Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

The young woman winced.

“You hurt?” Brynn asked.

“My ankle. I fell.”

Brynn had run plenty of trauma calls. She unzipped the woman’s boots-made in Italy, she noticed-and examined the joint through her black knee-highs. It didn’t look badly hurt. A sprain probably; thank God it wasn’t broken. She saw a gold ankle bracelet that probably equaled a half dozen of Brynn’s and Graham’s car payments.

The young woman stared toward the Feldmans’ house. Chewing her lip.

“What’s your name?”

“Michelle.”

“I’m Brynn McKenzie.”

“Brynn?”

A nod. She usually didn’t explain its derivation. “I’m a deputy with the county sheriff’s office.” She explained about the 911 call. “You know who they are, those men?”

“No.”

Brynn whispered, her voice growing more distorted, “Need to figure out what to do. Tell me what happened.”

“I met Emma after work and we picked up Steve and all drove up together. Got here about five, five-thirty. I went upstairs-I was going to take a shower-and I heard these bangs. I thought the stove exploded or something. Or somebody dropped something. I didn’t know. I ran downstairs and saw two men. They didn’t see me. One of them’d put down his gun. It was on the table near the stairs. I just picked it up. They were in the kitchen, standing over the…over the bodies, talking. Just looking down and they had this expression on their faces.” She shut her eyes. Whispered, “I can’t even describe it. They were, like, ‘We shot them. Okay, no big deal. What’s next?’” Her voice cracked. “One of them, he was going through the refrigerator.”

As Brynn scanned the woods the young woman continued, forcing back tears, “I started to walk toward them. I wasn’t even thinking. I was, like, numb. And one of them-one had long hair and one had a crew cut-the one with the long hair started to turn and I guess I just pulled the trigger. It just happened. There was this bang… I don’t think I hit them.”

“No,” Brynn said. “One of them’s hurt, I think. One you just mentioned. With long hair.”

“Hurt bad?” she asked.

“His arm.”

“I should’ve…I should’ve told them to stop, or put their hands up. I don’t know. They started shooting at me. And I panicked. I just lost it completely. I ran outside. I didn’t have the car keys.” A disgusted look on her face. “I did something so stupid… I was afraid they’d come after me so I shot out the tires. They would’ve just left if I hadn’t done that. Got in the car and left… I was so stupid!”

“That’s all right. You did fine. Nobody’d think straight at a time like that. You have the gun still?”

Please, Brynn thought. I want a weapon so badly.

But the woman shook her head. “I used up all the bullets. I threw it into a creek by the house so they couldn’t find it. And I ran.” She squinted. “You’re a deputy. Do you have a gun?”

“I did. But lost it in the lake.”

Suddenly Michelle became animated. Almost giddy. “You know, like, I saw this show one time, it was on A &E or Discovery, and somebody’d been in a car wreck, a bad one, and they lost a lot of blood and they were in the wilderness for days. They should’ve died. But something happened, like the body stopped the bleeding itself. The doctors saved them and…”

Brynn had experienced this mania before, at car wrecks and heart attack scenes, and knew the implicit question was best answered simply and honestly. “I’m sorry. I was there, in the kitchen. I saw them. I’m afraid they’re gone.”

Michelle held on to a fragment of hope for a moment longer. Then let it go. She nodded and lowered her head.

Brynn asked, “You have any idea what they want? Ow!” She flinched. She’d bit her tongue. “Was it robbery?” Eyes lensing with tears.

“I don’t know.”

The shivering grew worse, consuming Brynn. Michelle’s perfect fingernails, she had noticed, were dark from plum-colored polish; Brynn’s, unpolished, were the same shade.

“I understand you and Emma worked together. Are you a lawyer too?”

A shake of her pretty head. “No, I was a paralegal in Milwaukee for a while before I moved to Chicago. That’s how we met. It was just a way to make some money. I’m really an actress.”

“Did she ever talk to you about her cases?”

“Not too much, no.”

“Could be-a case at her law firm. She might’ve found out about a scam or crime of some kind.”

Michelle gasped. “You mean they came up here to kill her on purpose?”

Brynn shrugged.

A snap nearby. Brynn gasped and turned fast. About twenty feet away a badger, elegant in its round, clumsy way, nosed past warily.

Wisconsin, the Badger State.

Brynn asked Michelle, “Will somebody start to wonder if they don’t hear from you?”

“My husband. Except he’s traveling. We said we’d talk in the morning. That’s why I came up here with Steve and Emma. I had the weekend free.”

“Look.” Brynn was pointing toward the Feldman house. Two flashlight beams were scanning the side yard, a quarter mile away. “They’re back there. Hurry. The other house. Let’s go.” Brynn rose to a crouch, both of them staggering forward.

SO THE COP had gone into the water.

Hart and Lewis had found debris and an oil slick.

“Dead, gotta be,” Lewis’d said, looking distastefully at the lake, as if he were expecting monsters to slither out. “I’m outa here. Come on, Hart. Jake’s. I need a fucking beer. First round’s on you, my friend.”

They’d returned to the Feldman house. The fire in the hearth had burned itself out and Hart had shut off all the lights. He’d put into his pocket all the used medical supplies stained with his blood. He didn’t bother with the spent shells that littered the house and front yard; he’d worn gloves when loading the Glocks and had watched to make sure Lewis had too.

Then he sprayed and wiped everything Lewis had come near with his bare hands.

Lewis couldn’t resist a snicker at this.

“Keep that,” an irritated Hart said, pointing to Michelle’s purse.

Lewis slipped it into his combat jacket pocket and took a bottle of vodka from the bar. Chopin. “Shit. This is good stuff.” He uncorked it and took a drink. He lifted the bottle to Hart, who shook his head because he didn’t want any booze just now, though Lewis took it as a criticism about drinking on the job, which was true too. At least he wore gloves when handling the bottle.

“You worry too much, Hart,” Lewis said, laughing. “I know the score, my friend. I know how they operate in places like this. I wouldn’t do that in Milwaukee or St. Paul. But here…these cops’re like Andy in Mayberry. Not CSI. They don’t have all that fancy equipment. I know how to play it and how not to.”

Still, Hart noted that he wiped the lip of the bottle with his shirtsleeve before replacing it.

And he saw in that tiny gesture-so fast you’d miss it easily-a clue. A telling clue about Mr. Compton Lewis. He recognized the careless, aggressive attitude that he’d seen in other men-in his brother, for instance. The source was simple insecurity, which can control you the way a pinch collar controls a dog.

They returned outside. Lewis went to work on the Ford once more, getting the spare on the front, in place of one of those that’d been shot out-so they could drag the other flat on the rear, like he’d suggested.

Hart reflected on how much the disaster at the house was eating at him.

Blindsided…

Looking for clues he should’ve seen but hadn’t. He hated incompetence but hated it most when he was the guilty party. Hart had once canceled a hit in St. Louis, when it turned out that the “park” his victim used to walk home from work-a perfect shooting zone-was a neighborhood playground, filled with dozens of energetic little witnesses. Angrily, he’d realized that the two times he’d surveyed the place in preparation for the kill had been in midmorning, while the kids were still in school.