The Bodies Left Behind: A Novel Page 8

  Hart did not need any more enemies tonight.

  But seeing Lewis wipe the lip of the bottle, back at the Feldmans’ house, Hart had sized up the younger man and decided he could get Lewis to stay here if he played on the man’s insecurities: complimenting his shooting and making it seem like staying to get the cop was Lewis’s idea.

  Hart was sometimes called “the Craftsman,” a reference to his hobby of furniture making and woodworking, though the term was usually used by people in his profession, the one that had brought him here to Lake Mondac tonight. And the number one rule of craftsmanship is knowing your tools: the animate ones, like Lewis, in addition to those made from steel.

  No, Hart never intended to return to the city without killing these two women, even if it took all night. Or all the next day, for that matter, even if the place was swarming with cops and rescue workers.

  Yes, he wanted to kill Michelle, though that was a lower priority than getting the policewoman. She was the one he absolutely had to kill. She was the threat. Hart couldn’t forget her. Standing by her car. Just standing tall and waiting for him. The look on her face, a flash of gotcha, which might’ve been his imagination, though he didn’t think so. Like a hunter, waiting for just the right moment to take the shot. Like Hart himself.

  Only his instant reflex, diving to the ground, had saved him. That, and the fact that she’d fired one-handed, wisely not letting go of her car keys. He actually heard a bullet near his ear, a pop, not a phushhhh, like in the movies. Hart knew he was closer to death at that moment than when Michelle had snuck up behind him and taken her shot.

  Lewis now continued up the drive of 1 Lake View. At Hart’s direction, he beached the Ford in a stand of brush behind the house. It was well hidden in the tall grass and shrubs. They climbed out and moved west, into the woods about thirty feet, and then started going north, parallel to the private road, moving as quickly as they could toward Number 2.

  Hart led Lewis around a pile of noisy leaves and they picked up the pace, staying in the thick of the forest for as long as they could.

  A snap of branches behind them.

  Both men spun around. Lewis readied the shotgun nervously. The visitor wasn’t human, though. It was that animal again, the one nosing in the grass earlier, or a similar one. A dog or coyote, he supposed. Or maybe a wolf. Did they have wolves in Wisconsin?

  It kept its distance. Hart sensed no threat other than the risk of noise that might alert someone in the house. This time Lewis paid it no mind.

  The creature vanished.

  Hart and Lewis paused and studied the house for a long moment. There was no motion from inside. Hart thought he heard someone talking but decided it was the wind, which brushed over leaves and made the sound of a mournful human voice.

  No light, no movement inside.

  Had he been wrong in his guess that the cop had come here?

  Then he squinted and tapped Lewis on the arm. A thin trail rose from the heating system exhaust duct next to the chimney. Lewis smiled. They eased closer to the house, under cover of thorny berry bushes that stretched from the woods nearly to the back porch. Hart carried his pistol with his trigger finger pointed forward, outside the guard. He held the gun casually, at his side. Lewis’s grip on the shotgun was tense.

  At the back door, they stopped, noting the broken glass in the window. Hart pointed to the porch, at their feet. Two fragments of differing footprints, both women’s sizes.

  Lewis gave a thumbs-up. He hooked the gun through his left arm and reached in through the broken pane, unlatched the lock. He swung the door open.

  Hart held up a hand, whispered as low as he could, “Assume one of ’em has a weapon. And they’re waiting for us.”

  Lewis gave another of his patented sneers, evidencing his low opinion of their enemy. But Hart lifted an impatient eyebrow and the man mouthed “Okay.”

  “And no flashlights.”

  Another nod.

  Then, their gun muzzles pointed forward, they moved into the house.

  Moonlight slanted through the large windows and gave some illumination throughout the first floor. They searched quickly. In the kitchen, Hart pointed to the drawers. A half dozen were open. He tapped the knife block. Several slots were empty.

  Hart heard something. He held up a hand, frowning. Tilted his head.

  Yes, it was voices. Women’s voices, very faint.

