The Bodies Left Behind (26 page)

They disconnected.

Jasons sipped the soda, then ate some of the green apple. It was sour. They gave you a yogurt dip with it but he didn’t like the flavor. He was reflecting on Mankewitz’s deferential tone. The man always sounded like he didn’t know what planet Jasons came from, was almost afraid of him.

Stan Mankewitz, one of the most powerful men on the lakefront, from Minnesota to Michigan, and yet he was uncomfortable around the slim young man who weighed probably half what the union boss did and who walked around with a pleasant smile most of the time. Some of this might have been because Jasons, although he did have a law degree from Yale and an office in the union’s legal department, didn’t technically work for Mankewitz. A “labor relations specialist,” he was an independent contractor, powerful in his own right. He had his autonomous fiefdom—with the authority, and budget, to hire whomever he wanted. Jasons could also use money in ways that were beneficial to the union and Mankewitz but that avoided various inconvenient reporting regulations.

Then there was a lifestyle difference too. Mankewitz was not a stupid man. Nobody was going to do what Jasons did without his complete dossier—verbal at least—being delivered to the union boss. He’d know that Jasons lived alone in a nice detached house near the lakefront. That his mother lived in a nice apartment connected to her son’s house. That his boyfriend of several years, Robert, lived in an
amazing
townhouse near the lakefront. And he probably knew that Robert, a successful engineer and one hunky bodybuilder, shared Jasons’s interest in hockey, wine and music and that the partners had planned a civil union next year, with a honeymoon in Mexico.

But Jasons appreciated that Mankewitz did his homework. Because it was exactly how he himself worked his magic.

Alicia especially. Every day after school in that rehearsal room, three to four-thirty…. Impressive.

Mankewitz didn’t care about Jasons’s lifestyle, of course. Which was ironic, considering that the membership of Local 408 was made up of blue-collar folk, men mostly, some of whom would beat the crap out of James Jasons and Robert, given no excuse, some opportunity and a few too many beers.

Welcome to the new millennium.

A last bite of apple, sweetened by the diet soda.

He put the second hamburger back in the bag, which he twisted closed.

He passed a sign that announced it was forty-nine miles to Clausen, which he knew was about eight miles before the turnoff for Lake Mondac. Since he hadn’t seen any traffic, let alone a patrol car, on the road for miles, he edged the speed up to seventy-five.

And clicked the selector to the Christian CD, just for the fun of it.

 

HOLDING THE HEAVY

Savage rifle, Henry headed down the path toward where Rudy had directed him. He took a foil pack out of his pocket, a pipe and lighter too. Then he hesitated and put them away. He blew into his hands and continued along the path, scratching at the scars on his arm.

He stopped where the small path met the bigger one, the one that led down to the lake they got their water from. He stood there for five minutes, squinting, looking from right to left. Didn’t see a soul. He leaned the rifle against a tree. As he was reaching into his pocket again for the pack of meth and the lighter, a man stepped out of the shadows and hit him in the forehead with the butt of a shotgun, which was rubber padded but still hard enough to knock Henry off his feet. His head lolled back, eyes unfocused. A gurgling rose from his throat and his hands flailed and his knees jerked.

When the butt of the deer rifle, which wasn’t padded, crushed his windpipe Henry stopped thrashing quite so violently. After a minute he stopped moving altogether.

 

CRADLING THE DEER

rifle in his arm, Hart tensed as someone approached. But it was just Lewis, who glanced at the body on the ground, grunted and picked up the shotgun.

Hart bent down and felt the skinny man’s neck with the backs of his fingers. “Dead. You know they can lift prints from skin.”

“No. I didn’t. They can?”

“Yep.” Hart pulled his gloves back on. “What’s the story?”

Lewis said, “That girl deputy Brynn’s in the van. I saw some guy put her there. Looked like she was taped, her hands behind her, I mean.”

“So they walked right into the helpful arms of meth cookers.” Hart gave a faint laugh. “Everybody’s having a reversal of fortune tonight. We end up with a cop coming to visit in Lake Mondac, and they end up with a trailer full of slammers. Was she alone in the van?”

