The Bodies Left Behind: A Novel Read online

  They were on higher ground here and, looking back, they could still see a flashlight slowly probing for the pathway down the cliff face that would lead the killers into the valley and to the ranger station. They’d eventually learn that the women weren’t going that way but every minute they delayed on the cliff was a minute more Brynn and Michelle had to escape.

  Brynn found a section of the woods that was less ensnarled than others and she stepped off the trail. Michelle, somber again, gazed at the rocky, boggy ground and started forward with a look of distaste, like a girl reluctantly climbing into her date’s filthy car.

  THEY WERE DOING

  eighty, without the light bar going or the throaty siren. Didn’t need them. There was hardly any traffic out here, this time of night. And none of the retrofit accessories in the Dodge would have any inhibiting effect on suicidal wildlife. Sheriff Tom Dahl’s feeling was that deer were born without brains. He was sitting in the passenger seat and a young deputy, Peter Gibbs, was driving. Behind them was another car, Eric Munce at the wheel and, beside him, Howie Prescott, a massive, shaved-headed deputy who got good respect during traffic stops.

  Dahl had called his deputies and found no shortage of volunteers to help find out what had happened to their colleague Brynn McKenzie. They all stood ready to go, but four, he figured, was plenty.

  The sheriff was on the phone with an FBI agent in Milwaukee. His name was Brindle, which Dahl thought was a coloring of a horse or dog. The agent had been getting ready for bed but didn’t hesitate to help out. He sounded genuinely concerned.

  The subject of the conversation was the woman lawyer, Emma Feldman.

  “Well, Sheriff, started out as a little thing. She’s handling this corporate deal. She’s doing her homework and finds out that a lot of the companies on the lakefront have more than their fair share of documented aliens. Next thing a CI…that’s a—”

  “Confidential informant?” Dahl asked, but Brindle missed the irony.

  “Right. He says that Stanley Mankewitz, head of some local union, is selling forged green cards to illegals.”

  “How much could he make doing that?”

  “No, that’s not what it’s about. He doesn’t even charge ’em. What he does is gets them to guarantee that they’ll get jobs in open shops then unionize the workers. The union gets bigger, Mankewitz gets richer.”

  Hmm, Dahl thought. Clever idea.

  “That’s what we’re investigating right now.”

  “And this Mankewitz? He done it?”

  “Up in the air so far. He’s smart, he’s old school and he only hires people who keep their mouths shut. He’s a prick too, pardon my French, so, yeah, he did it. But the case’s weak. It takes just one witness having an accident or getting killed in a, quote, random house invasion and the whole case could fall apart.”

  “And here she is, out in the wilderness, this lawyer. A lot of accidents could happen there.”

  “Exactly. Milwaukee PD should’ve had somebody on her. They dropped the ball there.”

  This was offered a little too fast, Dahl thought. The finger-pointing’d already started up, it seemed. Policing wasn’t much different in Milwaukee, Washington, D.C., or Kennesha County.

  Dahl said, “Go faster.”

  “What?” the FBI agent asked.

  “I’m talking to the driver…. When my deputy’s husband called her phone, some man answered, claiming to be a deputy. Near as we can tell, there’re no troopers or neighboring law out there. None at all.”

  “I see why you’re worried. Where is this happening?”

  “Lake Mondac.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “Next to Marquette State Park.”

  “I’ll give my man a call who runs CI’s, see if there’s any word about somebody talking to a pro—hired killer.”

  So that’s what he means by pro. Dahl was getting irritated. “That’d be much appreciated, Agent Brindle.”

  “You want one of our people there, on the ground?”

  “Not yet, I don’t think. Let’s see what’s going on first.”

  “Okay. Well, call if you need to. We’ll be totally on board, Sheriff. This Mankewitz, he’s fucking around with illegals and Homeland Security and terrorist issues.”

  Not to mention putting a poor family at risk, Dahl thought. Something else he refrained from saying. He thanked the agent and they hung up.

  “How soon?” he muttered to the young deputy beside him.

