Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

“Was nice.”

“So’s the one at the Marriott. They have an ice statue swan. Gotta get there early. It melts down to a duck by two.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Brynn said. “You guys do anything fun?”

“Not really. In-laws over. That father of hers…man is skinny as your pencil. Had three helpings of chicken and before we were done he was dunking his bread in the mushroom soup at the bottom of Carole’s green bean casserole. I mean, for pity’s sake.”

“That’s a good casserole,” said Brynn, who’d had it several times.

“God made serving spoons for a reason.” Dahl glanced down at the doughnut balancing on a paper plate atop his coffee mug. “Krispy Kreme today. I myself am partial to the ones you bring.”

“Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“Right. They don’t make ’em with that little knob anymore, do they?”

“I don’t know, Tom. I just ask for three dozen. They mix ’em up for me.”

She kept waiting.

He said, “So. You heard, didn’t you?”

“Heard?”

He frowned. “Milwaukee PD called. That detective working on the Lake Mondac case?”

“Nobody called me.” She lifted an eyebrow.

“Hart was killed.”

“What?”

“Looked gangland. Shot in the back of the head. North side of Chicago. That’s where he lived, it turned out.”

“Well. How ’bout that.” Brynn sat back, eyed her own coffee. She’d seen the doughnuts but hadn’t given in.

“You were right. Man had some enemy or another.”

“Any leads?”

“Not many.”

“They find out anything about him?”

Dahl told her what Chicago PD had relayed to Milwaukee: Terrance Hart was a security consultant, with an office in Chicago. He made $93,043 last year. He would provide risk assessments to warehouse and manufacturing companies and arrange for security guards. Never been arrested, never been the subject of any criminal investigation, paid his taxes on time.

“Man traveled a lot, though. A lot.” The sheriff said this as if that alone was a cause for suspicion.

Dahl added that he’d been married briefly, no kids.

Marriage doesn’t suit me. Does it suit you, Brynn?

His parents lived in Pennsylvania. He had one younger sibling, a brother who was now a doctor.

“A doctor?” Brynn frowned.

“Yeah. The family was pretty normal. Which you wouldn’t expect. But Hart himself was always living on the edge. In trouble at school a lot. But, like I said, no arrests. Kept up a good front. His company’s done okay. And, get this, he was a woodworker. I mean, high-class stuff. Furniture, not just the bookshelves I hammer together. Had this sign above his workbench, what a teacher of mine told me: ‘Measure twice, cut once.’ Not your typical hit man.”

“What was the story with the shooting?”

“Pretty simple. He’d moved back to his townhouse from Green Bay, where he’d been hiding out. But with Michelle away there was no reason not to go home. He went to one of his old hangouts for lunch on Saturday afternoon. Walked out and somebody got him from behind.”

“Any witnesses?”

“Not really. Everybody in the bar hit the deck as soon as the gunplay started. Chicago, after all. Nobody could tell the cops anything concrete. Street was deserted. A few cars took off fast. No tag or IDs.” He paused. “There’s a connection here.”

“Here?” Brynn asked, watching him take a bite of the fried dough, as crumbs parachuted to the faded carpet.

“Well, Wisconsin. The ballistics on the slugs match a weapon might’ve been used in a shooting in that gas station thing over in Smith about six months ago? Exxon. The clerk nearly got killed.”

“I don’t remember.”

“The State Police handled it. Nobody here was involved.”

“The same gun?”

“They think. But who knows? That ballistics’ stuff. Not as easy as CSI makes it look.”

Brynn said, “So the perp here ditched the gun and somebody found it and it got sold on the street.”

“Guess so.”

“Recycling at its worst.”

“Amen.”

Brynn sat back, made a bridge across the top of her coffee mug with a skinny wood stirrer. “What else, Tom? Looks like there’s more.”

Dahl hesitated. “Guess I should say. Hart had your name in a notebook in his pocket. And your address too. And in the apartment they found some other things. Pictures.”

“Pictures?”

“Digital ones he’d printed out. Of the outside of the house. Taken recent. You could see the spring buds. The pictures were in this wooden box-a fancy one. Looks like he made it himself.”

“Well.”

A long sigh. “And I have to say, there were some of Joey’s school too.”

“No. Of Joey?”

“Just the school. I was thinking he might’ve been staking it out to get a feel for your schedule… In his apartment he had a suitcase being packed. Inside was a weapon and a sound suppressor. I’ve never see one of those. Except in the movies. I thought they were called silencers but the detective called them a suppressor.”

She was nodding slowly. Kept stirring coffee that didn’t need it.

“We’ll take your house off the special patrol route, if you’re comfortable with that.”

“Sure. Sounds like everything’s accounted for, Tom.”

“It is. Case closed. I don’t think I ever said that, not in fourteen years.” Clutching his breakfast he wandered back to his office.

CHESTNUT HAIR PINNED up, a concession to a surprise Wisconsin heat wave, Kristen Brynn McKenzie was walking past a dozen pines, round and richly green. Sweat blossomed under the arms of her tan uniform blouse and trickled down her spine. She was looking at the plants, studying them closely. They weren’t much taller than she was. As she moved along she lowered her hand and let it drag across the three-inch needles. They yielded without prickling.

She paused and looked at them.

Recalling, of course, April. She’d been thinking a lot about those twelve hours in Marquette State Park, remembering with odd clarity the sights and smells and feel of the trees and plants that had saved her life. And that had nearly ended it.

Why, she wondered, gazing at the pines, would they have evolved this way, these shapes and shades, some the color of green Jell-O, some the shade of Home Depot shutters? Why were these needles long and soft, and why had barberry brambles, where Amy’s toy, Chester, was probably still entombed, developed those terrible thorns?

Thinking of the foliage, the trees, the leaves. Wood alive and wood dead and decaying.

Brynn continued on, found herself next to several huge camellias, the blossoms widely unfolded from their tight pods, cradled in waxy green leaves. The petals were red, the color of bright blood, and her heart tapped a bit at that. She kept walking. Now past azaleas and ligustrum and crepe myrtle, ferns, hibiscus, wisteria.

Then she turned the corner and a short, dark-complexioned man holding a hose blinked in surprise and said, “Buenos dias, Mrs. McKenzie.”

“Morning, Juan. Where is he? I saw his truck.”

“In the shed.”

She walked past several piles of mulch, fifteen feet high. A worker in a Bobcat was stirring it, to prevent spontaneous combustion. It could actually smolder up a storm of smoke if you didn’t. The rich smell surrounded her. She continued on to the shed, really a small barn, and walked through the open door.

“I’ll be with you in a second,” Graham Boyd said, looking up from a workbench. He was wearing safety goggles and, she realized, seeing only her silhouette. He’d be thinking she was a customer. He returned to his task. She noted that the carpentry was part of an expansion project and he seemed to be doing the work himself. That was Graham. Even after he’d moved the last of his things out of their house he’d returned to finish the kitchen tiling. And had done a damn good job of it.