The Bodies Left Behind: A Novel Read online

  “Really,” Hart called. “Don’t worry. Or, tell you what, just throw ’em out the front, you don’t trust us. But otherwise we come in and get them. Believe me, we just want to be gone. Just want to be out of here.”

  Brynn flicked the kitchen lights out. Now the only illumination was from the roaring fireplace and the bedroom she’d glanced into.

  A whisper, its source uncertain. This meant they’d joined each other.

  But where?

  And were there just two? Or more? She found herself staring at the bodies of the couple.

  And where was the friend?

  Hart again, speaking so very calmly: “You’ve seen those folks inside. You don’t want that to happen to you. Throw the keys out here. I’m telling you not to be stupid. Please.”

  Of course the moment she showed herself she’d be dead.

  Should she say she was a deputy? And that more were on their way?

  No, don’t give yourself away.

  Pressing back against the pantry door, Brynn scanned the back windows. They reflected the living room and she gasped softly as a man appeared in the front door, slipping inside. Cautious. He was tall, solid, wearing a dark jacket. Long hair, boots. He carried a pistol in his—the reverse image confused her momentarily—his right hand. The other arm hung at his side and she got the impression he’d been injured. He disappeared. Somewhere in the living room.

  Brynn tensed, gripped the pistol in a shooting pose. She stared at the reflection at the front of the house.

  Go for the shot, she told herself. Your only advantage is surprise. Use it. He’s in the living room. It’s only twenty feet. Step into the doorway. Fire a burst of three, then back to cover. You can take him.

  Do it.

  Now.

  Brynn swallowed and stepped away from the wall, turning toward the living room. She gasped as the voice from behind her, in the dining room, shouted, “Listen, lady, you do what we’re saying!” A skinny man in a combat jacket, with short, light hair, a tat on his neck and eyes mean, had come through the French doors. He was lifting a shotgun to his shoulder.

  Brynn, spinning to face him.

  They fired simultaneously. Her slug came closer than his buckshot—he ducked and she didn’t—puncturing a stuffed dining room chair inches from him as the pellets from his shotgun crunched into the ceiling above her. The light fixture rained down.

  He crawled out the French door. “Hart! A gun! She’s got a gun.”

  She wasn’t sure these were his exact words, though. The shots were thunderclap loud and had numbed her ears.

  Brynn glanced into the living room. No sign of Hart. She started toward the back kitchen door. Then paused. She couldn’t just leave if the Feldmans’ friend was still here.

  “I’m a sheriff’s deputy,” she shouted. “Hello! Is someone in the house? Are you upstairs?”

  Silence.

  Brynn desperately scanned the windows, shivered, sure somebody was aiming at her even as she crouched in the shadows. “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  “Is anybody here?”

  The longest twenty seconds of her life.

  Leave, she told herself. Get help. You can’t do anything for anybody if you’re dead.

  She raced out the back door, gasping in fear and from the effort. Her keys in her left hand, she made her way to the front yard. She saw no one.

  The sun was down altogether and the darkness was growing fast. But there was still just enough light in the sky, barely, to make out one of the intruders running toward some bushes. His back was to her. It was the wounded man, Hart. She drew a target but he vanished in a thicket of bearberry and rhododendron.

  Brynn scanned the front yard. The other man, with the shotgun and the narrow face, wasn’t visible. She sprinted for her car. When she heard the rustle of bushes from behind her, she dropped instantly. The shotgun fired. Pellets hissed around her and clattered off the Ford. Brynn fired twice into the bush, breaking the number one rule about never shooting except at a clear target. She saw the slight man disappear behind the house, running in a crouch.

  Then she stood and opened her car door. Rather than jump in, though, she remained standing, a clear target, pointing the black Glock at the bushes where Hart had fled. Struggling to steady her breathing. And her shooting grip.

  Come on, come on…I can only wait a second or two—

  Then Hart rose fast from the bushes. He was close enough for her to see him blink in surprise that she was waiting for him. Brynn too was surprised; she hadn’t been expecting him so far to the right, and by the time she’d corrected and fired three shots he’d dived to cover. She believed she might’ve hit him.

