The Bodies Left Behind (45 page)

Which was fortunate because the woman died much sooner than expected.

A sad event.

Not long after which Michelle spent some time flushing down the toilet the six months’ worth of prescription AIDS medicines she’d with
held from Blanche, substituting Tylenol, Prylosec and children’s vitamins (which, thriftily, she also gave to the kids).

Now these two children were hers. She loved them with all her being. Doing what they were told, adoring her and—as the therapist told her in a court-ordered session years ago—validating an otherwise unremarkable life. But fuck the therapists; Michelle knew what she wanted. Always had.

In fact, one of the tragedies of that night in April—thanks to the unexpected appearance of Brynn’s husband with a gun—was Michelle’s loss of Amy, another girl she could have brought into her family. After killing Brynn and Hart (Lewis too, if Hart hadn’t done that for her), she’d have slipped away with her new daughter.

But that hadn’t worked out.

Add one more offense to Brynn McKenzie’s charge sheet.

Michelle now glanced at Tory, who was showing a picture she’d drawn to Rolfe. Michelle thought: The fat pig’s not your daddy. Don’t you dare ever think he is.

It was then that her phone rang. She noted caller ID, said to Rolfe, “I better get this.”

He nodded complacently, complimented the little girl on the picture and turned back to the TV.

Brad brought the soda for his mother. He held it out.

“Do I look like I’m on the phone?” Michelle snapped, then stepped into the bedroom. In a Latina accent she answered, “Harborside Inn. Can I help you?”

“Hi, yes. This’s Deputy McKenzie. From Kennesha County. You called about a half hour ago?”

“Oh, sure, Deputy. About that guest. The one with the suitcase.”

“Right. I’ve checked my schedule. I can be in Milwaukee about five.”

“Let’s see…could we make it five-thirty? We have a staff meeting at five.” Michelle was pleased at her performance.

I’m really an actress….

“Sure. I can do that.”

She gave Brynn the address.

“I’ll see you then.”

Michelle hung up. Closed her eyes. God or Fate…thank you.

She walked to the closet and took out a locked suitcase. Opened it. She removed her compact Glock, put it in her Coach purse. She stared
out the window for a moment, feeling both nervous and exhilarated. Then she returned to the living room. She said to Rolfe, “That was the nursing home. My aunt’s taken a bad turn.” She shook her head. “God, that poor woman. It hurts me to the bone what she’s going through.”

“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” he said, looking at her tormented face.

Michelle hated the endearment. She winced. And said, “I have to go see her.”

“You betcha….” He frowned. “Who is she again?”

Cool eyes turned his way. Meaning: Are you accusing me of something, or have you forgotten my relatives? Either way, you lose.

“Sorry,” he said fast, obviously reading her expression. “Haddie, right? That’s her name. Hey, I’ll drive you.”

Michelle smiled. “That’s okay. I’d rather it was Brad and me. I’ve got to deal with it with family, you understand.”

“Well, you betcha. It’s okay for Brad to see her, you think?”

She looked at the boy. “You want to see your auntie, don’t you?” He damn well better not say that he didn’t have an auntie. She held his eyes as she took the soda from his tiny hand and sipped it.

He nodded.

“I thought you did. Good.”

 

BRYNN MCKENZIE GATHERED

up her backpack and pitched out her second cocoa cup of the day.

Thought again about Graham and their first date. Then about the last time they’d been out together alone—at a woodsy club on Route 32, dancing until midnight. It was one week before she’d found out he was “cheating.”

Why didn’t you ask me to go with you?…

And why hadn’t he invited her to a therapy session?

“Hey, B?” a woman’s voice interrupted. “How ’bout Bennigan’s later?”
Jane Styles, another senior deputy, continued, “I’m meeting Reggie. Oh, and that cute guy from State Farm’s going to be there. One I told you about.”

Brynn whispered, “I’m not divorced, Jane.”

The words “not yet” tagged along at the end of the sentence.

“I just said he was cute. That’s only information. I’m not calling the caterer.”

“He sells insurance.”

“We need insurance. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got something going on. Buy a policy for me.”

“Funny.”

