The sirens grew closer as he dismantled his gun and put it in the canvas bag. The traffic on this side of the highway was at a standstill. On the other side the cars and trucks were still moving but slowly, as voyeurs strained to see what had happened.
As if there was an explanation for these bizarre events.
One of the killers apparently lay dead--his body now covered by a tarp--and the other had escaped, but there seemed to be no other serious injuries.
Jasons had been partially successful. There was nothing to do but leave.
With his cap low over his eyes he walked through the stopped line of traffic and onto the median. It took a bit more dancing but the gawkers let him through three lanes without his even having to run. Though once on the other side he moved quickly into the woods to make sure none of the law enforcers noticed him. He sprinted to his Lexus.
Jasons started it up and eased out onto the shoulder then accelerated to the speed of traffic--it was only about thirty miles an hour--and merged. He pulled the satellite phone from the bag, which was now on the seat next to him, and scrolled through speed dial. He went past his partner's name, and then his mother's and pushed the third button on the list.
Even though it was very early in the morning, Stanley Mankewitz answered on the second ring.
"NO ID."
Brynn glanced up from the back step of the ambulance, where she sat next to Graham.
Tom Dahl was referring to Comp, the man shot and killed by Hart. His partner. Of all the horrors that night perhaps the worst was the look of betrayal in the young man's face just before Hart pulled the trigger.
"We got money, a couple boxes of ammo, cigarettes, gloves, Seiko watch. That's it." They'd recovered Michelle's purse too, which might contain the men's fingerprints. Dahl would send officers to find Comp's shotgun in the brambles and Eric Munce's, which Graham explained was in the river.
Brynn's husband had told the story of how he'd tried to retrieve it but had fallen in the process. He'd landed on a shelf of rock, bruised and scraped but otherwise unhurt. He'd then climbed up the cliff face and was walking back past Eric Munce's body when he recalled that the man was wearing an ankle holster with a backup revolver in it. He'd taken the gun and hurried toward where he'd heard the gunshot.
"What was his name?" the sheriff asked, looking at the man's body, covered by a green tarp and lying nearby.
"Comp," Brynn said. "Something like that."
A medical technician had daubed Brynn's cheek with brown Betadine and Lanocaine and was now easing a massive bandage onto it. He was going to stitch it. She said no. A needle and thread would make a bigger scar and the thought of two facial deformities was too much for her.
He put a tight butterfly bandage on and told her to see a doctor later that day. "Dentist too. That busted tooth'll start to bother your tongue pretty soon."
Start to?
She told him she would.
Brynn was staring at Comp's body. She simply couldn't understand why Hart had killed him. This was the man Hart had risked his own life to save just a half hour earlier on the ledge--nearly getting crushed by a log, in fact, to pull the man to safety.
And Hart had told him to stand still, then shot him--casual as could be.
She looked around, the circus of flashing lights. Heard voices shouting, the crackle of radios.
In addition to Dahl, there were other deputies from the Kennesha County Sheriff's Department and a baker's dozen of state troopers. Two FBI agents too, who'd tossed off their suit jackets, were helping out however they could, including stringing crime scene tape. No egos were present. They'd show up later.
Head down, Michelle sat on the grass, her back against a tree, cradling sleeping Amy, both wrapped in blankets. The medics had looked them over and neither was badly injured. Michelle's ankle turned out to be just a pulled muscle.
Somber, Michelle clutched the girl tightly, and Brynn supposed she was mourning for them both--two people who had lost someone close to them so violently on this terrible night, two people who had left an innocence behind, dead or dying, in the tangled woods.
Brynn rose from the ambulance and stiffly walked over the grass to Michelle. "Did you get through to them?" Brynn asked. Michelle was going to call her brother and his wife, who lived north of Chicago, to come pick her up.
"They're on their way." Then her voice faded and she gave a stoic smile. "Never got a message from my husband."
"Did you call him?"
She shook her head. And her body language said she wanted to be alone. She brushed Amy's hair gently. The child was snoring softly.
