The Bodies Left Behind (29 page)

Tanner deferred to Dahl, who said, “Could I see some ID, sir? What’s your name?”

“Ari Paskell.” He offered his driver’s license to the State Police commander, who handed it to one of his troopers to check out.

“Please, what’s going on?”

“What’s your business here?”

“Business? I was coming to spend the weekend with Emma and Steve! What’s going on? I’ve been calling them all night and can’t get through.”

“How do you know them?”

“Steve and I are friends. We used to work together. He invited me to spend the weekend. Are they all right?”

Dahl glanced at Graham, who was staring into the woods. How I hate this, the sheriff thought. He then noticed the trooper in the front seat of his squad car. He nodded, meaning that the man’s license and tag checked out. Dahl lowered his voice, “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, sir. But there’s been a crime. The Feldmans were, well, they were the victims of a homicide tonight.”

“My God, no! But, no, you can’t be right…. I just talked to Steve this afternoon.”

“I’m afraid there’s no doubt.”

“No,” he gasped. “But…no. You’re wrong!” His face went even paler than it had been.

Dahl wondered if he was going to slip into hysteria. It happened pretty frequently at times like this, even with the toughest folks, which this fellow didn’t seem to be.

“I’m sorry.”

“But it can’t be.” The man’s eyes were wide, hands shaking. “I brought them their favorite beer. And I got fresh bratwurst. I mean, the kind we always have.” His voice cracked. “I got them a few hours ago. I stopped in…” He lowered his head. In a defeated voice he said, “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

Paskell leaned against his car, saying nothing, just staring at the house. He’d be reliving memories, pleasant ones, of events that there’d be no repeat of.

Munce joined them.

“What happened?” Paskell whispered. “Who did it?”

“We don’t know. Now, Mr. Paskell—”

“But they’re not rich. Who’d rob them?”

“Mr. Paskell, do you know who the other houseguest is? All we know is she’s a woman from Chicago used to work with Emma.”

He shook his head. “No, they said somebody else’d be visiting. I don’t know who.”

“I think you should head back home, sir. Or get a motel if you’re too tired or upset to drive. There’re some past Clausen on Six Eighty-two. There’s nothing you can do here now.”

He didn’t seem to hear. He was frowning.

Dahl paid a bit more attention and, like he always did with witnesses, gave him time to play the thought to the surface.

“This is probably crazy…” He cocked his head. “Just a thought.”

Usually civilians’ suggestions
were
crazy. But sometimes they led to the killer’s front door. Dahl said, “Go on.”

“Steven was talking to me, this was last fall?”

“Yessir?”

“And he said he’d had a run-in with a man up here. At one of the stores. A big guy. A local, Steve said. Some stupid thing, about nearly bumping cars in the lot. The guy went crazy. Followed him home, threatened him.”

“He give you any details?”

“No. Just he lived around here and he was pretty big. Three hundred pounds.”

Munce looked at Dahl, shaking his head. “Doesn’t seem like the perp. It was two of them, and nobody was that big, to judge from the footprints. Did he give you a name or description?”

“No, it was just one of those stories: this scary thing happened to me, you know. But he was shook up. No question. I mean, the man came right to the house. If there were more than one maybe the big man brought his friends and they…well, they hurt Steve and Emma. While he waited in the car.”

If Dahl had a dollar for every conflict in a parking lot that could have turned violent but didn’t, he’d be rich. He asked, “Could you give me your number, Mr. Paskell? We may want to ask you a few questions.”

Paskell was looking at the car, where the groceries bought specially for his friends sat, soon to be discarded. Would he throw them out in anger
or despair? Despite his benign appearance, the man was, Dahl figured, a rager. “Mr. Paskell?”

He still wasn’t listening. Then the sheriff asked again and the friend blinked. “My number. Yeah, sure.” He recited it for Dahl.

Brawny Tanner stroked his mustache and looked at the sheriff, his expression saying, It never gets any easier, does it?

“Are you all right to drive?” Dahl asked.

“A few minutes.” He was gazing at the house. “Just a few minutes.”

“Sure. You take your time.”