  But now it was time to escape.

  Jumping into the car, concentrating on getting the key in the ignition, not looking around. The engine roared and she slammed the shifter into reverse, flooring the limp accelerator. The car skittered backward along the gravel, whipsawing—now rear-wheel drive. She glanced behind her to see the men converging in the driveway, running flat-out after her. Answering one of her questions: she’d missed Hart, after all.

  The skinny man stopped and fired the shotgun. The pellets missed.

  “Our Loving Savior, look over us,” she whispered, an invocation they said as grace every night and that she’d never meant more than now.

  Brynn had taken the State Police’s pursuit and evasive driving course several times. She’d used the techniques often in the high-speed chases when after a speeder or a getaway car. This, though, was the opposite: evading an attacker, something she’d never imagined would happen. Yet her hours of practice came back to her: left hand on the wheel, right arm around the passenger seat, gripping the pistol. Two long football fields…She came to the end of the driveway and debated turning around to drive in forward or just stay in reverse and back down Lake View toward the county road. To pause even for five seconds to turn around could be disastrous.

  The men continued to sprint.

  Brynn decided: Stay in reverse and keep going. Put some distance between them.

  As she approached Lake View Drive she realized it was the right decision. They were closer than she’d thought. She never heard the shotgun fire again but pellets snapped into the windshield, starring it. She took the turn onto the private road and accelerated as fast as she dared, staring out of the dirty rear window and struggling to keep the car under control. It whipped back and forth and threatened to slam into the rocks or trees to the right or tumble down the embankment to the lake on the opposite side of the road.

  But she managed to keep control.

  Brynn eased off the gas a little but kept the speed at thirty. The transmission was roaring in protest. She doubted she could make it to the county road before the gears tore apart. She’d have to turn around soon. The private road was too narrow to do so but she could use the driveway at Number 2. It wasn’t close—three, four hundred yards of the serpentine private road—but she had no choice.

  Her neck stung from twisting to look backward. She glanced down at the cup holder. “Goddamn.” The man who’d checked for keys had taken her cell phone. She realized she still gripped the gun in her right hand, finger around the trigger. Glocks have a very light pull. She set the weapon on the seat.

  Brynn looked quickly behind her—out the front windshield. No sign of them. She turned back and steered the car through a curve to the left. The house at 2 Lake View was now about two hundred yards away.

  The driveway was growing closer. She let up on the gas a bit; the raging whine of the gears diminished.

  She was thinking: Pull in fast, get into drive and—

  A solid load of buckshot crashed into the driver’s side of the car, both windows vanishing into hundreds of pieces of ice, pelting her. A sphere of buckshot stabbed through her right cheek and knocked out a molar. She began choking on the tooth and the blood. Tears flowed and she couldn’t see the road any longer.

  Wiping her eyes, Brynn managed to hawk up the tooth an
d spit it out, coughing hard on the blood, which spattered the steering wheel, slippery as oil. She lost her grip and didn’t make a curve. The car, going about thirty-five, dove off the edge and started down the steep rocky hill toward the lake.

  She flew out of her seat, her feet nowhere near the brakes, as the Honda rolled backward down the cliff. It dropped about six feet and the trunk slammed onto a shelf of limestone, hood pointed straight up in the air. The gun hit her in the ear.

  The car balanced for a moment, with Brynn sprawled across the backs of the two front seats. Then, with the utmost leisure, the Honda continued to topple, belly flopping upside down into the lake. The car filled instantly with dark water as it sank. Brynn, stunned, was snagged beneath the steering wheel.

  She screamed as the frigid water embraced her body, swatting her hands in panic. She called out, “Joey, Joey.”

  And inhaled a breath that began as air and ended as water.

  “WELL, WE’RE FUCKED,”

  Lewis said. “Oh, man. She was a cop.” “Don’t panic.”

  “The fuck you talking about? She was a cop, Hart. You get your head around that? There could be a dozen of ’em in the woods. We’ve gotta leave, my friend. Leave!”

