City of the Sun Read Online Free PDF Page A

for was a body turning up and ending the waiting. He stood without thinking further and crossed the squad room. He caught the man just as he neared the door.
    “Excuse me, Mr. Gabriel?”
    “Yes?” The man stopped and regarded him. A low-wattage flicker of recognition came to his face. “Oh, yeah, how are you, Officer?”
    “I took your statement a while back. Good while back. I’ve looked into your son’s case …”
    “Yes?” A hunger leaped into Gabriel’s eyes. “Have you found out anything about it?”
    Carriero chided himself for his careless phrasing. “No, I … I don’t know quite how to say it without seeming disloyal.” He stopped. He knew this wasn’t team play, not good for business, as they say, but he couldn’t help it.
    The father looked at him pleadingly.
    “There’s a man. He’s an investigator. I used to work with him. It can cost some money, but he’s … I don’t know what good it’ll do, but personal attention to this might be worth the cost.” He held out a worn business card. “He may not even be available,” the young patrolman continued, “but you never know.”
    Paul felt himself deflate. He was hoping for some hard information, but a business card just didn’t help right now. His thought was to tell the officer about the two investigators they’d already tried, the sizable piece of their nest egg that they’d gladly spent but which had yielded only monthly meetings at a coffee shop as the investigators tried to pad their lack of results in thickly worded, laser-printed reports. Instead he just took the business card.
    “Thanks. I better find my wife.” Paul pocketed the card and went off after her.
    Carol sat, nearly catatonic, in the darkened living room. Night descended silently without her even noticing. The only light in the room flickered from the silent television. Her fragility was such that any disappointment at all had a gross weight and power.
    The door opened and Paul walked in with Tater on a leash. He unclipped the dog, then walked over and switched off the television.
    “Carol, let’s go on up to bed.”
    Though she seemed not to hear him, she got up and walked toward the stairs, with Paul right behind her.
    At the foot of the steps, Paul clicked on the switch illuminating the front of the house for Jamie, as they did every night.
    Carol looked at him and then turned off the lights before going up.
     
FOUR
     
    PAUL SKIRTED THE CITY and its afternoon traffic, taking County Line until he hit Mitchner. Indianapolis was only a couple hours’ drive from where he and Carol had gone to college, and also from where they’d grown up, and he had originally been drawn to the city for its many corporate and technological parks full of businesses and executives to whom he could sell insurance. The chance to buy a house of his own on a tree-lined street was an added bonus back then. Now he worked his way south into Warren and neared the Windemere Homes neighborhood, where the streets had been getting drab for the last several minutes. Lawns were not well tended there during the summer, much less in midwinter. Shrubbery was nonexistent. Most houses were on the one-more-year plan as far as repainting went. Even though the address was all the way out, Paul had decided to drive over without calling first. He couldn’t bring himself to go through it all over the phone, and this way, if he changed his mind at any point, he could just drive on.
    He glanced over at the copy of Jamie’s file resting on the passenger seat. He checked the worn business card in his right hand as he drove. Frank Behr, the investigator’s name, had been familiar, but he hadn’t been able to place why, so he had Googled the man’s name. What came back was a story he remembered reading many years ago.
    A man named Herb Bonnet, who worked at a trucking company, had become aware of the smuggling and selling of stolen farm equipment, and money laundering, by the owners of the company. Bonnet