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and was trying to shake the club down when words led to a fight and he caught two in the lung from his own backup piece, a .380 auto he wore on his ankle. There was no reason for Behr to have been there backing him up, but his lieutenant, Pomeroy, didn’t make this distinction. He said, unofficially but widely, that a cop’s always got to have his partner’s back. It was also known, unofficially but widely, that Ed Polk was the lieutenant’s cousin. Behr became a pariah and things started to unravel.
    He strained to the top of the hill for the tenth time, sweat jumping off his brow like grease from a hot pan. Making a hopeless attempt to solve a case his old boss couldn’t was just one reason not to take on this kind of work, he thought. What the case would do to him because of his own past was another.
     
     
    There were days of stillness, stretches of inertia. Sections of calendar passed when Paul felt he hadn’t moved one foot in front of the other. The house had become a crypt. He and Carol were mirrors that reflected each other’s grief, intensifying the pain and futility until it was almost searing.
    They tried to create positive momentum by attending some local encounter groups for the relatives of missing persons. Those in attendance would stand and speak of their loved ones (always in the past tense, as was the rule), giving the details of their particular story. It wasn’t so that others there could provide any help or information. The theory was that by intoning the events, one could gain power over them. Denial of the situation, clinging to the idea that the loved one was going to return — these were supposed to dissipate. Healing was supposed to ensue. Paul quickly came to dread the meetings. Withered, they sat in stale church basements, in classrooms after hours, like dead trees or tombstones. They poured coffee down their throats, not tasting it, chewed doughnuts, not tasting them. Everyone was missing somebody. Sons, daughters, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers. Where were they? The reasons for the disappearances were criminal, medical, accidental. But where were they? They were just gone. Carol seemed better after the meetings. Perhaps the sense of community helped her, or perhaps it was the forced talk that made her come alive momentarily. But he had felt it start to work on him, felt his belief that Jamie was coming back start to ebb, and that drove him away for good. He ceased going and returned to stillness.
    There were days, too, of motion. Bursts of activity. The yard — mowed, weeded, seeded, watered. After weeks of neglect. The car — lubed, washed, waxed. After months of dirty buildup. He began to stay out of the house, selfish as that was. It had surprised him at first, this instinct in himself. But he pursued it and took to spending long hours at work. He managed to get busy and sell policies with no problem, forgetting the terrible state of his real life. As he gave his regular pitch about being prepared for the unexpected, he could read the faces of those clients who knew his story. The worst
could
happen. The policies sold themselves.
    The most unseemly aspect of his behavior, he knew, was his staying away from Carol, but he couldn’t help it. To this end he bought and hung a heavy bag in the garage, so even when he was home he still wasn’t at home. He began punching it daily, making it swing and shriek on its chain. He pounded out his rage and pain in hourlong bursts. In that bag he saw the faces of anonymous attackers, drunk drivers, predators, who had come for Jamie. He lashed out at the formlessness. The dark leather of his bag gloves grew streaky white with sweat salt and creaked around his fists. After three weeks he felt some of the flab begin to melt away from his once rangy 195-pound frame. Forgotten muscles rose to the surface despite themselves. But most of all he punched to escape the weakness inside of him, a softness he knew was there and couldn’t eliminate.
    Behr