  Breathing hard from the run, the men had slowed and were walking through the dense woodland, toward where they’d seen the car go off the road after Lewis had sent a load of shot into the driver’s side. They moved carefully, looking around like soldiers on patrol. They had no idea if the woman was out of commission from the crash or was in hiding, waiting for them.

  And they couldn’t forget about Michelle either, who might’ve been drawn out of hiding by the ruckus.

  “She wasn’t in a cruiser. And she wasn’t in a uniform jacket.”

  Lewis scrunched his face up skeptically. “I didn’t see what she was wearing underneath. I was a little busy.” Again sarcastic. “And I’m not panicking.”

  “I’ll bet she was probably off duty and came up here to check out that nine-one-one. Didn’t get the message it was a false alarm.”

  Lewis snickered. “You say she wasn’t on duty, my friend. But she was on enough duty to nearly blow your fucking head off.” He said this as if he’d won an argument.

  Your head too, Hart corrected silently. He said, “A lot of cops have to carry their pieces. All the time. Regulation.”

  “I know that.” Lewis gazed at the lake. “I heard the bang, you know. Like a crash. But I wasn’t sure if there was a splash.”

  “I couldn’t hear it go in the water.” Hart nodded toward the Winchester and tapped his ear. “Loud. I don’t usually use shotguns.”

  “You oughta learn ’em, boy. The weapon of choice. Nothing like a scattergun. Scares the shit out of folks.”

  Weapon of choice.

  Crouching, they continued walking slowly. In this morass of trees and tangled brush Hart grew disoriented. They could see the road but he now had no idea where the car had gone over the side. With every step, it seemed, the vista changed.

  Lewis paused, rubbed his neck.

  Hart looked him over. “You hit?

  “Nope. Right as rain. I dodged in time. I can sense when bullets’re coming. Like in The Matrix. Now, that was a good flick. I have the whole set. You see it?”

  Hart had no idea what he was talking about. “No.”

  “Jesus. You don’t get out much, do you?”

  A crinkle in the bushes nearby.

  Lewis swung the shotgun toward the sound.

  Something low was in the grass nearby, moving fast. Badger or coyote. Maybe a dog. Lewis aimed for it, clicked the safety off.

  “No, no, no…Give ourselves away.”

  And you never shoot anything you don’t have to…human or animal. Who the hell was this boy?

  Lewis muttered, “We take it out, whatever the fuck it is, it won’t spook us anymore.”

  You’re spooked; I’m not. Hart picked up a rock and flung it nearby. The animal, an indistinct shadow, moved off.

  But it moved off slowly. As if the men weren’t worth bothering about. Crouching, Hart saw a few paw prints in the mud. Not normally superstitious, he couldn’t help thinking that the prints were a warning sign of sorts. Telling them that they’d strolled casually into a very different universe from what they were used to. This is my world, the creature who’d left the prints was saying. You don’t belong here. You’ll see things that aren’t there and miss things that’re coming up right behind you.

  For the first time that night, including the gunshot at the house, Hart felt a trickle of real fear.

  “Fucking werewolf,” Lewis said, then looked back to the lakeshore. “So she’s gone. Gotta be. I’m saying, we gotta keep going, get out of here. After that”—he nodded back to the Feldmans’ house—“all bets are off. This thing is very fucked up. We’ll get a car on the county road. Take care of the driver. And we’re back in the city in a couple hours.” He snapped his fingers theatrically.

  Hart didn’t respond. He gestured down the road. “I want to see if she went for a swim or not.”

  Lewis sighed, exasperated, like a teenager. But he followed Hart. They walked stealthily toward the rocky shore in silence, pausing every so often.

  The younger man was looking over the lake. It was completely shaded by dusk shadow now, the water rippling in the breeze like black snake scales. He announced, “That lake, I don’t like it. It’s freaky.”

  Talking too loud, walking too loud, Hart thought angrily. He decided he had to get some control of the situation. It’d be a fine line but he had to. He whispered, “You know, Lewis, you shouldn’t’ve said anything back there. About the keys. I could’ve gotten up behind her.”

