The Bodies Left Behind

knife-sharp thorns and the steep drop-offs.
    As for where the women actually were in this mess of woods north of the trail, they couldn’t say—until they found a clue. Lewis stopped, pointing to something white, lying on the ground. Small but very bright in the sea of blacks.
    They approached it very slowly. Hart didn’t think it was a trap—couldn’t imagine what it would be—but he didn’t trust anything about Brynn now.
    The Trickster  . . .
    “Cover me. I’ll check it out. Don’t shoot unless I’m about to get shot or stuck. I don’t want to give us away.”
    A nod.
    Hart, crouching, moved in close until he was about three feet away from the object. It was a white tube about eighteen inches long and three inches wide. One end bulged out. He prodded the object with a branch. When nothing happened he looked around. Lewis was scanning the nearby scenery. He gave a thumbs-up to Hart.
    The man bent down and picked it up. Lewis joined him.
    “A sock with a billiard ball inside.”
    “That was theirs?”
    “Has to be. It’s clean and dry.”
    “Shit. One of ’em was going to use that to clobber us. Man, that’d break some bone.”
    Brynn, Hart thought.
    “What’s that?” Lewis asked.
    Hart looked at him, eyebrow raised.
    “What’d you say? I missed it.”
    “Nothing. Didn’t say a thing.” Had he said her name aloud?
    They’d continued straight, going almost due north; just now their prey had come into view.
    They were directly behind the women on a relatively flat stretch of forest, mostly oak and maple and birch, that seemed to end in a clearing about a quarter mile ahead. To the right the ground dropped sharply toward a small, rocky trough—a streambed feeding what seemed to be a small lake, surrounded by dense pine forest. On their left the ground rose to a series of ridges, some covered with trees, some dotted with brush and rock, some bald.
    Hart crouched, motioning Lewis to join him. The man complied instantly.
    “We’re going to split up here. You go way round to the left. That ridge, see it?”
    A nod.
    “You’ll be in grass, so you can move faster. Then come in and get close to them on their left flank. I’ll keep going straight, come up behind them. When they hit that place there—see that sweet little clearing?”
    “Yeah, got it.”
    “I’ll wave the sock.” He tapped his pocket where he’d stuffed the billiard ball cudgel. “You shoot. That’ll keep ’em down. I’ll come up behind and finish them.”
    “Bodies?” Lewis asked. “We can’t leave ’em. The animals’ll carry the parts off all over the park. That’ll be a lot of evidence.”
    “No, we’ll bury them.”
    “Been cold this April. Ground’s pretty hard still. And what’ll we dig with?” Lewis looked around. He pointed at a small lake to their right. “There. We could weigh ’em down with rocks. Probably nobody comes there. It’s a pretty shitty little lake.”
    Hart glanced at it. “Good.”
    “Now, I’ll set the choke wide but if I don’t hit both of ’em with the first shot the other’ll go to cover right away. We’ll have to track her down. Who’d I ought to target first? Michelle or the cop?”
    Hart was watching the women make their way through the forest, casual as oblivious tourists. “You get Michelle. I’ll take Brynn.”
    “My pleasure.” Lewis nodded. It was clearly his preference anyway.

    THE WHITE F150 sped out of Humboldt and onto the highway.
    The pickup truck was doing close to fifty, the gassy engine accelerating hard.
    Graham Boyd was driving and his only passengers were three azaleas in the truck bed, which he hadn’t bothered to untether. He’d locked away the pellet gun in the same closet that contained Joey’s skateboard.
    After the confrontation with his stepson he’d goneinto the boy’s room to talk to him but he was pretending to sleep. Graham had called, “Joey,” twice, in a whisper. Part of him had been relieved that the boy didn’t respond; he’d had no clue what he was going to say. He just hated that all this tension was unresolved.
    He’d thought about taking the game cartridges, the computer and the whole Xbox itself and locking them in the toolshed. But he didn’t. It seemed to him that when it came to children, decisions about punishments shouldn’t be made in anger.
    You’re the adult, he’s the child.
    Chalk that one up to instinct.
    He’d checked five minutes later and the light under the boy’s door was still