The Bodies Left Behind

incinerating the cookers.
    The little girl was inside! she thought, panicked.
    The voice called again, “No, no! Please!” The woman’s voice wasn’t Michelle’s. It was Amy’s mother’s.
    Then the crack of pistol fire.
    The boom of a shotgun.
    Four or five more rounds. A pause, for reloading maybe. More shots.
    Silence. Then a voice, high-pitched in fear or desperation. A man or woman or child? . . . Brynn couldn’t tell.
    Another shot.
    More silence.
    Please, let her be all right. Please . . . picturing the tiny girl’s face.
    Motion flickered in the side-view mirror. A figure, carrying a pistol, was walking around the camper, studying it carefully and the bushes nearby.
    He then turned toward the van Brynn sat in.
    She looked around for anything that would free her hands. She slipped them around the gearshift lever between the seats and began to saw. The gesture was futile.
    She glanced outside. The figure was now looking directly at the van.

    SHERIFF TOM DAHL stood over the two bodies in the kitchen: a businesswoman in her thirties, looking like she’d kicked off her shoes after work, happily anticipating a weekend of relaxation; the other corpse was a solid man about her age, with a mop of post-college hair. He was the sort of guy you’d have a beer with at The Corner Place in Humboldt. The blood made huge stains on the floor.
    Although Dahl had the edge most law enforcers develop from the job, this particular crime shook him. The majority of deaths in Kennesha County were accidental and occurred outside. Homeless people frozen, car accident victims, workers betrayed by their equipment and sportsmen by the forces of nature. Seeing these poor young folks inside their own home, gangland-killed like this, was hard.
    He was staring at their pale hands; those of the typical dead around here were ruddy and calloused.
    And on top of it all, his own deputy—his secret favorite in the department, the daughter he would have liked to have—was missing from a house tattooed with small-arms fire.
    He exhaled slowly.
    Footsteps came downstairs. “The friend?” Dahl asked Eric Munce, the man he’d chosen not to sendhere, picking instead Kristen Brynn McKenzie. And the man whose future presence in the department would be a constant reminder of that decision, however things turned out.
    “No sign of her.”
    One relief. He’d been sure that they were going to find her body upstairs in the bedroom. Murdered and maybe not right away.
    Munce said, “They might have her with them. Or she’s with Brynn, hiding somewhere.”
    Let’s pray for that, Dahl thought, and he did, though very briefly.
    A call came in for him. The FBI, Special Agent Brindle explained, was sending several agents—now that Emma Feldman, a witness in the case against Mankewitz, was dead. A State Police commander was headed here too and wouldn’t like the Feebies—he tended to squeeze hard in pissing contests—but Dahl was all for the more the merrier. No criminals ever escaped because too many talented cops were on his trail. Well, most of the time.
    A crime scene unit from the State Police was en route as well, so Dahl ordered his boys to leave the evidence for collection but to look everywhere they needed in order to figure out what had happened and where Brynn and the Feldmans’ friend might be.
    It didn’t take long to find significant pieces of the puzzle: gunshots through windows, gunshots inside, gunshots outside, footprints that suggested two males were probably the perps. Brynn’s Sheriff Department uniform shoes were inside, and the friend had abandonedher chic city boots beside the Feldmans’ Mercedes—both in favor of practical hiking footgear. One was injured; she was using a cane or crutch and appeared to be dragging one foot.
    The Mercedes sat in front of the garage with gunshots in two tires, window smashed and hood up, a battery cable dangling. Another car had burned rubber—well, scattered gravel—as it fled. Another had limped out, dragging a flat.
    But the jigsaw pieces didn’t give any sense of the big picture. Now, standing in front of the fragrant fireplace in the living room, Dahl summarized to himself: a mess. We got a mess on our hands.
    And where the hell is Brynn?
    Eric?
    I’d rather it wasn’t him. You know how he gets.
    Dahl noticed something in the woodwork. “Anybody trying to play CSI ?” he asked sourly, eyes on Munce.
    The deputy looked where he was pointing. It seemed like someone had