The Bodies Left Behind: A Novel

by Jeffery Deaver

  “Like, I don’t know. Somebody was sweeping, covering up footprints.”

  “Yeah. It does.” He walked to the base of the steep hill. “Okay. Here we go.” He found a broken branch. “Here’s her broom. They did come this way. And look at that….” He pointed out a tiny set of shoe prints. “That little girl. In the camper. She must’ve got out.”

  Lewis had gone quiet again, and he rubbed his tattoo—the cross on his neck—compulsively.

  Hart said, “I’m not inclined to kill children. We’ll take care of the women but let the girl be.”

  But, funny, Lewis was bothered by something else.

  “One thing I want to say. I should’ve before. But…”

  “Go on, Comp.”

  “That robbery I told you about?”

  “The robbery?”

  “The bank.”

  In the snow, Hart remembered. Where he’d traded shots with the bank guard who was a former cop. “Yeah?”

  “Wasn’t quite honest with you.”

  “That right?”

  “Something’s been eating at me, Hart.”

  He was no longer the sarcastic “my friend.” And hadn’t been for hours. He said, “Go ahead, Comp. What is it?”

  “Truth is…we didn’t get away with fifty thousand. Or whatever I said. Was closer to…okay, it was closer to three. Really two and some change. And, okay, it wasn’t a bank. Was a guard refilling the ATM outside…and I only fired to scare him. He dropped his gun. And peed his pants, I think. He didn’t have any backup piece either…. I boost things up sometimes, exaggerate, you know. Got into the habit around my brother. Kind of had to, growing up…got disrespected a lot. So. There you have it.”

  “That’s it, the confession?”

  “Guess so.”

  “Hell, Comp, I wouldn’t want to work with somebody didn’t have a healthy ego. Way you can look at it, you made two thousand bucks for, what, two minutes’ work?”

  “’Bout that.”

  “That’s about sixty thousand an hour. And he peed his pants? Hell, that made it worth it right there.” Hart laughed.

  Lewis asked shyly, “You still interested in doing a heist together, you and me?”

  “You bet I am. Sooner we’re done here, the sooner we can start planning some jobs that don’t crash and burn. One hundred ten percent.”

  Repressing a grin, Lewis tapped his cigarettes again, like a good Catholic blessing himself.

  THE TREK WAS

  much harder than she’d anticipated. The hillside was so steep in places that it couldn’t be climbed, at least not with a nine-year-old in tow. Brynn frequently had to find alternative routes.

  “How about there?”

  Brynn glanced at the place where Michelle was pointing. It seemed to be a fairly level path between a rock ledge and a dense cluster of trees. Brynn considered it but that way would leave them completely exposed from below, with no escape routes. They had to bypass the path, taking precious minutes to find a way around. Brynn wasn’t entirely confident that Hart had bought the ploy about Point of Rocks. She was beginning to feel an itching sensation on the back of her neck, as if the men were drawing close.

  The women continued upward, looping around a formation of limestone, twenty feet high. Brynn could see that rock climbers had been here. Metal spikes had been pounded into the cracks. Tonight the hobby struck her as pure madness. Something Joey would try. But she put her son out of her head. Concentrate, she told herself.

  A brief respite as they traversed a fairly level trail. Then upward again, gasping for breath, all three of them.

  The sound of the Snake running through the gorge on their right grew softer as they moved higher. Brynn guessed they were now sixty feet or so above the river.

  “Oh, no,” Michelle whispered. Brynn too stopped. Their level plain suddenly ended in a sheer rock wall, a dead end. To the right, the ground extended to a steep drop-off into the gorge. Brynn walked toward it slowly. Dizzy, uncomfortable with the height, she didn’t get to the edge itself but returned quickly. “We can’t go that way.”

  She sighed in frustration. The men couldn’t be more than a half mile from the interstate but the hike was taking forever. To go back and find a way around the wall would add another ten minutes.

  Brynn looked back, then surveyed the wall. It was about twenty feet high and not completely vertical. The slope was probably seventy degrees in most places and the surface was cracked and craggy. She asked Michelle, “Can you do it?”

  “Damn right, I can.”

