The Bodies Left Behind

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