Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

“I’m lost.”

“And?”

“Scared.”

“And what do you look like?”

“Upset.”

“Good.” She rewarded him with another big smile, tousling his hair. “Then Mommy’s going to come up and…talk to her for a minute, then we both run back to the car and drive home and see Sam. Do you like Sam?”

“Yeah, he’s fun.”

“You like him more than you like Mommy?”

The hesitation was like a hot iron against her skin. “No.”

She pushed the jealousy away as best she could. Time to concentrate.

Michelle studied the area. Cars passed occasionally, a customer would come out of a tavern across the street or an elderly local would amble along the sidewalk. But other than that the neighborhood was deserted.

“Now. Be quiet. And shut the radio off.”

Her phone buzzed. She read the text message, frowned. It was from a friend in Milwaukee. The words were sobering. The man had just heard, about twenty minutes ago, that Gordon Potts had been killed in Eau Claire. freek accd’t, it reported.

Michelle’s face tightened. Bullshit about the accident. It was Hart’s work. But it was good news for Michelle. She’d been uneasy being out in public here in Milwaukee with Hart still loose. Now at least she knew he wasn’t in town at the moment.

God or Fate, smiling on her.

Then right on the dot she saw the Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department car pull into the parking lot of the Harborside Inn. Her palms began sweating.

God or Fate…

“Okay, Brad.” Michelle popped the locks and stepped out. Her son got out of the other side. “Mommy’s going to go around there,” she whispered. “And I’ll walk up behind that woman. Don’t look at me. Pretend I’m not there. You understand that?”

He nodded.

“Do not look at me when I come up to the car. Say it.”

“I won’t look at you.”

“Because if you look at me, that woman will take you away and put you in jail. She’s that kind of woman. I love you so much that I don’t want that to happen. That’s why I’m doing this for you. You know all the trouble I go to for you and your sister?”

“Yes.”

She hugged him. “Okay, now go tell her what I said. And remember ‘upset.’”

As the boy walked toward the car, Michelle, crouching, slipped around a row of parked cars. She pulled the Glock from the pocket of her leather jacket, a new one, bought by Sam Rolfe to replace her favorite, a really beautiful number from Neiman Marcus, which had been totally ruined on their walk through the woods that cold night in April.

AS HE DROVE along the road in Humboldt, toward Brynn McKenzie’s house, Sheriff Tom Dahl was thinking about her years in the department.

The job had been tough on her, especially taking on the worst assignments, the hurt kids, the domestics. Been tough too thanks to her fellow deputies’ attitudes because she was the overachiever, always had been. The girl in the front row, raising her hand because she knew every answer. Nobody liked that.

But, hell, she’d gotten results. Look at what she’d done that night at Lake Mondac. He didn’t know another deputy who would’ve pushed as hard as she had.

He didn’t know another deputy who would have survived.

Dahl massaged his game leg.

He parked in front of the small house; they all were on Kendall Road. Brynn’s was a neat place, trim and well kept up. And, thanks to Graham, it had the hell landscaped out of it. A lot different from the others here.

He got out of the car. Stood and stretched. A joint snapped somewhere. He’d given up worrying where such sounds originated or what they meant.

Tugging on his hat, a habit, Dahl walked slowly through the gate and then up the serpentine sidewalk, bordered by more kinds of plants than he knew existed.

At the door he hesitated only a moment and then rang the bell. A double chime sounded.

The door opened.

“Hey, Sheriff.”

Brynn’s son stood there. Seemed he’d grown another eight inches since they’d been together last, a department Christmas party.

“Hi, Joey.” Beyond him, in the living room, Anna McKenzie was moving toward the kitchen with a cane. “Anna.”

She nodded cautiously.

And behind her, in the kitchen, Brynn was taking the temperature of a roasting chicken as she stood beside the stove. He thought she didn’t cook. Or even knew how. The chicken looked pretty good.

She turned and lifted an eyebrow.

“We got her, Brynn. We got her.”

THEY SAT IN the family room, sheriff and deputy.

Iced tea, courtesy of Anna, sat between them.

Brynn said, “Took longer than I thought. Been on pins and needles.”

Which didn’t begin to describe her anxiety, waiting for the news.

Sheriff Dahl explained, “There was a complication. The teams were in place around Rolfe’s house. But when she came outside she had her son with her. She took her boy to the Harborside Inn.”

“She what ?”

“She even sent him up to the car the decoy was in while she moved around back to shoot you, well, her, from behind.”

“Oh, my God.”

“The tactical team didn’t want to move in while Michelle and the kid were together. They were afraid she’d use him as a hostage. They waited till they separated at the parking lot. The boy’s fine. He’s in CPS with his sister.”

Thank you, Brynn prayed silently. Thank you. “She was going to use her own child as a diversion and then shoot me right in front of him?” Brynn could hardly believe it.

“Looks that way.”

“What’s the boyfriend’s story?”

“Rolfe? They’re questioning him now but looks like he was in the dark. If he should be arrested for anything it’s bad judgment in women.” His cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. “Better take this. S’the mayor. We’re holding a press conference about the whole thing. Gotta get some notes.”

He rose and stepped outside, walking stiffly to his car.

Brynn sat back on the couch, staring at the ceiling, silently thanking Stanley Mankewitz and his slim assistant-James Jasons, she’d learned-for leading her to Michelle Kepler.

Maybe you’re looking for the wrong who.

After their get-together in the bad-coffee restaurant, Brynn had looked into other motives for murdering Emma Feldman, specifically the ones suggested by Mankewitz: suicidal state politicians and the Kenosha company making dangerous hybrid car parts. Some of her other cases too. But none of them had panned out.

She then considered Jasons’s comment and wondered: What if “the wrong who” could mean not who wanted to kill her-but who was the intended victim ?

As soon as Brynn began to consider that Michelle had wanted Steven Feldman dead, not Emma, the case fell into place. Feldman was a caseworker for the city’s Social Services Department, part of whose job function was checking out child abuse complaints and, in extreme cases, placing victims in foster homes.

Recalling how the young woman had silenced poor Amy that night in Marquette State Park, Brynn had wondered if he’d been investigating Michelle, with an eye toward placing children she might have.

There was no record of a file involving anyone named Michelle but Brynn had recalled that at the lake house that night Steven’s backpack was empty, while a number of Emma’s files were scattered on the floor. Had Michelle thrown his files, including the one about her own children, into the fireplace?

When she’d returned to Lake Mondac, Brynn had taken samples of ash from the fireplace. She intimidated the state lab in Gardener into analyzing it ASAP and learned that it was identical to ash produced by burning the manila folders issued to city workers. She also found the coiled bindings of steno pads, which Feldman had used to take notes during field interviews.