“Who the hell is she?” Lewis repeated.
That was answered when they found her purse in the living room, a little thing with makeup, cash and credit cards inside.
“Michelle,” Hart said, glancing at a Visa credit card. He looked up. “Her name’s Michelle.”
He’d just got shot by a Michelle.
Wincing, Hart now walked across the worn rug, dark tan, and shut off the living room lights. He peered carefully out the door and into the front yard. No sign of her. Lewis started into the kitchen. “I’ll get those lights.”
“No, not there. Leave ’em on. Too many windows, no curtains. She could see you easy.”
“What’re you, some wuss? Bitch is long gone.”
Grim-faced, Hart glanced down at his arm, meaning, you want to take the chance? Lewis got the point. They looked outside again, through the front windows, and saw nothing but a tangle of woods. No lights, no shapes moving in the dusk. He heard frogs and saw a couple of bats flying obstacle courses in the clear sky.
Lewis was saying, “Wish I’d knew that soap trick. That’s pretty slick. Me and my brother were in Green Bay one time. We weren’t doing shit, just hanging, you know. I went to pee by the railroad tracks and this asshole jumped me. Had a box cutter. Got me from behind. Homeless prick…cut me down to the bone. I bled like a stuck pig.”
Hart was wondering, What’s his point? He tried to tune the man out.
“Oh, I whaled on that dude, Hart. Didn’t matter I was bleeding. He felt pain that day. Come off the worst of it, I’ll tell you.”
Hart squeezed the wound and then stopped paying attention to the pain. It was still there but was lost in the background of sensations. Gripping his black gun, he stepped outside, crouching. No shots. No rustles from the bushes. Lewis joined him. “Bitch’s gone, I’m telling you. She’s halfway to the highway by now.”
Hart looked over the cars, grimaced. “Look at that.” Both the Feldmans’ Mercedes and the Ford that Hart had stolen earlier in the day had two flats each and the wheel sizes were different; the spares wouldn’t be compatible.
Lewis said, “Shit. Well, better start hiking, you think?”
Hart scanned the deep woods surrounding them, shadowy now. He couldn’t imagine a better place in the world to hide. Good goddamn. “See if you can plug one of those.” He nodded at the Ford’s shot-out tires.
Lewis sneered. “I’m not a fucking mechanic.”
“I’d do it,” Hart said, trying to be patient, “but I’m a little disadvantaged here.” He nodded at his arm.
The skinny man tugged at his earring, a green stone, and loped off resentfully toward the car. “What’re you going to be doing?”
What the hell did he think? With his Glock at his side, he started in the direction he’d seen Michelle flee.
EIGHT MILES FROM
Brynn McKenzie drove through Clausen, which amounted to a few gas stations, two of the three unbranded, a few stores—convenience, package and auto parts—and a junkyard. A sign pointed to a Subway but it was 3.2 miles away. She noted another sign, for hot sausages, in the window of a Quik Mart. She was tempted, but it was closed. Across the highway was a Tudor-style building with all the windows broken out and roof collapsed. It bore a prize that had surely tempted many a local teenager but the
All Girl Staff
sign was just too high or too well bolted to the wall to steal.
Then this sneeze of civilization was gone and Brynn began a long sweep through tree-and rock-filled wilderness, broken only by scruffy clearings. The few residences were set well off the road, trailers or bungalows, from which gray smoke eased skyward. The windows, glowing dimly, were like sleepy eyes. The land was too harsh for farms and the sparse populace would drive their rusted pickups or Datsun-era imports to work elsewhere. If they went to work at all.
For miles the only oncoming traffic: three cars, one truck. Nobody in her lane, ahead or behind.
At 6:40 she passed a sign saying that Marquette State Park campground was ten miles up the road.
Open May 20.
Which meant that Lake Mondac had to be nearby. Then she saw:
LAKE VIEW DRIVE
PRIVATE ROAD
NO TRESPASSING
NO PUBLIC LAKE ACCESS
VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
And howdy-do to you too….
