Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

He found the county phone book and looked at the map. The nearest towns to Lake Mondac were Clausen and Point of Rocks. Clausen had a town magistrate’s office, Point of Rocks a public safety office. He tried the magistrate first. No answer, and the message referred callers to City Hall, which turned out to be just a voice mail. The public safety office in Point of Rocks was closed, and the outgoing message said that anyone with an emergency should call either the county sheriff’s office or the State Police.

“And thank you for calling,” it concluded politely. “Have a nice day.”

How can a fucking police department be closed?

He heard Joey’s bedroom door open and close. The toilet flushed.

A moment later: “When’s mom coming home?” The boy, still not in his pajamas, was at the top of the stairs.

“Soon.”

“You called her?”

“She’s busy. She can’t be disturbed. Put your pajamas on and go to bed. Lights out.”

The boy turned around. The bedroom door closed.

Graham thought that he heard the video game again. He wasn’t sure.

Anna asked, “Where is she? I’m worried, Graham.”

“I don’t know. That deputy I talked to said it was just routine. But it didn’t feel right.”

“How do you mean?”

“Her phone. Giving it to somebody else? No way.” He could talk to Anna without worrying that she’d become defensive. When it came to serious topics, he had trouble talking to Brynn and to her son-hell, that was tonight’s theme, apparently-but he could talk to his mother-in-law. “She’s too much of a control person for that.”

He had, however, pulled back from “control freak.”

Anna’s frown morphed into a smile, as if she’d caught on. “That’s my daughter. You’re right.”

Graham picked up the landline. Made a call.

“Deputy Munce.”

“Eric, it’s Graham.”

“Hey. What’s up?”

“The sheriff in?”

“Now? Nope. He goes home about six, seven most nights.”

“Look, Brynn went out on something tonight. Up at Lake Mondac.”

“Right. Heard about that.”

“Well, she’s not back yet.”

Silence. “Not back? Forty minutes from there to your place. You’re north of town. Forty minutes tops. I’ve drove it in a half hour.”

“I called and got some other deputy. Said there was a domestic. And that Brynn was handling it. Child Services or something.”

A pause. “That doesn’t sound familiar, Graham. Who were you talking to?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe Billings.”

“Well, that’s nobody from our office. Hold on…” Muted sounds of conversation.

Graham rubbed his eyes. Brynn had been up at five. He’d been up at five-thirty.

The deputy came back on. “All right, Graham. Story is the guy who made that nine-one-one call called back and said it was a mistake. Brynn was going to turn around. That was close to seven, seven-thirty.”

“I know. But this deputy said it wasn’t a mistake. It was some domestic dispute, and they wanted Brynn to handle it. Could she have run into some State Police up there, town cops?”

“Could happen but that’s not the sort of thing the troopers’d handle.”

Graham’s skin chilled at this. “Eric, something’s wrong.”

“Let me call the sheriff. He’ll get back to you.”

Graham hung up. He paced the kitchen. Surveyed the new tiles on the floor. Organized a stack of bills. Drew a line in the dust on top of the small, rabbit-ear TV. Listened to the computer game upstairs.

Goddamnit. Why wasn’t the boy listening to him? He decided to ban Joey from skateboards for the rest of the school year.

Anger or instinct?

The phone rang.

“’Lo?”

“Graham, it’s Tom Dahl. Eric just called. We checked with the State Police. Nobody got any calls up at Lake Mondac. Clausen, Point of Rocks, even as far as Henderson.”

Graham explained what he’d told Eric Munce, irritated that the man hadn’t filled the sheriff in. “The deputy was named Billings.”

Silence for a moment. “Billings’s the name of a road between Clausen and the state park.”

So it might’ve been fresh in the mind of somebody trying to make up a name. Graham’s hands were sweating.

“Her phone keeps going to voice mail again, Tom. I’m plenty worried.”

“What’s wrong?” a voice called. Joey’s.

Graham looked up. The boy was standing halfway down the stairs. He’d been listening. “What’s wrong with Mom?”

“Nothing. Go back to bed. Everything’ll be fine.”

“No. Something’s wrong.”

“Joey,” Graham snapped. “Now.”

Joey held his eye for a moment, the chill look sending a shiver through Graham’s back, then turned and stomped up the stairs.

Anna appeared in the door, glanced at Graham’s grimacing face. “What?” she whispered.

He shook his head, said, “I’m talking to the sheriff.” Then: “Tom, whatta we do?”

“I’ll send some people up there. Look, relax. Her car probably broke down and she hasn’t got cell phone reception.”

“Then who was Billings?”

Another pause. “We’ll get up there right away, Graham.”

GASPING, FACE DOTTED with cold sweat, Michelle crouched, leaning against her pool cue cane, Brynn beside her. They were still on the Joliet Trail, hiding in a tangle of juniper and boxwood, which smelled to Brynn of urine.

They’d come a half mile from the cliff top intersection with the Danger sign and shelter, running as best they could the entire distance.

They now watched the beam from a flashlight, pointed downward, slowly sweeping the ledge and cliff face as Hart and his partner climbed down. They continued walking along the trail, moving quickly.

The men had bought the sham Brynn had orchestrated: the shouting, the broken branch, the blood-her own-spattered on the ledge. The men would continue to the bottom now, either on the cliff or the path around Apex Lake, and make for the ranger station. Which would give Brynn and Michelle an extra hour to get to safety before Hart and his partner realized that they’d been tricked.

In the end it hadn’t been Michelle’s fear of heights-or Brynn’s-that decided the matter. Brynn had concluded that even climbing down the cliff and hiking through the tangled brush in the ravine would take too much time. The men would have caught up with them before they were halfway to the ranger station. But the cliff was a good chance to mislead their pursuers. Brynn had broken the branch to make it look like an accident, then carefully climbed down the cliff to the ledge. There she’d taken a deep breath, and cut her scalp with the kitchen knife. As a deputy she knew a lot about head injuries, and that lacerations on the head didn’t hurt badly but bled copiously. (She knew this from Joey as much as from auto accident calls.) After smearing the blood on the stone, she’d climbed back up to the cliff top and they’d fled down the Joliet Trail.

She now looked back. The sweeping flashlight beam was still visible through the bones of trees. Then the path turned and the women lost sight of the killers.

“How does it feel?” Michelle nodded at Brynn’s head. She apparently thought Brynn had made her decision not to climb down the cliff face because of the young woman’s fear of heights. She glowed with gratitude. Brynn said it was fine.

Michelle began rambling, telling a story about how she’d been hit on the head by a schoolgirl on the playground, and had bled all over a new dress, which had upset her more than the fight. “Girls’re worse than boys.”

Brynn didn’t disagree. She did antigang campaigns at the high schools. Gangs…even in modest Humboldt.

An image of Joey, panting and bloody, after one of his fights at school also came to mind. She pushed it away.