  “Half hour…”

  “Well,” Dahl began impatiently, rubbing his scarred leg.

  “I know, Sheriff,” Gibbs said. “But we’re doing eighty. Any faster and all it takes is one deer. And if it doesn’t kill us coming through the windshield, Eric’ll get us from behind. That boy really oughta back off a bit.”

  THEY’D LEFT THE

  Joliet Trail twenty minutes before, with Brynn deviating only when necessary—around thickets and brambles and beds of leaves that might cover trip holes and bogs. They headed up into the hills, steep ones, and already the incline was dramatic in some places. A slip could turn into a tumble down a hillside for many yards, over sharp rocks and through thornbushes. The men would be at the bottom of the cliff by now. She hoped that, finding no bodies, they’d continue through the ravine to the ranger station. It could be forty minutes, an hour before they realized they’d been tricked and returned to the Joliet Trail to resume the hunt.

  A brief pause for another compass reading. They’d remained largely on course, due north.

  For the first time tonight Brynn was beginning to feel that she and Michelle might survive.

  They’d be at the river soon. And then either a trek south along the bank to Point of Rocks or the shorter but arduous—and dangerous—climb up the gorge. She couldn’t get that image out of her head: the hiker who’d fallen and been impaled on the tree limb.

  The recovery team had needed a chain saw to cut the body free. They’d had to stand around waiting for an hour for an officer to arrive with the tool.

  Brynn squinted at a silver flash in the distance ahead of them. Was that the river?

  No, just a narrow band of grass shining in the moonlight. Otherworldly. She wondered what kind it was. Graham could have told her in a heartbeat.

  But she didn’t want to think about Graham.

  Then she shivered at the sound of a howl behind them. A creature baying. Was it the wolf that seemed to be following them as persistently as the men?

  Michelle looked back at the sound. She froze. And then she screamed.

  “Michelle, no!” Brynn whispered harshly. “It’s just the—”

  “Them, it’s them!” The young woman was pointing into the darkness.

  What? What did she see? All Brynn was looking at were layers of shadow, some moving, some still. Smooth or textured.

  “Where?”

  “There! Him!”

  Finally Brynn could see: a hundred feet away a man stood behind a bush.

  No! They hadn’t believed the trick at the junction. Brynn gripped her spear. “Get down!”

  But whatever’d been building within the young woman now exploded in rage and madness. “You fuckers!” she screamed. “I hate you!”

  “No, Michelle. Please, be quiet. We have to run. Now!”

  But the younger woman seemed transfixed, as if Brynn weren’t even present. She flung aside the pool cue steadying her and pulled out a pool ball bolo.

  Brynn stepped forward, gripping Michelle’s leather jacket. But, her face a mask of fury, the woman shoved Brynn away, sending her slipping down an incline of slick leaves.

  The bolo in one hand, the knife in the other, Michelle charged the man, moving fast despite her limp. “I hate you, I hate you!” she screamed.

  “No, Michelle, no! They have guns!”

  But she seemed deaf to the pleas. When she was thirty feet away from the man she flung the bolo, which flew in a fierce arc and nearly struck his head. He stood his ground—just as Brynn hers
elf had back in the Feldmans’ driveway.

  Undaunted, Michelle continued her charge.

  Brynn debated. Should she follow? It’d be suicide….

  Then decided: Oh, hell. She grimaced, rose to her feet and charged after the woman, trying to keep low. “Michelle, stop!” Any minute, the man would fire. It must’ve been Hart; he remained motionless, waiting for the perfect shot.

  Michelle sprinted directly toward him.

  The man couldn’t miss.

  But no shots came.

  Slowing to a stop, Brynn could see why. It wasn’t a person at all. What the crazed young woman had been attacking was just a weird configuration of tree trunk, broken about six feet up, the branches and leaves giving the impression of a human. It was like a scarecrow.

  “I hate you!” the young woman’s shrill voice echoed.

  “Michelle!”

  Then, when she was ten feet away, Michelle apparently realized her mistake. She stopped, gasping for breath, staring at the trunk. She dropped to her knees, lowering her head, hands over her face, sobbing. An eerie keening came from her throat, both mournful and hopeless.

