Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

“No, Michelle. Please, be quiet. We have to run. Now!”

But the younger woman seemed transfixed, as if Brynn weren’t even present. She flung aside the pool cue steadying her and pulled out a pool ball bolo.

Brynn stepped forward, gripping Michelle’s leather jacket. But, her face a mask of fury, the woman shoved Brynn away, sending her slipping down an incline of slick leaves.

The bolo in one hand, the knife in the other, Michelle charged the man, moving fast despite her limp. “I hate you, I hate you!” she screamed.

“No, Michelle, no! They have guns!”

But she seemed deaf to the pleas. When she was thirty feet away from the man she flung the bolo, which flew in a fierce arc and nearly struck his head. He stood his ground-just as Brynn herself had back in the Feldmans’ driveway.

Undaunted, Michelle continued her charge.

Brynn debated. Should she follow? It’d be suicide…

Then decided: Oh, hell. She grimaced, rose to her feet and charged after the woman, trying to keep low. “Michelle, stop!” Any minute, the man would fire. It must’ve been Hart; he remained motionless, waiting for the perfect shot.

Michelle sprinted directly toward him.

The man couldn’t miss.

But no shots came.

Slowing to a stop, Brynn could see why. It wasn’t a person at all. What the crazed young woman had been attacking was just a weird configuration of tree trunk, broken about six feet up, the branches and leaves giving the impression of a human. It was like a scarecrow.

“I hate you!” the young woman’s shrill voice echoed.

“Michelle!”

Then, when she was ten feet away, Michelle apparently realized her mistake. She stopped, gasping for breath, staring at the trunk. She dropped to her knees, lowering her head, hands over her face, sobbing. An eerie keening came from her throat, both mournful and hopeless.

The horror of the evening finally poured out; the tears up until now had been tears of confusion and pain. This was a rupture of pure sorrow.

Brynn approached and then stopped. “Michelle, it’s okay. Let’s-”

Michelle’s voice rose to another wail. “Leave me alone!”

“Please. Shhhh, Michelle. Please be quiet… It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not okay! It’s not okay at all.”

“Let’s keep at it. We don’t have much farther to go.”

“I don’t care. You go on…”

A faint smile. “I’m not leaving you here.”

Michelle hugged herself, rocking back and forth.

Brynn crouched next to her. She understood that something else was going on within the young woman. “What is it?”

Michelle looked absently at the knife, slipped it back in the sock scabbard. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

“What?” Brynn persisted.

“It’s my fault they’re dead,” she whispered, her face miserable. “Steve and Emma. It’s my fault!”

“You, why?”

She snapped, “Because I’m a spoiled little brat. Oh, God…”

Brynn looked behind them. A few minutes. This was important, she sensed. They could afford a few minutes. The men were miles away. “Tell me.”

“My husband…” She cleared her throat. “My husband’s seeing somebody else.”

“What?”

A faint, pained smile and she managed to say, “He’s cheating on me. I said he’s on a business trip. He is, but he’s not going alone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“A girlfriend of mine works for the travel agency his company uses. I made her tell me. He’s going with somebody else.”

“Maybe it’s just somebody he works with.”

“No, it’s not. And they got one hotel room.”

Oh.

“I was so mad and so hurt. I couldn’t be alone this weekend! I just couldn’t be. I talked Emma and Steve into coming up here and bringing me along. I wanted to cry on their shoulders. I wanted them to tell me it’s not my fault. That he’s a bastard, that they would be my friends after the divorce and dump him … And now they’re dead because I couldn’t act like a grown-up.”

“That’s hardly your fault.” Brynn looked back and saw no pursuers. Nor any sign of their mascot, the wolf. She put her arm around the young woman and helped her to her feet. “Let’s walk. Tell me while we walk.”

Michelle complied. They collected her pool cue and continued toward the river.

“How long’ve you been married?”

“Six years.” Her voice caught. “Michael was like my best friend. Everything seemed so fine. He was so laid-back, generous. He took really good care of me… And you know what’s so messed up? That’s why I lost him-being a spoiled little girl.” She gave a sour laugh. “He’s a banker. He makes all this money. When we got married I quit my job. It’s not like he wanted me to or anything. It was my idea. It was, like, my chance to go to acting school.”

Michelle winced, stepping hard and apparently jarring her ankle. She continued, “I told you I was an actress… Bullshit. I’m a twenty-nine-year-old acting student. And not a very good one. I was an extra in two local commercials. And Second City told me no. My life is lunch with my girlfriends, tennis, my health club, my spa. The only thing I’m good at is spending money, shopping and keeping myself in shape.”

To the tune of a svelte size 4, Brynn couldn’t help but observe.

“And I became…a nobody. Michael’d come home and I couldn’t even talk about the housework-because the maids had done it all. I got boring. He fell out of love with me.”

Part of a law enforcer’s job is to recognize the psychological issues at work within the people she meets professionally-the bystanders, witnesses and victims, in addition to the criminals. Brynn didn’t know that she had any particular insights but she told Michelle her honest assessment: “It’s not all your fault. It never is.”

“I’m such a loser…”

“No, you’re not.”

Brynn believed this. A little spoiled, true, a little too pampered, a little too much in love with money and the good life. In a curious way maybe this night was teaching her there was more within her than a rich-girl dilettante.

As for the other issue, the more important one, Brynn now put her arm around Michelle’s shoulders. “There’s one thing you have to understand. Whether you asked them here or not made no difference. Whoever killed Emma and Steve was a professional, hired to murder her. If it wasn’t tonight it would’ve been next week. You had nothing to do with that.”

“You think?”

“I do, yes.”

The girl wasn’t completely convinced. Brynn knew that guilt has a complex DNA; it doesn’t need to be purebred to be virulent. But Michelle seemed to take some comfort in Brynn’s words. “I just wish I could turn back the clock.”

Isn’t that a prayer for every day? Brynn thought.

Michelle sighed. “I’m sorry I lost it. I shouldn’t’ve screamed.”

“I don’t think we have to worry. They’re miles away, in the bottom of the ravine. They couldn’t hear a thing.”

GRAHAM BOYD WAS pulled from his stew of thoughts about his wife when he heard the distinctive sound of the engine in his F150 start up.

“Somebody’s stealing the truck.” He stared at his mother-in-law and instinctively slapped his pants pocket, felt his set of keys.

How? he wondered. In the shows Anna watched, Matlock and Magnum, P.I., everybody was hot-wiring cars. He didn’t think you could anymore.

But when he saw the deadbolt on the kitchen door open and that the spare keys he kept on the hook were gone, he knew. “Jesus, not this. Not now.”

“I’ll call the sheriff,” Anna said.

“No,” Graham shouted. “It’s okay.”

He ran outside.

The truck was backing up against the gardening shed to turn around so the driver could head out, hood first, down the narrow driveway. It tapped into the corrugated metal with a loud bang. Not much damage, none to the truck. The driver slammed the transmission into drive.