The businessman, his face a mask, pulled out his phone. He rubbed it between thumb and finger, delaying making calls to friends. Dahl left him to the agonizing task.

Prescott and Gibbs were putting up crime scene tape. Munce reported that the three deputies had gotten a “ways” into the woods and had lost all trace of the women’s trail.

“Whatta you think about that big local?” Tanner asked Dahl.

“Doesn’t set off fireworks for me. But we’ll keep it in mind. Get me a map. Anybody got a map? And spotlights?”

Maps yes, spots no, so they walked up the steps to the front porch, whose overhead light was blazing and attracting the first few bugs of the season. One deputy produced the large map of the area and set it on a wooden café table on the porch, moved the chairs back. The houses here weren’t depicted but Lake View Drive was, a narrow yellow line. Lake Mondac was on one side and on the other was a vast mass of green, Marquette State Park. Elevations and trails were shown, ranger stations, parking lots and a few of the scenic highlights: Natural Bridge, Devil’s Deep, the Snake River Gorge.

Tens of thousands of acres.

Dahl looked at his battered Timex. “Give them five, six hours since the murder. How far could Brynn and the girl get? In that brush, at night, not very.” His leg hurt like the dickens.

Prescott ambled up. “Found something by the garage, Sheriff.”

The troopers eyed the deputy’s bulk. He nodded at them, as confident as any twenty-seven-year-old could be.

“What’s that?”

“Found a tarp, the sort you’d cover a canoe with. And drag marks leading to that stream. It runs into the lake.”

“Footprints?”

“Couldn’t tell. It’s grass and gravel. But the skids could be fresh. And I looked in the garage. There’s only one life vest. No paddles. I’ll bet they took the boat.”

Dahl looked over the map. “No streams or rivers flowing out of the lake. They could get as far as the opposite shore but then they’d have to hoof it.”

“They have the boots for it,” Munce pointed out. “Swapping footgear.”

Dahl noticed that Graham still hadn’t left yet, but was hanging back, eyes on the dark woods.

“Graham, you help us out here?”

He joined them and accepted various measures of sympathy from the other law enforcers after introductions were made and they learned it was his wife who was missing.

Dahl explained about the canoe.

Graham shook his head. “I don’t think it was Brynn who took it.”

“Why not?”

“She hated boats. Hated water.”

“Well,” Commander Arlen Tanner pointed out, “was a pretty extreme situation. She might’ve made an exception.”

“Only if there was no other way to go.”

Dahl asked, “Did Brynn know the state park good?”

“Some. And I saw her in the car before she left, looking over her map. She always does that. Prepares, you know. She and her ex came here a few times. She and I’ve never been.”

Munce said, “Brynn and me were on a search and recovery here a while ago.” He was frowning and tense, as if there was something he’d been meaning to bring up. “Gotta say, Tom. Don’t know why you didn’t have me come up here. I wasn’t but twenty minutes away.”

“Thought you were busy. On that grand theft case.”

“No, no. Didn’t you hear? That was a mistake. I would’ve come.”

Dahl continued to examine the map. “We know she got dry clothes and she hooked up with that friend of the Feldmans. They came back to the house here, got boots and then took off. But which way?”

Tanner liked the canoe idea, despite what Graham’d said. “Could’ve paddled across the lake and are hiding there. Or if they didn’t take the boat they could be up there.” He gestured at the steep hill behind the house; it was covered with vegetation.

Another trooper shrugged. “I’d vote for Six Eighty-two. They’d plan
on flagging down a car or truck or getting to one of the houses along there. It’d take ’em a few hours but they could do it.”

Dahl felt the same.

Graham was shaking his head.

“What?” Dahl asked.

“I don’t think she’d go that way, Tom. Not if those men were still around.”

“The highway’s the closest to safety for them,” Dahl said. He was inclined to believe the men were in the area here and moving slowly toward the highway.

“Brynn wouldn’t lead them to anybody’s house. Not out here. She wouldn’t endanger anybody innocent. She’d keep running. And she wouldn’t hide either.”

“Why not?” Tanner asked.

“Because she wouldn’t.”

“I don’t know, Graham,” Dahl said. “Okay, she might not go to a house but she could flag down a car.”

