The Bodies Left Behind: A Novel

by Jeffery Deaver

  Brynn recognized balsam fir, juniper, yew, spruce, hickory, some gnarly black willows and central casting’s oak, maple and birch. Beneath the trees were congregations of sedge, thistle, ragweed and blackberry. Daffodils and crocuses had been tricked into awakening by the thaw that had murdered the plants in the yard of Graham’s client.

  Although married to a landscaper, she hadn’t learned about local flora from her husband. That education came from her job. The rampant growth of meth labs in out-of-the-way parts of rural America meant that police officers who’d never done anything more challenging than pulling over drunk drivers now had to make drug raids out in the boondocks.

  Brynn was one of the few deputies in the department who took the State Police tactical training refresher course outside of Madison every year. It included assault and arrest techniques, part of which involved learning about plants, which ones were dangerous, which were good for cover and which might actually save your life (even young hardwoods could stop bullets fired from close range).

  As she drove, the Glock 9mm pistol was high on her hip, and while the Sheriff’s Department Crown Victoria cruiser had plenty of room for accessories, the configuration of bucket seat and seat belt in the Honda she was now driving kept the boxy gun’s slide bridling against her hip bone. There’d be a mark come morning. She shifted again and put on the radio. NPR, then country, then talk, then weather. She shut it off.

  Oncoming trucks, oncoming pickups. But fewer and fewer of them and soon she had the road to herself. It now angled upward and she saw the evening star ahead of her. Hilltops grew craggy and bald with rock and she could see evidence of the lakes nearby: cattails, bog bean and silver and reed canary grass. A heron stood in a marsh, immobile, his beak, and gaze, aimed directly at her.

  She shivered. The outside temperature was in the midfifties but the scene was bleak and chilly.

  Brynn flicked on the Honda’s lights. Her cell phone rang. “Hi, Tom.”

  “Thanks again for doing this, Brynn.”

  “Sure.”

  “Had Todd check things out.” Dahl explained that he still couldn’t get through on either of the couple’s mobiles. As far as he knew the only people at the house were the Feldmans, Steven and Emma, and a woman from Chicago Emma used to work with, who was driving up with them.

  “Just the three of them?”

  “That’s what I heard. Now, there’s nothing odd about Feldman. He works for the city. But the wife, Emma…get this. She’s a lawyer at a big firm in Milwaukee. Seems that she might’ve uncovered some big scam as part of a case or a deal she was working on.”

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t know the details. Just what a friend in Milwaukee PD tells me.”

  “So she’s maybe a witness or whistle-blower or something?”

  “Could be.”

  “And the call, the nine-one-one call—what’d he say exactly?”

  “Just ‘this.’”

  She waited. “I missed it. What?”

  A chuckle. “Who’s on first? I mean he said the word ‘this.’ T-H-I-S.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yep.” Dahl then told her, “But it could be a big deal, this case. Todd’s been talking to the FBI in Milwaukee.”

  “The Bureau’s involved? Well. Any threats against her?”

  “None they heard of. But my father always said those that threaten usually don’t do. Those that do usually don’t threaten.”

  Brynn’s stomach flipped—with apprehension, sure, but also with excitement. The most serious nonvehicular crime she’d run in the past month was an emotionally disturbed teenager with a baseball bat taking out plate-glass windows in Southland Mall and terrorizing customers. It was a potential disaster but she’d defused it with a brief face-to-face, smiling at his mad eyes while her heart thudded just a few beats above normal.

  “You watch yourself, Brynn. Check the place out from a distance. Don’t go stumbling in. Anything looks funny, call it in and wait.”

  “Sure.” Thinking: as a last resort maybe. Brynn snapped her phone shut and set it in the cup holder.

  This reminded her she was thirsty—and hungry too. But she pushed the thought aside; four of the roadside restaurants she’d passed in the last ten miles were closed. She’d check out whatever was happening at Lake Mondac, then get home to Graham’s spaghetti.

  For some reason she thought of dinners with Keith. Her first husband had cooked too. In fact, he did most of the cooking in the evening, unless he was working second-shift tour.

