Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

As he sanded by hand, he thought back to that night in the woods, recalling all the trees there-oak, ash, maple, walnut, all the hardwoods that made up the medium for his craft. What he purchased as smooth, precisely cut lumber, with perfect angles at the corners, had begun as a huge, imposing, even forbidding creature, towering a hundred or so feet in the air. In one way it troubled him that the trees were cut down. In another, though, he believed he was honoring the wood by transforming it into something else, something to be appreciated.

He now looked over the project he’d been working on: an inlaid box. He was pleased with the progress. It might be a present for someone. He wasn’t sure yet.

At eight that night he drove to downtown Green Bay, to a woody, dark bar that served pretty good chili and had a bowl and a beer, sitting at the bar. He got another beer when he finished the first and went into the back room, where there was a basketball game on. He watched it, sipping the beer. It was a West Coast game and the hour was later here. Pretty soon the other patrons began to check their watches, then stand and head home. The score was 92-60 well into the second half and whatever interest had existed before the halftime show had evaporated.

Anyway, it was just basketball. Not the Packers.

He glanced at the walls. They were covered with old signs from Wisconsin’s breweries of the past, famous ones, he supposed, though he’d never heard of them. Loaf and Stein, Heileman, Foxhead. An ominous tusked boar stared at him from a Hibernia Brewing logo. A picture of a TV screen on which two women looked out at the audience. Penned below it was, Hey there, from Laverne and Shirley.

Hart asked for his check as the waitress passed by. She was polite but cool, having given up flirting with him when it wasn’t reciprocated the first time, a week or so ago. In bars like this one, once is enough. He paid, left and drove to another bar not far away, in the Broadway District. He stepped out of the car and into the shadows of a nearby alley.

When the man came out of the bar at 1 A.M., which he’d done virtually every night for the past week, Hart grabbed him, pushed a pistol into his back and dragged him into the alley.

It took Freddy Lancaster about fifteen seconds to decide that the impending threat from Hart was worse than the equally dangerous but less immediate threat of Michelle Kepler. He told Hart everything he knew about her.

One glance out of the alley and one single muted gunshot later, Hart returned to his car.

He drove back to his house, thinking about his next steps. He had believed Freddy when he’d said that neither he nor Gordon Potts knew exactly where Michelle lived but the man had disgorged enough information to allow Hart to start closing in on her.

Which he’d do soon.

But for now he’d do what he’d been obsessing about for the past several weeks. He yawned and reflected that at least he could get a good night’s sleep. He wouldn’t need an early start. Humboldt, Wisconsin, was only a three-hour drive away.

AT 2:30 P.M. on Monday, May 4, Kristen Brynn McKenzie was in the bar area of a restaurant in Milwaukee, having chicken soup and a diet soda. She’d just left appointments with an MPD detective and an FBI agent, where they’d compared notes about their respective investigations into the killings of the Feldmans and the meth dealers in Kennesha County in April.

The meetings had proven to be unhelpful. The goal of the city and the federal investigations, it seemed, was to find a link to Mankewitz, rather than capture those individuals who had slaughtered an innocent husband and wife and left their bodies ignominiously on a cold kitchen floor.

A fact that Brynn pointed out to both the detective and the Feebie, neither of whom was moved by her assessment to do more than curl his lips sympathetically. And with some irritation.

She’d left the second appointment in a bad mood and decided to grab some belated lunch and head home.

In the past few weeks Brynn McKenzie had logged 2,300 miles in her own investigation. She was now driving a used Camry-very used. The waterlogged Honda had died in the line of duty, according to the insurance company, thus excluding it from her personal auto policy. She’d paid for the car herself, from her savings, which hurt, particularly since she wasn’t sure about her financial future.

Graham had moved out.

They’d discussed the situation several times again after April 18. But Graham remained badly shaken by Eric Munce’s death, for which he still blamed himself-though not Brynn, not at all (what a difference between him and Keith).

Graham had been gone only a few days, moving into a rental unit twenty minutes away. She found herself sad and troubled…but in some way relieved. There was also a large numbness factor. Of course, domestics were her specialty, and she knew it was far too early to say for certain where their lives were headed.

He was still paying his share of the bills-more than his share, actually, picking up all of Anna’s medical expenses that the insurance company wasn’t. But their lifestyle had been based on two incomes and Brynn was suddenly much more conscious of finances.

She ate a bit more of the cooling soup. Her phone buzzed. Joey was calling and she picked up immediately. It was just a check-in and she made cheerful comments as he told her a few things about gym and science, then hung up to hurry off to his final class.

After allowing that Graham might have been accurate in his comments about the boy-and about her rearing of him-she’d done some investigating (and interrogating) and learned that the reports of Joey’s ’phalting were true; he’d hitched rides on trucks a number of times. Only by the grace of God had he been saved from serious injury. The class cutting too had occurred.

She’d had several difficult talks with the boy-prodded largely by her mother, which had surprised her.

Brynn had swooped into her son’s life like a tactical officer from a helicopter. He was only allowed to board at a local free-style course, when she was there with him. And he had to wear his helmet, no ski hats.

“Mom, like, come on. Are you kidding?”

“That’s your only option. And I keep your board locked up in my room.”

He’d sighed, exaggeratedly. But agreed.

She also required him to call in regularly and to be home within twenty minutes of the end of school. She was amused to see his reaction when she reminded him that the police have an arrangement with the local phone company that allows them to track the whereabouts of cell phones, even when they’re not in use. (This was true, though what she didn’t share was that it would be illegal for her to use the system to electronically check up on him.)

But if she was getting the rebellious behavior under control, there seemed to be nothing she could do with his moods about Graham’s departure. Although her husband stayed in regular touch with his stepson, Joey wasn’t happy at the breakup and she didn’t know how to do anything about that. After all, she wasn’t the one who’d walked out the door. She’d fix it, though at the moment she didn’t have a clue how.

She pushed the soup away, reflecting that so much had changed since that night.

“That night.” The phrase had become an icon in her life. It meant a lot more than a chronological reference.

She was single again, had an injured mother in her care and a troubled son to keep an eye on. Still, nothing in the world would stop her from finding Michelle and Hart and bringing them in.

She was, in fact, wondering if there was anything she could salvage from the meetings she’d just had with the detective and FBI agent when she realized the bar was deathly quiet.