The Bodies Left Behind

locking block pin back into the frame.
    “That’s pretty romantic,” Michelle offered.
    What Brynn had thought too.
    After the seminar they’d had coffee and discussed small-town policing, and small-town dating. He’d winced once and she’d asked if he was all right. Thenhe explained that he’d just gotten back from a medical; he’d been shot in a real hostage rescue, which nonetheless ended happily—for everybody but the hostage takers.
    “The HT’s didn’t quite make it.”
    Oh, that incident? she’d thought, recalling the bank robbery gone bad, two armed tweakers—meth heads—inside a branch of Piny Grove Savings with customers and employees. The windows were too thick for a safe sniper shot, so Keith had walked around the barricade and through the front door, holding his weapon at his side. Not even crouching to present a smaller target, he’d shot one in the head, took a round in the side and in the vest from the other one, then killed him too, through the kiosk he tried to hide behind.
    The HT’s didn’t quite make it.
    Keith had recovered quickly from his minor injuries. He was reprimanded—it had to be done—for the Bruce Willis/Clint Eastwood procedure. But nobody had treated his disobedience very seriously and, of course, the media had lapped it up like a kitten gorging on milk.
    Brynn made him tell her the story in depth. She was fascinated. Too fascinated, she’d decided later, utterly won over by the tough, quiet man.
    Their first date involved a horror movie, Mexican food and lengthy discussions of calibers, body armor and high-speed chases.
    They were married eleven months after that.
    “So you married a cowboy?”
    Brynn nodded.
    Michelle added with a grimace, “I married my father, my therapist says. . . . Anyway, what happened?”
    Ah, what happened? Brynn managed to refrain from stroking her deformed jaw but couldn’t stop a compulsive memory: Keith, his face flipping instantly from rage to shock, stumbling back under the impact of the bullet, gripping his chest, as their brightly lit kitchen filled with the pungent smell of gun smoke from her service Glock.
    “Brynn?” Michelle persisted softly. “What happened?”
    Finally she whispered, “Things just didn’t work out. . . . So, there I was, single again. I had Joey and my job—my mother was living with us then, so there was a built-in babysitter. I loved work. Had no plans to get married again. But a couple years ago I met Graham. Bought some plants from his landscaping company. They didn’t work out too well and I came back for more. He told me what I was doing wrong and then asked me out. I said yes. He was funny, he was nice. He wanted children but his first wife hadn’t. We went out for a while. And I found it was really comfortable. He proposed. I accepted.”
    “Comfortable’s nice.”
    “Oh, real nice. No fights. Home every night.”
    “But . . .?”
    Now she was touching her jaw. She lowered her hand.
    Brynn grimaced. “A little time goes by and suddenly I’m working more assignments, longer hours, tougher jobs. Lot of domestics. And when I wasn’t doing that I’dspend time with Joey. . . . He’d had some problems at school. That’s an issue, I don’t know if you heard? Children of law enforcers?”
    Michelle shook her head.
    “Statistically more behavior problems, psychological issues. Joey keeps getting into scrapes at school. And he can be a little reckless—he skateboards like a speed-demon. So I was focusing on my job and on Joey, and next thing I know Graham’s started going out to regular poker games.”
    “But they weren’t really poker games.”
    “Sometimes they were. But sometimes he wouldn’t go for the whole game. Sometimes he didn’t show up at all.”
    One thing she didn’t share with Michelle was that when Tom Dahl asked her to drive to Lake Mondac earlier her first thought was: If I go, Graham can’t leave tonight. Can’t see her.
    Thinking too: He didn’t answer his phone when she’d called from the car; had he gone anyway?
    “You’re sure?” Michelle asked.
    “Oh, there was an eyewitness. Saw them together.”
    “Do you trust ’im?”
    “Pretty much. It was me.” Brynn could picture the scene now. Outside of Humboldt. Driving in a detective’s car to a briefing on a meth lab situation. She’d seen Graham standing next to a blonde, tall, outside the Albemarle Motel. She was nodding, smiling. Brynn remembered it seemed like a nice smile. He was