The Bodies Left Behind

disagree. She did antigang campaigns at the high schools. Gangs . . . even in modest Humboldt.
    An image of Joey, panting and bloody, after one of his fights at school also came to mind. She pushed it away.
    Michelle kept up the manic banter and Brynn tuned her out. She paused and looked around. “I think we should go off the trail now, find the river.”
    “We have to? We’re making good time.”
    But the trail, Brynn told her, didn’t lead them anywhere except deeper into the woods. The closest town that way was fifteen miles.
    “I need to use the compass.” She knelt to the side of the trail and set the alcohol bottle on the ground. With some prodding the needle finally swung north. “We go that way. It’s not far. A couple of miles, I’d guess. Probably less.” She put the bottle in her pocket.
    They were on higher ground here and, looking back, they could still see a flashlight slowly probing for the pathway down the cliff face that would lead the killers into the valley and to the ranger station. They’d eventually learn that the women weren’t going that way but every minute they delayed on the cliff was a minute more Brynn and Michelle had to escape.
    Brynn found a section of the woods that was less ensnarled than others and she stepped off the trail. Michelle, somber again, gazed at the rocky, boggy ground and started forward with a look of distaste, like a girl reluctantly climbing into her date’s filthy car.

    THEY WERE DOING eighty, without the light bar going or the throaty siren. Didn’t need them. There was hardly any traffic out here, this time of night. And none of the retrofit accessories in the Dodge would have any inhibiting effect on suicidal wildlife. Sheriff Tom Dahl’s feeling was that deer were born without brains.
    He was sitting in the passenger seat and a young deputy, Peter Gibbs, was driving. Behind them was another car, Eric Munce at the wheel and, beside him, Howie Prescott, a massive, shaved-headed deputy who got good respect during traffic stops.
    Dahl had called his deputies and found no shortage of volunteers to help find out what had happened to their colleague Brynn McKenzie. They all stood ready to go, but four, he figured, was plenty.
    The sheriff was on the phone with an FBI agent in Milwaukee. His name was Brindle, which Dahl thought was a coloring of a horse or dog. The agent had been getting ready for bed but didn’t hesitate to help out. He sounded genuinely concerned.
    The subject of the conversation was the woman lawyer, Emma Feldman.
    “Well, Sheriff, started out as a little thing. She’s handling this corporate deal. She’s doing her homework and finds out that a lot of the companies on the lakefront have more than their fair share of documented aliens. Next thing a CI . . . that’s a—”
    “Confidential informant?” Dahl asked, but Brindle missed the irony.
    “Right. He says that Stanley Mankewitz, head of some local union, is selling forged green cards to illegals.”
    “How much could he make doing that?”
    “No, that’s not what it’s about. He doesn’t even charge ’em. What he does is gets them to guarantee that they’ll get jobs in open shops then unionize the workers. The union gets bigger, Mankewitz gets richer.”
    Hmm, Dahl thought. Clever idea.
    “That’s what we’re investigating right now.”
    “And this Mankewitz? He done it?”
    “Up in the air so far. He’s smart, he’s old school and he only hires people who keep their mouths shut. He’s a prick too, pardon my French, so, yeah, he did it. But the case’s weak. It takes just one witness having an accident or getting killed in a, quote, random house invasion and the whole case could fall apart.”
    “And here she is, out in the wilderness, this lawyer. A lot of accidents could happen there.”
    “Exactly. Milwaukee PD should’ve had somebody on her. They dropped the ball there.”
    This was offered a little too fast, Dahl thought. The finger-pointing’d already started up, it seemed. Policing wasn’t much different in Milwaukee, Washington, D.C., or Kennesha County.
    Dahl said, “Go faster.”
    “What?” the FBI agent asked.
    “I’m talking to the driver. . . . When my deputy’s husband called her phone, some man answered, claiming to be a deputy. Near as we can tell, there’re no troopers or neighboring law out there. None at all.”
    “I see why you’re worried. Where is this happening?”
    “Lake Mondac.”
    “I don’t know