The Bodies Left Behind: A Novel

by Jeffery Deaver

  “You do now,” she muttered.

  “The only thing I’m doing with that file is giving it to you.”

  “What?”

  “Shred it. No. Do what I do. Shred it, then burn it.”

  “You’re not…”

  “Deputy McKenzie, I’m not here to blackmail, I’m not here to leverage you into dropping the investigation. I’m giving this to you as a show of good faith. I’m innocent. I don’t want you off the case. I want you to keep investigating until you find out who really did kill those people up there.”

  Brynn clutched the file. It seemed to give off radiation. She slipped it into her backpack. “Thank you.” With a trembling hand she drank some soda. She considered what he’d told her. “But then who wanted Emma Feldman dead? What would the motive be? Nobody else seems to have one.”

  “Has anybody looked for one?”

  True, she admitted. Everybody’d been assuming all along that Mankewitz was behind the crimes.

  The union boss looked away. His shoulders slumped. “We’ve drawn a blank too, though there were some other cases Emma was working on that might have been sensitive enough to motivate somebody to kill her. One was a trust-and-estate matter for a state representative, the one who killed himself.”

  Brynn remembered the story. The man had tried to cut his wife and children out of his will and leave all his money to a twenty-two-year-old gay prostitute. The media had broken the story and the politician killed himself.

  “Then,” the labor boss continued, “she had another case that was curious.” A glance at Jasons, the king of information and sources, apparently.

  He said, “A products liability case involving a new hybrid car. A driver was electrocuted. The man’s family sued Emma Feldman’s client, a company in Kenosha. They made the generator or electrical system or something. She was hard at work on the case but then all the files were pulled and nobody heard anything more about it.”

  A dangerously defective hybrid? Something you didn’t hear about much. In fact, never. There’d certainly be big money involved. She’d found something she shouldn’t’ve?

  Maybe.

  And Kenosha rang a bell…. She’d have to look at her notes from the past few weeks. A call to be returned. Somebody was interested in some of Emma Feldman’s files. Somebody named Sheridan.

  Mankewitz continued, “But we couldn’t come up with any particular leads. You’re on your own now.” He waved for the check, paid, nodding at Brynn’s unfinished soup. “I didn’t pay for that. Appearance of impropriety, you know.” He pulled his coat on.

  The associate remained sitting but he fished a business card from his pocket. It contained only a name and phone number. She wondered if the name was real. He said, “If you need me for anything, if I can be of any more help, please call. It’s a voice mail only. But I’ll get right back to you.”

  Brynn nodded. “Thank you,” she said again to both men, tapping her backpack.

  “Think about what I told you,” Mankewitz said. “Seems like you and the FBI and everybody else’s been looking in the wrong place.”

  “Or,” the skinny man said, sipping from his glass as if the soda were a vintage wine, “looking for the wrong who.”

  THE POLICE LINE

  bunting on the front porch had come undone; it wagged like a bony yellow finger in the breeze. Brynn hadn’t been back to the Feldmans’ vacation house on Lake View Drive since that night, now almost three weeks ago. Oddly, in the afternoon daylight, the house looked starker than it had then. The paint was uneven and peeling in many places. The angles sharp. The shutters and trim unpleasing black.

  She walked to the place where she’d stood beside her car, nearly hyperventilating with terror, in a shooting stance, waiting for Hart to rise from the bushes and present a target.

  From that memory, her thoughts slipped back naturally to the school counselor’s report that Mankewitz had given her, now indeed both shredded and burned in the backyard barbecue. The counselor had transcribed the incident pretty much the way it happened.

  The night was also in April, curiously. She pictured herself blinking in horror as Keith, just home from a long day of patrol, sat at the kitchen table and his anger slowly unraveled. She didn’t know what had sparked the outburst; often, she couldn’t remember. Something about their taxes and money. Maybe she’d misplaced some receipts.

  Small. It was usually something small.