  Brynn smiled, said to Amy, “You remember when you were little, Amy? You and I’ll climb together. We’ll play piggyback?”

  “I guess. Rudy wants me to ride piggyback sometimes. I don’t like it. He smells bad.”

  Brynn shot a glance to Michelle, who grimaced in disgust. But Brynn smiled at Amy. “Well, I probably don’t smell too good either. But it’ll be fun. Come on. Let’s go.” Brynn turned around. She whispered to Michelle, “I’ll go up first. If something happens, I drop her, try to break her fall. Don’t worry about me.”

  Michelle nodded and boosted the girl up, whispering, “Can you handle her?”

  “No choice,” Brynn gasped.

  The theme for the evening.

  Though the burden wasn’t as great as it could be. She was thinking how thin the little girl was…and about the sad fate that had landed her squarely in such neglect.

  They started up the cliff, a foot at a time. Heart slamming, legs burning, Brynn slowly climbed. About fifteen feet from the ground, the muscles in her legs began quivering. More from fear than from effort. How she hated heights…. She paused frequently.

  Amy, with her arms around Brynn’s neck, was holding on very tightly, making it hard for Brynn to breathe, but she’d rather the child kept a solid grip.

  Her rubber legs propelled her another five feet, then ten, grasping handholds harder than she needed to, fingers cramping. Even her toes curled, as if she were climbing barefoot.

  Finally, an eternity, her head was over the edge, and she was looking at a flatter plain. In front of her was a huge tangle of forsythia. Not daring to look down, she grabbed all the vines within arm’s length in her right hand, tested them and, with a deep breath, let go of the rock. She pulled herself halfway over the edge and then said, “Amy, go over my head. Put your knees on my shoulders and climb. When you’re on the top, stop. Just stand there.”

  Brynn was about to offer more reassurance but the girl said quickly, “Okay,” and climbed off. And stood motionless, at attention.

  A child used to doing exactly as she was told.

  Brynn then pulled herself the rest of the way over the top and sat down, breathing hard. She looked over the side—disappointingly, it seemed much less intimidating from this end, as if the effort and fear had been wasted. She beckoned Michelle up. The young woman climbed quickly, despite her bad ankle—thanks to youth and that fancy butt-firming health club of hers. Brynn helped her over the edge and the three sat together in a huddle, catching their breath.

  Brynn oriented herself and, looking around, found what seemed to be a path that led upward. They started walking again.

  Michelle eased close to Brynn. “What’ll happen to her?”

  “If she doesn’t have kin, a foster home.”

  “That’s sad. She should be with a family.”

  “The system’s pretty good in Kennesha. They check on the families real well.”

  “Just nice if she could go to somebody who really wanted her. I’d love her.”

  Maybe one of the problems between Michelle and her husband had to do with children. He might not have wanted any.

  “Adoptions’re possible. I don’t know how that works.” Brynn touched her cheek. It hurt like hell. She saw Michelle’s eyes focused on Amy. “So you’d like kids?”

  “Oh, they’re the best. I just love them…. The way you guide them, teach them things. And what they teach you. They’re always a challenge. Children mak
e you, I don’t know, whole. You’re not a complete person without them.”

  “You sound like an expert. You’ll be a good mother.”

  Michelle gave a laugh. “I intend to be.”

  For the moment at least, thoughts of unfaithful husbands and marriages in shambles had faded and the woman seemed to be looking at a brighter future.

  And what about me? Brynn thought.

  Keep going, she told herself. Keep going.

  LEWIS HAD MADE

  an improvised sling for the shotgun and was carrying the weapon on his back. The men were going straight up the slope as best they could, Hart figuring that the women would be taking an easier route because of the girl. Hart thought of the professional couples and their kids he saw at the rock-climbing walls at recreation areas and sports stores near where he lived. He’d wondered if any of the parents actually had jobs that required them to climb like this. But no, of course they didn’t. They were paper pushers. They made ten times what he did, their lives were never endangered, they never felt the pain that Hart was experiencing. Yet he would never dream of swapping lives with them for any money.

  They’re nothing but dead bodies, Brynn. Sitting around, upset, angry about something they saw on TV doesn’t mean a single thing to them personally. Going to their jobs, coming home, talking stuff they don’t know or care about….

