Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

“Let’s ask her. Might be a good idea. But I don’t know. She’s had so much coming at her. And one of our deputies was killed.”

“No! Who?”

“Eric.”

“That cute boy? With the brunet wife?”

Brynn sighed. She nodded.

With the brunet wife and a young baby.

“Did you get shot?” Anna asked abruptly.

“Collateral injury. Like a ricochet.”

“But you were shot?”

She nodded.

“What on earth happened?”

Brynn’s calm broke, like pond ice cracking. “Some really bad things, Mom.”

Anna hugged her, and Brynn felt her frail body shaking, as was her own. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry. But everything’s going to be fine now.” Her mother stepped away, turning quickly, wiping her eyes. “I’ll get breakfast going. For you too. You need something.”

A smile. “Thanks, Mom.” Brynn watched her go and then called into the kitchen, “Where’s Graham?”

“Was here. I don’t know. Out back, I guess.”

Water began to flow in the front bathroom. The pipes squealed.

Brynn went upstairs to get some clothes for Michelle. In the bedroom she looked at her matted hair, the cuts and bruises, the white bandage with its aureole of yellow and purple.

She replayed Comp’s horrific death: the look on his face as he gazed at Hart, revealing pure betrayal.

Then the image of Hart’s face looking back at her as he sped away in the stolen sedan, the image frozen over the bead sight of the pistol she held firmly.

You should’ve killed me…

She wanted a shower badly but she’d get clothes for Michelle first. She’d interview the young woman, then call Tom Dahl and the State Police and FBI with any new information about Emma Feldman or Hart or his partner that Michelle could recall-something that might lead to Mankewitz. Then she’d speed up to Gardener and bully the evidence through the crime lab.

Brynn found a T-shirt, sweats, the jeans, socks and a pair of running shoes. She’d get a garbage bag for Michelle to put her dirty clothes in. She supposed the designer items would have to be dry cleaned. She whiffed, smelled her own sweat, powerful. Smelled rusty blood too, mixed with the perfume of antiseptic.

In the kitchen the tea kettle started whistling, then stopped.

Listening to the whining pipes in the first-floor bathroom, Brynn rested her forehead against the cool glass of the window, looking out at Graham’s truck. She was thinking of the evidence in the glove compartment, wondering how long it would take to get answers from the State Police lab in Gardener. Fingerprints could be done quickly now, thanks to the FBI’s integrated identification system. Ballistics would take longer but Wisconsin had a good database that might be able to trace one of the slugs in Hart’s or Comp’s pistols to prior crimes. Which might in turn lead to a full identification…or at least to somebody who could be pressured to dime Hart out.

Not a single print on the brass…She sighed, shaking her head.

A thought occurred to her. Brynn sat down on the edge of the bed, absently poked her tummy, as she often did, and called Tom Dahl.

“How you doing?” he asked. “Exhausted, betcha.”

“Not yet. Waiting for it to hit. Got a question.”

“Sure thing.”

“About the scene at Lake Mondac.”

“Go ahead.”

“You said Arlen’s Crime Scene folks searched the house with a metal detector and all they recovered was brass, right?”

“Yep. Fancy thing. Not like what the tourists use looking for arrowheads.”

“And no firearms?”

“Just brass and spent shells.”

“You said they searched the streams?”

“Yep. Found some brass there too. It was everywhere. Place was a turkey shoot.”

As I well know. “Now, Michelle said she picked up one of their guns. She shot Hart with it. And then the tires. She used up all the ammo and threw it in the stream.”

“Wonder why nobody found it. Maybe it was one of those other creeks.”

“I’d love to get my hands on it… And I don’t like the idea of unaccounted-for firearms. Anybody over at the house still?”

“Pete Gibbs’s there. And Arlen has a couple of his boys. Might be somebody from Crime Scene too.”

“Thanks, Tom.”

“Wish you’d get some rest.”

“All in good time.”

She hung up and pulled on sweats, then called Gibbs at the Feldman house.

“Pete. It’s me.”

“Oh, hey, Brynn. How you doing?”

“Ugh.”

“I hear that.”

She asked if any Crime Scene people were still there.

“Yep. A couple of ’em.”

“Do me a favor. See if anybody’s recovered any pistols.”

“Sure, hold on.”

After a moment he came back on the line and reported that all they’d found were a few more shell casings that’d been missed last night. No weapons.

She sighed again. “Thanks. How you doing?” He sounded shaken. She assumed it was Munce’s death, but there was another source.

“Kind of an unpleasant thing happened,” he said ruefully. “I had to break the news to one of the Feldmans’ friends. She hadn’t heard. Man, I hate doing that. She broke down. Went totally bonkers.”

“A friend?”

“Yeah. Took her nearly a hour to calm down. Though she was one lucky lady, I’ll tell you. She was supposed to come up last night but something happened at work. She couldn’t get on the road till this morning. Imagine if that hadn’t happened.”

“Where’d she drive up from?”

“Chicago.”

“You get her number?”

“No. Didn’t think to. Should I have?”

“I’ll call you back.”

Brynn sat back on the bed, considering this.

A second houseguest was coming to visit last night? Another woman, and also from Chicago?

Wasn’t impossible. But wouldn’t Michelle have mentioned her? And why wouldn’t the two women drive up here together?

An absurd thought began unraveling…

Embarrassingly absurd.

Yet Brynn couldn’t quite dismiss it. All right, she’d been assuming all night that Michelle was the Feldmans’ houseguest. But when she considered the question now, she realized that she had no evidence that she actually was.

In fact, Brynn thought, what if she was a stranger who wanted to pretend she knew them? I gave her all the information she’d need to play the role. “Are you their friend from Chicago?” I asked her. “What’s your name?” Which told her I didn’t know anything about her. “Did you practice law with Emma?”

I’m an actress…

But, no, this was crazy. What would her motive be for lying?

Brynn gasped as another thought occurred to her, answering that question with horrifying clarity. On the interstate-at the Snake River Bridge-she’d recovered handguns from the men: Hart’s Glock and Comp’s SIG-Sauer. With the weapon that Michelle claimed to have found that meant the two men had brought three semiauto pistols and a shotgun.

Even for professional hit men that seemed excessive.

And why had Crime Scene found all that brass with the metal detector but not the missing pistol?

My Lord, what if the gun wasn’t Hart’s or Comp’s, but Michelle’s?

But why would she bring a gun with her?

One answer: because she’d been hired by Stanley Mankewitz to kill Emma Feldman and had brought along Hart and Comp, intending to kill them at the scene.

And leave their bodies behind, the fall guys.

Then Brynn recalled Michelle reaching into her jacket at the interstate. She wasn’t reaching for the knife; she was going for the gun she’d been carrying with her all night.

Which meant she still had it.

On the first floor the pipes stopped squealing as Michelle shut off the water.