The Bodies Left Behind: A Novel Read online

  The miracle of modern electronics. God bless Edison. Or Marconi. Or Sprint.

  Dahl stretched and massaged his leg near the leathery spot where a bullet had come and gone, not stinging much at the time and probably fired by one of his own men in the county’s only bank robbery shootout in recent memory. “Whatta you think, Todd? I don’t think you say, ‘This is the number I want,’ to four-one-one. I think you say, ‘This is an emergency.’ To nine-one-one.”

  “And then you pass out.”

  “Or get shot or stabbed. And the line just went dead?”

  “And Peggy tried calling back. But it went to voice mail. Direct. No ring.”

  “And the message said?”

  “Just ‘This is Steven. I’m not available.’ No last name. Peggy left a message to call her.”

  “Boater on the lake?” Dahl speculated. “Had a problem?”

  “In this weather?” April in Wisconsin could be frigid; the temperatures tonight were predicted to dip into the high thirties.

  Dahl shrugged. “My boys went into water that’d scare off polar bears. And boaters’re like golfers.”

  “I don’t golf.”

  Another deputy called, “Got a name, Todd.”

  The young man produced a pen and notebook. Dahl couldn’t tell where they came from. “Go on.”

  “Steven Feldman. Billing address for the phone is two one nine three Melbourne, Milwaukee.”

  “So, it’s a vacation house on Lake Mondac. Lawyer, doctor, not a beggarman. Run him,” the sheriff ordered. “And what’s the number of the phone?”

  Dahl got the numbers from Jackson, who then returned again to his cubicle, where he’d look up the particulars on the federal and state databases. All the important ones: NCIC, VICAP, Wisconsin criminal records, Google.

  Out the window the April sky was a rich blue like a girl’s party dress. Dahl loved the air in this part of Wisconsin. Humboldt, the biggest town in Kennesha, had no more than seven thousand vehicles spread out over many miles. The cement plant put some crap into the air but it was the only big industry the county had so nobody complained except some local Environmental Protection Agency people and they didn’t complain very loudly. You could see for miles.

  Quarter to six now.

  “‘This,’” Dahl mused.

  Jackson came back yet again. “Well, here we go, Sheriff. Feldman works for the city. He’s thirty-six. His wife Emma’s a lawyer. Hartigan, Reed, Soames and Carson. She’s thirty-four.”

  “Ha. Lawyer. I win.”

  “No warrants or anything on either of them. Have two cars. Mercedes and a Cherokee. No children. They have a house there.”

  “Where?”

  “I mean Lake Mondac. Found the deed, no mortgage.”

  “Owning and not owing? Well.” Dahl hit REDIAL for the fifth time. Straight to voice mail again. “Hi, this is Steven. I’m not available—”

  Dahl didn’t leave another message. He disconnected, let his thumb linger on the cradle, then removed it. Directory assistance had no listing for a Feldman in Mondac. He called the phone company’s local legal affairs man.

  “Jerry. Caughtya ’fore you left. Tom Dahl.”

  “On my way out the door. Got a warrant? We looking for terrorists?”

  “Ha. Just, can you tell me there’s a landline for a house up in Lake Mondac?”

  “Where?”

  “About twenty miles north of here, twenty-five. House is number three Lake View.”

  “That’s a town? Lake Mondac?”

  “Probably just unincorporated county.”

  A moment later. “Nope, no line. Us or anybody. Everybody uses their mobiles nowadays.”

  “What would Ma Bell say?”

  “Who?”

  After they disconnected, Dahl looked at the note Jackson had given him. He called Steven Feldman’s office, the Milwaukee Department of Social Services, but got a recording. He hung up. “I’ll try the wife. Law firms don’t ever sleep. At least not ones with four names.”

  A young woman, an assistant or secretary, answered and Dahl identified himself. Then said, “We’re trying to reach Mrs. Feldman.”

  The pause you always got, then: “Is something wrong?”

  “No. Just routine. We understand that she’s at her vacation house at Lake Mondac.”

  “That’s right. Emma and her husband and a friend of hers from Chicago were driving up there after work. They were going for the weekend. Please, is anything wrong? Has there been an accident?”

