Signature Kill (14 page)

Behr was parked across the street watching through binoculars. When he had arrived at the address, Behr had figured Prilo wasn’t in. There were no lights on in the house, no car in the driveway, so Behr had waited. With his cooler packed with sandwiches and drinks, he had sat for three hours. The day before, he’d called Center City Rapid, the local trucking company for which Prilo had worked since his release and since he couldn’t drive long haul anymore due to parole restrictions. A helpful routing manager had e-mailed Behr Prilo’s routes, so Behr checked them against murder sites while he sat. Neither the body-dump locations nor the places where victims were last seen mirrored the delivery routes exactly, but they were certainly close enough for a motivated individual to have diverted off course and visited. It could have all taken place during nonworking hours too. And Prilo didn’t have such a busy driving schedule that he didn’t also have a lot of free time. His schedule was part-time, patchy at best.

After about an hour and fifteen minutes inside, Prilo reemerged from his place, this time without the canvas tool bag, but still wearing the gloves.

What are those for, huh, buddy?
Behr said aloud, starting his car and taking up a loose tail. Behr followed as Prilo drove around seemingly aimlessly for about half an hour. Finally, Prilo pulled into a Marsh’s parking lot and went inside. Behr considered following him in, but thought it was a bit aggressive, not to mention pointless. He didn’t need to surveil the guy browsing produce. Twenty minutes later Prilo emerged with several plastic grocery bags and Behr followed him home. It was dark by then, and Behr did a gut check before digging in to sit for the night. The idea that on night one Prilo would emerge and Behr would follow him on a body dump was beyond a long shot, but he had never succeeded at anything without adding a few layers of leather to his ass. So Behr sat and froze and reflected and grew bored and cramped and sat some more. He thought about the victims, and Mary Beth Watney, and Susan, and Trevor, and money, and Kendra Gibbons, and Lisa Mistretta. He thought about her too much. And while Behr went through three Red Bulls, Prilo didn’t go anywhere.

At 7:20 in the clear morning, Prilo broke the monotony by exiting his house with his tool bag. Behr followed as Prilo drove to the Center City Rapid lot and picked up a Mitsubishi Fuso light-duty box truck. Then Behr trailed along as his subject made a pickup of cardboard boxes at a computer company and drove them to a long-range trucking firm’s yard before off-loading them. There were a few more pickups and drops, but by then Behr was so tired he was ready to drive into a telephone pole, so he called it.

Years back Behr could sit surveillance for three days straight before breaking, but right now he needed to sleep and piss and not in that order. That was getting old, all boiled down. Behr got home and regrouped and slept and he was back on Prilo’s house by 5:30 that evening, in time to see the man moving about his kitchen. It was another night in for Prilo, another sitting outside for Behr, and the next day passed in the same way as well.

Behr was home the next morning, hurrying to get himself organized
and go back to work on Prilo after a quick shower, when his phone rang. It was Susan.

“Day care’s got an infestation of bedbugs.”

“Really? That’s nasty,” Behr said. “Where’d they come from?”

“Funny, they didn’t say,” Susan said, “but I’ve got work. Can you take Trevor? You haven’t seen him in days.”

It was the truth. He hadn’t seen Trevor since the boy had gone to his grandparents’ for the weekend. He hadn’t seen Susan since their conversation in bed, and his subsequent moment with Lisa Mistretta. He knew himself better than to pretend it was a coincidence.

He had to get back on Prilo, but he had no choice.

“I’ll be over to get him,” Behr said and hung up.

Even though it wasn’t by the book, Behr ran the heater on stakeout now. Because while it was one thing to leave an infant strapped into a car seat with toys and an iPod playing “Baby Einstein,” it was going a little far to freeze him too.

After collecting Trevor, Behr had managed to get back to Prilo’s place in time to pick him up going to work. He’d followed him on his routes for a while, before Prilo returned his truck and got in his personal car. He then returned home for several hours.

Along with a wave of happiness, Behr felt like an asshole every time he glanced back in the rearview, or turned around to give Trevor a bottle, but he just couldn’t bring himself to break off the sit. Trevor was a trouper too: he hardly complained while in his seat, or lying on the backseat while Behr changed his diaper. The kid had sitting surveillance in his blood. Maybe it really was hereditary.