  Hart pointed up the stairs, noting that his pulse, which had been a little elevated by the trek through the forest, was now back to normal.

  STANLEY MANKEWITZ WAS

  eating dinner with his wife in an Italian restaurant in Milwaukee, a place that claimed to serve the best veal in the city. That was a meat that troubled both Mankewitz and his wife but they were guests of the businessman making up the threesome and so they’d agreed to come here. The waiter recommended the veal saltimbocca, the veal Marsala and the fettuccine with veal Bolognese.

  Mankewitz ordered a steak. His wife picked the salmon. Their host had the chopped-up calf.

  As they waited for their appetizers they toasted with glasses poured from a bottle of Barbaresco, a spicy wine from the Piedmont region of Italy. The bruschetta and salads came. The host tucked his napkin into his collar, which seemed tacky but was efficient, and Mankewitz never put down whatever was efficient.

  Mankewitz was hungry, but he was tired too. He was head of a local union—maybe the most important on the western shore of Lake Michigan. It was made up of tough, demanding workers, employed at companies owned by men who were also tough and demanding.

  Which words also described Mankewitz’s life pretty well.

  Their host, one of the heads of the national union, had flown in from New Jersey to talk to Mankewitz. He’d offered Mankewitz a cigar as they sat in a conference room in the union headquarters—where no-smoking ordinances weren’t taken seriously—and proceeded to tell him that the joint federal and state investigation had better be concluded, favorably, pretty soon.

  “It will be,” Mankewitz had assured. “Guaranteed.”

  “Guaranteed,” the man from New Jersey had said, in the same abrupt way he’d bitten the tip off his cigar.

  Hiding his fury that this prick had flown from Newark to deliver his warning like a prissy schoolteacher, Mankewitz had smiled, conveying a confidence he absolutely didn’t feel.

  He began spearing his romaine lettuce from the Caesar salad, dressing on the side but anchovies present and accounted for.

  The dinner was purely social and the conversation meandered as they ate. The men talked about the Packers and the Bears and the Giants but delivered mere sound bites, aware that a lady was at the table, and everyone found the subject of vacationing in Door County or the Caribbean a more palatable topic. The New Jersey man offered his anchovies to Mankewitz, who declined but with a smile, as a wave of absolute fury passed through him. Hatred too. He’d decided that if their host ever ran for head of the national union Mankewitz would make sure his campaign sank like the Edmund Fitzgerald.

  As the salad plates were noisily whisked away, Mankewitz noticed a man enter the restaurant by himself and shake his head curtly to the hostess. He was in his late thirties, with short, curly hair and an easy face and looked like a good-natured Hobbit. The man oriented himself, looking around the underlit and over-Italianized place, which was owned by Ukrainians and staffed by Eastern Europeans and Arabs. He finally spotted Mankewitz, who was hard to miss, being 230 pounds, with an enviable shock of silver hair.

  They made eye contact. The man stepped back, into the corridor. Mankewitz took a slug of wine and wiped his mouth. He stood up. “Be right back.”

  The labor boss joined the Hobbit and they walked toward the banquet rooms, tonight empty, down a long corridor, where the only other presences were effigies: pictures of people like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and James Gandolfino, all of whose signatures and endorsements of the restaurant in bold marker looked suspiciously similar.

  Eventually Mankewit
z got tired of walking and stopped. He said, “What is it, Detective?”

  The man hesitated, as if he didn’t want his job title used under these circumstances. And Mankewitz decided that of course he didn’t.

  “There’s a situation.”

  “What does that mean? ‘Situation’? That’s a Washington word, a corporate word.” Mankewitz had been in a bad mood lately, unsurprisingly, which prompted the retort, but there wasn’t much edge to it.

  The Hobbit said, without a fleck of emotion, “Up in Kennesha County.”

  “The hell is that?”

  “About two hours northwest of here.” The cop lowered his voice even more. “It’s where the lawyer in the case has a summer house.”

  The Case. Capital C.

