The Bodies Left Behind (2 page)

“Around the lake? Think so.”

Dahl stared at the blue pebble of Lake Mondac on the map. It was surrounded by a small amount of private land, which was in turn engulfed by huge Marquette Park.

This…

Jackson said, “And the campgrounds’re closed till May.”

“Whose phone?”

“That we’re still waiting on.” The young deputy had spiky blond hair. All the rage. Dahl had worn a crew cut for nine-tenths of his life.

The sheriff had lost interest in the routine reports and in a beer bash in honor of one of their senior deputies’ birthdays, an event that was supposed to commence in an hour at the Eagleton Tap, and which he had been looking forward to. He was thinking of last year when some guy—a registered sex offender, and a stupid one—picked up Johnny Ralston from grade school and the boy had the presence of mind to hit
LAST CALL
on his cell phone and slip it in his pocket as they drove around, the sicko asking him what kind of movies he liked. It took all of eight minutes to find them.

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 returning 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.