She turned, slowing as the Honda bumbled over the gravel and dirt, thinking she should’ve taken Graham’s pickup. According to the directions that Todd Jackson had given her, the distance was 1.2 miles from the county route to 3 Lake View, the Feldmans’ vacation house. Their driveway, he’d added, was “a couple football fields long. Or that’s what it looked like on Yahoo.”
Making slow progress, Brynn drove through a tunnel of trees and bushes and blankets of leaf refuse. Mostly the landscape was needles and naked branch and bark.
Then the road widened slightly and the willow, jack pine and hemlock on her right grew sparse; she could see the lake clearly. She’d never spent much time on bodies of water, didn’t care for them. She felt more in control on dry land, for some reason. She and Keith had had a tradition of going to the Gulf Coast in Mississippi, his choice pretty much. Brynn had divided her time there between reading and taking Joey to amusement parks and the beach. Keith spent most of the time in the casino. It wasn’t her favorite locale but at least the beige water lapping at the shoreline was as easygoing and warm as the locals. Lakes around here seemed bottomless and chill and the abrupt meeting of rocky shore and black water made you feel helpless, easy prey for snakes and leeches.
She reflected on another course she’d taken through the State Police: a water safety rescue seminar. It had been held at a lake just like this and though she’d done the exercise—swimming underwater to rescue a “drowning” dummy in a sunken boat—she’d hated the experience.
She now scanned the surroundings, looking for boaters in trouble, car accidents, fires.
For intruders too.
There was still enough light to navigate by and she shut the lights out so as not to announce her presence. And drove even more slowly to keep the crunch of the tires to a minimum.
She passed the first two houses on the private road. They were dark and set at the end of long driveways winding through the woods. Large structures—four, five bedrooms—they were old, impressive, somber. There was a bleakness about the properties. Like sets in the opening scene of a family drama: the homestead boarded up, the story to be told in flashbacks to happier days.
Brynn’s own bungalow, which she’d bought after Keith bought her
share of their marital house, would have fit inside either of these and still have left it half empty.
As the Honda crawled along, she passed a small bald patch between copses of fir, spruce and more hemlock, giving her a partial view of the house at number 3—the Feldmans’—ahead and to her left. It was grander than the others, though of the same style. Smoke trailed from the chimney. The windows were mostly dark, though she could see a glow behind shades or curtains in the back and on the second floor.
She drove on toward the house and it was lost to sight behind a large copse of pine. Her hand reached down and for reassurance tapped the grip of her Glock, not a superstitious gesture, but one she’d learned long ago: you had to know the exact position of your weapon in case you needed to draw it fast. Brynn recalled that she’d loaded the weapon with fresh ammo last week—thirteen rounds, which wasn’t superstitious either but more than enough for whatever she’d run into in Kennesha County. Besides, it took all your thumb strength to jam the slick brass rounds into the clip.
Tom Dahl wanted his deputies on the range for a checkup once a month but Brynn went every two weeks. It was a rarely used but vital skill, she believed, and she blew through a couple boxes of Remingtons every other Tuesday. She’d been in several firefights, usually against drunk or suicidal shooters, and had come away with the sense that the brief seconds of exchanging bullets with another human being were so chaotic and loud and terrifying that you needed any edge you could get. And a big part of that was making automatic the process of drawing and firing a weapon.
She’d had to cancel her session last week because of another incident with Joey—a fight at school—but the next morning she’d made her range time of 6
A.M.
and, upset about her son, had run through two boxes of fifty rounds. Her wrist had ached from the excess for the rest of the day.
Brynn slowed about fifty yards from the Feldmans’ driveway and pulled onto the shoulder, sending a startling cluster of grouse into the air. She stopped, intending to walk the rest of the way.
She was reaching for her phone, in the cup holder, to shut the ringer off before approaching the crime scene, when it trilled. A glance at caller ID. “Tom.”
“Look, Brynn…”
“Doesn’t sound good. What? Tell me.”
He sighed. She was irritated he was delaying, though a lot more irritated at the news she knew was coming.
