Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

Hearing the crack, crack, crack of her gun.

Ebony, of course.

His aching arm prodded him to think too: And what kind was Michelle?

That would remain to be seen.

“So you’re thinking of going after them?” Lewis asked. He opened his mouth and puffed out a bit of steam.

“Yep.”

“I gotta say, Hart. This isn’t what I planned on.”

Putting it mildly.

Lewis continued, “Everything’s changed. That bitch shooting you, trying to shoot me. The cop…You or me, in that bathroom, the ammonia trap. If it’d worked, one of us’d be blinded. And that shot in the house, the cop? Missed me by inches.”

I can dodge bullets…

Hart said nothing. He wasn’t riled up the way Lewis was. The women were just being true to their nature. Like that animal he’d seen. Of course they’d fight back.

“So that’s what I’m thinking,” Lewis said. “I just want to get the hell out of here. She’s a cop, Hart. Lives ’round here. She knows this place. She’s halfway to that ranger station or something right now. They’ll have phones in the park… So we’ve gotta get outa here now. Back to Milwaukee. Whoever that girl is, Michelle, she’s sure as hell not going to ID us. She’s not stupid.” He tapped his pocket, where her purse, containing her name and address, rested. “And the cop didn’t really get a good look at us. So, back to Plan A. Get to the highway, ’jack a car. Whatta you say?”

Hart grimaced. “Well, Lewis, I am tempted. Yes, I am. But we can’t.”

“Hmm. Well, I’m inclined to think otherwise.” Lewis was speaking softly now, more reasonable, less surly.

“We have to get them.”

“‘Have to’? Why? Where’s that written down? Look, you’re thinking I’m scared. Well, I’m not. Tonight, against two women? This’s nothing. Let me tell you a story. I did a bank job in Madison? Last year?”

“Banks? Never done a bank.”

“We got fifty thousand.”

“That’s pretty good.” The average bank robbery take nationwide was $3,800. Another stat Hart knew: 97 percent of the perps were arrested within one week.

“Yep, was. So. This guard wanted to be a hero. Had a backup gun on his ankle.”

“He’d been a cop.”

“What I figured. Exactly. Came out shooting. I covered the other guys. Right out in the open. Kept him down. I didn’t even crouch.” He laughed, shaking his head. “One of my crew, the driver, was so freaked he dropped the keys in the snow, took a couple minutes to find them. But I held that guard off. Even stayed upright while I reloaded, and we could hear sirens in the distance. But we got away.” He fell silent to let Hart digest this. Then: “I’m talking about what makes sense… You stand your ground when you need to. You get the hell out when you need to. And then take care of ’ em later.” Another tap of Michelle’s purse. “Nothing good’s going to come of this.” He repeated, “Everything’s changed.”

A mournful call filled the moist air, a bird of some sort, Hart guessed. Waterfowl or owl or hawk, he couldn’t tell them apart. He squatted down, pushed his hair off his forehead. “Lewis, I’m thinking that nothing has changed, not really.”

“Sure it has. The minute she tried to cap you, it all went to shit in there.” A nod back at the house and a skeptical glance.

“But it’s shit we could’ve foreseen. We should’ve foreseen. Look, when you make a choice-signing on for this job, for instance-there’s a whole slew of consequences that can follow. Things could go left, they could go right. Or, what happened tonight, they could turn around and slug you in the gut…”

Or shoot you in the arm.

“Nobody forced me to live this kind of life. Or you either. But we chose it and that makes it our job to think everything through, figure out what could happen and plan for it. Every time I do a job I plan everything out, I mean every detail. I’m never surprised. Doing the job itself’s usually boring, I’ve been through it so often in my mind.”

Measure twice, cut once.

“Tonight? I figured out ninety-five percent of what could happen and planned for that. But what I didn’t bother to think about was the last five percent-that that Michelle was going to use me for target practice. But I should’ve.”

The slim man, rocking on his haunches, said, “The Trickster.”

“The what?” Hart asked.

“My grandmother said when something went wrong, something you didn’t think could happen, it was the Trickster’s fault. She got it out of a kid’s book or something. I don’t remember. The Trickster was always hanging around looking for ways to make things go wrong. Like Fate or God or whatever. Except Fate could do you good things too. Like give you a winning lotto ticket. Or could make you stop for a yellow light, even if you would’ve gone through, and save you from getting T-boned by a garbage truck. And God would do things that were right, so you’d get what you deserved. But the Trickster? He was just there to mess you up.” He nodded again at the house. “Trickster paid us a visit in there.”

“Trickster.” Hart liked that.

“But that’s life sometimes, ain’t it, Hart? You miss that five percent. But so what? Best thing still might be to get the hell out of here, put it all behind us.”

Hart rose. He winced as he accidentally reached his shot arm out to steady himself. He looked out at the lake. “Let me tell you a story, Lewis. My brother…younger’n me.”

“You have a brother?” Lewis’s attention had turned from the house. “I’ve got two.”

“Our parents both died about the same time. When I was twenty-five, my brother was twenty-two. I was kind of like a father figure. Well, even back then we were into this kind of stuff, you know. And my brother got this job one time, easy, just numbers. He was a runner mostly. He had to pick up some money and deliver it. Typical job. I mean, thousands of people do that shit every day, right? All over the world.”

“They do.” Lewis was listening.

“So I didn’t have anything going on at the moment and was helping him out. We picked up the money-”

“This was Milwaukee?”

“No. We grew up in Boston. We pick up the money and’re about to deliver it. But turns out we were going to be set up. The guy ran the numbers operation was going to clip us and let the cops find the bodies and some of the books and some of the money. The detectives’d think they closed up the operation.”

“You two were fall guys.”

“Yep. I had this sense something was wrong and we went around back of the pickup location and saw the muscle there. My brother and me, we took off. A few days later I found the guys hired to do the clip and took care of them. But the main guy just vanished. Word was he’d moved to Mexico.”

Lewis grinned. “Scared of your bad ass.”

“After six months or so I stopped looking for him. But it turns out he never went to Mexico at all. He’d been tracking us the whole time. One day he walks up to my brother and blows his head off.”

“Oh, shit.”

Hart didn’t speak for a moment. “But see, Lewis, he didn’t kill my brother. I did. My laziness killed my brother.”

“Your laziness?”

“Yep. Because I stopped looking for that son of a bitch.”

“But six months, Hart. That’s a long time.”

“Didn’t matter if it was six years. Either you’re in all the way, a hundred and ten percent. Or don’t bother.” Hart shook his head. “Hell, Lewis, forget it. This’s my problem. I was the one hired on. It’s not your issue. Now, I’d consider it a privilege if you came with me. But if you want to head back to Milwaukee, you go right ahead. No hard feelings at all.”