  She pushed the accelerator down a bit harder, deciding that the difference in response between the Crown Vic and the Honda was as noticeable as that between fresh Idahos and instant potato buds out of a box.

  Thinking, as she had been, about food.

  “WELL, BOY, YOU

  got yourself shot.” In a downstairs bedroom of the Feldman house, shades drawn, Hart was looking at the left sleeve of his brown flannel shirt, dark to start with but darker now halfway between wrist and elbow from the blood. His leather coat was on the floor. He slouched on the guest bed.

  “Yep, lookit that.” Tugging his green stud earring, skinny Lewis finished making obvious, and irritating, observations and began to roll up Hart’s cuff carefully.

  The men had taken off their stocking masks and gloves.

  “Just be careful what you touch,” Hart said, nodding at the other man’s bare hands.

  Lewis pointedly ignored the comment. “That was a surprise, Hart. Bitch blindsided us. Never saw that coming. So who the hell is she?”

  “I don’t really know, Lewis,” Hart said patiently, looking at his arm as the curtain of sleeve went up. “How would I know?”

  “It’ll be a piece of cake, Hart. Hardly any risk at all. The other places’ll be vacant. And only the two of them up there. No rangers in the park and no cops for miles.”

  “They have weapons?”

  “Are you kidding? They’re city people. She’s a lawyer, he’s a social worker.”

  Hart was in his early forties. He had a lengthy face. With the mask off, his hair came well below the bottom of his ears, which were close to the side of his head. He swept the black strands back but they didn’t stay put very well. He favored hats and had a collection. Hats also took attention away from you. His skin was rough, not from youthful eruptions but simply because it was that way. Had always been.

  He gazed at his forearm, purple and yellow around the black hole, from which oozed a trickle of blood. The slug had gone through muscle. An inch to the left, it would have missed completely; to the right the bullet would have shattered bone. Did that make him lucky or unlucky?

  Speaking to himself as much as to Lewis, Hart said of the blood, “Not pulsing out. Means it’s not a major vein.” Then: “Can you get some alcohol, a bar of soap and cloth for a bandage?”

  “I guess.”

  As the man loped off slowly, Hart wondered again why on earth anybody would have a bright red-and-blue tattoo of a Celtic cross tattooed on his neck.

  From the bathroom Lewis called, “No alcohol. Whisky in the bar, I saw.”

  “Get vodka. Whisky smells too much. Can give you away. Don’t forget your gloves.”

  Did the thin man give an exasperated sigh?

  A few minutes later Lewis returned with a bottle of vodka. True, the clear liquor didn’t smell as much as the whisky but Hart could tell that Lewis had had himself a hit. He took the bottle in his gloved hands and poured the liquid on the wound. The pain was astonishing. “Well,” he gasped, slumping forward. His eyes focused on a picture on the wall. He stared at it. A jumping fish, a fly in its mouth. Who’d buy something like that?

  “Phew…”

  “You’re not going to faint, are you, man?” Lewis asked as if he didn’t need this inconvenience too.

  “Okay, okay…” Hart’s head dropped and his vision crinkled to black but then he breathed in deeply and came back around. He rubbed the Ivory soap over the wound.

&nb
sp; “Why’re you doing that?”

  “Cauterizes it. Stops the bleeding.”

  “No shit.”

  Hart tested the arm. He could raise and lower it with some control and not too much pain. When he closed his fist, the grip was weak but at least it was functioning.

  “Fucking bitch,” Lewis muttered.

  Hart didn’t waste much anger at the moment; he was more relieved than anything. What ended up being a shot arm had almost been a shot head.

  He remembered standing in the kitchen, scratching his face through the stocking, when he’d looked up to see movement in front of him. It turned out, though, to be a reflection of the young woman moving up silently from behind, lifting the gun.

  Hart had leapt aside just as she’d fired—not even aware he’d been hit—and spun around. She’d fled out the door as he’d let go with a couple of rounds from his Glock. Lewis, who’d been standing next to him—and would have been the next to die—had spun around too, dropping a bag of snacks he’d pilfered from the refrigerator.