  But the incident had escalated fast. Keith, getting that crazed look in his eyes, so terrifying. Possessed. His voice was low at first, then cracking, rising to a scream. Brynn had said the worst thing she could: “Calm down. It’s no big deal.”

  “I’m the one who’s been working on it all day! Where’ve you been? Handing out parking tickets?”

  “Calm down,” she’d snapped back, even as her heart stuttered and she found her hand protecting her jaw.

  Then he’d snapped. He’d leapt up, kicking the table over, tax forms and receipts flying through the air, and charged her, beer bottle in hand. She’d pushed him away, hard, and he’d grabbed her by the hair and muscled her to the floor. They’d grappled, knocking chairs aside. He’d dragged her toward him, balling his fist up.

  Screaming, crying, “No, no, no.” Seeing his massive hand rearing back.

  And then Joey was charging into them, sobbing himself.

  “Joey! Get back,” Keith raged, intoxicated—though, as usual, not from alcohol but anger. He was completely out of control, drawing back his huge fist.

  She tried to twist away, so the terrible blow wouldn’t shatter her jaw again. Trying to protect Joey, who was stuck in the middle, screaming right along with his mother.

  “Don’t hurt Mommy!”

  Then: Crack.

  The bullet struck Keith directly in the center of the chest.

  And the boy began screaming once more. The five-year-old had slipped his mother’s Glock from her holster, probably meaning just to threaten. But the weapon has no traditional safety catch; just gripping the trigger could cause it to go off.

  The gun spun to the floor as mother, father, son were frozen in a horrible tableau.

  Keith, blinking, had stumbled back. Then dropped to his knees and vomited. He passed out. Brynn had gasped, sped to him and ripped his shirt open, seeing the disk of hot copper and lead fall from the Kevlar vest.

  Ambulances and statements and negotiations…

  And of course the indelible horror of the incident itself.

  Yet Mankewitz and that skinny fellow Jasons didn’t know the worst part. The part that she regretted every minute of her life.

  After that night, life got better. In fact, it became perfect.

  Keith found a good psychiatrist and went into anger-management and twelve-step programs. They went to couple’s therapy. Joey too went into counseling.

  And never again was there a harsh word between them, let alone a touch not motivated by affection or passion. They became the most normal of couples. Attending Joey’s events and church. Anna and her husband warily returned to their daughter’s life, having distanced themselves because of Keith.

  No more big blowups, no harsh words. He became a model husband.

  And nine months later she asked him for a divorce, and he had reluctantly agreed.

  Why had she asked for one?

  She’d spent hours, days wondering. Was it the aftershock of that terrible night? The accumulation of the man’s moods? Or that she wasn’t programmed to live a calm, normal life?

  I wouldn’t trade the life I lead for anything. Look at most of the rest of the world—the walking dead. They’re nothing but dead bodies, Brynn. Sitting around, upset, angry about something they saw on TV doesn’t mean a single thing to them personally….

  She thought back to that night after she and Graham had returned from the hospital after Anna had been shot. What he’d said to her.

  Oh, Graham, you’re right. So right. But I do owe my son. I owe him big. I put him in a situation where he
actually used a weapon to try to save his mother, when I should have taken him out of that household years before.

  And then I left after everything got better, I took Joey away from a man who moved heaven and earth to turn his life around.

  How can I help but spoil the boy, protect him? And hope for his forgiveness?

  Touching her jaw, she now climbed onto the porch of the Feldmans’ house. The scene had been released but a State Police lockbox was still on the door. She worked the combination, took the key and stepped inside. The place smelled of sweet cleanser and fireplace smoke, lured out by the damp air.

  She saw bullet holes—from Hart’s, from Lewis’s shotgun, from Michelle’s, from Brynn’s own weapon as well. In the kitchen the floor had been scrubbed clean. Not a trace of blood remained. There were companies that did this, cleaning up after crimes and accidental deaths. Brynn had always thought that would be a good murder-mystery novel: a killer who works for one of those companies and cleans the scene so completely the police can’t find any clues.