  “The lawyer from—”

  “Got it.” Now Mankewitz was concerned about indiscretion and cut the cop off with a wave before he mentioned Hartigan, Reed, Soames & Carson. “What’s the story?” Mankewitz had dropped the irritated act, which was replaced by a concern that was no act at all.

  “Apparently what happened was there was a nine-one-one call from her husband’s phone. Went to the county. We’re monitoring all communication involving the players.”

  The Players. In the Case…

  “You told me that. I didn’t know they were checking all the way out there.”

  “The systems’re all consolidated.”

  How did they do that? Mankewitz wondered. Computers, of course. Privacy was fucked. As well he knew. “A call. A nine-one-one call. Go on.” Mankewitz looked at a smiling Dean Martin.

  “Nobody seems to know what was said. It was really brief. And then it seemed to get rescinded.”

  That’s a word cops don’t use very often. “Whatta you mean?”

  “The husband, he called back and said it was a mistake.”

  Mankewitz looked along the dark corridor to where his wife was chatting happily with a tall, balding man standing at the table. He wondered if the man only stopped by because he’d seen Mankewitz wasn’t at the table.

  Determined, slick, tough pricks…

  He focused on the Hobbit. “So it was an emergency and then it wasn’t.”

  “Right. That’s why it didn’t go to anybody on the task force. I’m the only one who knows. The record’s there but it’s buried…. I have to ask, Stan, what should I know about?”

  Mankewitz held his eyes. “There’s nothing you should know about, Pat. Maybe it was a fire. Nine-one-one—who knows? A fender-bender. A break-in. A raccoon in the basement.”

  “I’ll go out on a limb for you but not walk the plank.”

  For what he was slipping into the cop’s anonymous account, the man should’ve been willing to jump off the fucking plank and kill sharks with his bare hands.

  Mankewitz happened to notice his wife glancing his way. The entrées had arrived. He looked back at the cop and said, “I told you from the beginning there’s nothing you have to worry about. That was our deal. You’re completely protected.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Stan.”

  “Like what, eat here?”

  The detective gave a halfhearted grin. He nodded at a photo next to them. “Can’t be that bad. It was Sinatra’s favorite restaurant.”

  Mankewitz grunted and left the man in the corridor, heading for the men’s room and fishing a prepaid cell phone out of his pocket.

  ON THE SECOND

  floor of the house at 2 Lake View were five doors, all closed. The carpet was Home Depot Oriental and on the walls were posters from an art gallery that was thirty feet of aisle in Target or Wal-Mart. Hart and Lewis moved with infinite care, slowly, pausing at each door. They finally found the one the women’s voices were coming from. Lewis was staying focused. And, thank God, quiet.

  The words the women were speaking were impossible to make out but it was clear that they didn’t seem at all suspicious the men were nearby.

  What the hell were those gals talking about?

  Strange allies on a strange night.

  Hart wasn’t thinking much about that, though. He was feeling keen satisfaction in the success of the car trick. That he was about to kill two human beings meant nothing to him, nor did the fact there’d be some pleasure in the death of Michelle, who’d shot him, or of the policewoman, who’d tried to. No, this nearly sexual pleasure he felt was due only to the approaching conclusion of a job he’d begun. The bloody deaths of two women happened to be that resolution but, to him, it was no different from that glow he felt when he gave the last fine-steel-wool buff to the lacquer on a cabinet he’d built or dusted herbs on an omelet he’d fixed for a woman who’d spent the night.

  Of course, there’d be consequences from the deaths. His life was about to change and he understood that. For instance, the cop’s colleagues would go all out to find her killer. He even wondered whether her kin—husband, brother or father—might take the law into their own hands, if the local investigators didn’t do a very good job finding Hart, which he suspected they wouldn’t.

  But if and when the cop’s husband, say, came after him, Hart would create a plan to deal with that. He’d execute it and eliminate the problem. And feel just as satisfied with the symmetry of conclusion as he was about to now, when he fired the fatal bullet into her body.