Thinking of Hart, thinking of the Harborside Inn in Milwaukee, Brynn McKenzie walked down a corridor she’d been up and down so often that she tended not even to see it. On the walls were pictures of deputies killed in the line of duty. There were four over the past eighty-seven years, though Eric Munce’s portrait wasn’t up yet. The county had the photos mounted in expensive frames. The first fatality was a deputy with a handlebar mustache. He’d been shot by a man involved in the Northfield, Minnesota, train robbery.

She passed a map of the county too, a big one, pausing and glancing at the azure blemish of Lake Mondac. She asked herself, So, is what I’m about to do now a good idea, or a bad idea?

Then she laughed. Why bother to ask the question? It doesn’t matter. I’ve already made the decision.

She fished the keys out of her pocket and pushed outside into a beautiful, clear afternoon.

Is it true he’s a killer?

That’s our understanding.

 

DRIVING THROUGH A

gritty neighborhood of Milwaukee toward Lake Michigan, Michelle Kepler was saying to her son, “What you’re going to do is go up to this woman and say you’re lost. She’ll be parked and when she gets out of her car you go up to her and say, ‘I’m lost.’ Say it.”

“I’m lost.”

“Good. I’ll point her out to you. And make sure you look, you know, upset. Can you do that? You know how to look upset?”

“Uh-huh,” said Brad.

She snapped, “Don’t say you know something when you don’t. Now, do you know how to look upset?”

“No.”

“Upset is what I look like when you’ve done something wrong and you disappoint me. You understand?”

He nodded quickly. This, he got.

“Good.” She smiled.

In downtown Milwaukee, Michelle drove past the Harborside Inn then around the block. Returned to the hotel. The parking lot was half full. It was 5
P.M.
Brynn McKenzie wasn’t due for another half hour.

“Better work.”

“What, Mommy?”

“Shhh.”

She circled once more, then pulled into a space on the street, twenty feet from the parking lot. “What we’re going to do is when the woman drives in, she’ll park somewhere there. See?…Good. And then you and me both get out. I’m going to go around that way, behind. You go up to her and knock on the window closest to her. Tell her you’re lost. And scared. She’ll get out of the car. What are you going to tell her?”

“I’m lost.”

“And?”

“Scared.”

“And what do you look like?”

“Upset.”

“Good.” She rewarded him with another big smile, tousling his hair. “Then Mommy’s going to come up and…talk to her for a minute, then we both run back to the car and drive home and see Sam. Do you like Sam?”

“Yeah, he’s fun.”

“You like him more than you like Mommy?”

The hesitation was like a hot iron against her skin. “No.”

She pushed the jealousy away as best she could. Time to concentrate.

Michelle studied the area. Cars passed occasionally, a customer would come out of a tavern across the street or an elderly local would amble along the sidewalk. But other than that the neighborhood was deserted.

“Now. Be quiet. And shut the radio off.”

Her phone buzzed. She read the text message, frowned. It was from a friend in Milwaukee. The words were sobering. The man had just heard, about twenty minutes ago, that Gordon Potts had been killed in Eau Claire.
freek accd’t,
it reported.

Michelle’s face tightened. Bullshit about the accident. It was Hart’s work. But it was good news for Michelle. She’d been uneasy being out in public here in Milwaukee with Hart still loose. Now at least she knew he wasn’t in town at the moment.

God or Fate, smiling on her.

Then right on the dot she saw the Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department car pull into the parking lot of the Harborside Inn. Her palms began sweating.

God or Fate…

“Okay, Brad.” Michelle popped the locks and stepped out. Her son got out of the other side. “Mommy’s going to go around there,” she whispered. “And I’ll walk up behind that woman. Don’t look at me. Pretend I’m not there. You understand that?”

He nodded.

“Do not look at me when I come up to the car. Say it.”

“I won’t look at you.”

“Because if you look at me, that woman will take you away and put you in jail. She’s that kind of woman. I love you so much that I don’t want that to happen. That’s why I’m doing this for you. You know all the trouble I go to for you and your sister?”

“Yes.”

She hugged him. “Okay, now go tell her what I said. And remember ‘upset.’”