  In a voice with which he’d delivered news of fatal accidents and successful births Tom Dahl said, “Nothing’s wrong that we know of. I’d just like to get in touch with her. Could you give me her cell phone number?”

  A pause.

  “Tell you what. You don’t know me. Call back the Kennesha County Center’s main number and ask to speak to the sheriff. If it’d make you feel any better.”

  “It would.”

  He hung up and the phone buzzed one minute later.

  “Wasn’t sure she’d call,” he said to Jackson as he was picking up the handset.

  He got Emma Feldman’s mobile number from the assistant. Then he asked for the name and number of the friend driving up with them.

  “She’s a woman Emma used to work with. I don’t know her name.”

  Dahl told the assistant if Emma called in to have her get in touch with the Sheriff’s Department. They hung up.

  Emma’s mobile went straight to voice mail too.

  Dahl exhaled, “‘This,’” the way he’d let smoke ease from his lips up until seven years and four months ago. He made a decision. “I’ll sleep better…. Anybody on duty up that way?”

  “Eric’s the closest. Was checking out a GTA in Hobart that turned into a mistake. Oops, should’ve called the wife first, that sort of thing.”

  “Eric, hmm.”

  “Called in five minutes ago. Went for dinner in Boswich Falls.”

  “Eric.”

  “Nobody else within twenty miles. Usually isn’t, up there, with the park closed and all, this time of year.”

  Dahl looked out the interior window, over the cubicles of his deputies. Jimmy Barnes, the deputy whose birthday was tomorrow, was standing beside two coworkers, all of them laughing hard. The joke must’ve been pretty funny and it’d surely be told again and again that night.

  The sheriff’s eyes settled on an empty desk. He winced as he massaged his damaged thigh.

  “HOW’D IT GO?”

  “Joey’s fine,” she said. “He’s just fine.”

  Graham was in the kitchen, two skills on display, Brynn observed of her husband. He was getting the pasta going and he’d progressed with the new tile. About twenty square feet of kitchen floor were sealed off with yellow police line tape.

  “Hi, Graham,” the boy called.

  “Hey, young man. How you feeling?”

  The lanky twelve-year-old, in cargo pants, windbreaker and black knit hat, held up his arm. “Excellent.” He was nearly his mother’s five-foot-five-inch height and his round face was dusted with freckles, which hadn’t come from Brynn, though he and his mother shared identical straight chestnut brown hair. His now protruded from under the watch cap.

  “No sling? How’re you going to get any sympathy from the girls?”

  “Ha, ha.” Graham’s stepson crinkled his nose at the comment about the opposite sex. The lean boy got a juice box from the fridge, poked the straw in and emptied the drink.

  “Spaghetti tonight.”

  “Al-right!” The boy instantly forgot skateboard injuries and female classmates. He ran to the stairs, dodging books that were stacked on the lower steps, intended for putting away at some point.

  “Hat!” Graham shouted. “In the house…”

  The boy yanked the cap off and continued bounding upward.

  “Take it easy,” Graham called. “Your arm—”

  “He’s fine,” Brynn repeated, hanging her dark green jacket in the front closet, then return
ing to the kitchen. Midwest pretty. Her high cheekbones made her look a bit Native-American, though she was exclusively Norwegian-Irish and in roughly the proportion her name suggested: Kristen Brynn McKenzie. People sometimes thought that, especially with her shoulder-length hair pulled back taut, she was a retired ballet dancer who’d settled into a size-eight life with few regrets, though Brynn had never danced, outside of a school or club, in her life.

  Her one concession to vanity was to pluck and peroxide her eyebrows; more long-term tactics were in the planning but so far none had been put into practice. If there was any imperfection it was her jaw, which, seen from straight on, was a bit crooked. Graham said it was charming and sexy. Brynn hated the flaw.

  He now asked, “His arm—it’s not broken?”

  “Nope. Just lost some skin. They bounce back, that age.” She glanced at the kettle. He made good pasta.

