Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

Empty. The waiter, busboy and bartender were gone.

And then she had a memory: seeing a slight man walking behind her on the way from the police station here. She hadn’t thought anything of it, but now realized that she’d stopped at one point to look in a store window; he’d stopped as well, to make a phone call. Or to pretend to.

Alarmed, she started to rise but felt the breeze of a door opening and sensed people behind her, at least two, it seemed.

She froze. Her gun was under her suit jacket and a raincoat. She’d be dead before she undid two buttons.

There was nothing to do but turn around.

She did so, half expecting to see Hart’s gray eyes as he steadied the gun to kill her.

The heavier of the two, a man in his sixties, said, “Detective, I’m Stanley Mankewitz.”

She nodded. “It’s Deputy. ”

The other man, skinny and boyish, was the one she’d seen earlier, following her. He had a faint smile but humor was not its source. He remained silent.

Mankewitz sat on the stool next to hers. “May I?”

“You’re bordering on kidnapping here.”

He seemed surprised. “Oh, you’re free to leave any time, Deputy McKenzie. Kidnapping?”

He nodded to his associate, who went to a nearby table.

The bartender had returned. He looked at Mankewitz.

“Just coffee. A Diet Coke for my friend.” He nodded at the table.

The bartender delivered the coffee to the bar and the soda to Mankewitz’s associate. “Anything else?” he asked Brynn, as if saying, Want some cheesecake for your last meal?

She shook her head. “Just the check.”

Mankewitz prepared the coffee carefully, just the right amount of cream, a sugar packet and a Splenda. He said, “I heard you had quite an evening a few weeks ago.”

That night…

“And how would you know that?”

“I watch the news.” He gave off an aura of confidence that she found reassuring in one sense-that she was in no physical danger at the moment-but also troubling. As if he had another weapon, like knowing something that could destroy her life without resorting to violence. He seemed completely in control.

In this way he reminded her of Hart.

The union boss continued, “Very important to be informed. When I was growing up, before your time, we had an hour of local news-five P.M.-and then national and international. Walter Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley…Just a half hour. Me, that wasn’t enough. I like all the information I can get. CNN. I love it. It’s the home page on my BlackBerry.”

“That doesn’t answer the question of how you happen to be here, when I just decided to come in on a whim… Unless you’d somehow found out I had an appointment at Milwaukee PD.”

He hesitated only a moment-she’d obviously touched something close to home. He said, “Or maybe I’ve just been shadowing you.”

“I know he has,” she snapped, nodding at his slim associate.

Mankewitz smiled, sipped the coffee and looked with regret at the rotating dessert display. “We have a mutual interest here, Deputy.”

“And what would that be?”

“Finding Emma Feldman’s killer.”

“I’m not watching him drink very bad coffee two feet away from me right now?”

“It is bad coffee. How’d you know?”

“Smell.”

He nodded at the can of soda by her plate. “You and my friend and that diet pop. That’s what’s not good for you, you know. And, no, you’re not in the company of her killer.”

She looked behind her. The other fellow was sipping his soda while he looked over his own BlackBerry.

What was his home page?

“Don’t imagine you work many murders in Kennesha County,” Mankewitz said. “Not like this one.”

“Not like these, ” she corrected. “Several people were killed.” Now that she was alive and the bartender was a witness, even a bribable one, she’d started feeling cocky, if not ornery.

“Of course.” He nodded.

Brynn mused, “What kind of cases do we run? Domestic knifings. A gun goes off accidental during a 7-Eleven or gas station heist. A meth deal goes bad.”

“Bad stuff, that drug. Very bad.”

Tell me about it. She said, “If you’ve seen COPS, you know what we do.”

“April seventeenth was a whole different ball game.” He sipped the bad coffee anyway. “You in a union? A police union?”

“No, not in Kennesha.”

“I believe in unions, ma’am. I believe in working and I believe in giving everybody a fair shake to climb up the ladder. Like education. School’s an equalizer; a union’s the same. You’re in a union, we give you the basics. You might be happy with that, take your hourly wage and God bless. But you can use it like a diving board, you want to go higher in life.”

“Diving board?”

“Maybe that’s a bad choice. I’m not so creative. You know what I’m accused of?”

“Not the details. A scam involving illegal immigrants.”

“What I’m accused of is giving people forged documentation that’s better than what they can buy on the street. They get jobs in open shops and vote to go union.”

“Is that true?”

“No.” He smiled. “Those’re the accusations. Now, you know how the authorities tipped to my alleged crimes? That lawyer, Emma Feldman, was doing some business deal for a client and she found a large number of legal immigrants were union members-proportionately a lot higher than in most locals around the country. From that, somebody started the rumor that I was selling them forged papers. All their green cards, though, were legit. Issued by the U.S. government.”

Brynn considered this. He seemed credible. But who knew?

“Why?”

“To break the union, that’s why, pure and simple. The rumors start going around that I’m corrupt. That Local Four-oh-eight is a front for terrorists. That I’m encouraging foreigners to take our jobs…Bang, everybody votes to drop out and go open shop.” He was worked up. “Let me explain exactly why I’m being persecuted here. Why people want Stanley Mankewitz out of the picture. Because I don’t hate immigrants. I am all in favor of them. I’d rather employ a dozen Mexicans or Chinese or Bulgarians who come to this country-legally, I’ll add-to work hard, than a hundred lazy born-here citizens any day. So I’m caught right in the middle. The employers hate me because I’m union. My own membership hates me because I promote people who aren’t Amurican. ” He drawled the last word, a good ole boy. “So there’s a conspiracy to set me up.”

Brynn sighed, having lost all interest in her soup and the soda, which had been flat to start with, probably as bad as the coffee, though it didn’t stink.

Mankewitz lowered his voice. “Did you know I saved your life on April seventeenth?”

Her attention swung fully to him now. A frown. She didn’t want to show any emotion but couldn’t help herself.

Mankewitz said, “I sent Mr. Jasons there to protect my interest. I knew I didn’t kill Emma Feldman and her husband. I wanted to find out who really did. That could lead me to who was trying to set me up.”

“Please…” she said, giving him a skeptical glance. Her cheek stung and she rearranged her expression.

Mankewitz looked over her shoulder. “James?”

Jasons joined them at the bar, toting a briefcase. He said, “I was in the forest, near that ledge you and that woman and little girl were on. I had a Bushmaster rifle. You were throwing rocks and logs down on those men.”

She asked in a whisper, “That was you?” Jasons didn’t look like he could even hold a gun. “Shooting at us?”

“ Near you. Not at. Only to break up the fighting.” Another sip of soda. “I drove to the house at the lake. I said I was a friend of Steve Feldman. I followed your husband and that other deputy into the woods. I wasn’t there to kill anybody. Just the opposite. My orders were to keep everyone alive. Find out who they were. I broke up the fight but I couldn’t track them down to interrogate them.”