  In the kitchen she saw a half dozen battered cookbooks, several of which she herself owned. She pulled down an old Joy of Cooking. She opened it up to the page where the red ribbon marked a recipe. Chicken fricassee. She laughed. She’d made this very dish. In the corner was written in pencil, 2 hours. And the words Vermouth instead.

  Brynn put the book back.

  She wondered what would happen to the house now.

  Abandoned for another generation, she supposed. Who’d want to be up here anyway? Imposing, harsh woods, no grocery stores or restaurants nearby and that lake cold and dark, like an old bullet hole.

  But then she cut all of these reflections loose, pushed them away, just like she and Michelle had shoved the canoe into the black stream and gone on their urgent way.

  With a glance at where the bodies had lain—where she had almost joined them in death—Brynn returned to the living room.

  “WE HAVE TO LEAVE.”

  “Okay,” Joey replied to his mother and trooped down the stairs, wearing an Old West costume that Anna had made. Man, that woman knew her way around Singer sewing machines, Brynn thought. Always had. Some people are born to the skill.

  Brynn had spent the past several days in Milwaukee and Kenosha, running down leads, some successful and some not. But she’d made a point of returning in time that evening to get to Joey’s pageant.

  Brynn called, “Mom, are you okay in there?”

  From the family room Anna said, “I’m fine. Joey, I wish I could come. But I’ll come to your party when school’s over. I’ll be fine by then. Who’re you playing?”

  “I’m this frontier scout. I lead people over the mountains.”

  “It’s not about the Donner party, is it?” Anna asked.

  “What’s that?” Joey wondered aloud. “Like the Democrats?”

  “In a way.”

  “Mother,” Brynn scoffed.

  Hobbling into the doorway Anna said, “Turn around…. My, look at that. You look like Alan Ladd.”

  “Who?”

  “A famous actor.”

  “Like Johnny Depp?” the boy asked.

  “Heaven help us.”

  Joey wrinkled his face. “I don’t want to put that makeup on. It’s all greasy.”

  Brynn said, “You have to wear it onstage. People can see you better. Besides, it makes you look so handsome.”

  He gave an exaggerated sigh.

  Anna said, “Honey, I think Graham might like to go.”

  “Yeah,” the boy said fast. “Mom, can he?”

  “I don’t know,” Brynn said uncertainly, angry that her mother had—tactically, it seemed—asked this in front of Joey.

  Her mother held her eye and gave her one of her patented ironclad smiles. “Oh, give him a call. What can it hurt?”

  Brynn didn’t know the answer to that. And therefore she didn’t want to ask him.

  “He’d like the show, Mom. Come on.”

  “It’s short notice.”

  “In which case he’ll say he has other plans, thank you very much for the invitation. Or he’ll say yes.”

  She glanced back. Anna had been supportive emotionally after the breakup, but hadn’t offered any opinion about it. Brynn assumed she was being her typical uninvolved self. But she wondered now if the pleasant smile—the smile of a spokeswoman for AARP on a television ad—hid a carefully planned strategy about her daughter’s life.

  “I’d rather not,” Brynn said evenly.

  “Ah.” The smile faltered.

  “Mom,” Joey said. He was angry.

  Her mother’s eyes slipped, for a split second, to her grandson. And she said nothing else.

  Joey muttered, “I don’t know why he moved out. All the way over to Hendricks Hills.”

  “How’d you know he was there?” Graham had just moved into a new rental yesterday.

  “He told me.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “He called.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “He called me,” the boy said defiantly. “To say hi, you know.”

  Brynn wasn’t sure how to react to this. “He didn’t leave a message?”

  “Naw.” He tugged at his costume. “Why’d he move there?”

  “It’s a nice neighborhood.”

  “I mean why’d he move at all?”

  “I told you. We had a different way of seeing things.”

  Joey didn’t know what that meant but neither did Brynn. “Well, can’t he come to the play?”