Brynn tested her wounded face, wincing despite the topical anesthetic cream, then joined Dahl and the FBI agents. She fought through her fuzzy mind--once the pursuit had stopped, disorientation had flooded into the vacuum with a smack--and gave them a synopsis of everything that had happened from her arrival at Lake Mondac: the escape, the portable meth lab, the surprise gunshots fired at them when they were on the rock ledge.
"One of Rudy Hamilton's people?" an FBI agent said, hearing Brynn's opinion as to the identity of the sniper by the ledge. "I don't know." He seemed doubtful.
"Rudy said somebody named Fletcher might be in the area."
The agent nodded. "Kevin Fletcher, sure. Meth and crack bigwig. But no evidence he operates around here. He sticks close to Green Bay. Makes ten times as much up there. No, I'm still betting the shooter was some muscle Mankewitz sent."
"Drove down here to protect his hit men?"
"I'm guessing," the other said.
Of course they were eager to pin anything on Mankewitz, short of the Kennedy assassination. Still, Brynn didn't disagree; it would make sense. And the shooter had saved Hart and Comp from crushed skulls or a fall into the barbwire thorns.
"You get a look at him?"
"Nope. Don't even know where he was."
The agent looked out over the woods. "That's not going to be an easy crime scene."
And then they all grew silent as a recovery team carried Eric Munce's body from the woods. The bag was dark green. The men started to set it near the body of the other killer, but hesitated and, out of respect, set it farther away, on the grass, not the shoulder.
"I've seen those bags a dozen times," Brynn said softly to Dahl. "But never with one of ours inside."
The driver of the SUV and his girlfriend were sitting dazed on the ground near the ambulance. Their seat belts had kept them from any damage other than bruising. The man who'd been pulled from his car by Hart was uninjured but his fear or ego kept prompting him to mutter about lawsuits until somebody suggested he could sell his story to People or Us. It was meant sarcastically to shut him up. But he seemed to like the idea. And he did shut up.
Brynn walked up to her husband and he put his arm around her. She asked Dahl, "Eric's wife?"
A sigh. "I'm going by there now. In person, no calls."
Graham looked at the body bag containing the deputy. "Well," he said, as if it hurt to take enough breath to speak. Brynn rested her head against his shoulder. She was still astonished that he'd driven all this way to try to find her. Dahl wasn't happy that he and Munce had tried an end run, particularly as it had resulted in the deputy's death. Still, if they hadn't, Brynn, Michelle and Amy would be dead now. And they wouldn't have stopped at least one of the killers and collected good evidence that might lead to Hart and ultimately the man who had hired them.
Deputies Pete Gibbs and big Howie Prescott, breathing hard, came out of the forest with several state troopers. They were carrying clear plastic bags. Inside were shell casings and an empty ammunition clip.
They placed Comp's personal effects into another bag. Michelle's purse and Hart's map went into others.
Brynn looked over the evidence, thinking: Hart, who the hell are you? "Tom, did CS do a prelim dusting at the Lake Mondac house?"
"Sure. Found about five hundred prints. Mostly the Feldmans'. None of the others set off alarms. The stolen Ford had
about sixty and they were negative too. Those boys wore gloves the whole time. Smarter'n our criminals round here."
"What about the spent brass and shells?"
"Found a ton of it. Yours, theirs. Went over the whole place with a metal detector. Even fished some out of that creek beside the garage. But no prints on a single shell."
"None?" Brynn asked, dismayed. "They wore gloves loading their weapons?"
"Looks like it."
Yep, smarter than our criminals...
Then she jabbed a finger at one of the evidence bags. "Tom, this's our chance. Maybe there're no prints on the brass--Hart'd expect to leave that. But he's taken his weapon apart to clean and load it. There's a print on one of those clips, I guarantee it. And the map. And they were carting around Michelle's purse. They must've opened it. I'm taking the evidence up there myself--to the lab in Gardener."
"You?" Dahl scoffed. "Don't be nuts, Brynn. The state folk can handle that. Get some rest."
"I'll get some sleep in the car on the way home. Grab a shower and head over there."
