The Bodies Left Behind

cars then into the lane again. Brynn aimed Munce’s revolver but had only a brief clear target—between two good Samaritans climbing out of their vehicles—and she wouldn’t risk injuring them.
    She lowered the gun and ran to the Highlander to help the occupants.

    A WITNESS TO the carnage, James Jasons crouched in fragrant bushes a hundred yards down the highway from where the SUV lay on its side.
    Sirens sounded in the distance.
    He believed he saw Graham Boyd helping some of the injured. The absence of the uniformed deputy, Munce, might explain the gunshot he’d heard earlier from deep within the forest.
    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 woodsto 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 triedto 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