hands were all over each other, and they started on the couch but weren’t finished until they’d moved to her room and destroyed her bed too. Afterward, Behr lay there in a tangle of sheets, her hair and her smell, drunk and happy and miserable all at once.
Sometime later, it could have been hours, neither of them sleeping, he heard her voice in the darkness and felt her fingers on the mottled buckshot scars along his collarbone.
“Would you have done it? You know, with his hammer …”
The question floated there in the air for a moment. He knew better than to answer it.
“I should go,” he said and started to move.