Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

AS SHE APPROACHED the Feldman house Brynn McKenzie decided that even with the glow from behind ivory curtains the place was eerie as hell. The other two houses she’d passed might have been the sets for family dramas; this was just the place for a Stephen King movie, the kind she and her first husband, Keith, would devour like candy.

She looked up at the three-story home. You sure didn’t see many houses of this style or size in Kennesha County. White siding, which had seen better days, and a wraparound porch. She liked the porch. Her childhood house in Eau Claire had sported one. She’d loved sitting out in the chain swing at night, her brother singing and playing his battered guitar, her sister flirting with her latest boyfriend, their parents talking, talking, talking…And the home she and Keith owned had a nice wrap-around. But as for her present house, she didn’t even know where a porch would fit.

Approaching the Feldmans’, she glanced at the yard, impressed. The landscaping was expensive. The place was surrounded by strategically placed dogwoods, ligustrum and crepe myrtles that had been cut way back. She recalled her husband’s advice to his customers against this practice (“Don’t rape your crepes”).

Parking in the circular gravel drive, she caught movement inside, a shadow on the front curtain. She climbed out into the chill air, fresh and sweet with the perfume of blossoms and firewood smoke.

Hearing the comforting sound of frogs croaking and the honk of geese or ducks, Brynn walked over gravel and up the three steps to the porch. Flashed on Joey, imagining him skateboarding off this height into the school parking lot.

Well, I did talk to him.

It’ll be fine…

Her issue black Oxfords, as comfy and unstylish as shoes could be, thunked on the wood as she approached the front door. Hit the bell.

It rang but there was no response.

She pressed the button once more. The door was solid but flanked by narrow windows curtained with lace, and Brynn could see into the living room. She noted no motion, no shadows. Only a pleasant storm of flames in the fireplace.

She knocked. Loud, reverberating on the glass.

Another shadow, like before. She realized that it was from the waving of the orange flames in the fireplace. There was light from a side room but most of the other rooms on this floor were dark, and a lamp from the top of the stairs cast bony shadows of the stair railings on the hallway floor.

Maybe everybody was out back, or in a dining room. Imagine that, she thought, a house so big you’d miss the doorbell.

A throaty honk above her. Brynn looked up. The light was dim and the sky was shared by birds and mammals: mallards on final approach to the lake, a few silver-haired bats in their erratic, purposeful hunt. She smiled at the sight. Then, looking back into the house, her eye noted something out of place: behind a massive brown armchair a briefcase and backpack lay open and the contents-files, books, pens-were dumped on the floor, as if they’d been searched for valuables.

Her gut clenched and in a snap came the thought: a 911 call cut short. An intruder realizes the victim dialed the police and then calls back to say it’s a false alarm.

Brynn McKenzie drew her weapon.

She looked behind her fast. No voices, no footsteps. She was stepping back to the car to get her cell phone when she saw something curious inside.

What is that?

Brynn’s eyes focused on the edge of a rug in the kitchen. But it was glistening. How can a rug be shiny?

Blood. She was looking at a pool of blood.

All right. Think. How to handle it?

Heart stuttering, she tested the knob. The lock had been kicked out.

Cell phone in the car? Or go inside?

The blood was fresh. Three people inside. No sign of the intruders. Somebody could be hurt but alive.

Phone later.

Brynn shoved the door open, glancing right and left. Said nothing, didn’t announce her presence. Looking, looking everywhere, head dizzy.

She glanced into the lit bedroom to her left. A deep breath and she stepped inside, keeping her gun close to her side so it couldn’t be grabbed, as Keith had lectured in his class on tactical operations, the class where she’d met him.

The room was empty but the bed was mussed and first aid materials were on the floor. Her misshapen jaw quivering, she moved back into the living room, where the fire crackled. Trying to be silent, she found the carpet and navigated carefully around the empty briefcase and backpack and file folders scattered on the floor, the labels giving clues about the woman’s professional life: Haberstrom, Inc., Acquisition. Gibbons v. Kenosha Automotive Technologies. Pascoe Inc. Refinancing. Hearing-County Redistricting.

She continued on to the kitchen.

And stopped fast. Staring down at the bodies of the young couple on the floor. They wore business clothes, the shirt and blouse dark with blood. Both had been shot in the head and the wife in the neck too-she was the source of the blood. The husband had run in panic, slipping and falling; a skid mark of red led from his shoe to the carpet of blood. The wife had turned away to die. She lay on her stomach with her right arm twisted behind her, a desperate angle, as if she were trying to touch an itch above her lower spine.

Where was the friend? Brynn wondered. Had she escaped? Or had the killer taken her upstairs? She recalled the light on the second floor.

Had the intruder left?

The answer to that question came a moment later.

A voice outside whispered, “Hart? The keys aren’t in the car. She’s got ’em.”

It came from toward the front of the house, but she couldn’t tell where exactly.

Brynn flattened herself against the wall. Wiped her right palm on her left shoulder, then gripped her gun firmly.

After a moment another voice-Hart’s, she supposed-speaking firmly, not to his partner but to her: “You, lady. In the house. Bring your keys out here. We just want your car is all. You’ll be fine.”

She lifted the gun, muzzle up. Brynn McKenzie had fired a weapon at another human being four times in the decade and a half she’d been a public safety officer. Not a lot, but four times more than most deputies did in their whole careers. Like Breathalyzing drivers and comforting beaten wives, this was a part of her job and she was filled with an odd blend of tension, terror and contentment.

“Really,” Hart called. “Don’t worry. Or, tell you what, just throw ’em out the front, you don’t trust us. But otherwise we come in and get them. Believe me, we just want to be gone. Just want to be out of here.”

Brynn flicked the kitchen lights out. Now the only illumination was from the roaring fireplace and the bedroom she’d glanced into.

A whisper, its source uncertain. This meant they’d joined each other.

But where?

And were there just two? Or more? She found herself staring at the bodies of the couple.

And where was the friend?

Hart again, speaking so very calmly: “You’ve seen those folks inside. You don’t want that to happen to you. Throw the keys out here. I’m telling you not to be stupid. Please.”

Of course the moment she showed herself she’d be dead.

Should she say she was a deputy? And that more were on their way?

No, don’t give yourself away.

Pressing back against the pantry door, Brynn scanned the back windows. They reflected the living room and she gasped softly as a man appeared in the front door, slipping inside. Cautious. He was tall, solid, wearing a dark jacket. Long hair, boots. He carried a pistol in his-the reverse image confused her momentarily-his right hand. The other arm hung at his side and she got the impression he’d been injured. He disappeared. Somewhere in the living room.