The Bodies Left Behind

by Jeffery Deaver

  Michelle had taken the weapons reluctantly. But Brynn had insisted. And the young woman had grudgingly agreed.

  Then they'd slipped into the woods behind the house and turned north, back toward the Feldmans' place, picking their way carefully through the boggy ground and using logs and rocks as stepping-stones to climb over the streams that ran to the lake.

  Now, keeping under cover in the yard of her friends' house, Michelle was staring south toward the gunshots. She muttered to Brynn, "Why did you want to come back here? We should've gone the other way. To the county road. Now we've got to go past them to get there."

  "We're not going that way."

  "What do you mean? It's the only way to the county road."

  Brynn shook her head. "I was on Six Eighty-two for nearly a half hour and I saw three cars. And that was at rush hour. We'd have to risk walking on the shoulder in the open for who knows how long. They'd find us there for sure."

  "But weren't there some houses on the highway? We'll go there. Call nine-one-one."

  "We can't go to any of them," Brynn said. "I won't lead those men to somebody else's place. I don't want anybody else hurt."

  Michelle was silent, staring at the Feldmans' house. "That's crazy. We have to get out of here."

  "We're going to get out. Just not the way we came in."

  "Well, why aren't there more police here?" she snapped. "Why'd you just come here by yourself? The police wouldn't do it that way in Chicago." The young woman's voice was positively surly. Brynn tamped down her irritation. She squinted as she looked past her and pointed.

  In the house at 2 Lake View, she could make out two flashlight beams, one upstairs, one on the ground floor. Scanning eerily. The men were both in the house, searching for them.

  "Keep an eye on the flashlights. I'm going to look inside. Did Steven have a gun?"

  "I have no idea," Michelle scoffed. "They really weren't the gun type."

  "Where's your cell phone?" Brynn asked.

  "In my purse, in the kitchen."

  As Brynn sprinted for the porch she glanced back and could see the young woman's eyes, just visible in the moonlight. Yes, there was a measure of sorrow--that her friends had died. But it was the put-upon expression Brynn sometimes recognized in her son during one of his irritated moments. The expression that asked, Why me? Life just isn't fair.

  "NOTHING."

  Spoken in a whisper.

  In the basement of the house at 2 Lake View Drive, Hart nodded, acknowledging the comment by Lewis, who was sweeping his flashlight around a dark storage area, which would have been perfect for hiding in.

  And had been pretty much their last hope of finding the women in the house.

  Hart was feeling more confident. It was likely that the women were no longer armed, a conclusion he'd come to by default: otherwise they would have lain in wait and shot the men. Still, he'd insisted they use flashlights and not put on the overhead lights.

  Once, Hart had seen a movement, spun around and fired. But the target turned out to be just a fleeing rat, its shadow magnified a dozen times. The creature scurried away. Hart was angry with himself for the panicked shot. He'd hurt his injured arm in the maneuver and they'd been temporarily deafened again. Angry too for the loss of control. Sure, it was logical. The sudden motion, jumping toward him, it seemed.... Naturally he'd fired.

  But excuses always tasted bad in Hart's mouth. You had nobody to blame but yourself if you cut the plank wrong or planed a bow into a chair leg meant to be straight, or split a dovetail joint.

  "Measure twice, cut once," his father used to say.

  They trooped upstairs into the dark kitchen. Hart was looking out the back windows and into the forest, wondering if he was staring right at the women. "Wasted some good minutes searching. That's why they set up that little scene in the bedroom. Buy time."

  And to blind us. He could smell the ammonia all the way down here, even with the upstairs bedroom door closed.

  Then Hart mused, "But where are they? Where would I go, if I was them?"

  "The woods? Snuck past us and're making for the highway?"

  Hart agreed. "Yep. That's what I'd guess. There's no other way out. They'll be thinking they can hail a car but there won't be much traffic this time of night. Hell, there wasn't much on the way up here. And they'll have to stick close to the shoulder, out in the open. And that blood on Brynn's uniform? She's hurt. Be moving slowly. We'll spot 'em easy."

  BRYNN MCKENZIE WAS

  making a fast sweep through the Feldmans' house. She left the lights out, of course, and searched by feel for weapons and cell phones. She found none. Michelle's purse was gone, which meant the killers had it--and that they'd now know her name and where she lived.