  The horror of the evening finally poured out; the tears up until now had been tears of confusion and pain. This was a rupture of pure sorrow.

  Brynn approached and then stopped. “Michelle, it’s okay. Let’s—”

  Michelle’s voice rose to another wail. “Leave me alone!”

  “Please. Shhhh, Michelle. Please be quiet…. It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not okay! It’s not okay at all.”

  “Let’s keep at it. We don’t have much farther to go.”

  “I don’t care. You go on….”

  A faint smile. “I’m not leaving you here.”

  Michelle hugged herself, rocking back and forth.

  Brynn crouched next to her. She understood that something else was going on within the young woman. “What is it?”

  Michelle looked absently at the knife, slipped it back in the sock scabbard. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “What?” Brynn persisted.

  “It’s my fault they’re dead,” she whispered, her face miserable. “Steve and Emma. It’s my fault!”

  “You, why?”

  She snapped, “Because I’m a spoiled little brat. Oh, God…”

  Brynn looked behind them. A few minutes. This was important, she sensed. They could afford a few minutes. The men were miles away. “Tell me.”

  “My husband…” She cleared her throat. “My husband’s seeing somebody else.”

  “What?”

  A faint, pained smile and she managed to say, “He’s cheating on me. I said he’s on a business trip. He is, but he’s not going alone.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “A girlfriend of mine works for the travel agency his company uses. I made her tell me. He’s going with somebody else.”

  “Maybe it’s just somebody he works with.”

  “No, it’s not. And they got one hotel room.”

  Oh.

  “I was so mad and so hurt. I couldn’t be alone this weekend! I just couldn’t be. I talked Emma and Steve into coming up here and bringing me along. I wanted to cry on their shoulders. I wanted them to tell me it’s not my fault. That he’s a bastard, that they would be my friends after the divorce and dump him…. And now they’re dead because I couldn’t act like a grown-up.”

  “That’s hardly your fault.” Brynn looked back and saw no pursuers. Nor any sign of their mascot, the wolf. She put her arm around the young woman and helped her to her feet. “Let’s walk. Tell me while we walk.”

  Michelle complied. They collected her pool cue and continued toward the river.

  “How long’ve you been married?”

  “Six years.” Her voice caught. “Michael was like my best friend. Everything seemed so fine. He was so laid-back, generous. He took really good care of me…. And you know what’s so messed up? That’s why I lost him—being a spoiled little girl.” She gave a sour laugh. “He’s a banker. He makes all this money. When we got married I quit my job. It’s not like he wanted me to or anything. It was my idea. It was, like, my chance to go to acting school.”

  Michelle winced, stepping hard and apparently jarring her ankle. She continued, “I told you I was an actress…. Bullshit. I’m a twenty-nine-year-old acting student. And not a very good one. I was an extra in two local commercials. And Second City told me no. My life is lunch with my girlfriends, tennis, my health club, my spa. The only thing I’m good at is spending money, shopping and keeping myself in shape.”

  To the tune of a svelte size 4, Brynn couldn’t help but observe.

  “And I became…a nobody. Michael’d come home and I couldn’t even talk about the housework—because the maids had done it all. I got boring. He fell out of love with me.”

  Part of a law enforcer’s job is to recognize the psychological issues at work within the people she meets professionally—the bystanders, witnesses and victims, in addition to the criminals. Brynn didn’t know that she had any particular insights but she told Michelle her honest assessment: “It’s not all your fault. It never is.”

  “I’m such a loser….”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Brynn believed this. A little spoiled, true, a little too pampered, a little too much in love with money and the good life. In a curious way maybe this night was teaching her there was more within her than a rich-girl dilettante.

  As for the other issue, the more important one, Brynn now put her arm around Michelle’s shoulders. “There’s one thing you have to understand. Whether you asked them here or not made no difference. Whoever killed Emma and Steve was a professional, hired to murder her. If it wasn’t tonight it would’ve been next week. You had nothing to do with that.”

  “You think?”