Trevor was napping in his car seat and Behr was calculating the cost of things like orthodontia and college when Prilo hurried out of his house, got in his car, and screeched away.

Interesting development
, Behr thought, and tailed him out east to some warehouses on 30th Street. The buildings were abandoned low-slung brick jobs that stretched for several hundreds of yards. There were no lights showing through from inside rows of casement
windows that were broken in a pattern resembling a jack-o’-lantern’s smile. The parking lot was deserted, too, when Prilo pulled in. Behr slowed to a stop out on the road on the other side of the fence and used his binoculars to see Prilo park, root around in his trunk for something, and then head inside the partially open loading bay of one of the buildings.

Something’s going down inside that building
.

Behr felt it. And he needed to know what. He sat there for a long moment considering what he should do. He could wait for Prilo to come out and resume the tail. Or he could peel off and take Trevor to Susan now, but that would be twenty-five or thirty minutes round-trip without counting time for explanations. He could call the cops and have them come down and enter the building and see what they found. The problem was: he didn’t even know what to call in.

Man with a dark past inside a building?
Behr glanced back in the rearview mirror and saw that Trevor had nodded off to sleep. He put the car in gear, took his foot off the brake, and eased into the lot.

Behr drove down near the loading bays and saw the door Prilo had entered through was suspended partially open by some tangled chain. He couldn’t see very far inside due to the darkness, but all looked quiet. He took another look in the rearview. Trevor was still asleep. Behr turned up the heater, reached into the glove box for a Mini Maglite, and eased the car door open. He stepped out into the cold afternoon air and gentled the door shut. He moved away from his car, over the cracked asphalt toward the chest-high landing by the open mouth of the loading bay.

Clicking on the flashlight, Behr swept the beam around the loading bay. He saw nothing inside but some old, broken wooden pallets littering the floor. He put the flashlight between his teeth and vaulted himself up to the level of the bay, then crouched and went inside. Daylight behind him, Behr found himself in the half darkness of the defunct company’s shipping department. Abandoned racks and box chutes and more pallets were scattered about. He saw a set of stairs leading to a door that was slightly ajar, one that seemed to give entry into the main part of the building’s interior.

Behr looked back. He could still hear the hum of his running car engine, and if he bent his knees he could just see the hood. He felt a sense of dread in his next steps as his car went out of sight, but felt powerless to check the urge to advance. He walked a dozen more paces, then paused and listened. The engine was very faint, nearly inaudible now. The space smelled like bird shit, and he saw scores of pigeons lining the window ledges above him. He could no longer hear the car as he progressed into growing darkness. But his eyes adjusted to the low light and he continued. He cleared a towering set of storage racks and felt the first blow. Deep and numbing, a bolt of pain exploded in his upper back.

He stumbled forward, turning, and saw what it was: Jerold Allen Prilo, mouth clamped shut, coming at him with a claw hammer in one hand, a hook-bladed carpet knife in the other, and cold murder in his eyes. Most of the puffed-up pains in the ass that Behr dealt with in the course of his work were merely antisocial. They wanted to posture, bluff, and threaten on their way to working themselves up to actual violence. This was different. This encounter was
asocial
. Prilo came at him without a word, without a sound, his arms pinwheeling. He wasn’t trying to prove himself, or impress anything upon Behr. No, Prilo was trying to kill him.

Prilo advanced another few strides and Behr retreated. He knew this backing away would only result in failure, in his maiming or death, but he picked up a valuable piece of information as he did: Prilo was not light on his feet. The man’s work-boot-shod feet stomped straight forward with inchoate fury. Behr flashed desperately on Trevor, alone in the car, and what would happen to the boy should he be incapacitated, and should Prilo be the one to walk out of the warehouse. He lunged away at an angle, forcing Prilo to turn. Behr cut toward him and threw a looping overhand right, clipping Prilo below the ear. Prilo straightened and renewed his attack, swinging the claw hammer at Behr’s head. Behr tucked his chin behind his shoulder, taking the blow along his upper triceps, then wrapped Prilo’s hammer arm under his and stood up, straightening it and popping the capsule of the elbow.

Prilo grunted in pain, and Behr heard the pleasing sound of the
hammer coming loose and hitting the floor with a steel-on-concrete clang.