  Brynn walked into the kitchen, where the bodies lay in their death poses, the blood making a paisley pattern next to the husband and a near-perfect circle around the wife. Brynn hesitated briefly and then knelt and searched their pockets for cell phones. None. She tried the jackets. Similarly empty. She then stood and looked down at them. Wished there were time to say some words, though she had no idea what.

  Did the couple have laptop computers? She looked at the briefcase on the floor--it was the woman's--and at the pile of file folders all stamped with the word CONFIDENTIAL. But no electronics. The husband apparently used a backpack for his briefcase but that had contained only a few magazines, a paperback novel and a bottle of wine.

  Brynn's feet were beginning to sting again from chafing; the lake water had soaked through the dry socks. She looked in the laundry room and found two pairs of hiking boots. She pulled on dry socks and the larger of the boots. She took the second pair for Michelle. She also found a candle lighter and slipped that in her pocket.

  Was there anything--?

  She gasped in shock. Outside, the croak of frogs and the whisper of wind vanished in the insistent blare of a car alarm.

  Then Michelle's desperate voice calling, "Brynn! Come here! Help me!"

  Brynn ran outside, gripping her makeshift spear, blade forward.

  Michelle was standing beside the Mercedes, the window shattered. The young woman was frantic, wide-eyed. And paralyzed.

  Brynn ran to the car, glancing at the house at Number 2. The flashlights went out.

  They're on their way. Great.

  "I'm sorry!" Michelle cried. "I didn't think, I didn't think..."

  Brynn ripped the passenger door open, popped the hood and ran to the front of the car. She'd made a point to learn all she could about cars and trucks--vehicles make up the majority of police work in a county like Kennesha--and her studies included mechanics as well as driving. Brynn struggled to work the cable off the positive terminal of the battery with the Chicago Cutlery knife. The piercing sound stopped.

  "What happened?"

  "I just..." Michelle moaned angrily. "It's not my fault!"

  No? Whose was it?

  She continued, "I have low blood sugar. I was feeling funny. I brought some crackers with me." She pointed to a bag of Whole Foods-brand snacks in the backseat. She said defensively, "If I don't get food, sometimes I faint."

  "Okay," said Brynn, who'd avoided breaking into and searching the Mercedes specifically because she'd known it would be alarmed. She now climbed in fast, grabbed the crackers and handed them to Michelle, then rifled through the glove compartment. "Nothing helpful," she muttered.

  "You're mad," she said, her voice an irritating whine. "I'm sorry. I said I was sorry."

  "It's okay. But we have to move. Fast. They're on their way." She handed Michelle the boots she'd found inside, the smaller pair, which should fit fine. Michelle's own boots were chic and stylish, with spiky three-inch heels--just the sort for a young professional. But useless footgear for fleeing from killers.

  Michelle stared at the fleece boots. She didn't move.

  "Hurry."

  "Mine are fine."

  "No, they're not. You can't wear those." A nod at the designer footwear.

  Mi
chelle said, "I don't like to wear other people's clothes. It's...gross." Her voice was a hollow whisper.

  Maybe she meant dead people's clothes.

  A glance toward Number 2. No sign of the men. Not yet.

  "I'm sorry, Michelle. I know it's upsetting. But you have to. And now."

  "I'm fine with these."

  "No. You can't. Especially with a hurt ankle."

  Another hesitation. It was as if the woman were a pouty eight-year-old. Brynn took her firmly by the shoulders. "Michelle. They could be here any minute. We don't have any choice." Her voice was harsh. "Put the goddamn boots on. Now!"

  A long moment. Michelle's jaw trembling, eyes red, she snatched away the hiking boots and leaned against the Mercedes to put them on. Brynn jogged to the garage and found beside it what she'd seen when she'd arrived: a canoe under a tarp. She hefted it. The fiberglass boat wasn't more than forty or fifty pounds.

  Although Yahoo's estimate was accurate and two hundred yards separated them from the shoreline, a stream was only about thirty feet from the house and it ran pretty much straight to the lake.

  In the garage she found life preservers and paddles.

  Michelle was staring down at her friend's boots, grimacing. She looked like a rich customer who'd been sold inferior footwear and was about to complain to the store manager.