As the boy walked toward the car, Michelle, crouching, slipped around a row of parked cars. She pulled the Glock from the pocket of her leather jacket, a new one, bought by Sam Rolfe to replace her favorite, a really beautiful number from Neiman Marcus, which had been totally ruined on their walk through the woods that cold night in April.

 

AS HE DROVE

along the road in Humboldt, toward Brynn McKenzie’s house, Sheriff Tom Dahl was thinking about her years in the department.

The job had been tough on her, especially taking on the worst assignments, the hurt kids, the domestics. Been tough too thanks to her fellow deputies’ attitudes because she was the overachiever, always had been. The girl in the front row, raising her hand because she knew every answer. Nobody liked that.

But, hell, she’d gotten results. Look at what she’d done that night at Lake Mondac. He didn’t know another deputy who would’ve pushed as hard as she had.

He didn’t know another deputy who would have survived.

Dahl massaged his game leg.

He parked in front of the small house; they all were on Kendall Road. Brynn’s was a neat place, trim and well kept up. And, thanks to Graham, it had the hell landscaped out of it. A lot different from the others here.

He got out of the car. Stood and stretched. A joint snapped somewhere. He’d given up worrying where such sounds originated or what they meant.

Tugging on his hat, a habit, Dahl walked slowly through the gate and then up the serpentine sidewalk, bordered by more kinds of plants than he knew existed.

At the door he hesitated only a moment and then rang the bell. A double chime sounded.

The door opened.

“Hey, Sheriff.”

Brynn’s son stood there. Seemed he’d grown another eight inches since they’d been together last, a department Christmas party.

“Hi, Joey.” Beyond him, in the living room, Anna McKenzie was moving toward the kitchen with a cane. “Anna.”

She nodded cautiously.

And behind her, in the kitchen, Brynn was taking the temperature of a roasting chicken as she stood beside the stove. He thought she didn’t cook. Or even knew how. The chicken looked pretty good.

She turned and lifted an eyebrow.

“We got her, Brynn. We got her.”

 

THEY SAT IN

the family room, sheriff and deputy.

Iced tea, courtesy of Anna, sat between them.

Brynn said, “Took longer than I thought. Been on pins and needles.”

Which didn’t begin to describe her anxiety, waiting for the news.

Sheriff Dahl explained, “There was a complication. The teams were in place around Rolfe’s house. But when she came outside she had her son with her. She took her boy to the Harborside Inn.”

“She
what
?”

“She even sent him up to the car the decoy was in while she moved around back to shoot you, well,
her,
from behind.”

“Oh, my God.”

“The tactical team didn’t want to move in while Michelle and the kid were together. They were afraid she’d use him as a hostage. They waited till they separated at the parking lot. The boy’s fine. He’s in CPS with his sister.”

Thank you, Brynn prayed silently. Thank you. “She was going to use her own child as a diversion and then shoot me right in front of him?” Brynn could hardly believe it.

“Looks that way.”

“What’s the boyfriend’s story?”

“Rolfe? They’re questioning him now but looks like he was in the dark. If he should be arrested for anything it’s bad judgment in women.” His cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. “Better take this. S’the mayor. We’re holding a press conference about the whole thing. Gotta get some notes.”

He rose and stepped outside, walking stiffly to his car.

Brynn sat back on the couch, staring at the ceiling, silently thanking Stanley Mankewitz and his slim assistant—James Jasons, she’d learned—for leading her to Michelle Kepler.

Maybe you’re looking for the wrong who.

After their get-together in the bad-coffee restaurant, Brynn had looked into other motives for murdering Emma Feldman, specifically the ones suggested by Mankewitz: suicidal state politicians and the Kenosha company making dangerous hybrid car parts. Some of her other cases too. But none of them had panned out.

She then considered Jasons’s comment and wondered: What if “the wrong who” could mean not who wanted to kill her—but who was the intended
victim
?

As soon as Brynn began to consider that Michelle had wanted
Steven
Feldman dead, not Emma, the case fell into place. Feldman was a caseworker for the city’s Social Services Department, part of whose job function was checking out child abuse complaints and, in extreme cases, placing victims in foster homes.