Dahl nodded at the troopers. "Half these boys're stationed in Gardener They'll drop everything off at the lab."
She whispered, "And everything'll sit gathering dust for two weeks. I want that guy." A nod up the highway, where, peering over the ribbed pistol barrel, she'd last seen Hart in the 'jacked car speeding away. "I'm going to stand over the tech like a school teacher till I get some names from AIFIS. I want that man bad."
Dahl looked at her grim, determined expression. "All right."
Brynn locked the bags in the glove compartment of Graham's truck, which he'd collected a quarter mile down the road. She noticed ripe green azaleas in the back bed. They were just starting to bud. Pink and white.
She leaned her head against her husband's shoulder again. "Oh, honey. What a night." He looked up. "You came. You came to find me."
"I did, yes." He gave her a distracted smile. He was clearly shaken--who wouldn't be?--having seen and experienced what he had tonight.
"Let's get home. I called Anna but they'll want to see you. Joey didn't take this whole thing too well." He was going to say something else, she sensed. But didn't.
Then another State Police car pulled up and a trooper and a short woman in a suit, Latina, climbed out. She was from Child Protective Services.
Brynn joined them, introduced herself and explained what had happened. The trooper, who was solid, square-jawed and looked like an ex-soldier, registered some shock at the news. The social worker, her face calm and observant, apparently had heard it all before. She nodded matter-of-factly and jotted some notes. "My office has lined up an emergency foster couple. They're good people. I know them well. We'll stop by the doctor, get her checked out and I'll take her over there now."
Brynn whispered, "Can you imagine? Meth cookers for parents. And they had her helping them? And look at her neck." She'd noticed sausage red marks from where her mother or Gandy--or maybe that disgusting Rudy--had grabbed Amy by her throat, a threat or punishment. They didn't seem serious but Brynn still shivered with anger. And for a troubling moment felt a dark satisfaction that Hart had killed them.
They joined Michelle, whose face was as pale as the cloudy dawn sky overhead. She was clutching Amy possessively. The girl was now awake.
The social worker nodded at Michelle and then crouched down. "Hi, Amy. I'm Consuela. You can call me Connie, if you want."
The girl blinked.
"We're going to take you for a ride to see some nice people."
"Where's Mommy?"
"These are some very nice people. You'll like them."
"I don't like Mommy's friends."
"No, they're not friends of hers."
"Where's Chester?"
"We'll get Chester for you," Brynn said. "That's a promise."
The social worker put her arm around Amy and helped her to her feet, then wrapped the blanket tighter around the girl. "Let's go for a ride."
The girl gazed absently at Michelle and nodded.
The young woman watched her go with such a look of affection that one might have thought she was the girl's mother.
There was silence for a moment.
"I know all you've been through. But I have something else to ask."
Michelle glanced at her.
"It'll be a couple of hours before your brother gets here?"
"I guess."
"I know this is hard. I know you don't want to. But will you come back to my house for a little while? We're not too far away. I can get you a change of clothes, something to eat and drink."
"Brynn," Graham said. He was shaking his head. "No."
She glanced his way but continued speaking to the young woman. "I need you to tell me everything you can remember about Hart. Anything he mentioned or any mannerisms. Or anything Emma might've said about her case. While it's fresh in your mind."
"Absolutely."
"She needs rest," Graham said, nodding at Michelle.
"She has to wait somewhere."
"No, it's okay, really," Michelle said to Graham. "I don't want him to hurt anybody else. I'm not sure what I can do. But I'll help." Her voice was firm.
The medical examiner's van headed off, the two bodies in the back. Brynn noted that it was her husband who seemed the most upset of any of them as they watched the departure of the boxy vehicle, sickly yellow-green. The sky was now light, the color of diluted egg yolk, and the traffic was thicker, easing through the one open lane, gawkers taking in the overturned SUV, the dark puddles on the highway.
Brynn explained to Tom Dahl about interviewing Michelle. "She can wait at my house until her brother arrives. Anna'll look after her while I'm at the state lab."
The sheriff nodded. Then said, "And we'll need to talk to you, Graham, about what happened with Eric. Can you come down to the station?"
