Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

She heard footsteps on the front porch.

Graham’s?

A knock on the wooden frame. She rose.

“The bell’s out, I think,” Tom Dahl said.

“Hey. Come on in.”

The sheriff walked inside. He noticed the smooth walls. Didn’t comment on them. “How’s your mother doing?”

“She’ll be okay. Feisty, you know.” She tilted her head toward the closed family room door. “We made her up a bedroom downstairs. She’s sleeping now.”

“Oh, I’ll keep my voice down.”

“With the meds she’s on, she’d sleep through a party.”

The sheriff sat and massaged his leg. “I liked the way you phrased it. About those two killers: the bodies left behind. Described it pretty good.”

“Anything at all, Tom?”

“I’ll tell you up front there’s not much. That fellow got himself shot was Compton Lewis. Lived in Milwaukee.”

“Compton was his first name?”

“Ask his mother or father. Fellow was just a punk, a wannabe. Did construction around the lakefront and ran some petty scams, smash-and-grab at gas stations and convenience stores. Biggest thing was he and some folks tried to rob a guard refilling an ATM outside of Madison last year. They think Lewis was supposedly the getaway driver but he dropped his keys in the snow. His buddies ran off and he got busted. Did six months.” Dahl shook his head. “Only kin I could track down was Lewis’s older brother. The only one still in the state. The man took the news hard, I’ll tell you. Started crying like a baby. Had to hang up and called me back a half hour later…Didn’t have much to say, but here’s his number if you want to talk to him.” He handed her a Post-it note.

“How about Hart?” She’d checked every criminal database in five states, all the nicknames, all the mug shots for everybody named Hart, Heart, Harte, Hartman, Harting…nothing.

“No leads at all. That man…he’s good. Look at the fingerprints. Didn’t leave a one anywhere. And digging the bullet with his DNA out of the woodwork? He knows what he’s doing.”

“And Michelle? She would’ve given Hart and Lewis a fake name but I’d guess Michelle is real; Hart and Lewis found her purse and probably looked through it. And she’d’ve told the truth to me-because I’d be dead by morning.”

Dahl said, “They’re more concerned about her ’cause the FBI’s sure it’s Mankewitz who hired her, and they want to prove him or one of his people hired her. But so far the snitches haven’t come up with anything concrete.”

“Are they taking the composite picture of her I did to acting schools and health clubs?” Brynn was pretty sure the biography Michelle had told that night was a lie, its purpose to elicit sympathy from Brynn, but the young woman had been so credible it was worth checking out.

“I think they’re working from the top down more, going for a Mankewitz connection first.”

He went on to say that he’d opened files on the four meth cookers killed by Hart and Lewis. They were murder charges; like ’em or not, drug dealers have a right not to be killed too.

If the mysterious shooter near the ledge in Marquette State Park in the early hours of April 18 had any connection to the methamphetamine industry in Wisconsin or to Mankewitz, nobody’d been able to find it. The State Police had found the probable location of the shooter’s nest but they’d recovered no physical evidence whatsoever. He’d collected all his brass and obscured his shoeprints. “Everybody’s a damn pro,” Dahl muttered. Then asked, “How’s that little girl doing?”

“Amy? No other family that Child Protective Services can find.”

“Sad.”

“Not really, Tom. At least she’ll have a chance for a decent life now. She wouldn’t’ve survived there with Gandy and his wife… And I have to say she’s looking okay. Pretty happy.”

“You saw her?”

“This morning. I bought her a new Chester and took it up.”

“A new…?”

“Toy. I don’t know what. Donkey-monkey or something. I was planning on going back to the park and getting the original. Just didn’t have the heart.”

“That’d be above and beyond, Brynn. Physically, she’s okay?”

“Well, nobody’d gone south.”

“Thank God for that.”

“But the marks on her neck?” Brynn grimaced angrily. “The doctor who looked her over that night said they’d been made in the past few hours.”

“Few hours? You mean, it was Michelle did that?”

“Yep.” Brynn sighed. “Amy was making some noise, and Hart and Lewis were nearby. Michelle pulled her aside to talk to her. And she was quiet after that. Half strangled the poor kid, I’ve got a feeling.”

“Lord, what a witch.”

“And Amy was terrified for the rest of the night. I never connected it.”

“Poor thing. Good you went to see her.”

She asked, “That FBI fellow who’s checking on Mankewitz? He’ll call us? Or are they thinking we’re bumpkins?”

“Never knew where that word came from.”

Brynn lifted an eyebrow.

“They think we’re bumpkins but they said they’d let us know,” Dahl said.

“Still, give me his number. I’ll call just to say hello.”

Snickering, Dahl dug through his wallet and found a card. Showed it to Brynn and she wrote down the information.

“You look tired. I owe you that time off. And I’m insisting you take it. That’s from your boss. Kick back. Let Graham take care of things for a while. A man oughta know his way around the kitchen and grocery store and laundry. Lord knows, I do. Carole’s whipped me into shape.”

Brynn laughed and Dahl missed the mournful tone. “Well, I will. Promise. But not just yet. We’ve got open homicides and even if Mankewitz is behind it and the U.S. attorney comes in on RICO or conspiracy counts, it’s still a state crime happened in our county.”

“What’re you planning to do?” Dahl asked.

“Go where the leads take me. Here, Milwaukee, wherever.” She at least would follow up on some of the acting school and health club connections, anything else she could think of. Maybe gun clubs. The woman certainly knew how to use a firearm.

“And it won’t do any good saying no?”

“You can fire me.”

He chuckled.

Brynn sighed. “And this all ended up in our lap.”

“Usually, you know, you can’t pick the bullet that hits you. Usually you can’t even hear it coming.”

“What’re you and Carole doing this weekend?”

“Maybe a movie. Only if her mother comes to babysit. These teenagers? They charge you ten dollars an hour and you have to feed them. I mean, something hot. What do you pay?”

“Graham and I don’t go out much.”

“Better that way. Stay home, have dinner. No need to go out. Especially with cable. Best be going.”

“Say hi to Carole for me.”

“Will do. And regards to your mom. Wish her well.”

She watched him go and she stood, looking over the first item on her list.

SITTING IN Adiner in downtown Milwaukee, big, broad Stanley Mankewitz noted his reflection in the glass, intensified because of the dark gray afternoon light. The date was May 1 but the weather had been borrowed from March.

This was an important date in Mankewitz’s life. International Workers’ Day, picked by worldwide labor movements in the late 1880s to honor common workers. That particular date was selected largely to commemorate the martyrs of the Haymarket Massacre, in which both police and workers were killed in May 1886 in Chicago, following rallies by the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions in support of an eight-hour workday.

May Day meant two things to Mankewitz. One, it honored working people-which he had been and which he now represented with all his heart-along with their brothers and sisters throughout the world.