The Bodies Left Behind

because she didn’t want to take the call, not because of the No Cell Phone Use sign nearby.
    A patient walked from the admitting window into the waiting area, sat down. Squeezed his arm and winced. He glanced once at Brynn and returned to his waiting state of numb silence.
    “Been an hour,” Graham said.
    “Nearly.”
    “Long time. But that’s not necessarily bad.”
    “No.”
    Silence again, broken by cryptic announcements over the hospital PA. Then Brynn’s phone was vibrating again. This call she took. “Tom.”
    “Brynn, how’s your mother?”
    “We don’t know yet. What do you have?”
    “Okay. Michelle got through the roadblocks somehow. They haven’t found your husband’s truck.”
    Brynn hunched forward and pressed her injured cheek, as if the pain were payment for her misjudgment.
    Dahl continued, “You were right. We found that friend who drove up from Chicago this morning. She was the only one coming to visit. Michelle, we guess, is a hit man. . . . Well, hit woman. ”
    “Hired by Mankewitz or one of his people.”
    “What they’re figuring,” Dahl said.
    “So Hart and Comp were supposed to be the bodies left behind.”
    “The what?”
    “The bodies left behind. . . . She was going to make it look like they were the only killers and they got into a fight between themselves after the Feldmans were dead. So we wouldn’t bother to look further. But it went bad. Hart reacted too fast or her gun jammed, who knows? She had to run. Then I found her in the woods.” Brynn pinched the bridge of her nose. Her laugh was bitter. “And rescued her.”
    Another doctor came out, through the double doors. Brynn stopped talking. The physician, wearing blue scrubs, kept going.
    Brynn was reflecting on the look that passed between Hart and the young woman at the interstate.
    You came close, Michelle. Real close.  . . .
    Hart’s words to her by the highway had a whole different meaning, now that Brynn knew the truth.
    And she recalled Michelle’s shocked reaction when Brynn told her about meeting Hart in the van beside the meth cookers’ camper. The woman would have been terrified that Hart had mentioned Michelle’s real identity.
    “And somebody from Mankewitz’s crew was probably going to come pick her up when it was over. Hell, that’s who was taking shots at us when we were on that cliff.”
    Brynn was aware that Graham was staring at her, taking in the conversation.
    She continued to the sheriff, “She needed the evidence I’d brought with me—the guns and clips, the map, the boxes of ammunition. Her purse. That’s why she was so willing to come back with us to our house. Something probably had her prints on them. Or trace evidence that might lead us to her. She’d planned to collect it at Lake Mondac after she’d killed Hart and his friend. . . . Wait, Tom. What about her shoes? A pair of women’s shoes at the Feldmans’ house? In the yard. Any prints?”
    “Recovered them. But no prints.”
    “None?”
    “Looks like they were wiped off, like the Ford. Wiped off with Windex.”
    A faint laugh. “She did that when I went for the canoe. . . . Brother, did she have me fooled.” Brynn rubbed a knuckle against a faint bump on her rebuilt jaw, as she often did when thoughtful or upset. The betrayal stung her deeply. And she said in a soft voice, “I was supposed to be one too.”
    “What?”
    “A body left behind. She was using me as bait. She didn’t have a sprained ankle at all. She was moving slow to draw the men close. And she tried to keep them following in our direction all night. She broke the Mercedes window to set off the alarm—probably as the men were heading toward the highway. And complained about putting on those boots, made a big deal of it. She was stalling, trying to get them closer to us. And who knows what else? She had some crackers. I’ll bet she dropped those.” Brynn laughed sourly, shaking herhead. “Once, she had this outburst, screamed like a banshee. It was to let them know where we were. She was waiting for them to catch up. Then she’d shoot them in the woods. Me too.”
    “Well, Brynn, why didn’t she, you know, just shoot you right up front?” Dahl asked.
    “She needed me for insurance maybe, or to help her get out of the area. Most likely use me to help her kill them.”
    Aware that Graham had fallen silent, his jaw set, large hands clasped together.
    Brynn told Tom she’d better go and asked him to call her if they