  Brynn snapped, "Come on. Help me."

  Michelle glanced back toward the house at 2 Lake View and, her face troubled, shoved the crackers in her pocket, then hurried to the canoe. The two women dragged it to the stream. Michelle climbed in with her pool cue walking stick and Brynn handed her the spear, paddles and life vests.

  With a look back at the morass of forest, through which the killers were surely sprinting right now, the deputy climbed in and shoved off into the stream, a dark artery seeping toward a dark heart.

  THE MEN RAN

  through the night, sucking in cold, damp air rich with the smell of rotting leaves. At the sound of the horn, Hart had realized that rather than head for the county road, like he'd thought, the women had snuck back to the Feldman house. They'd probably broken into the Mercedes hoping to fix the tire, not thinking the car was alarmed. He and Lewis had started running directly for the place but immediately encountered bogs and some wide streams. Hart started to ford one but Lewis said, "No, your feet'll chafe bad. Gotta keep 'em dry."

  Hart, never an outdoorsman, hadn't thought about that. The men returned to the driveway and jogged to Lake View Drive and then north toward number 2.

  "We go...up careful," Hart said, out of breath, when they were halfway to the Feldmans' driveway. "Still...could be a trap." The jogging was hell on his wounded arm. He winced and tried moving it into different positions. Nothing helped.

  "A trap?"

  "Still...worried about a gun."

  Lewis seemed a lot less obnoxious now. "Sure."

  They slowed at the mailbox, then started up the drive, Hart first, both of them sticking to the shadows. Lewis was silent, thank God. The kid was catching on, if you could call a thirty-five-year-old a kid. Hart thought again of his brother.

  About fifty feet up the driveway they paused.

  Hart scanned what they could see, which wasn't much because of the dusk. Bats swooped nearby. And some other creature zipped past his head, floating down to a scampering landing.

  Hell, a flying squirrel. Hart'd never seen one.

  He was squinting at the Mercedes, noting the broken window. He saw no signs of the women.

  It was Lewis who spotted them. He happened to look back down the driveway toward the private road. "Hart. Look. What's that?"

  He turned, half expecting to see Brynn rising from the bushes about to fire that black service piece of hers. But he saw nothing.

  "What?"

  "There they are! On the lake."

  Hart turned to look. About two hundred feet into the lake was a low boat, a skiff or canoe. It was moving toward the opposite shore but very slowly. It was hard to see for certain but he thought there were two people in it. Brynn and Michelle had seen the men, stopped paddling and hunched down, keeping a low profile. The momentum was carrying them toward the opposite shore.

  Lewis said, "That alarm, it wasn't a mistake. It was to distract us. So they could get away in the fucking boat."

  The man had made a good catch. Hart hadn't even been looking at the lake. He bridled once again at being outguessed--and he decided it was probably Brynn who'd tried to trick them.

  The men ran down to the shore.

  "Too far for the scattergun," Lewis said, grimacing, disappointed. "And I'm not much of a pistol shot."

  But Hart was. He went to a range at least once a week. Now, holding his gun in one hand, he began firing, slowly, adjusting the elevation of the barrel as he did so. The sharp detonation rolled across the lake with each shot and returned as a pale echo. The first and second kicked up water in front of the boat; the rest did not. They were right on target. One shot every few seconds, the bullets pelted the canoe, sending fragments of wood or fiberglass into the air. He must've hit at least one of them--he saw her slump forward and heard a woman's panicked scream filling the damp air.

  More shots. The wailing stopped abruptly. The canoe capsized and sank.

  Hart reloaded.

  "Nothing's moving," Lewis said, shouting because of their numb ears. "You got 'em, Hart."

  "Well, we gotta make sure." Hart nodded at a small skiff nearby. "Can you row?"

  "Sure," Lewis answered.

  "Bring some rocks. To weigh the bodies down."

  "That was some fine shooting, Hart. I mean, really." Lewis muscled the small boat upright.

  But Hart wasn't thinking about marksmanship. Shooting was just a skill and in this business you had to be good at it, just like you couldn't be a carpenter without knowing how to plane or lathe. No, he was recalling his earlier thoughts. Now that the evening's mission was finished he had to turn his attention to what came next: how to anticipate and prepare for the hard consequences that would flow from these women's deaths.

