The Bodies Left Behind

house, she didn’t even know where a porch would fit.
    Approaching the Feldmans’, she glanced at the yard, impressed. The landscaping was expensive. The place was surrounded by strategically placed dogwoods, ligustrum and crepe myrtles that had been cut way back. She recalled her husband’s advice to his customers against this practice (“Don’t rape your crepes”).
    Parking in the circular gravel drive, she caught movement inside, a shadow on the front curtain. She climbed out into the chill air, fresh and sweet with the perfume of blossoms and firewood smoke.
    Hearing the comforting sound of frogs croaking and the honk of geese or ducks, Brynn walked over gravel and up the three steps to the porch. Flashed on Joey, imagining him skateboarding off this height into the school parking lot.
    Well, I did talk to him.
    It’ll be fine.  . . .
    Her issue black Oxfords, as comfy and unstylish asshoes could be, thunked on the wood as she approached the front door. Hit the bell.
    It rang but there was no response.
    She pressed the button once more. The door was solid but flanked by narrow windows curtained with lace, and Brynn could see into the living room. She noted no motion, no shadows. Only a pleasant storm of flames in the fireplace.
    She knocked. Loud, reverberating on the glass.
    Another shadow, like before. She realized that it was from the waving of the orange flames in the fireplace. There was light from a side room but most of the other rooms on this floor were dark, and a lamp from the top of the stairs cast bony shadows of the stair railings on the hallway floor.
    Maybe everybody was out back, or in a dining room. Imagine that, she thought, a house so big you’d miss the doorbell.
    A throaty honk above her. Brynn looked up. The light was dim and the sky was shared by birds and mammals: mallards on final approach to the lake, a few silver-haired bats in their erratic, purposeful hunt. She smiled at the sight. Then, looking back into the house, her eye noted something out of place: behind a massive brown armchair a briefcase and backpack lay open and the contents—files, books, pens—were dumped on the floor, as if they’d been searched for valuables.
    Her gut clenched and in a snap came the thought: a 911 call cut short. An intruder realizes the victim dialed the police and then calls back to say it’s a false alarm.
    Brynn McKenzie drew her weapon.
    She looked behind her fast. No voices, no footsteps. She was stepping back to the car to get her cell phone when she saw something curious inside.
    What is that?
    Brynn’s eyes focused on the edge of a rug in the kitchen. But it was glistening. How can a rug be shiny?
    Blood. She was looking at a pool of blood.
    All right. Think. How to handle it?
    Heart stuttering, she tested the knob. The lock had been kicked out.
    Cell phone in the car? Or go inside?
    The blood was fresh. Three people inside. No sign of the intruders. Somebody could be hurt but alive.
    Phone later.
    Brynn shoved the door open, glancing right and left. Said nothing, didn’t announce her presence. Looking, looking everywhere, head dizzy.
    She glanced into the lit bedroom to her left. A deep breath and she stepped inside, keeping her gun close to her side so it couldn’t be grabbed, as Keith had lectured in his class on tactical operations, the class where she’d met him.
    The room was empty but the bed was mussed and first aid materials were on the floor. Her misshapen jaw quivering, she moved back into the living room, where the fire crackled. Trying to be silent, she found the carpet and navigated carefully around the empty briefcase and backpack and file folders scattered on the floor, the labels giving clues about the woman’s professional life: Haberstrom, Inc., Acquisition. Gibbons v. Kenosha Automotive Technologies. Pascoe Inc. Refinancing. Hearing—County Redistricting.
    She continued on to the kitchen.
    And stopped fast. Staring down at the bodies of the young couple on the floor. They wore business clothes, the shirt and blouse dark with blood. Both had been shot in the head and the wife in the neck too—she was the source of the blood. The husband had run in panic, slipping and falling; a skid mark of red led from his shoe to the carpet of blood. The wife had turned away to die. She lay on her stomach with her right arm twisted behind her, a desperate angle, as if she were trying to touch an itch above her lower spine.
    Where was the friend? Brynn wondered. Had she