  “That’s a relief.” The kitchen was hot and six-foot-three-inch Graham Boyd rolled his sleeves up, showing strong arms, and two small scars of his own. He wore a watch with much of the gold plate worn off. His only jewelry was his wedding band, scratched and dull. Much like Brynn’s, nestled beside the engagement ring she’d had on her finger for exactly one month longer than the band.

  Graham opened cans of tomatoes. The Oxo’s sharp round blade split the lids decisively under his big hands. He turned down the flame. Onion was sizzling. “Tired?”

  “Some.”

  She’d left the house at five-thirty. That was well before the day tour started, but she’d wanted to follow up at a trailer park, the site of a domestic dispute the afternoon before. Nobody’d been arrested and the couple had ended up remorseful, tearful and hugging. But Brynn wanted to make sure the excessive makeup on the woman’s face wasn’t concealing a bruise she didn’t want the police to see.

  Nope, Brynn had learned at 6 A.M.; she just wore a lot of Max Factor.

  After the predawn start she was planning to be home early—well, for her, at five, but she’d gotten a call from an EMS medical tech, a friend of hers. The woman began: “Brynn, he’s all right.”

  Ten minutes later she was in the emergency room with her son.

  She now puffed out her tan Sheriff’s Department uniform blouse. “I’m stinky.”

  Graham consulted the triple shelves of cookbooks, about four dozen of them altogether. They were mostly Anna’s, who’d brought them with her when she moved in after her medical treatments, but Graham had been browsing through them recently, as he’d taken over that household duty. His mother-in-law hadn’t been well enough to cook, and Brynn? Well, it wasn’t exactly one of her skills.

  “Ouch. I forgot the cheese,” Graham said, rummaging futilely in the pantry. “Can’t believe it.” He turned back to the pot, and his thumb and forefinger ground oregano into dust.

  “How was your day?” she asked.

  He told her about an irrigation system gone mad, turned on prematurely April first then cracking in a dozen places in the freeze that surprised nobody but the owner, who’d returned home to find his backyard had done a Katrina.

  “You’re making headway.” She nodded at the tile.

  “It’s coming along. So. The punishment fit the crime?”

  She frowned.

  “Joey. The skateboard.”

  “Oh, I told him he’s off it for three days.”

  Graham said nothing, concentrated on the sauce. Did that mean he thought she was too lenient? She said, “Well, maybe more. I said we’ll see.”

  “They oughta outlaw those things,” he said. “Going down railings? Jumping in the air. It’s crazy.”

  “He was just in the school yard. Those stairs there. The three stairs going down to the parking lot. All the kids do it, he said.”

  “He has to wear that helmet. I see it here all the time.”

  “That’s true. He’s going to. I talked to him about that too.”

  Graham’s eyes followed the boy’s route to his room. “Maybe I should have a word with him. Guy-to-guy thing.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. I don’t want to overwhelm him. He got the message.”

  Brynn got her own beer, drank half. Ate a handful of Wheat Thins. “So. You going to your poker game tonight?”

  “Thought I might.”

  She nodded as she watched him roll meatballs with his large hands.

  “Honey,” a voice called. “How’s our boy?”

  “Hey, Mom.”

  Anna, seventy-four, stood in the doorway, dressed nice, as usual. Today the outfit was a black pantsuit and gold shell. Her short ’do had been put in place by the hairdresser just yesterday. Thursday was her day at Style Cuts.

  “Just a few scrapes, a few bruises.”

  Graham said, “He was skateboarding down stairs.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Three steps. Not ‘stairs.’” Brynn sipped. “Everything’s fine. He won’t do it again. Nothing serious, really. We’ve all done things like that.”

  Graham asked Anna, “What’d she do when she was a kid?” Nodding at his wife.

  “Oh, I’ve got stories.” But she told none of them.

  “I’ll take him paintballing or something,” Graham suggested. “Channel some of that energy.”

  “That’d be a good idea.”

  Graham ripped up lettuce with his hands. “Spaghetti okay, Anna?”

  “Whatever you make’ll be lovely.” Anna took the glass of Chardonnay her son-in-law poured for her.

  Brynn watched her husband take plates from the cupboard. “Think there’s some dust on them? From the tiling?”

  “I sealed it off with plastic. Took it down after I was done.”