  Then they’d heard a series of cracks from outside and Hart knew she was shooting out the tires of both the Ford and the Mercedes so they couldn’t pursue her.

  “Got careless there,” Hart now said ominously.

  Lewis looked at him like he was being blamed, which he was—the skinny man was supposed to be in the living room, not the kitchen, at the time. But Hart let it go.

  “Think you hit her?” Lewis now asked.

  “No.” Hart felt dizzy. He pressed the side of the Glock pistol against his forehead. The cold calmed him.

  “Who the hell is she?” Lewis repeated.

  That was answered when they found her purse in the living room, a little thing with makeup, cash and credit cards inside.

  “Michelle,” Hart said, glancing at a Visa credit card. He looked up. “Her name’s Michelle.”

  He’d just got shot by a Michelle.

  Wincing, Hart now walked across the worn rug, dark tan, and shut off the living room lights. He peered carefully out the door and into the front yard. No sign of her. Lewis started into the kitchen. “I’ll get those lights.”

  “No, not there. Leave ’em on. Too many windows, no curtains. She could see you easy.”

  “What’re you, some wuss? Bitch is long gone.”

  Grim-faced, Hart glanced down at his arm, meaning, you want to take the chance? Lewis got the point. They looked outside again, through the front windows, and saw nothing but a tangle of woods. No lights, no shapes moving in the dusk. He heard frogs and saw a couple of bats flying obstacle courses in the clear sky.

  Lewis was saying, “Wish I’d knew that soap trick. That’s pretty slick. Me and my brother were in Green Bay one time. We weren’t doing shit, just hanging, you know. I went to pee by the railroad tracks and this asshole jumped me. Had a box cutter. Got me from behind. Homeless prick…cut me down to the bone. I bled like a stuck pig.”

  Hart was wondering, What’s his point? He tried to tune the man out.

  “Oh, I whaled on that dude, Hart. Didn’t matter I was bleeding. He felt pain that day. Come off the worst of it, I’ll tell you.”

  Hart squeezed the wound and then stopped paying attention to the pain. It was still there but was lost in the background of sensations. Gripping his black gun, he stepped outside, crouching. No shots. No rustles from the bushes. Lewis joined him. “Bitch’s gone, I’m telling you. She’s halfway to the highway by now.”

  Hart looked over the cars, grimaced. “Look at that.” Both the Feldmans’ Mercedes and the Ford that Hart had stolen earlier in the day had two flats each and the wheel sizes were different; the spares wouldn’t be compatible.

  Lewis said, “Shit. Well, better start hiking, you think?”

  Hart scanned the deep woods surrounding them, shadowy now. He couldn’t imagine a better place in the world to hide. Good goddamn. “See if you can plug one of those.” He nodded at the Ford’s shot-out tires.

  Lewis sneered. “I’m not a fucking mechanic.”

  “I’d do it,” Hart said, trying to be patient, “but I’m a little disadvantaged here.” He nodded at his arm.

  The skinny man tugged at his earring, a green stone, and loped off resentfully toward the car. “What’re you going to be doing?”

  What the hell did he think? With his Glock at his side, he started in the direction he’d seen Michelle flee.

  EIGHT MILES FROM

  Lake Mondac the landscape ranged from indifferent to hostile. No farms here; the country was forested and hilly, with forbidding sheer cliffs of cracked rocks. Brynn McKenzie drove through Clausen, which amounted to a few gas stations, two of the three unbranded, a few stores—convenience, package and auto parts—and a junkyard. A sign pointed to a Subway but it was 3.2 miles away. She noted another sign, for hot sausages, in the window of a Quik Mart. She was tempted, but it was closed. Across the highway was a Tudor-style building with all the windows broken out and roof collapsed. It bore a prize that had surely tempted many a local teenager but the All Girl Staff sign was just too high or too well bolted to the wall to steal.

