City of the Sun by David Levien

socks, underwear. The bottom drawer housed folded dress shirts and two neckties. Beneath them, secreted, was a folded magazine photo of a full-breasted young blond singer wearing a brassiere top and a microphone that fit over her head like an air-traffic controller’s mouthpiece. She was covered in sweat and projected sex, youth, and innocence. There were also three packs of Black Cat firecrackers, but no scribbled notes or other information.
    Some light dust was under the bed, Behr saw, his mini Maglite slowly sweeping over it as if it were a lunar surface. There was a small boom box and some pop CDs. Eminem, Green Day, Korn, a strange three-course meal. Between the mattress and box spring he discovered a treasure, a Cal Ripken baseball card from his rookie season tucked inside a plastic sleeve. Finding nothing else, he tried to smooth out the bedding the way it had been.
    Behr sat on the small desk chair, testing its strength, and flipped quickly through the school-books on the desk. The notebooks were marked “Return to Jamie Gabriel — Room 102, Johnny Fricking Kennedy Middle School.” Behr pulled at his chin and looked through them. School exercises, personal notes, top-ten lists organizing and reorganizing the best professional athletes in each of their sports and combining them across sports. Kobe Bryant dueled with Dwayne Wade and Derek Jeter; Behr half smiled at Peyton Manning being crossed out two times and moved right to the top, and at what was written in for tenth place: “Tiger Wood.” There was nothing to indicate the boy had met anybody new or had plans to meet someone at the time of his disappearance.
    He turned on the computer and searched through documents, which were school papers on plankton, Paul Revere, and the like. He checked the scrap of paper that the parents had given him and signed on to America Online to review Jamie’s account. He found nothing beyond kidlike screen names in the boy’s e-mail address book. His favorite places list was made up of movie, music, sports, and car sites. Behr didn’t find any links to strange, or borderline, Web sites. Besides spam, there were no e-mails new, old, or to be sent, as they had been automatically deleted by the server long ago after so much inactivity. He made a note to himself to try to get access to the service provider archives. Behr signed off, shut down the computer, and sat back. He rubbed his face with his hand and stood.
    Carol and Paul still waited in the hall. They’d been standing there, frozen, for the whole forty minutes Behr had been in the boy’s room. As he walked out, they looked up at him, childlike in their anticipation. Behr shook his head and wrote a note in his notebook. They stood uncomfortably for a moment in the close quarters of the hallway.
    “Mr. Behr … Frank …” Carol finally said, her voice low but direct in the tortured air of the hall. “I want to explain how we felt … how we feel about our son. How we love him …” Time and her pain couldn’t completely hide her prettiness, Behr noticed, and when she stopped, unable to go on, he felt the urge to help her.
    “No need, ma’am,” he began, his voice low and rough. He went on despite himself. “I understand a bit of what you’re going through, having lost a son of my own. He died when he was seven.”
     
EIGHT
     
    BEHR CLIMBED into his Toronado and turned it over. The engine woke up hoarse then leveled. He drove away from the Gabriel house, surprised at himself for mentioning Tim to this couple he’d only known for a few minutes, his employers. He hadn’t gone into detail when they pursued it, but still, he had brought him up. And now, in the car, he found himself thinking about the events leading up to Tim’s death, trying for the thousandth time to untangle the knot they’d become.
    Behr crossed County Line and made a left toward Donohue’s, where he figured on a skirt steak and a Beck’s Dark while he reviewed his new case notes. He hoped