  Because, Hart knew, they surely would.

  GRAHAM BOYD SAT

  forward on the green couch, frowning, looking not at the TV screen but at an antiqued table nearby, splotched in white and gold, under which sat a box containing the only knitting project he'd ever known Brynn to tackle--a sweater for a niece. She'd given it up years ago, after six inches of uneven sleeve. Anna looked up from her own knitting. "I let it go for a while."

  Her son-in-law lifted an eyebrow.

  She traded the big blue needles for a remote control, turned down the volume. Once again, Graham caught a glimpse of a tougher core within her than the spun hair and faint smile in her powdered face suggested.

  "You might as well tell me. I'll get it out of you sooner or later."

  What the hell was she talking about? He looked away, at some nonsense on the flat screen.

  Her eyes didn't leave him. "That call, right? The one from the school?"

  He started to say something, then paused. But he went ahead finally. "Was a little worse than I let on."

  "Thought so."

  He explained what Joey's section advisor had said--about the boy's cutting school, the forgery, the 'phalting and even the suspension last fall. "And there were some other fights he got into too. I didn't have the heart to ask his advisor about it."

  Well, which one?...

  "Ah." Anna nodded. "I had a feeling."

  "You did?"

  She retrieved the knitting project. "What're you going to do about it?"

  Graham shrugged. He sat back. "Had an idea to talk to him. But I'll leave that for Brynn. Let her handle it."

  "Been eating at you, I could see. You didn't laugh once at Drew Carey."

  "If this's happened once, it's happened before. Cutting class? Don't you think?"

  "Most likely. My experience with children." Anna was speaking from knowledge. Brynn had an older brother and a younger sister, a teacher and comp
uter salesperson, respectively. Pleasant, kind people, fun people. Conventional. Brynn tended to swim upstream more than her siblings.

  Anna McKenzie now dropped the Hallmark-Channel demeanor, which she donned like camouflage when needed. The tone in her voice changed, day to night. "What I want to say: You never discipline him, Graham."

  "After Keith, I never knew whether to do this or that."

  "You're not Keith. Thank God. Don't worry."

  "Brynn doesn't let me. Or that's the message I get. And I never pushed. I don't want to undermine her. He's her son."

  "Not just," she reminded quickly. "He's your boy too now. You get the whole package--even came with an ornery old lady you hadn't bargained for."

  He gave a laugh. "But I want to be careful. Joey...I know he had a tough time with the divorce."

  "Who doesn't? That's life. No reason for you to be a shrinking violet when it comes to him."

  "Maybe you're right."

  "I am. Go up and see him. Now." She added, "Maybe it's the best thing in the world Brynn went out on that call tonight. Give you two a chance to talk."

  "What do I say? I tried coming up with something. It was stupid."

  "Go with your instincts. If it feels right it probably is. That's what I did with my children. Got some things right. And some things wrong. Obviously."

  The last word was heavily seasoned.

  "You think?"

  "I think. Somebody's got to be in charge. He can't be. And Brynn..." The woman said nothing more.

  "Any advice?"

  Anna laughed. "He's the child. You're the adult."

  Graham supposed that was a brilliant insight but it didn't seem to help.

  Evidently she could see he was confused. "Play it by ear."

  Graham exhaled and walked upstairs, the steps creaking under his big frame. He knocked on the boy's door and entered without waiting for a response, which he'd never done before.

  Joey's round, freckled face looked up from his desk, dominated by a large flat-screen monitor. He'd put his knit hat back on, like a rapper. He was apparently instant-messaging with a friend. A webcam was involved. Graham didn't like it that the friend could see him, see the room.

  "How's the homework coming?"

  "Finished." He typed away, not looking at the keyboard. Or at Graham.

  On the wall was a series of still pictures from the Gus Van Sant movie Paranoid Park, about skateboarders in Portland. Joey must have printed them out. It was a good movie--for adults. Graham had protested about their taking the boy. But Joey had become obsessed with the movie and sulked until Brynn had acquiesced. As it turned out, though, they'd fled the theater after one particularly horrific scene. Graham had dodged the incident that a told-you-so would have bought, though he came real close to telling his wife that next time she should listen to him.