  “I do, yes.”

  The girl wasn’t completely convinced. Brynn knew that guilt has a complex DNA; it doesn’t need to be purebred to be virulent. But Michelle seemed to take some comfort in Brynn’s words. “I just wish I could turn back the clock.”

  Isn’t that a prayer for every day? Brynn thought.

  Michelle sighed. “I’m sorry I lost it. I shouldn’t’ve screamed.”

  “I don’t think we have to worry. They’re miles away, in the bottom of the ravine. They couldn’t hear a thing.”

  GRAHAM BOYD WAS

  pulled from his stew of thoughts about his wife when he heard the distinctive sound of the engine in his F150 start up. “Somebody’s stealing the truck.” He stared at his mother-in-law and instinctively slapped his pants pocket, felt his set of keys.

  How? he wondered. In the shows Anna watched, Matlock and Magnum, P.I., everybody was hot-wiring cars. He didn’t think you could anymore.

  But when he saw the deadbolt on the kitchen door open and that the spare keys he kept on the hook were gone, he knew. “Jesus, not this. Not now.”

  “I’ll call the sheriff,” Anna said.

  “No,” Graham shouted. “It’s okay.”

  He ran outside.

  The truck was backing up against the gardening shed to turn around so the driver could head out, hood first, down the narrow driveway. It tapped into the corrugated metal with a loud bang. Not much damage, none to the truck. The driver slammed the transmission into drive.

  Waving his hands like a traffic cop, Graham walked to the passenger window, which was open. Joey looked straight at him with a fierce expression.

  Graham said, “Shut off the engine. Get out of the truck.”

  “No.”

  “Joey. Do it now. This minute.”

  “You can’t make me. I’m going to look for Mom.”

  “Out of the car. Now.”

  “No.”

  “There are people doing that. Tom Dahl, some deputies. She’ll be fine.”

  “You keep saying that!” he shouted. “But how do you know?”

  True, Graham thought.

  He saw the boy’s edgy eye
s, his firm grip on the wheel. He wasn’t short—his father was well over six feet—but he was skinny and looked tiny in the big seat.

  “I’m going.” He still couldn’t make the turn down the driveway so he eased forward, tapped a trash can and backed up again, this time judging correctly; he stopped before he hit the shed. He straightened the wheels toward the road and put the truck in forward once more.

  “Joey. No. We don’t even know where she is.” Saying this seemed like a retreat. He shouldn’t be arguing from logic. He was commander-in-chief.

  Instinct, remember.

  “Lake Mondac.”

  “Shut the engine off. Get out of the truck.” Should he reach in for the keys? What if the boy’s foot slipped off the brake? One of Graham’s workers had been badly injured reaching into a moving truck, just like this, trying to grab the shifter when the driver forgot to engage it. Our bodies are no match for two tons of steel and detonating gasoline.

  He glanced at the seat. Jesus. The boy had a pellet gun—Graham recognized the powerful break-action model. At close range it was as accurate as a .22, and as deadly to squirrels and river rats. Brynn had forbidden him to have weapons. Where had he gotten it? Stolen, Graham wondered.

  “Joey! Now!” Graham snapped. “You can’t do anything. Your mother’ll be home soon. And she’d be furious if you weren’t here.”

  Another retreat in the be-the-parent-in-control game.

  “No, she won’t. Something’s wrong. I know something’s wrong.” The boy let up on the brake and the vehicle began to roll forward.

  And, not even thinking, Graham ran in front of the vehicle and stood there, hands on the hood.

  “Graham!” Anna called from the porch. “No. Don’t make a war out of it.”

  And he thought, no, it’s time somebody did make it a war.

  “Get out of that truck!”

  “I’m going to find Mom!”

  The only thing keeping him alive was a twelve-year-old’s untied running shoe on the pedal of brakes that had needed servicing for a year. “No, you’re not. Shut the engine off, Joey. I’m not going to tell you again.” When Graham was a child, that was all his father had needed to say to get him to comply, though the offenses back then were things like failure to take out the trash or neglecting his homework.