Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

That’s a word cops don’t use very often. “Whatta you mean?”

“The husband, he called back and said it was a mistake.”

Mankewitz looked along the dark corridor to where his wife was chatting happily with a tall, balding man standing at the table. He wondered if the man only stopped by because he’d seen Mankewitz wasn’t at the table.

Determined, slick, tough pricks…

He focused on the Hobbit. “So it was an emergency and then it wasn’t.”

“Right. That’s why it didn’t go to anybody on the task force. I’m the only one who knows. The record’s there but it’s buried… I have to ask, Stan, what should I know about?”

Mankewitz held his eyes. “There’s nothing you should know about, Pat. Maybe it was a fire. Nine-one-one-who knows? A fender-bender. A break-in. A raccoon in the basement.”

“I’ll go out on a limb for you but not walk the plank.”

For what he was slipping into the cop’s anonymous account, the man should’ve been willing to jump off the fucking plank and kill sharks with his bare hands.

Mankewitz happened to notice his wife glancing his way. The entrées had arrived. He looked back at the cop and said, “I told you from the beginning there’s nothing you have to worry about. That was our deal. You’re completely protected.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Stan.”

“Like what, eat here?”

The detective gave a halfhearted grin. He nodded at a photo next to them. “Can’t be that bad. It was Sinatra’s favorite restaurant.”

Mankewitz grunted and left the man in the corridor, heading for the men’s room and fishing a prepaid cell phone out of his pocket.

ON THE SECOND floor of the house at 2 Lake View were five doors, all closed. The carpet was Home Depot Oriental and on the walls were posters from an art gallery that was thirty feet of aisle in Target or Wal-Mart.

Hart and Lewis moved with infinite care, slowly, pausing at each door. They finally found the one the women’s voices were coming from. Lewis was staying focused. And, thank God, quiet.

The words the women were speaking were impossible to make out but it was clear that they didn’t seem at all suspicious the men were nearby.

What the hell were those gals talking about?

Strange allies on a strange night.

Hart wasn’t thinking much about that, though. He was feeling keen satisfaction in the success of the car trick. That he was about to kill two human beings meant nothing to him, nor did the fact there’d be some pleasure in the death of Michelle, who’d shot him, or of the policewoman, who’d tried to. No, this nearly sexual pleasure he felt was due only to the approaching conclusion of a job he’d begun. The bloody deaths of two women happened to be that resolution but, to him, it was no different from that glow he felt when he gave the last fine-steel-wool buff to the lacquer on a cabinet he’d built or dusted herbs on an omelet he’d fixed for a woman who’d spent the night.

Of course, there’d be consequences from the deaths. His life was about to change and he understood that. For instance, the cop’s colleagues would go all out to find her killer. He even wondered whether her kin-husband, brother or father-might take the law into their own hands, if the local investigators didn’t do a very good job finding Hart, which he suspected they wouldn’t.

But if and when the cop’s husband, say, came after him, Hart would create a plan to deal with that. He’d execute it and eliminate the problem. And feel just as satisfied with the symmetry of conclusion as he was about to now, when he fired the fatal bullet into her body.

Hart gingerly tried the knob. Locked. The voices continued, unalarmed. Hart pointed to himself and his good shoulder.

Lewis lowered his mouth to Hart’s ear and whispered, “Your arm?”

“I’ll live with it. When I’m through I’ll drop down on the floor and give covering fire. You come in over me and take them out.”

“They have guns, you think?” Glancing toward the door.

“Why take knives if you’ve got guns? But we oughta count on one of them having a piece.”

Lewis nodded and gripped the shotgun, eyed the safety. The red button showed.

Inside, the talking continued, casual as could be.

Hart stepped back, glanced at Lewis, who held the muzzle of the Winchester skyward and nodded. Then, hunched down like a tackle, Hart sped forward and flinched as his right shoulder connected with wood. With a loud crack the lock popped and the door flew inward, but stopped only a few inches inside. Hart gasped as his head slammed into the oak and he stumbled back, stunned.

The door had hit some barricade.

Inside the bedroom the voices stopped instantly.

Hart shoved the door again-it moved no farther-and then snapped to Lewis, “Push, help me. Push! It’s blocked.”

The younger man dug his feet into the carpet but the door wouldn’t budge. “No way. It’s blocked solid.”

Hart looked around the hall. He ran to the bedroom next door, to the right, and pushed his way inside. He searched the room fast. It had a French door leading to a deck outside. He kicked this open and looked out, to the left. The deck was thirty feet long and the bedroom where the women hid opened onto it as well, via a similar French door. There were no stairs off the deck. They hadn’t escaped this way; they were still inside.

Hart called for Lewis to join him. Together they stepped out onto the deck. They moved to the first bedroom, stopping just short of the windows, which were closed, shades pulled or curtains drawn, and it seemed that other pieces of furniture had been pushed against the windows as barricades. The French door, beyond the end of the windows, was curtained as well.

Considering how best to approach the assault, whether the woman would be holding her Glock toward the hall or window, barricades, escape routes-for the women and for Hart and Lewis…

Lewis was eager to move but Hart took his time. Finally he decided. “You go down to that door. I’ll stay here and kick this window out and try to push that dresser or table, whatever it is, out of the way. I’ll fire. They’ll focus on that. Then you let go with a couple rounds.”

“Crossfire.”

Hart nodded. “We got ammo. We can afford to use it. Then we’ll go in through the door. Okay?”

Lewis, crouching, covered the distance to the door, staying low. He took a deep breath and glanced back. Hart nodded, kicked in the window, with a huge crash, and pushed over a small dresser. He dodged back as Lewis broke out a pane in the door and fired three shotgun rounds into the room, shaking the curtains and rattling the glass, while Hart fired his Glock four times in a random pattern. He didn’t expect to hit anything but he knew it would keep their prey down, give him and Lewis time to get inside.

“Go!”

The men ran through the doorway, guns ready.

They found a room filled with mismatched antiques, rustic prints, books and magazines stacked on dressers and in baskets. But no human beings.

Hart thought for a moment that the women had used the delay to escape by the door to the hallway but it was still blocked-by a big dresser, it turned out. He gestured to the closet. Lewis pulled the door open and fired a shotgun round inside.

The noise was deafening. Wished the man had held back. The sudden deafness was freaking Hart out; he couldn’t have heard anybody sneaking up behind him.

Looking around again. Where? The bathroom, Hart supposed. Had to be.

The door was closed.

Lewis stood in front of it. Hart pointed at Lewis’s fatigue-jacket pocket. The man nodded and set down the shotgun and pulled out his silver SIG-Sauer pistol, still loud but less deafening than the Winchester scattergun. He chambered a round and flicked off the safety.