“I’m sorry, Brynn. Oh, brother. Wild goose chase.”
Oh, damn…“Tell me.”
“Feldman called back. The husband.”
“Called back?”
“Com Central called me. Feldman said he’s got nine-one-one on speed dial. Hit it by mistake. Hung up as soon as he realized it. Didn’t think it’d gone through.”
“Oh, Tom.” Grimacing, she stared at thrushes picking at the ground beside a wood lily.
“I know, I know.”
“I’m practically there. I can see the house.”
“You moved fast.”
“Well, it
was
a nine-one-one, remember.”
“I’m giving you a
whole
day off.”
And when would she have time for that? She exhaled long. “At least you’re buying me dinner out tonight. And not Burger King. I want Chili’s or Bennigan’s.”
“Not a single bit of problem. Enjoy it.”
“’Night, Tom.”
Brynn called Graham but got his voice mail. It rang four times before it switched over. She left a message saying the call was a false alarm. She hung up. Tried again. This time it went right to voice mail. She didn’t leave another message. Was he out?
Your poker game?
It’ll keep….
Thinking of the false alarm, though, Brynn wasn’t wholly upset. She was going to take an advanced course next week in domestic violence negotiations and could use her dinner break tonight to make some headway in the course manual she’d just received. If she’d been home she wouldn’t have been able to crack the book until bedtime.
She also had to admit that she wouldn’t mind a bit of a break from evenings with Anna, especially if a run to Rita’s was scheduled. It was odd having Anna back in the house after so many years of mutual independence. Emotions from years past surfaced. Like that night last week when her mother had shot a look her way after Brynn returned late from a shift; the tension was identical to that when, as a teenager, she’d lost herself in steeple-jumping and had come home hours after she’d promised. No fight, no lectures. Just a simple, burdened look beneath an unflappable smile.
They’d never fought. Anna wasn’t temperamental or moody. She was a perfect grandmother, which counted for a lot to Brynn. But mother and daughter had never been chummy, and during Brynn’s first marriage Anna largely faded from her life, emerging only after Joey was born.
Now divorced and with a man whom Brynn believed Anna approved of, they’d reconnected. At one point, a year ago, Brynn had wondered if mother and daughter would finally grow close. But that hadn’t happened. They were, after all, the same people they’d been twenty years ago, and, unlike her siblings, Brynn had never had much in common with her mother. Brynn had always spent her life riding, pushing, looking for something outside Eau Claire. Anna’s had been spent working unchallenging jobs—mostly four hours a day as a real estate office manager—and raising her three children. Evenings were invariably knitting, chatting and TV.
Perfectly fine for relations living apart. But when Anna moved in, after her surgery, it was like Brynn had been transported back to those days of her youth.
Oh, yes, she was looking forward to a few hours of evening time to herself.
And a free dinner at Bennigan’s. Hell, she’d even order a glass of wine.
Brynn flipped the car lights on and put the car in reverse to turn around. Then she paused. The nearest gas station was back in Clausen, a good twenty minutes.
The Feldmans were behind this mixup; the least they could do was let her use their bathroom. Brynn put the car in gear and headed for their driveway, curious to see just how far Yahoo thought two football fields was.
SQUATTING NEXT TO
Great, Hart thought. Fingerprints
and
DNA.
And here
I’m
the one picked this guy to tag along tonight.
“Any sign of her?” the skinny man asked, crouched over one of the wheels.
Hart crunched over leaves, returning from making a circuit of the property. As he’d searched for Michelle, being as quiet as he could, he’d had the queasy sense of being targeted. Maybe she was gone. Maybe she wasn’t.
“Ground’s plenty muddy. I found some footprints, probably hers, going toward the county road at first but they seemed to turn that way.” He pointed to the dense woods and steep hillside behind the house. “She’s gotta be hiding there someplace. You hear anything?”
“No. But it’s freaking me out. I keep looking over my shoulder. Man, she is going down. When we get back, I am tracking down that bitch. I don’t care who she is, where she lives. She’s going down. She fucked with the wrong man.”