  Hart gingerly tried the knob. Locked. The voices continued, unalarmed. Hart pointed to himself and his good shoulder.

  Lewis lowered his mouth to Hart’s ear and whispered, “Your arm?”

  “I’ll live with it. When I’m through I’ll drop down on the floor and give covering fire. You come in over me and take them out.”

  “They have guns, you think?” Glancing toward the door.

  “Why take knives if you’ve got guns? But we oughta count on one of them having a piece.”

  Lewis nodded and gripped the shotgun, eyed the safety. The red button showed.

  Inside, the talking continued, casual as could be.

  Hart stepped back, glanced at Lewis, who held the muzzle of the Winchester skyward and nodded. Then, hunched down like a tackle, Hart sped forward and flinched as his right shoulder connected with wood. With a loud crack the lock popped and the door flew inward, but stopped only a few inches inside. Hart gasped as his head slammed into the oak and he stumbled back, stunned.

  The door had hit some barricade.

  Inside the bedroom the voices stopped instantly.

  Hart shoved the door again—it moved no farther—and then snapped to Lewis, “Push, help me. Push! It’s blocked.”

  The younger man dug his feet into the carpet but the door wouldn’t budge. “No way. It’s blocked solid.”

  Hart looked around the hall. He ran to the bedroom next door, to the right, and pushed his way inside. He searched the room fast. It had a French door leading to a deck outside. He kicked this open and looked out, to the left. The deck was thirty feet long and the bedroom where the women hid opened onto it as well, via a similar French door. There were no stairs off the deck. They hadn’t escaped this way; they were still inside.

  Hart called for Lewis to join him. Together they stepped out onto the deck. They moved to the first bedroom, stopping just short of the windows, which were closed, shades pulled or curtains drawn, and it seemed that other pieces of furniture had been pushed against the windows as barricades. The French door, beyond the end of the windows, was curtained as well.

  Considering how best to approach the assault, whether the woman would be holding her Glock toward the hall or window, barricades, escape routes—for the women and for Hart and Lewis…

  Lewis was eager to move but Hart took his time. Finally he decided. “You go down to that door. I’ll stay here and kick this window out and try to push that dresser or table, whatever it is, out of the way. I’ll fire. They’ll focus on that. Then you let go with a couple rounds.”

  “Crossfire.”

  Hart nodded. “We got ammo. We can afford to use it. Then we’ll go in through the door. Okay?”

 
Lewis, crouching, covered the distance to the door, staying low. He took a deep breath and glanced back. Hart nodded, kicked in the window, with a huge crash, and pushed over a small dresser. He dodged back as Lewis broke out a pane in the door and fired three shotgun rounds into the room, shaking the curtains and rattling the glass, while Hart fired his Glock four times in a random pattern. He didn’t expect to hit anything but he knew it would keep their prey down, give him and Lewis time to get inside.

  “Go!”

  The men ran through the doorway, guns ready.

  They found a room filled with mismatched antiques, rustic prints, books and magazines stacked on dressers and in baskets. But no human beings.

  Hart thought for a moment that the women had used the delay to escape by the door to the hallway but it was still blocked—by a big dresser, it turned out. He gestured to the closet. Lewis pulled the door open and fired a shotgun round inside.

  The noise was deafening. Wished the man had held back. The sudden deafness was freaking Hart out; he couldn’t have heard anybody sneaking up behind him.

  Looking around again. Where? The bathroom, Hart supposed. Had to be.

  The door was closed.

  Lewis stood in front of it. Hart pointed at Lewis’s fatigue-jacket pocket. The man nodded and set down the shotgun and pulled out his silver SIG-Sauer pistol, still loud but less deafening than the Winchester scattergun. He chambered a round and flicked off the safety.

  Hart started forward. Just as he was about to kick in the bathroom door, though, he paused, cocking his head. He gestured Lewis back. “Wait,” he mouthed. He pulled a drawer out of a dresser and tossed it into the door, which snapped open.

  Fumes poured from it. Their eyes stung fiercely and both men began to cough.