Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

After muscling her way out of the car, nestled in twenty feet of opaque water, she’d tried to swim to the surface but couldn’t-too much weight from her clothes and shoes. So she’d clawed her way to the rocks at the shore and scrabbled upward, desperate hands gripping whatever they could find, feet kicking. She’d hit the surface and sucked in air.

Now, she told herself, get out. Move.

Brynn pulled up hard. But got only a few inches. No part of her body was working the way it should and her wet clothes must’ve boosted her weight by fifty pounds. Her hands slipped on the slime and she went under again. Grabbed another rock. Pulled herself up to the surface.

Her vision blurred and she started to lose her grip on a rock. Then forced her muscles to attention. “I’m not dying here.” She believed she actually growled the words aloud. Brynn finally managed to swing her legs up and found a ledge with her left foot. The right one joined in and finally she eased herself onto the shore. She rolled through debris-metal and glass, and red and clear plastic-into a pile of rotting leaves and branches, surrounded by cattails and tall, rustling grasses. The cold air hurt worse than the water.

They’ll be coming. Of course, those two men’ll be coming after her. They wouldn’t know exactly where the car went in but they could find out easily enough.

You have to move.

Brynn climbed to her knees and tried crawling. Too slow. Move! She stood and immediately fell over. Her legs wouldn’t cooperate. In panic she wondered if she’d broken a bone and couldn’t feel the injury because of the cold. She frisked herself. Nothing seemed shattered. She rose again, steadied herself and staggered in the direction of Lake View Drive.

Her face throbbed. She touched the hole in her cheek, and with her tongue probed the gap where the molar had been. Winced. Spat more blood.

And my jaw. My poor jaw. Thinking of the impact that had cracked it years ago, and later the terrible wire, the liquid meals, the plastic surgery.

Was all that cosmetic work ruined?

Brynn wanted to cry.

The ground here was steep, rocky. Narrow stalks-willow, maple and oak-grew out of the angular ground horizontally but obeying nature turned immediately skyward. Using them as grips, she pulled herself up the hill, toward Lake View Drive. The moon, neatly sliced in half, was casting some light now and she looked behind her for the Glock. But if it had flown from the car before the dive, the weapon, perfectly camouflaged for a dark night, was nowhere to be seen.

She picked up a rock shaped a bit like an ax head. Gazed at the weapon manically.

Then Brynn recalled finding Joey bloody and gasping after eighth-grader Carl Bedermier had challenged him after school. Acting by rote, from her medical training, she’d examined the wounds, pronounced him fine and then said, “Honey, there are times to fight and times to run. Mostly, you run.”

So what the hell are you doing? she now snapped to herself, staring at the chunk of granite in her hand.

Run.

She dropped the rock and continued up the incline to the private road. As she neared the top her foot slipped, dislodging an avalanche of shale and gravel. It fell in a huge clatter. Brynn dropped to her belly, smelling compost and wet rock.

But no one came running. She wondered if the men were deafened themselves from the shooting.

Probably. Guns are much louder than people think.

Move fast while you can still take advantage of it.

Another few feet. Then ten. Twenty. The ground leveled some and she could move faster. Eventually she was at Lake View Drive. She saw no one on it and crossed fast, then rolled into a ditch on the far side, hugging herself and gasping.

No. Don’t stop.

She thought of a high-speed chase last year. Bart Pinchett in his Mustang GT, yellow as yolk.

“Why didn’t you pull over?” she’d muttered, ratcheting the cuffs on. “You knew we’d get you sooner or later.”

He’d lifted a surprised eyebrow. “Well, long as I was moving, I was still a free man.”

Brynn rolled to her knees and stood. She slogged up the hill away from the road and into the trees, plunging into a field of tall yellow and brown grass.

Ahead of her, two or three hundred yards or so, she saw the silhouette of the house at 2 Lake View. As earlier, it was dark. Would the telephone be on? Did they even have a telephone?

Brynn gave a brief prayer that they would. Then she looked around her. No sign of the attackers. She shook her head again, swiveling it from side to side until the second water bead burst.

Which made the sudden sound-footfalls charging through the grass directly toward her-all the more vivid.

Brynn gasped and started to sprint away from Hart or his partner, maybe both, when a forsythia branch caught her foot and she went down hard, breathlessly hard, in a tangle of branches, which were covered with yellow buds bright as you’d see on wallpaper in a baby’s bedroom.

THEY WERE DRIVING back from Rita’s, a mile away. It seemed to Graham that every place in Humboldt was a mile away from every other place.

He’d brought Joey along-didn’t want to leave him alone, because of the skateboard injury, even if he was “fine,” and because he’d ditch homework for video games, instant messaging and MySpace on the computer and texting from his iPhone. The boy wasn’t crazy about picking up his grandmother but he was in pretty good humor as he sat in the backseat and text-messaged a friend-or half the school, to judge from the volume of his keyboarding.

They collected Anna and headed back home. There, Joey charged upstairs, taking the steps several at a time.

“Homework,” Graham called.

“I will.”

The phone rang.

Brynn? he wondered. No. A name he didn’t recognize on caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Hi. This’s Mr. Raditzky, Joey’s central section advisor.”

Middle school was a lot different nowadays, Graham reflected. He’d never had advisors. And “central section” sounded like a communist spy organization.

“Graham Boyd. I’m Brynn’s husband.”

“Sure. How you doing?”

“Good, thanks.”

“Is Ms. McKenzie there?”

“She’s out, I’m afraid. Can I take a message? Or can I help you?”

Graham had always wanted children. He made his living with plants but he had an innate desire to nurture more than that. His first wife had decided against motherhood, suddenly and emphatically-and well into the marriage. Which was a big disappointment to Graham. He believed he had instinctive skills for parenting and his radar was picking up early warning signals from Mr. Raditzky’s tone.

“Well, I want to talk to you about something… Did you know Joey cut school today? And that he was ’phalting.” Something faintly accusatory in the tone.

“Cut school? No, he was there. I dropped him off myself. Brynn had to be at work early.”

“Well, he did cut, Mr. Boyd.”

Graham fought the urge to deny. “Go on, please.”

“Joey came to central section this morning, gave me a note that he had a doctor’s appointment. And left at ten. It was signed by Ms. McKenzie. But after we heard he hurt himself, I checked in the office. It wasn’t her signature. He forged it.”

Graham now experienced the same unexpected alarm he’d felt last summer while wheeling a plant across a customer’s yard, not realizing he’d rolled it over a yellow jackets nest. Blithe and happy, enjoying the day, unaware that the threat had already been unleashed and dozens of attackers were on their way.

“Oh.” He looked up in the direction of the boy’s bedroom. From it came the muted sounds of a video game.

Homework…

“And what else did you say? ‘Defaulting’?”