  “No, honey.” She smiled. “Not this time. Maybe later.”

  The boy walked to the window and gazed outside. He seemed disappointed. Brynn frowned. “What’s that?”

  “I thought maybe he was here.”

  “Why?”

  “You know, he comes by sometimes.”

  “He does? To see you?”

  “No. He just sits outside for a while then drives off. I saw him at school too. He was parked outside after class.”

  Brynn kept her voice steady as she asked, “You’re sure it was Graham?”

  “I guess. I couldn’t see him real good. He had sunglasses on. But it had to be him. Who else would it be?”

  Looking at her mother, who was clearly surprised at this news. “But it might not have been him.”

  Joey shrugged. “He had dark hair. And he was big like Graham.”

  “What kind of car was he in?”

  “I don’t know. Something kind of blue. Looked neat. Like a sports car. Dark blue. I couldn’t see too good. When he called he told me they never found his truck so he got a new one. I figured that was it. What’s wrong, Mom?”

  “Nothing.” She smiled.

  “Come on. Can’t you call him?”

  “Not today, honey. I’ll call him later.” Brynn scanned the empty road for a moment. Then turned and, smiling again—one of her mother’s stoic smiles—said, “Hey, Mom, you are looking better. Maybe you should come to the play after all.”

  Anna was going to scold—she’d been after Brynn to let her come to the play all along—but she caught on. “Love to.”

  Brynn continued, “We’ll go to T.G.I. Friday’s after. I’ll help you throw something on. I’ll be there in a minute.” She walked to the front door, locked it and went upstairs.

  She opened the lockbox and clipped her holster containing the Glock to the back of her skirt waistband, pulled on a jacket.

  Staring out the window at the empty road in front of the house, she called Tom Dahl.

  “Need a favor. Fast.”

  “Sure, Brynn. You okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Go on.”

  “Graham. I need to know what cars are registered in his name. Everything. Even the company cars.”

  “He causing you trouble?”

  “No, no. It’s not him I’m worried about.”

  “Just hold on a minute. I’ll get into the DMV database.”

  Less than sixty secon
ds later the sheriff’s easy voice came back on the line. “Rolling Hills Landscaping’s got three forty-foot flatbeds, two F150 pickups and an F250. Graham himself has a Taurus he’s leasing through his insurance company—’causa that woman stealing his pickup last month, I’d imagine.”

  “The Taurus? It’s dark blue?”

  “White.”

  “Okay…”

  She was thinking back to that night.

  You should have…. You should’ve killed me.

  “Tom, I need somebody to watch the house again.”

  “What’s going on, Brynn?”

  “Somebody was outside, parked. Checking out the place. Joey saw him. You know kids, might’ve been nothing. But I don’t want to take any chances.”

  “Sure we can do that, Brynn. Anything.”

  ON THURSDAY, MAY 7,

  Brynn was sitting in her cubicle clutching a cup of hot chocolate, really hot. This had become a recent addiction, though she’d given up her much-loved saltines and Brie sandwiches in compensation. She could drink three cups of cocoa a day. She wondered if this was because she’d been so chilled on that night. Probably not. Swiss Miss made a really good product. She reflected that she and Graham had sipped hot chocolate at the Humboldt Diner at the end of their first date. The beverages had started out near 212 degrees when they’d begun talking, and the cups had been cold when they’d finished.

  She was reading through her notes—hundreds of jottings, setting out the conversations she’d had after her meeting with Stanley Mankewitz. She’d never worked so hard in her life.

  Looking for the wrong who…

  Her office phone rang. She took a last sip and set the cup down. “Deputy McKenzie.”

  “Hello?” asked a Latina voice with the reserve most people displayed when calling the police. The caller explained she was the manager of the Harborside Inn in Milwaukee.

  “How can I help you?” Hearing “Milwaukee,” Brynn sat forward quickly, tense. The most likely reason for someone from that city to call was the Feldman murder case.

  That was indeed the purpose and Brynn grew more and more interested as she listened.