“I didn’t see anybody else. I wasn’t that close.”

“So where’s Michelle?”

“No idea.”

Hart pressed the catch on the bolt of the deer rifle, slipped it out of the gun, flung it away. Threw the gun itself in the opposite direction. He was a much better shot with a pistol than a rifle. Besides, a bolt action let you fire off a round only every few seconds. In that time he could have emptied the Glock’s fifteen-round clip and been halfway through reloading.

They eased silently toward the camper.

“How many people inside?” Hart whispered.

“Couldn’t see too good. Definitely one other man—and the guy who put Brynn in the van. A woman too.”

Hart was looking over Lewis carefully. The man was staring at the camper and kneading the shotgun stock. His eyes were troubled.

“Comp?”

“Yeah?” He looked up.

“We’ve gotta do it.”

“Sure.”

“I know what you’re thinking—they haven’t exactly done us harm. But they’re tweakers, Comp. They cook meth. They’ll be dead anyway in a year. OD’d or burned to death or clipped by somebody’s upset they’re peeing on his turf. This’ll be faster. This’ll be better for them. We’ll get Brynn, find Michelle, finish with them and that’s it.”

Lewis was looking at the van.

“How we handle it’s this: They’re pros and that means they’re going to have guns. Now, we bought some time when I talked to Brynn’s husband, but that’s not to say he believed me, or that they aren’t going to send a car around to the park, just for what the hell. I think we have to assume there’re cops at the house already and on a quiet night like this, sound’ll carry. They could hear the gunshots. We’ve got to finish it up fast, once the shooting starts. Real fast.”

“Sure.”

“You have that lighter of yours?”

“Always carry one. In case I meet a lady in a bar needs a light.” The crack in his voice belied the joke.

“Courteous of you, nonsmoker that you are.” Hart smiled and Lewis exhaled a brief laugh. “Okay, you go around to the right side of the camper, the one without the doors. Get some dirty leaves and see if you can find something plastic or rubber. Start a fire under the camper. Just small. We don’t want it to spread and call attention to us. I just want smoke. With all that ammonia and propane in there, they’ll freak and get the hell out, head for the van. When they come out…okay?”

He nodded.

“I’ll take the front door, you take the back. You locked and loaded?”

“Yes, I am.”

Hart checked his Glock and made sure one of the full clips was upside down in his waistband, to the right, so he could grab it easily in his left hand to reload.

“Keep your SIG handy too.”

Lewis fished his chrome-plated pistol out of his jacket pocket. And slipped the automatic into his waistband.

Hart noticed that the suggestion was greeted with none of the sarcasm or resistance of earlier.

Lewis gave an uneasy laugh. “Well, aren’t we a couple of gunslingers.”

“Move in slow, move in quiet. Get the fire going. Then come back around. Let ’em all get out before you start shooting. Last thing we want is to have to go in and get anybody. You counted three, right?”

“Yeah, but now I think about it, the woman turned her head and said something. She wasn’t looking at the two men. Maybe there’s somebody else.”

“Okay, we’ll plan on four.”

 

THE ROPE GANDY

had used to hook her to the tie-down in the back of the fourteen-foot van was thick and made of nylon—strong but slippery. Brynn finally managed to untie it. The tape on her hands, behind her, wouldn’t yield but she managed to climb to her feet. The buttons in the back doors were flush and she couldn’t lift them. She stumbled to the front of the van, tripped over the transmission shifter and hit her head on the dash. She lay stunned for a moment. Then managed to right herself and, turning her back to the glove box, got it open. Empty, except for papers.

She collapsed into the front seat of the van, catching her breath. Her stomach muscles were in agony from the navigation to the front and from the smack of the club Gandy’s wife had used on her. Brynn tried for the unlock button on the armrest but it was just out of reach of her bound hands. She surveyed the rest of the van, the junk, the boxes, the shopping bags. No knives or tools. No phones. She sat back in the seat, despairing eyes closing.

Then behind her a woman screamed.

“Michelle,” she whispered. Had she returned, had they found her at
the lake and dragged her back here? Brynn spun around. But there were only two windows in the van aside from those in the front: in the rear doors. They were opaque with dirt.

