Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

“Away on some work.”

“Whereabouts? What do you want?”

“Smirnie and grapefruit. And a burger, medium. No fries.”

“You got it. So where?”

“New England. Then a while in Florida.”

The bartender got the drink and carried the square of greasy green paper with Hart’s order to a window into the kitchen, hung it up and rang a bell. A dark brown hand appeared, grabbed the slip then vanished. The bartender returned.

“Florida. Last time I was there, the wife and I went, we sat on the deck all day long. Didn’t go to the beach till the last day. I liked the deck better. We went out to eat a lot. Crab. Love those crabs. Where were you?”

“Some place. You know, near Miami.”

“Us too. Miami Beach. You didn’t get much of a tan, Terry.”

“Never do that. Not good for you.” He drained the liquor.

“Right you are.”

“I’ll have another.” He pushed the glass toward the bartender. Looked around the place. He sipped the new drink. It was strong. Afternoon pours were big. A few minutes later the bell rang again and his burger appeared. He ate part of it slowly. “So, Ben, everything good around town?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Anybody come in here asking about me?”

“Ha.”

“What, ha?”

“Like a line out of some movie. James Garner. Or some detective, you know. A PI.”

Hart smiled, sipped his drink. Then ate more, with his left hand. He was using that arm, the shot one, for everything he could. The muscle had atrophied but was coming back. Just that day he’d finished with the triple-0 steel wool on the box he’d started up in Wisconsin, using his left hand for most of the work. It was really beautiful; he was proud of it.

The bartender said, “Nobody while I was here. Expecting somebody?”

“I never know what to expect.” A grin. “How’s that for a PI line?”

“You got a haircut.”

It was much shorter. A businessman’s trim.

“Looks good.”

Hart grunted.

The man went off to refill somebody else’s drink. Hart was thinking: If people drink liquor during the day it’s usually vodka. And mixed with something else. Sweet or sour. Nobody drinks martinis in the afternoon. Why is that?

He wondered if Brynn McKenzie was eating lunch at that moment. Did she generally? Or did she wait for dinner, a family dinner?

Which put him in mind of her husband. Graham Boyd.

Hart wondered if they’d talked about getting back together. He doubted it. Graham’s place, a nice townhouse about four miles from Brynn’s, didn’t look very temporary. Not like Hart’s apartment, when he’d broken up with his wife. He’d just crashed and hadn’t gotten around to fixing up the place for months. He thought back to being with Brynn in that van, next to the meth cooker’s camper. He’d never answered her question, the implicit one when she’d glanced at his hand: Are you married? Never answered it directly. Felt bad, in a funny way.

No lies between us…

The bartender’d said something.

“What?”

“That okay, Terry? Done right?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“No problem.”

ESPN was on the tube. Sports highlights. Hart finished his lunch.

The bartender collected the plate and silverware. “So you seeing anybody, Terry?” he asked, making bartender conversation.

Looking at the TV, Hart said, “Yeah, I have been.” Surprising himself.

“No, shit. Who?”

“This woman I met in April.” He didn’t know why he was saying this. He supposed because it made him feel good.

“Bring her in here sometime.”

“Ah, think we’re breaking up.”

“How come?”

“She doesn’t live around here.”

The bartender grimaced. “Yeah, I hear that. Long distance. I had a stint in the reserves and Ellie and me were apart for six months. That was tough. We’d just started going out. And the fucking governor calls me up. When you’re married it’s one thing, you can be away. But just going out with somebody…it sucks to commute.”

“Sure does.”

“Where is she?”

“Wisconsin.”

The bartender paused, sensing a joke. “For real?”

A nod.

“I mean, it’s not like we’re talking L.A. or Samoa, Terry.”

“There’re other problems.”

“Man and woman, there’re always other problems.”

Hart was thinking, Why do so many bartenders say things in a way that sounds like it’s the final word on a subject?

“We’re like Romeo and Juliet.”

The bartender lowered his voice. He understood. “She’s Jewish, huh?”

Hart laughed. “No. Not religion. It’s her job more.”

“Keeps her too busy, right? Never gets home? You ask me, that’s bullshit. Women oughta stay home. I’m not saying after the kids are grown, she can’t go back part-time. But it’s the way God meant it to be.”

“Yeah,” Hart said, thinking how Brynn McKenzie would respond to that.

“So that’s it between you guys?”

His chest thudded. “Probably. Yeah.”

The bartender looked away, as if he’d seen something troubling in Hart’s eyes-either scary or sad. Hart wondered which. “Well, you’ll meet somebody else, Terry.” The man lifted his soda, which had some rum “accidentally” spilled into it.

Hart offered his own bartenderism, “One way or the other, life goes on, doesn’t it?”

“I-”

“There’s no answer, Ben. I’m just talking.” Hart gave a grin. “Gotta finish packing. What’s the damage here?”

The bartender tallied it up. Hart paid. “Anybody comes around asking for me, let me know. Here’s a number.”

He jotted down a prepaid mobile he used for voice mail only.

Pocketing the twenty-dollar tip, Ben said, “PI’s, huh?”

Hart smiled again. He looked around the place and then headed out.

The door eased shut behind him as he stepped onto the sidewalk, the late May sky brilliant. The wind usually didn’t blow in from Lake Michigan but Hart thought he could smell the ripe scent of water on the cool breeze.

He pulled on sunglasses, thinking back to that night in April, thinking about the absence of light in Marquette State Park. There was no such thing as a single darkness, he’d learned there. There were hundreds of different shades-and textures and shapes too. Grays and blacks there weren’t even words to describe. Darkness as plentiful as types of woods, and with as many different grains. He supposed that if-

The first bullet struck him in his back, high and right. It exited, spattering his cheek with blood and tissue. He gasped, more startled than hurt, and looked down at the mess of the wound in his chest. The second entered the back of his head. The third sailed inches over him, as he dropped, and cracked obliquely into the window of the tavern. The glass began to cascade toward the ground.

Limp, Hart collided hard but silently with the sidewalk. Window shards flowed around him. One of the bigger sheets cut his ear nearly off. Another sliced through his neck and the blood began to flow in earnest.

“MORNING,” TOM DAHL SAID.

He was standing in Brynn’s cubicle, holding his coffee mug in one hand and two doughnuts in the other. Cheryl from reception had brought them. They rotated the duty. Every Monday, somebody brought pastry. To take the sting out of coming back to work maybe. Or maybe it was one of those traditions that had started for no reason and kept going because there was no reason to stop it.

She nodded.

“How was your weekend?” the sheriff asked.

“Good,” she said. “Joey was with his dad. Mom and I met Rita and Megan for brunch after church. We went to Brighton’s.”

“The buffet?”

“Yep.”

“They do a good spread there,” Dahl said reverently.