  He hesitated then rinsed them anyway.

  “Can somebody take me over to Rita’s tonight?” Anna asked. “Megan’s got to pick up her son. Just for an hour and a half or so. I promised to handle bathroom duty.”

  “How’s she doing?” Brynn asked.

  “Not good.” Anna and her dear friend had been diagnosed around the same time. Anna’s treatment had gone well, Rita’s had not.

  “I’ll take you,” she told her mother. “Sure. What time?”

  “Sevenish.” Anna turned back to the family room, the heart of Brynn’s small house on the outskirts of Humboldt. The nightly news was on. “Lookit. Another bomb. Those people.”

  The phone rang. Graham answered. “Hi, Tom. How’s it going?”

  Brynn set the beer down. Looked at her husband, holding the phone in his large hand. “Yeah, I saw it. Good game. You’re calling for Brynn, I’m guessing…. Hold on. She’s here.”

  “The boss,” he whispered, offering the handset then turning back to dinner.

  “Tom?”

  The sheriff asked about Joey. She thought he was going to lecture her about skateboards too but he didn’t. He was explaining about a situation up in Lake Mondac. She listened carefully, nodding.

  “Need somebody to check it out. You’re closer than anybody else, Brynn.”

  “Eric?”

  Graham lit a burner on the Kenmore stove. Blue sparks ascended.

  “I’d rather it wasn’t him. You know how he gets.”

  Graham stirred the pot. It was mostly the contents of cans but he still stirred like he was blending hand-diced ingredients. In the family room a man’s voice was replaced by Katie Couric’s. Anna announced, “That’s more like it. What the news should be about.”

  Brynn debated. Then she said, “You owe me a half day, Tom. Give me the address.”

  Which turned Graham’s head.

  Dahl put on another deputy, Todd Jackson, who gave directions. Brynn wrote.

  She hung up. “Might be a problem up at Lake Mondac.” She looked at the beer. Didn’t drink any more.

  “Aw, baby,” Graham said.

  “I’m sorry. I feel obligated. I left work early because of Joey.”

  “But Tom didn’t say that.”

  She hesitated. “No, he didn’t. The thing is I’m closest.”
/>   “I heard you mention Eric.”

  “He’s a problem. I told you about him.”

  Eric Munce read Soldier of Fortune magazine, wore a second gun on his ankle like he was in downtown Detroit and would go prowling around for meth labs when he should have been Breathalyzing DUIs and encouraging kids to get home by 10 P.M.

  From the doorway, Anna said, “Should I call Rita?”

  “I guess I can take you,” Graham said.

  Brynn put a stopper on her beer bottle. “Your poker game?”

  Her husband paused, smiled then said, “It’ll keep. Anyway, with Joey being hurt, better to stay here, keep an eye on him.”

  She said, “You guys eat. And leave the dishes. I’ll clean up when I get back. It’ll be a couple hours is all.”

  “Okay,” Graham said. And everybody knew he’d clean up.

  She pulled on her leather jacket, lighter weight than her Sheriff’s Department parka. “I’ll call when I get up there. Let you know when I’ll be back. Sorry about your game, Graham.”

  “Bye,” he said, not looking back, as he eased the jackstraws of spaghetti into the boiling pot.

  NORTH OF HUMBOLDT

  the landscape is broken into bumpy rectangles of pastures, separated by benign fences, a few stone walls and hedgerows. The sun was sitting on the tops of the hills to the west and shone down on the landscape, making the milk cows and sheep glow like bright, bulky lawn decorations. Every few hundred yards signs lured tourists this way or that with the promise of handmade cheeses, nut rolls and nougat, maple syrup, soft drinks and pine furniture. A vineyard offered a tour. Brynn McKenzie, who enjoyed her wine and had lived in Wisconsin all her life, had never sampled anything local. Then, eight miles out of town, the storybook vanished, just like that. Pine and oak ganged beside the road, which shrank from four lanes to two. Hills sprouted and soon the landscape was nothing but forest. A few buds were out but the leaf-bearing trees were still largely gray and black. Most of the pines were richly green but some parcels were dead, killed by acid rain or maybe blight.