Brynn looked in the side-view mirror. Smoke filled the night. Was the camper burning? Meth labs were notorious for incinerating the cookers.

The little girl was inside! she thought, panicked.

The voice called again, “No, no! Please!” The woman’s voice wasn’t Michelle’s. It was Amy’s mother’s.

Then the crack of pistol fire.

The boom of a shotgun.

Four or five more rounds. A pause, for reloading maybe. More shots.

Silence. Then a voice, high-pitched in fear or desperation. A man or woman or child?…Brynn couldn’t tell.

Another shot.

More silence.

Please, let her be all right. Please…picturing the tiny girl’s face.

Motion flickered in the side-view mirror. A figure, carrying a pistol, was walking around the camper, studying it carefully and the bushes nearby.

He then turned toward the van Brynn sat in.

She looked around for anything that would free her hands. She slipped them around the gearshift lever between the seats and began to saw. The gesture was futile.

She glanced outside. The figure was now looking directly at the van.

 

SHERIFF TOM DAHL

stood over the two bodies in the kitchen: a businesswoman in her thirties, looking like she’d kicked off her shoes after work, happily anticipating a weekend of relaxation; the other corpse was a solid man about her age, with a mop of post-college hair. He was the sort of guy you’d have a beer with at The Corner Place in Humboldt. The blood made huge stains on the floor.

Although Dahl had the edge most law enforcers develop from the job, this particular crime shook him. The majority of deaths in Kennesha County were accidental and occurred outside. Homeless people frozen, car accident victims, workers betrayed by their equipment and sportsmen by the forces of nature. Seeing these poor young folks inside their own home, gangland-killed like this, was hard.

He was staring at their pale hands; those of the typical dead around here were ruddy and calloused.

And on top of it all, his own deputy—his secret favorite in the department, the daughter he would have liked to have—was missing from a house tattooed with small-arms fire.

He exhaled slowly.

Footsteps came downstairs. “The friend?” Dahl asked Eric Munce, the man he’d chosen not to send here, picking instead Kristen Brynn McKenzie. And the man whose future presence in the department would be a constant reminder of that decision, however things turned out.

“No sign of her.”

One relief. He’d been sure that they were going to find her body upstairs in the bedroom. Murdered and maybe not right away.

Munce said, “They might have her with them. Or she’s with Brynn, hiding somewhere.”

Let’s pray for that, Dahl thought, and he did, though very briefly.

A call came in for him. The FBI, Special Agent Brindle explained, was sending several agents—now that Emma Feldman, a witness in the case against Mankewitz was dead. A State Police commander was headed here too and wouldn’t like the Feebies—he tended to squeeze hard in pissing contests—but Dahl was all for the more the merrier. No criminals ever escaped because too many talented cops were on his trail. Well, most of the time.

A crime scene unit from the State Police was en route as well, so Dahl ordered his boys to leave the evidence for collection but to look everywhere they needed in order to figure out what had happened and where Brynn and the Feldmans’ friend might be.

It didn’t take long to find significant pieces of the puzzle: gunshots through windows, gunshots inside, gunshots outside, footprints that suggested two males were probably the perps. Brynn’s Sheriff Department uniform shoes were inside, and the friend had abandoned her chic city
boots beside the Feldmans’ Mercedes—both in favor of practical hiking footgear. One was injured; she was using a cane or crutch and appeared to be dragging one foot.

The Mercedes sat in front of the garage with gunshots in two tires, window smashed and hood up, a battery cable dangling. Another car had burned rubber—well, scattered gravel—as it fled. Another had limped out, dragging a flat.

But the jigsaw pieces didn’t give any sense of the big picture. Now, standing in front of the fragrant fireplace in the living room, Dahl summarized to himself: a mess. We got a mess on our hands.

And where the hell is Brynn?

Eric?

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

Dahl noticed something in the woodwork. “Anybody trying to play
CSI
?” he asked sourly, eyes on Munce.

The deputy looked where he was pointing. It seemed like someone had dug a bullet out of the molding. “Not me.”