Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

Michelle kept up the manic banter and Brynn tuned her out. She paused and looked around. “I think we should go off the trail now, find the river.”

“We have to? We’re making good time.”

But the trail, Brynn told her, didn’t lead them anywhere except deeper into the woods. The closest town that way was fifteen miles.

“I need to use the compass.” She knelt to the side of the trail and set the alcohol bottle on the ground. With some prodding the needle finally swung north. “We go that way. It’s not far. A couple of miles, I’d guess. Probably less.” She put the bottle in her pocket.

They were on higher ground here and, looking back, they could still see a flashlight slowly probing for the pathway down the cliff face that would lead the killers into the valley and to the ranger station. They’d eventually learn that the women weren’t going that way but every minute they delayed on the cliff was a minute more Brynn and Michelle had to escape.

Brynn found a section of the woods that was less ensnarled than others and she stepped off the trail. Michelle, somber again, gazed at the rocky, boggy ground and started forward with a look of distaste, like a girl reluctantly climbing into her date’s filthy car.

THEY WERE DOING eighty, without the light bar going or the throaty siren. Didn’t need them. There was hardly any traffic out here, this time of night. And none of the retrofit accessories in the Dodge would have any inhibiting effect on suicidal wildlife. Sheriff Tom Dahl’s feeling was that deer were born without brains.

He was sitting in the passenger seat and a young deputy, Peter Gibbs, was driving. Behind them was another car, Eric Munce at the wheel and, beside him, Howie Prescott, a massive, shaved-headed deputy who got good respect during traffic stops.

Dahl had called his deputies and found no shortage of volunteers to help find out what had happened to their colleague Brynn McKenzie. They all stood ready to go, but four, he figured, was plenty.

The sheriff was on the phone with an FBI agent in Milwaukee. His name was Brindle, which Dahl thought was a coloring of a horse or dog. The agent had been getting ready for bed but didn’t hesitate to help out. He sounded genuinely concerned.

The subject of the conversation was the woman lawyer, Emma Feldman.

“Well, Sheriff, started out as a little thing. She’s handling this corporate deal. She’s doing her homework and finds out that a lot of the companies on the lakefront have more than their fair share of documented aliens. Next thing a CI…that’s a-”

“Confidential informant?” Dahl asked, but Brindle missed the irony.

“Right. He says that Stanley Mankewitz, head of some local union, is selling forged green cards to illegals.”

“How much could he make doing that?”

“No, that’s not what it’s about. He doesn’t even charge ’em. What he does is gets them to guarantee that they’ll get jobs in open shops then unionize the workers. The union gets bigger, Mankewitz gets richer.”

Hmm, Dahl thought. Clever idea.

“That’s what we’re investigating right now.”

“And this Mankewitz? He done it?”

“Up in the air so far. He’s smart, he’s old school and he only hires people who keep their mouths shut. He’s a prick too, pardon my French, so, yeah, he did it. But the case’s weak. It takes just one witness having an accident or getting killed in a, quote, random house invasion and the whole case could fall apart.”

“And here she is, out in the wilderness, this lawyer. A lot of accidents could happen there.”

“Exactly. Milwaukee PD should’ve had somebody on her. They dropped the ball there.”

This was offered a little too fast, Dahl thought. The finger-pointing’d already started up, it seemed. Policing wasn’t much different in Milwaukee, Washington, D.C., or Kennesha County.

Dahl said, “Go faster.”

“What?” the FBI agent asked.

“I’m talking to the driver… When my deputy’s husband called her phone, some man answered, claiming to be a deputy. Near as we can tell, there’re no troopers or neighboring law out there. None at all.”

“I see why you’re worried. Where is this happening?”

“Lake Mondac.”

“I don’t know it.”

“Next to Marquette State Park.”

“I’ll give my man a call who runs CI’s, see if there’s any word about somebody talking to a pro-hired killer.”

So that ’s what he means by pro. Dahl was getting irritated. “That’d be much appreciated, Agent Brindle.”

“You want one of our people there, on the ground?”

“Not yet, I don’t think. Let’s see what’s going on first.”

“Okay. Well, call if you need to. We’ll be totally on board, Sheriff. This Mankewitz, he’s fucking around with illegals and Homeland Security and terrorist issues.”

Not to mention putting a poor family at risk, Dahl thought. Something else he refrained from saying. He thanked the agent and they hung up.

“How soon?” he muttered to the young deputy beside him.

“Half hour…”

“Well,” Dahl began impatiently, rubbing his scarred leg.

“I know, Sheriff,” Gibbs said. “But we’re doing eighty. Any faster and all it takes is one deer. And if it doesn’t kill us coming through the windshield, Eric’ll get us from behind. That boy really oughta back off a bit.”

THEY’D LEFT THE

Joliet Trail twenty minutes before, with Brynn deviating only when necessary-around thickets and brambles and beds of leaves that might cover trip holes and bogs. They headed up into the hills, steep ones, and already the incline was dramatic in some places. A slip could turn into a tumble down a hillside for many yards, over sharp rocks and through thornbushes.

The men would be at the bottom of the cliff by now. She hoped that, finding no bodies, they’d continue through the ravine to the ranger station. It could be forty minutes, an hour before they realized they’d been tricked and returned to the Joliet Trail to resume the hunt.

A brief pause for another compass reading. They’d remained largely on course, due north.

For the first time tonight Brynn was beginning to feel that she and Michelle might survive.

They’d be at the river soon. And then either a trek south along the bank to Point of Rocks or the shorter but arduous-and dangerous-climb up the gorge. She couldn’t get that image out of her head: the hiker who’d fallen and been impaled on the tree limb.

The recovery team had needed a chain saw to cut the body free. They’d had to stand around waiting for an hour for an officer to arrive with the tool.

Brynn squinted at a silver flash in the distance ahead of them. Was that the river?

No, just a narrow band of grass shining in the moonlight. Otherworldly. She wondered what kind it was. Graham could have told her in a heartbeat.

But she didn’t want to think about Graham.

Then she shivered at the sound of a howl behind them. A creature baying. Was it the wolf that seemed to be following them as persistently as the men?

Michelle looked back at the sound. She froze. And then she screamed.

“Michelle, no!” Brynn whispered harshly. “It’s just the-”

“Them, it’s them!” The young woman was pointing into the darkness.

What? What did she see? All Brynn was looking at were layers of shadow, some moving, some still. Smooth or textured.

“Where?”

“There! Him!”

Finally Brynn could see: a hundred feet away a man stood behind a bush.

No! They hadn’t believed the trick at the junction. Brynn gripped her spear. “Get down!”

But whatever’d been building within the young woman now exploded in rage and madness. “You fuckers!” she screamed. “I hate you!”