  Then this sneeze of civilization was gone and Brynn began a long sweep through tree-and rock-filled wilderness, broken only by scruffy clearings. The few residences were set well off the road, trailers or bungalows, from which gray smoke eased skyward. The windows, glowing dimly, were like sleepy eyes. The land was too harsh for farms and the sparse populace would drive their rusted pickups or Datsun-era imports to work elsewhere. If they went to work at all.

  For miles the only oncoming traffic: three cars, one truck. Nobody in her lane, ahead or behind.

  At 6:40 she passed a sign saying that Marquette State Park campground was ten miles up the road. Open May 20. Which meant that Lake Mondac had to be nearby. Then she saw:

  LAKE VIEW DRIVE

  PRIVATE ROAD

  NO TRESPASSING

  NO PUBLIC LAKE ACCESS

  VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

  And howdy-do to you too….

  She turned, slowing as the Honda bumbled over the gravel and dirt, thinking she should’ve taken Graham’s pickup. According to the directions that Todd Jackson had given her, the distance was 1.2 miles from the county route to 3 Lake View, the Feldmans’ vacation house. Their driveway, he’d added, was “a couple football fields long. Or that’s what it looked like on Yahoo.”

  Making slow progress, Brynn drove through a tunnel of trees and bushes and blankets of leaf refuse. Mostly the landscape was needles and naked branch and bark.

  Then the road widened slightly and the willow, jack pine and hemlock on her right grew sparse; she could see the lake clearly. She’d never spent much time on bodies of water, didn’t care for them. She felt more in control on dry land, for some reason. She and Keith had had a tradition of going to the Gulf Coast in Mississippi, his choice pretty much. Brynn had divided her time there between reading and taking Joey to amusement parks and the beach. Keith spent most of the time in the casino. It wasn’t her favorite locale but at least the beige water lapping at the shoreline was as easygoing and warm as the locals. Lakes around here seemed bottomless and chill and the abrupt meeting of rocky shore and black water made you feel helpless, easy prey for snakes and leeches.

  She reflected on another course she’d taken through the State Police: a water safety rescue seminar. It had been held at a lake just like this and though she’d done the exercise—swimming underwater to rescue a “drowning” dummy in a sunken boat—she’d hated the experience.

  She now scanned the surroundings, looking for boaters in trouble, car accidents, fires.

  For intruders too.

  There was still enough light to navigate by and she shut the lights out so as not to announce her presence. And drove even more slowly to keep the crunch of the tires to a minimum.

  She passed the first two houses on the private road. They were dark and set at the end of long driveways winding through the woods. Large structures—four, five bedrooms—they
were old, impressive, somber. There was a bleakness about the properties. Like sets in the opening scene of a family drama: the homestead boarded up, the story to be told in flashbacks to happier days.

  Brynn’s own bungalow, which she’d bought after Keith bought her share of their marital house, would have fit inside either of these and still have left it half empty.

  As the Honda crawled along, she passed a small bald patch between copses of fir, spruce and more hemlock, giving her a partial view of the house at number 3—the Feldmans’—ahead and to her left. It was grander than the others, though of the same style. Smoke trailed from the chimney. The windows were mostly dark, though she could see a glow behind shades or curtains in the back and on the second floor.

  She drove on toward the house and it was lost to sight behind a large copse of pine. Her hand reached down and for reassurance tapped the grip of her Glock, not a superstitious gesture, but one she’d learned long ago: you had to know the exact position of your weapon in case you needed to draw it fast. Brynn recalled that she’d loaded the weapon with fresh ammo last week—thirteen rounds, which wasn’t superstitious either but more than enough for whatever she’d run into in Kennesha County. Besides, it took all your thumb strength to jam the slick brass rounds into the clip.

  Tom Dahl wanted his deputies on the range for a checkup once a month but Brynn went every two weeks. It was a rarely used but vital skill, she believed, and she blew through a couple boxes of Remingtons every other Tuesday. She’d been in several firefights, usually against drunk or suicidal shooters, and had come away with the sense that the brief seconds of exchanging bullets with another human being were so chaotic and loud and terrifying that you needed any edge you could get. And a big part of that was making automatic the process of drawing and firing a weapon.