Graham looked at his watch. "I should get Joey to his English tutor."
Brynn said, "He can stay home today. We'll both be too busy."
"I think he should go."
"Not today," Brynn said.
Graham shrugged then turned to the sheriff and said that he'd call the station and arrange a time.
Dahl then extended his hand to her. She blinked at the solemn gesture. She took it awkwardly. "I owe you more than a half day, Brynn. A lot more."
"Sure." She took Michelle's arm and they followed Graham to his truck.
"MOM. LIKE, WHERE
were you? Shit. What happened to your face?" "Just an accident. Watch your language."
"My God!" Anna cried.
"It's all right."
"It's not all right. It's all black and blue. And yellow. And I can't even see what's under the bandage."
Brynn recalled that she'd have to make an appointment for a new molar. She touched the gap with her tongue. The pain had vanished. Her mouth just felt weird.
"What happened, Mom?" Joey was wide-eyed.
"I fell." Brynn hugged her son. "Tripped. You know how clumsy I am."
Her mother eyed the bandage and said no more.
Michelle walked into the living room. The tape on her ankle--and the painkillers--had done the trick. She was no longer limping.
"Mom, this is Michelle," Brynn said.
"Hello, dear."
The young woman nodded politely.
"Joey, you go upstairs. I'll call your tutor. Graham and I'll be busy today. You're staying home."
Graham said, "Really. I can drop him off."
"Please, honey, it'll be better."
"You two are a mess," Anna announced. "What happened?"
Brynn glanced at the TV, off at the moment. Her mother would find out soon enough but she was glad the local news wasn't on. "I'll tell you in a bit. Joey, you've had breakfast?"
"Yeah."
"Upstairs. Work on your history project."
"All right."
The boy trooped off, with a glance back at Michelle. Graham went into the kitchen.
In her de
puty voice, her calm voice, Brynn said, "Mom, Michelle's friends were killed. That was the case I was on tonight."
"Oh, no." Shocked, Anna stepped close and took Michelle's hand. "I'm so sorry, dear."
"Thank you."
"Her brother's on his way. She'll be here for a little while until he gets here."
"You come over here and sit down." Anna indicated the green couch in the family room, where Graham and Brynn sat together in the evenings if TV was on the agenda. It was perpendicular to Anna's rocker.
Michelle said, "I'd really like to take a shower, if I could."
"Of course. There's a bathroom down that hall. There." Brynn pointed. "I'll bring you some clothes. Unless you'd rather not." Thinking of the woman's earlier aversion to wearing Emma Feldman's boots.
Michelle was smiling. "I'd love some. Thanks. Anything you've got."
"I'll hang them on the door," Brynn said, thinking that at last she'd have a use for her skinny-girl jeans, which she hadn't worn in two years but hadn't quite been able to throw out.
Anna said, "There're bath towels in the closet. I've got coffee. Do you want tea? I'll make you some food."
"Thanks. If it's not too much trouble."
Brynn noted that the woman's last complaint about her blood sugar had been eons ago.
Anna led her to the bathroom and returned.
"I'll give you the details later, Mom. They tried to kill her too. She found the bodies."
"No!" Anna's hand went to her mouth. "No...What's the poor thing going to do? Should I call Reverend Jack? He could be here in ten minutes."
"Let's ask her. Might be a good idea. But I don't know. She's had so much coming at her. And one of our deputies was killed."
"No! Who?"
"Eric."
"That cute boy? With the brunet wife?"
Brynn sighed. She nodded.
With the brunet wife and a young baby.
"Did you get shot?" Anna asked abruptly.
"Collateral injury. Like a ricochet."
"But you were shot?"
She nodded.
"What on earth happened?"
Brynn's calm broke, like pond ice cracking. "Some really bad things, Mom."
Anna hugged her, and Brynn felt her frail body shaking, as was her own. "I'm sorry, honey. I'm sorry. But everything's going to be fine now." Her mother stepped away, turning quickly, wiping her eyes. "I'll get breakfast going. For you too. You need something."