Free City of the Sun by David Levien Page A

involuntarily glanced toward the street. “Now I’m on the Internet and I get updates throughout the day,” he half heard Cranepool continue in the background. Behr refocused and asked half a dozen followups, to which Cranepool shook his head. Behr nodded his thanks and began backing off across the lawn the way he had come. Cranepool hurried inside with relief while Behr made his way to the street.
    Behr walked around the corner and imagined himself on a bike. He saw that the clearest shot at Cranepool’s front door was from where he stood on Perry
before
making the turn onto Tibbs. Behr brought his right arm across his chest and simulated a cross-body backhanded toss.
This is where you would throw it from
, he thought. Then he continued around the corner. It was another thirty yards to Mrs. Conyard’s house. Jamie had never made it that distance. This was the place. It slammed Behr in the chest. The familiar blackness that came with the realization that a horrible crime had occurred rushed up and tunneled around him.
This was the place
.
     
     
    Behr stood out on Tibbs between the Cranepool and Conyard houses for a long time. He knelt down near the asphalt, even brushed it with his fingertips, and looked into the oil stains like a seer. Had he glanced up, he would have seen Cranepool peering at the huge, threatening man from behind his kitchen curtain. When Behr finally stood, the cartilage in his knees cracked, and he remembered the jogger.
     
ELEVEN
     
    SOMETIMES THINGS HAPPENED QUICKLY on a case, other times not so at all. Usually it was like banging against a slab of rock with a sledgehammer. Tiny chips flew here and there but seemed to lead nowhere, and then
clunk
, the whole thing came apart. That moment was a long way off as Behr sat in the dark and steeled himself to search places on the Internet that should not exist, that would not exist in a decent world. He’d gone late into the previous nights checking the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Web sites and others. He’d found Jamie’s picture posted there among thousands, his just one of the awkward-sweet faces of the missing, though no leads were listed. But tonight Behr was going to a far worse place. Like a predator lurking in cyberspace, he began to locate the sites dedicated to child pornography. Though they were relatively few and hard to find, there were still far too many of them. Some offered censored thumbnails, hoping to entice buyers into the elaborate processes of passwords and protected downloads. Revulsion and sweat bathed the back of Behr’s neck as he clicked on sample pictures. They were shot in badly lit rooms, where faceless men penetrated drugged and frail young boys and girls. Black circles and digital buzz-outs did little to mask what was going on. Behr felt his gorge rise but went on as best he could, trying to determine if any of the vacant-eyed youths were Jamie. Cold feverish rage grew within him. It took all of his will to restrain himself from smashing every single thing in his house. He wanted to barehand kill every one of the pale, flabby-bodied men on his computer screen. As a cop he’d encountered all manner of street filth, degenerates, and psychopaths. He’d seen corpses that had suffered grisly fates and living victims who had suffered worse, but none of it had the power to numb him to this. He went later and later into the night, discovering societies that advocated physical
love
— their word for it — between adults and children, until he went bleary-eyed. As he willed himself on, the unimaginable happened at four A.M. His own son appeared to him like a revenant. Tim’s face began to appear superimposed over those of the young victims. It made his skin crawl, his scalp boil, and his blood surge in his temples. He found himself weak with rage. Sour vomit filled the back of his throat, and he barely reached the bathroom in time.
    Behr was back on Tibbs before six A.M. the next morning, looking