Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

“Comp,” Brynn said. “Something like that.”

A medical technician had daubed Brynn’s cheek with brown Betadine and Lanocaine and was now easing a massive bandage onto it. He was going to stitch it. She said no. A needle and thread would make a bigger scar and the thought of two facial deformities was too much for her.

He put a tight butterfly bandage on and told her to see a doctor later that day. “Dentist too. That busted tooth’ll start to bother your tongue pretty soon.”

Start to?

She told him she would.

Brynn was staring at Comp’s body. She simply couldn’t understand why Hart had killed him. This was the man Hart had risked his own life to save just a half hour earlier on the ledge-nearly getting crushed by a log, in fact, to pull the man to safety.

And Hart had told him to stand still, then shot him-casual as could be.

She looked around, the circus of flashing lights. Heard voices shouting, the crackle of radios.

In addition to Dahl, there were other deputies from the Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department and a baker’s dozen of state troopers. Two FBI agents too, who’d tossed off their suit jackets, were helping out however they could, including stringing crime scene tape. No egos were present. They’d show up later.

Head down, Michelle sat on the grass, her back against a tree, cradling sleeping Amy, both wrapped in blankets. The medics had looked them over and neither was badly injured. Michelle’s ankle turned out to be just a pulled muscle.

Somber, Michelle clutched the girl tightly, and Brynn supposed she was mourning for them both-two people who had lost someone close to them so violently on this terrible night, two people who had left an innocence behind, dead or dying, in the tangled woods.

Brynn rose from the ambulance and stiffly walked over the grass to Michelle. “Did you get through to them?” Brynn asked. Michelle was going to call her brother and his wife, who lived north of Chicago, to come pick her up.

“They’re on their way.” Then her voice faded and she gave a stoic smile. “Never got a message from my husband.”

“Did you call him?”

She shook her head. And her body language said she wanted to be alone. She brushed Amy’s hair gently. The child was snoring softly.

Brynn tested her wounded face, wincing despite the topical anesthetic cream, then joined Dahl and the FBI agents. She fought through her fuzzy mind-once the pursuit had stopped, disorientation had flooded into the vacuum with a smack-and gave them a synopsis of everything that had happened from her arrival at Lake Mondac: the escape, the portable meth lab, the surprise gunshots fired at them when they were on the rock ledge.

“One of Rudy Hamilton’s people?” an FBI agent said, hearing Brynn’s opinion as to the identity of the sniper by the ledge. “I don’t know.” He seemed doubtful.

“Rudy said somebody named Fletcher might be in the area.”

The agent nodded. “Kevin Fletcher, sure. Meth and crack bigwig. But no evidence he operates around here. He sticks close to Green Bay. Makes ten times as much up there. No, I’m still betting the shooter was some muscle Mankewitz sent.”

“Drove down here to protect his hit men?”

“I’m guessing,” the other said.

Of course they were eager to pin anything on Mankewitz, short of the Kennedy assassination. Still, Brynn didn’t disagree; it would make sense. And the shooter had saved Hart and Comp from crushed skulls or a fall into the barbwire thorns.

“You get a look at him?”

“Nope. Don’t even know where he was.”

The agent looked out over the woods. “That’s not going to be an easy crime scene.”

And then they all grew silent as a recovery team carried Eric Munce’s body from the woods. The bag was dark green. The men started to set it near the body of the other killer, but hesitated and, out of respect, set it farther away, on the grass, not the shoulder.

“I’ve seen those bags a dozen times,” Brynn said softly to Dahl. “But never with one of ours inside.”

The driver of the SUV and his girlfriend were sitting dazed on the ground near the ambulance. Their seat belts had kept them from any damage other than bruising. The man who’d been pulled from his car by Hart was uninjured but his fear or ego kept prompting him to mutter about lawsuits until somebody suggested he could sell his story to People or Us. It was meant sarcastically to shut him up. But he seemed to like the idea. And he did shut up.

Brynn walked up to her husband and he put his arm around her. She asked Dahl, “Eric’s wife?”

A sigh. “I’m going by there now. In person, no calls.”

Graham looked at the body bag containing the deputy. “Well,” he said, as if it hurt to take enough breath to speak. Brynn rested her head against his shoulder. She was still astonished that he’d driven all this way to try to find her. Dahl wasn’t happy that he and Munce had tried an end run, particularly as it had resulted in the deputy’s death. Still, if they hadn’t, Brynn, Michelle and Amy would be dead now. And they wouldn’t have stopped at least one of the killers and collected good evidence that might lead to Hart and ultimately the man who had hired them.

Deputies Pete Gibbs and big Howie Prescott, breathing hard, came out of the forest with several state troopers. They were carrying clear plastic bags. Inside were shell casings and an empty ammunition clip.

They placed Comp’s personal effects into another bag. Michelle’s purse and Hart’s map went into others.

Brynn looked over the evidence, thinking: Hart, who the hell are you? “Tom, did CS do a prelim dusting at the Lake Mondac house?”

“Sure. Found about five hundred prints. Mostly the Feldmans’. None of the others set off alarms. The stolen Ford had about sixty and they were negative too. Those boys wore gloves the whole time. Smarter’n our criminals round here.”

“What about the spent brass and shells?”

“Found a ton of it. Yours, theirs. Went over the whole place with a metal detector. Even fished some out of that creek beside the garage. But no prints on a single shell.”

“None?” Brynn asked, dismayed. “They wore gloves loading their weapons?”

“Looks like it.”

Yep, smarter than our criminals…

Then she jabbed a finger at one of the evidence bags. “Tom, this’s our chance. Maybe there’re no prints on the brass-Hart’d expect to leave that. But he’s taken his weapon apart to clean and load it. There’s a print on one of those clips, I guarantee it. And the map. And they were carting around Michelle’s purse. They must’ve opened it. I’m taking the evidence up there myself-to the lab in Gardener.”

“You?” Dahl scoffed. “Don’t be nuts, Brynn. The state folk can handle that. Get some rest.”

“I’ll get some sleep in the car on the way home. Grab a shower and head over there.”

Dahl nodded at the troopers. “Half these boys’re stationed in Gardener They’ll drop everything off at the lab.”

She whispered, “And everything’ll sit gathering dust for two weeks. I want that guy.” A nod up the highway, where, peering over the ribbed pistol barrel, she’d last seen Hart in the ’jacked car speeding away. “I’m going to stand over the tech like a school teacher till I get some names from AIFIS. I want that man bad.”

Dahl looked at her grim, determined expression. “All right.”

Brynn locked the bags in the glove compartment of Graham’s truck, which he’d collected a quarter mile down the road. She noticed ripe green azaleas in the back bed. They were just starting to bud. Pink and white.

She leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder again. “Oh, honey. What a night.” He looked up. “You came. You came to find me.”