  “So I gave it away, huh? It’s all my fault.”

  “I’m saying we’ve gotta be more careful. And when you were in the dining room you started talking to her. You should’ve just shot.”

  Lewis’s eyes were good at being defensive and surly at the same time. “I didn’t know she was a cop. How the fuck could I know that? I stood my ground and nearly took lead there, my friend.”

  Took lead? Hart thought. Nobody ever said “took lead.”

  “I hate this fucking place,” Lewis muttered. He rubbed the bristle on his head, poked the lobe where his earring had been. Frowned, then remembered he’d put it away. “Got a thought, Hart. It’s what, a mile back to the county road?”

  “About that.”

  “Let’s get the spare on the Ford, the front, and drive her to the county road, drag the bad wheel behind us. You see what I’m saying? It’s front-wheel drive. Won’t be a problem. Get to the county road. Somebody’ll stop to help. I’ll flag ’em down, then they’ll open the window and, bang, that’s it. Fucker won’t know what hit ’im. Take their car. Back home in no time. We’ll go to Jake’s. You ever go there?”

  Eyes on the lake, Hart said absently, “Don’t know it.”

  Lewis scowled. “And you call yourself a Milwaukee boy. Best bar in town.” Peering along the shore, he said, “I think it was there.” He pointed at a spot about fifty yards to the south.

  “Hart, I hit her in the fucking head. And her car’s in the water. She’s dead, either way, from buckshot or drowning.”

  Maybe, Hart thought.

  But he couldn’t shake the image of her back at the Feldmans’ house, standing in the driveway. She hadn’t scurried away, she hadn’t panicked. She’d just stood tall, brownish hair pulled back off her forehead. The car keys—keys to safety, you could say—in one hand, her weapon in the other. Waiting, waiting. For him to present a target.

  None of that meant she wasn’t drowned, trapped in a two-ton automobile, of course, at the bottom of the spooky lake But it did mean she wouldn’t drown without one hell of a fight.

  Hart said, “Before we go anywhere let’s just make sure.”

  Another scowl.

  Hart was patient. “A few minutes won’t hurt. Let’s split up. You take the right side of the road, I’ll do the left. If you se
e anybody, it’s got to be either one of ’em so just draw a target and shoot.”

  He was going to remind Lewis not to say anything, just shoot. But the skinny man was already bunching his mouth up into a little pout.

  So Hart just said, “Okay?”

  A nod. “I’ll just draw my target and shoot. Yes, sir, captain.” And gave a snide salute.

  HER CHEEK RESTED

  against a rock, slimy with algae. Her body was submerged in breathtakingly cold water, up to the neck. Teeth clicking, breath staccato, cheek swollen. It seemed to push her eye out of the socket. Tears and sour lake water covering her face.

  Brynn McKenzie spat blood and oil and gasoline. She shook her head to get the water out of her ears. Had no effect. She felt deaf. Wondered if a piece of buckshot or glass had pierced her eardrum. Then her left ear popped and tickling water flowed out. She heard the lapping of the lake.

  After muscling her way out of the car, nestled in twenty feet of opaque water, she’d tried to swim to the surface but couldn’t—too much weight from her clothes and shoes. So she’d clawed her way to the rocks at the shore and scrabbled upward, desperate hands gripping whatever they could find, feet kicking. She’d hit the surface and sucked in air.

  Now, she told herself, get out. Move.

  Brynn pulled up hard. But got only a few inches. No part of her body was working the way it should and her wet clothes must’ve boosted her weight by fifty pounds. Her hands slipped on the slime and she went under again. Grabbed another rock. Pulled herself up to the surface.

  Her vision blurred and she started to lose her grip on a rock. Then forced her muscles to attention. “I’m not dying here.” She believed she actually growled the words aloud. Brynn finally managed to swing her legs up and found a ledge with her left foot. The right one joined in and finally she eased herself onto the shore. She rolled through debris—metal and glass, and red and clear plastic—into a pile of rotting leaves and branches, surrounded by cattails and tall, rustling grasses. The cold air hurt worse than the water.