“And how many did you see on the road when you drove up? I saw a hundred deer and one Chevrolet. She knows how deserted it is round here.”

“Well, whatta
you
think she did, Graham?” Munce asked.

“Headed into the park itself. Straight into the middle.”

“But she’d know none of the ranger stations’re open this time of year.”

“But they have phones, don’t they?”

“They’re not working if they’re closed for the season.”

“Well, pay phones.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

Tapping the map. “I’m not even sure she’d go for a ranger station. I think maybe she’d make for the interstate.” His finger tapped the Snake River Gorge Bridge.

Arlen Tanner was looking over the map. “All respect, Mr. Boyd, that’s a lotta ground to cover. How’d they find their way? We’ve had people lost in this place for nearly a week. It’s thousands and thousands of acres. And it’s pretty rough, a lot of it. Caves, drop-offs, swamps.”

“That’s exactly what she’d want.” Graham countered. “The harder, the better.
If
those men are after them. Put her more in control.”

One of the troopers, looking like a big, buff soldier, offered, “That’s,
what? Seven, eight miles from here. It’s mostly off-trail. And the gorge is one of the most dangerous places in the park.”

“All respect,” Tanner announced, “the odds are they’re going to be hiding around here somewhere. Or hiking back to the highway. That’s the logical approach.”

Dahl said, “I agree with Arlen, Graham. I know her too but nobody’d strike out in that direction. She’d never find her way, even with GPS and a map and in daylight. I think for now we’ve got to concentrate around here. And Six Eighty-two.”

“At least send a few people into the park at the Snake River Gorge, Tom,” Graham insisted.

“We just don’t have the manpower, Graham. I can’t send volunteers, not with those men out there. Has to be armed troopers or deputies. Now go on home, Graham. Joey’s going to be worried. He’s got to know you’re there for him. I’m talking as a father now. Not a cop…. I promise, your number’s the first one I call, we find anything.”

Eric Munce walked Graham back to his truck.

Dahl stood on the porch and looked out over the chaos of the front yard: the lights, the law enforcers, the police cars, an ambulance useful only as a taxi ride for two dead bodies. The victims’ friend, Paskell, had joined Graham and Munce. They shook hands and seemed to be sharing mutual sympathy.

As he turned back to the map to organize the search parties, Dahl thought a short prayer that ended with: And bring Brynn home to us, if you please.

STEAM OR SMOKE

They never did.

Brynn McKenzie lay on her back, breathing hard, locating pain and
thinking: In the movies every car that crashes blows up. In real life they never do. She’d run probably a hundred highway accidents. Including four fires that wholly immolated the vehicles. The cars or trucks burned furiously but none of them had ever actually exploded.

Which hadn’t stopped her escaping as fast as she could through the gap where the windshield had been—moving like a caterpillar with her hands taped, scrunching along painfully over glass and rocks—and putting as much distance between herself and the shattered van as possible. She’d paused only to turn her back to Hart’s map and grab it, then crumple it into a ball.

She was now about twenty feet from the vehicle, which lay on its side at the foot of the steep hill they’d tumbled down sideways—that orientation had probably saved her life. Had they kept going forward, over the drop, the airbags would have come and gone with first impact and the final drop would have fired them out through the windshield and underneath the tumbling vehicle.

As it was, Hart ironically might have saved her life. She recalled how he’d broken her fall as she’d slammed into him, smelling of aftershave, smoke and bleach.

She was hurting in various places but she tested the important appendages. They all seemed to work. It was odd not having the use of her hands, still taped behind her, to evaluate injuries. The wound in her cheek, and the gum where the tooth had been, still won the pain award. The throbbing had claimed everything north of her shoulders.

Where was Hart? She couldn’t see him.

She looked to the top of the hill—it seemed very far away—where there was a faint light from the camper. She could hear Hart’s partner calling him. He’d undoubtedly heard the crash but couldn’t see the van, which had rolled through tall stands of brush.

They hadn’t fallen all the way to the bottom of the ravine. The van was resting on a flat area about twenty feet wide, at the edge of which was another drop—about thirty feet down, she estimated—to a fast-moving stream.

She told herself: Your legs’re working fine. Get up.