The Bodies Left Behind

walked to the front door, locked it and went upstairs.
    She opened the lockbox and clipped her holster containing the Glock to the back of her skirt waistband, pulled on a jacket.
    Staring out the window at the empty road in front of the house, she called Tom Dahl.
    “Need a favor. Fast.”
    “Sure, Brynn. You okay?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Go on.”
    “Graham. I need to know what cars are registered in his name. Everything. Even the company cars.”
    “He causing you trouble?”
    “No, no. It’s not him I’m worried about.”
    “Just hold on a minute. I’ll get into the DMV database.”
    Less than sixty seconds later the sheriff’s easy voice came back on the line. “Rolling Hills Landscaping’s gotthree forty-foot flatbeds, two F150 pickups and an F250. Graham himself has a Taurus he’s leasing through his insurance company—’causa that woman stealing his pickup last month, I’d imagine.”
    “The Taurus? It’s dark blue?”
    “White.”
    “Okay . . .”
    She was thinking back to that night.
    You should have. . . . You should’ve killed me.
    “Tom, I need somebody to watch the house again.”
    “What’s going on, Brynn?”
    “Somebody was outside, parked. Checking out the place. Joey saw him. You know kids, might’ve been nothing. But I don’t want to take any chances.”
    “Sure we can do that, Brynn. Anything.”

    ON THURSDAY, MAY 7, Brynn was sitting in her cubicle clutching a cup of hot chocolate, really hot. This had become a recent addiction, though she’d given up her much-loved saltines and Brie sandwiches in compensation. She could drink three cups of cocoa a day. She wondered if this was because she’d been so chilled on that night. Probably not. Swiss Miss made a really good product.
    She reflected that she and Graham had sipped hot chocolate at the Humboldt Diner at the end of theirfirst date. The beverages had started out near 212 degrees when they’d begun talking, and the cups had been cold when they’d finished.
    She was reading through her notes—hundreds of jottings, setting out the conversations she’d had after her meeting with Stanley Mankewitz. She’d never worked so hard in her life.
    Looking for the wrong who  . . .
    Her office phone rang. She took a last sip and set the cup down. “Deputy McKenzie.”
    “Hello?” asked a Latina voice with the reserve most people displayed when calling the police. The caller explained she was the manager of the Harborside Inn in Milwaukee.
    “How can I help you?” Hearing “Milwaukee,” Brynn sat forward quickly, tense. The most likely reason for someone from that city to call was the Feldman murder case.
    That was indeed the purpose and Brynn grew more and more interested as she listened.
    The hotel manager said she’d seen on TV a composite picture of the man wanted in connection with the killings at Lake Mondac, a man possibly going by the name or nickname of Hart or Harte. Someone looking very similar had checked into the inn there on April 16. The manager had called the local police and they referred her to the Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department.
    The name of the guest was William Harding.
    Harding . . . Hart . . .
    “Is it true he’s a killer?” the woman asked uneasily.
    “That’s our understanding. . . . What was the addresson the register?” Brynn snapped her fingers at Todd Jackson, who appeared instantly at her cubicle.
    As the manager recited an address in Minneapolis, Brynn transcribed it and told the young deputy, “Check this out. Fast.”
    Asked about phone calls and visitors, the woman said there were no outgoing calls but the guest, Harding, met in the coffee shop with a skinny man with a crew cut, who the manager thought was rude, and a pretty woman in her twenties with short red hair. She looked a bit like the woman in the other composite picture the manager had seen.
    Getting better and better . . .
    Then the woman added, “The thing is, he never checked out.”
    “He’s still there?” she asked.
    “No, Officer. He checked in for three days, went out the afternoon of the seventeenth and then never came back. I tried to call but directory assistance doesn’t have anybody listed in Minneapolis, or St. Paul, by that name at that address.”
    She wasn’t surprised when Jackson slipped her a piece of paper that read: Fake. A parking lot. No name in MN, WI, NCIC or VICAP.
    She nodded, whispering, “Tell Tom we’ve got something here.”
    Jackson