The Bodies Left Behind

might’ve been staking it out to get a feel for your schedule. . . . In his apartment he had a suitcase being packed. Inside was a weapon and a sound suppressor. I’ve never see one of those. Except in the movies. I thought they werecalled silencers but the detective called them a suppressor.”
    She was nodding slowly. Kept stirring coffee that didn’t need it.
    “We’ll take your house off the special patrol route, if you’re comfortable with that.”
    “Sure. Sounds like everything’s accounted for, Tom.”
    “It is. Case closed. I don’t think I ever said that, not in fourteen years.” Clutching his breakfast he wandered back to his office.

    CHESTNUT HAIR PINNED up, a concession to a surprise Wisconsin heat wave, Kristen Brynn McKenzie was walking past a dozen pines, round and richly green. Sweat blossomed under the arms of her tan uniform blouse and trickled down her spine. She was looking at the plants, studying them closely. They weren’t much taller than she was. As she moved along she lowered her hand and let it drag across the three-inch needles. They yielded without prickling.
    She paused and looked at them.
    Recalling, of course, April. She’d been thinking a lot about those twelve hours in Marquette State Park, remembering with odd clarity the sights and smells and feel of the trees and plants that had saved her life. And that had nearly ended it.
    Why, she wondered, gazing at the pines, would they have evolved this way, these shapes and shades, some the color of green Jell-O, some the shade of Home Depot shutters? Why were these needles long and soft, and why had barberry brambles, where Amy’s toy, Chester, was probably still entombed, developed those terrible thorns?
    Thinking of the foliage, the trees, the leaves. Wood alive and wood dead and decaying.
    Brynn continued on, found herself next to several huge camellias, the blossoms widely unfolded from their tight pods, cradled in waxy green leaves. The petals were red, the color of bright blood, and her heart tapped a bit at that. She kept walking. Now past azaleas and ligustrum and crepe myrtle, ferns, hibiscus, wisteria.
    Then she turned the corner and a short, dark-complexioned man holding a hose blinked in surprise and said, “ Buenos dias, Mrs. McKenzie.”
    “Morning, Juan. Where is he? I saw his truck.”
    “In the shed.”
    She walked past several piles of mulch, fifteen feet high. A worker in a Bobcat was stirring it, to prevent spontaneous combustion. It could actually smolder up a storm of smoke if you didn’t. The rich smell surrounded her. She continued on to the shed, really a small barn, and walked through the open door.
    “I’ll be with you in a second,” Graham Boyd said, looking up from a workbench. He was wearing safety goggles and, she realized, seeing only her silhouette. He’d be thinking she was a customer. He returned to histask. She noted that the carpentry was part of an expansion project and he seemed to be doing the work himself. That was Graham. Even after he’d moved the last of his things out of their house he’d returned to finish the kitchen tiling. And had done a damn good job of it.
    Then he was looking up again. Realizing who she was. He set the board down and took the goggles off. “Hi.”
    She nodded.
    He frowned. “Everything okay with Joey?”
    “Oh, sure, fine.”
    He joined her. They didn’t embrace. He squinted, looking at her cheek.
    “You had that surgery?”
    “Vanity.”
    “You can’t see a thing. How’s it feel?”
    “Inside’s tender. Have to watch what I eat.” She looked around the building. “You’re expanding.”
    “Just doing what should’ve been done a long time ago. Anna says she’s doing better. I called.”
    “She said. More house-ridden than she needs to be. The doctors want her to walk more. I want her out more too.” She laughed.
    “And Joey’s been off skateboards without a cop present, hmm? Grandma gave me a report.”
    “That’s a capital crime in the house now. And I’ve got spies. They tell me he’s clean. He’s really into lacrosse now.”
    “I saw that special. About Michelle Kepler and the murders.”
    “On WKSP. That’s right.”
    “There were some cops from Milwaukee. They said they ’d arrested her. You didn’t even get mentioned. Not by name.”
    “I didn’t go along for the party. I was off that night.”
    “You?”
    She nodded.
    “Didn’t they interview you, at least? The reporters?”
    “What do I need