Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

“Well, yeah, I’m a craftsman.”

Hart had been aware of her studying him closely. He looked back into her eyes. She said, “Can I ask you a question?”

A lifted eyebrow. “Yeah.”

“I’m curious. Why’re you in this line of work?”

“It suits me.”

Hart was somebody who didn’t believe in psychoanalysis or spending too much time contemplating your soul. He believed you felt in harmony or you didn’t, and if you bucked that feeling you were making a big mistake.

God, doesn’t the boredom just kill them? It would me. I need more, Brynn. Don’t you?

Michelle had nodded, as if she understood exactly what he meant and had been hoping for just that answer. She said, “It looks like it does.”

He got tired of talking about himself. “Okay. What’s the threat situation?”

“The what?”

“How risky’s the job going to be? How many people up there, weapons, police nearby? It’s a lake house-are the other houses on Lake View occupied?”

“It’ll be a piece of cake, Hart. Hardly any risk at all. The other places’ll be vacant. And only the two of them up there, the Feldmans. And no rangers in the park or cops around for miles.”

“They have weapons?”

“Are you kidding? They’re city people. She’s a lawyer, he’s a social worker.”

“Just the Feldmans, nobody else? It’ll make a big difference.”

“That’s my information. And it’s solid. Just the two of them.”

“And nobody gets hurt?”

“Absolutely not,” she had said. “I wouldn’t do this if there was a chance anybody’d get hurt.” Brenda-Michelle had smiled reassuringly.

Lots of money, nobody hurt. Sounded good. Still, he’d said, “I’ll get back to you.”

Hart had driven home and researched what she’d told him. Sitting at his computer, he’d laughed out loud. Sure enough, it was all true. And he was confident that no cops in the world would come up with a sting like this. They offered drugs, perped merchandise, funny money, but they didn’t suggest a caper out of a Nicholas Cage movie.

Then came the big day. They’d driven up to Lake Mondac in the stolen Ford together. He, Compton Lewis and Michelle. The two men had broken in and, while they held the Feldmans at gunpoint, Michelle was supposed to come into the kitchen, tape up their hands and start interrogating them about the money. Instead of the duct tape, though, she was carrying a 9mm subcompact Glock. She’d walked past Hart and shot the couple point-blank.

In the ringing silence that followed she turned around and walked into the living room like nothing had happened.

Hart had stared at her, trying to figure it out.

“The fuck did you do?” gasped Lewis, who’d been poking around in the fridge for food, rather than where he should’ve been-watching the front of the house.

“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.” She’d started going through the briefcase and backpack.

The men had been staring in shock at the bodies, while-they’d assumed-she was looking for a key to a secret room or lockbox or something. Hart himself had been frantically tallying up the offenses they’d just bought into. Felony murder being number one.

Then he saw her reflection-she was coming up behind him, lifting the gun.

He leapt sideways, instinctively.

Crack…

The tug on his arm.

Then returning fire as she escaped.

Lying in the spongy bed now, Hart knew exactly what had happened. There was no hidden treasure. Michelle had been hired to kill the Feldmans-Brynn had suggested as much as they’d sat in the van beside the meth cookers’ camper.

Her plan was to leave Hart and Lewis in the Feldmans’ house, the fall guys.

And Hart couldn’t help but laugh now. He’d hired Compton Lewis for exactly the same reason Michelle had hired Hart: an insurance policy, a fall guy. In case the robbery went bad and people ended up dead, Hart had been going to kill Lewis and set him up to look like the sole perp. That was why he’d gotten a loser he’d had no previous connection with. That scenario had nearly played out on the interstate. With Michelle, Brynn and the little girl together-and Hart had the squad car to escape by-it was time to conclude the evening. He killed Lewis and was about to kill the others with the SIG when who shows up but Brynn’s husband?

I was thinking with my contacts, guys in my crew, and your, you know, the way you plan things and think, we’d be a good team.

Oh, you sad bastard, Hart thought. You really did believe that, didn’t you? And here you were, 50 percent dead from the first time we sat down together, you tugging your green earring and scoffing about why were we in a faggot place like this that only sold coffee and not a real bar?

With sleep closing in, he pictured Michelle. Of all the people he’d worked with and for-dangerous Jamaican drug lords, South Side gangstas and OC bosses throughout the Midwest-the petite, young redhead was the most deadly.

The cloak of sweet, the cloak of helpless, the cloak of harmless-hiding a scorpion.

He speculated about the two women together last night. What on earth had they talked about? Brynn McKenzie was not a woman easily fooled, and yet Michelle had been the consummate actress. He thought of those surreal moments in the van with Brynn.

So, Michelle was a friend of the family? Is that how she got mixed up in this whole thing? Wrong time and wrong place, you might say. A lot of that going around tonight…

The Trickster.

In the Feldmans’ house he’d glanced quickly at a credit card in her purse and gotten her name. Michelle S. Kepler, he believed. Maybe Michelle A. There’d probably been a driver’s license but he hadn’t bothered to look for it then. He’d have to find her-before the police did, of course. She’d give him up in a minute. Oh, he had some work to do in the next few days.

But then, like Compton Lewis, Michelle faded from his thoughts and he fell asleep with only one image in his mind: the calm, confident eyes of Deputy Brynn McKenzie, sitting beside him in the front seat of the van.

You have the right to remain silent…

THEY RETURNED FROM the hospital at 8 P.M.

Brynn and Graham picked up Joey from the neighbor’s house and they drove home. Brynn got out of the car first and went up to the deputy, Jimmy Barnes, the one whose birthday was today. The balding, ruddy-faced man was parked on the shoulder in front of their house, all grim and quiet-the way everybody was in the Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department, because of Munce.

In fact, the way a lot of people throughout the town of Humboldt were.

“Nobody’s come by, Brynn.” He waved to Graham. “Made the rounds a few times.”

“Thanks.”

She suspected that Michelle, whoever she was, would be long gone but the woman seemed frighteningly obsessed.

And, she reflected, Hart too knew her last name.

“Crime Scene’s got what they need. I locked up after.”

“They say anything?”

“Nope. You know the state boys.”

It’d be against the laws of nature for the brass and the slugs from Lake Mondac not to match those collected in her house.

Barnes asked, “Wasn’t her friends? She was making all that up?”

“That’s right.”

“And your mom. Heard she’ll be okay?”

“She’ll live.”

“Where’d she get hit?”

“The leg. Hospital another day or two. Therapy.”

“Sorry about that.”

Brynn shrugged. “Lot of people don’t make it round to see therapy.”

“Lucky.”

If your daughter bringing an armed killer into your house is luck, then I guess.

“’Night now. Somebody’ll make the rounds off and on.”

“Thanks, Jimmy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”