The Bodies Left Behind

paddles.
    Michelle was staring down at her friend’s boots, grimacing. She looked like a rich customer who’d been sold inferior footwear and was about to complain to the store manager.
    Brynn snapped, “Come on. Help me.”
    Michelle glanced back toward the house at 2 Lake View and, her face troubled, shoved the crackers in herpocket, then hurried to the canoe. The two women dragged it to the stream. Michelle climbed in with her pool cue walking stick and Brynn handed her the spear, paddles and life vests.
    With a look back at the morass of forest, through which the killers were surely sprinting right now, the deputy climbed in and shoved off into the stream, a dark artery seeping toward a dark heart.

    THE MEN RAN through the night, sucking in cold, damp air rich with the smell of rotting leaves.
    At the sound of the horn, Hart had realized that rather than head for the county road, like he’d thought, the women had snuck back to the Feldman house. They’d probably broken into the Mercedes hoping to fix the tire, not thinking the car was alarmed. He and Lewis had started running directly for the place but immediately encountered bogs and some wide streams. Hart started to ford one but Lewis said, “No, your feet’ll chafe bad. Gotta keep ’em dry.”
    Hart, never an outdoorsman, hadn’t thought about that. The men returned to the driveway and jogged to Lake View Drive and then north toward number 2.
    “We go . . . up careful,” Hart said, out of breath, when they were halfway to the Feldmans’ driveway. “Still . . . could be a trap.” The jogging was hell on hiswounded arm. He winced and tried moving it into different positions. Nothing helped.
    “A trap?”
    “Still . . . worried about a gun.”
    Lewis seemed a lot less obnoxious now. “Sure.”
    They slowed at the mailbox, then started up the drive, Hart first, both of them sticking to the shadows. Lewis was silent, thank God. The kid was catching on, if you could call a thirty-five-year-old a kid. Hart thought again of his brother.
    About fifty feet up the driveway they paused.
    Hart scanned what they could see, which wasn’t much because of the dusk. Bats swooped nearby. And some other creature zipped past his head, floating down to a scampering landing.
    Hell, a flying squirrel. Hart’d never seen one.
    He was squinting at the Mercedes, noting the broken window. He saw no signs of the women.
    It was Lewis who spotted them. He happened to look back down the driveway toward the private road. “Hart. Look. What’s that?”
    He turned, half expecting to see Brynn rising from the bushes about to fire that black service piece of hers. But he saw nothing.
    “What?”
    “There they are! On the lake.”
    Hart turned to look. About two hundred feet into the lake was a low boat, a skiff or canoe. It was moving toward the opposite shore but very slowly. It was hard to see for certain but he thought there were two people in it. Brynn and Michelle had seen the men, stoppedpaddling and hunched down, keeping a low profile. The momentum was carrying them toward the opposite shore.
    Lewis said, “That alarm, it wasn’t a mistake. It was to distract us. So they could get away in the fucking boat.”
    The man had made a good catch. Hart hadn’t even been looking at the lake. He bridled once again at being outguessed—and he decided it was probably Brynn who’d tried to trick them.
    The men ran down to the shore.
    “Too far for the scattergun,” Lewis said, grimacing, disappointed. “And I’m not much of a pistol shot.”
    But Hart was. He went to a range at least once a week. Now, holding his gun in one hand, he began firing, slowly, adjusting the elevation of the barrel as he did so. The sharp detonation rolled across the lake with each shot and returned as a pale echo. The first and second kicked up water in front of the boat; the rest did not. They were right on target. One shot every few seconds, the bullets pelted the canoe, sending fragments of wood or fiberglass into the air. He must’ve hit at least one of them—he saw her slump forward and heard a woman’s panicked scream filling the damp air.
    More shots. The wailing stopped abruptly. The canoe capsized and sank.
    Hart reloaded.
    “Nothing’s moving,” Lewis said, shouting because of their numb ears. “You got ’em, Hart.”
    “Well, we gotta make sure.” Hart nodded at a small skiff nearby. “Can you row?”
    “Sure,” Lewis answered.
    “Bring some rocks. To weigh