He won’t be chopping anybody up with
that
arm for a while
, Behr thought.

But before he could react further, Prilo took the opportunity to slash at Behr’s face with the knife in his remaining good hand. Behr managed to get his arm up to block it, but took the blade along the outside of his forearm. The cut was long and somewhat deep and Behr sucked in breath between clenched teeth. Only the sleeve of his thick canvas coat saved it from being disastrous. Behr had kept Prilo’s arm wrapped under his and used it to jerk the man into two punches, and was happy to discover his slashed arm was still functioning. He used it to neutralize Prilo’s knife hand by gripping the wrist, and drove a knee to the body that doubled Prilo over. Behr quickly enclosed Prilo’s neck in an arm-in guillotine choke. It was solid and deep and Prilo was able to fight on for only another moment before dropping to his knees. This allowed Behr to increase his leverage and sink the choke in deeper. He felt his surgically repaired collarbone grind and strain, but hold. Then Behr took a risk and released the choke and Prilo’s arm, shifting to a straight guillotine. He regripped and cranked the choke hold. The pain in his sliced arm was intense, but he tried to ignore it as a distressed gurgling noise emitted from Prilo, and within seconds the man went limp and was facedown on the concrete and out.

Behr released him and stood, sucking in air. He kicked away the carpet knife and picked up the hammer, then found blood soaking down his pant leg, but on the opposite side from the arm that had been cut. He rolled Prilo over and saw the source: Prilo’s tongue had been caught out and stuck between his teeth. The tremendous pressure the choke put on his jaw had taken a chunk out of it. Blood poured from his mouth. Behr slapped him, and Prilo came back to consciousness sputtering and gagging.

Behr got him by the front of his shirt and jacket with his left hand, holding the hammer in his right.

“What the fuck?” Behr said.

“You broke my arm,” Prilo said, drooling and spitting blood.
Even with the lacerated tongue Behr could pick up a bit of southern Indiana or even Missouri twang in Prilo’s speech.

“Dislocated the elbow. May not be broke,” Behr said, trying to gather his faculties and ask a reasonable question.

“What you want?” Prilo asked,

“What are you doing in here?”

“Who are you? You not a cop,” Prilo said, more blood falling out of his mouth.

“No, I’m not,” Behr said.

“You a relative?”

“Of who?”

“Of hers,” Prilo said, and suddenly Behr knew whom he was talking about: Mary Beth Watney, Prilo’s victim.

“No.”

“You been following me.”

“You set me up for an ambush,” Behr said. “What do you use this place for?”

“Nothing. I just ’membered it from delivering here before it closed. You been following me,” Prilo said again.

“I want to know about you and Kendra Gibbons,” Behr demanded.

“Who?” Prilo asked.

“Kendra Gibbons. Young blond girl. Prostitute. Disappeared eighteen months ago. Don’t give me the dumb act.”

“I don’t know nothing about her,” Prilo said. “What do you think I am?”

“I know what you are,” Behr said into Prilo’s face. “You’re a goddamned murderer of women. And I think you murdered Kendra Gibbons.”

“It wasn’t me,” Prilo said.

A moment passed with only the sound of their breathing. Behr felt blood running down his arm as he stared into the eyes of a killer. But he’d killed too, and he wondered for an instant what Prilo saw staring back.

“Telling you: it wasn’t me.”

Prilo’s denial sounded truthful. But there was something else behind his words that resembled knowledge. Ordinarily Behr could
take his time. He could strap the guy to a chair and interrogate him. He could hold him or call the cops. Or throw him in the trunk and drive him into the woods and make him think he was going to be executed. But Behr had no time for that. His body and soul were split in half—one side needing to go to Trevor, in the car alone, but the other desperate to know what Prilo knew. He wanted to go check on his son, but he wasn’t about to leave Prilo, and he wasn’t going to bring him along and show him he had the boy there either. He had to hurry, and he considered crushing the bones of Prilo’s face in order to get him talking, and raised the hammer.

“Don’t give me that bullshit. Tell me what you know about the dead women turning up in this town or you’ll never leave this fucking warehouse.” Behr smacked him across the head with the side of the hammer. There was a dull thud as unyielding steel met skull. Prilo lurched over to the side, gulping air through his bloody mouth. Behr straightened him up. “What do you know?” he demanded.