  They came to a flat stretch and paused, looking around carefully. He wasn’t going to forget that both women had attempted to kill them tonight and he had no reason to think they’d given up trying. Sure, they wanted to escape. But he couldn’t get Brynn’s eyes out of his mind. Both in the driveway of the Feldmans’ house and then in the van just before she released the brake, risking her own death to stop him.

  You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney….

  Hart had to smile.

  At that moment a faint scream sounded in the distance, ahead of them. A high squeal.

  “The hell’s that?” Lewis looked alarmed. “Fucking Blair Witch Project.”

  Hart laughed. “That’s the girl. The little girl.”

  “She’s as good as your GPS, Hart.”

  And they broke into a run.

  “AN ANIMAL?” MUNCE

  asked in a whisper. Graham cocked his head, listening to the keening howl somewhere nearby, to their left, it seemed, carried on the breeze. He’d seen an animal—a coyote or feral dog, maybe even a wolf—on a ridge, looking their way. Was that the source of the sound? He knew plants, he knew soil and silt and rock. He didn’t know animals or their habits.

  “Could be, I don’t know.”

  It hadn’t sounded like a woman’s voice. It had almost seemed like a child. But that couldn’t be.

  “Maybe the wind,” Munce offered.

  Though there’d been a sense of alarm, an uneasiness about it. Fear more than pain. Now silence.

  Wind, bird, animal…Please. Let it be one of those.

  “Down there,” Munce said. “Right below us.”

  Graham was frowning at the daunting sweep of trees that disappeared away from them. They’d come about a quarter mile, picking their way slowly through the dense woodland. It was a much longer trek than expected, owing to detours around brush thick as scouring pads and steep cliffs that couldn’t be negotiated without rappelling gear—which Munce had announced he wished they’d had and Graham was grateful they didn’t.

  They started down the hillside, using trees as handholds once again. Then they found themselves stymied—in a funnel of rock. “I think that’s our only option,” Munce said, pointing down a chute descending away from them. It was about six feet wide and at a forty-five-degree slope, littered with shale and gravel and dirt. Slippery as ice. And if you fell you’d slide along the rugged stone surface for a good fifty feet to a precipice. They couldn’t see what lay beyond. “Or we go back and try to make our way around.”

  Just then another wail filled the night. The men looked at each other, eyes wide.

  There was no doubt the sound had come from a human throat.

  “We go,” Graham said, torn between a frantic need to find the source of the screams and fear that, if they lost their footing here, they’d find themselves tumbling off a cliff—or sliding into a grove of deadly honey locust.

  “WHERE’S MY MOTHER?”

  Amy shrieked again. “Please, honey,” Brynn said to the little girl. Held her finger to her lips. “Please be quiet.”

  Exhausted, emotionally drained, the little girl was losing it.

  “No!” she wailed. Her face was bright red, eyes and nose streaming. “Noooo!”

  “Those men will hurt us, Amy. We have to be quiet.”

  “Mommy!”

  They were on a relatively flat stretch of ground in a thick forest, the trees only a yard or two apart. They’d been moving along well when suddenly Amy had become hysterical.

  “Where’s my mommy? I want to go back to Mommy!”

  Forcing a smile onto her face, Brynn knelt down and took the girl by the shoulders. “Please, honey, we have to be quiet. We’re playing that game, remember? We need to be quiet.”

  “I don’t want to play any game! I want to go back! I want Mommy!”

  The girl’s age was close to ten but once again Brynn thought she was acting more like a five-or six-year-old—maybe a reaction to this terrible evening, maybe a harrowing insight about her upbringing.

  “Please!”

  “Nooo!” The volume of the accompanying squeal was astonishing.

  “Let me try,” Michelle said, kneeling in front of Amy and setting down the spear. She handed the girl her stuffed toy. Amy flung it to the ground.

  Brynn said, “I’ll check behind us. If they’re nearby they had to’ve heard her.” She jogged back twenty feet and climbed a small hillock, gazed back.

  The girl’s screaming seemed like a siren.

  Brynn squinted through the night.

  Oh, no…

  She was dismayed, but not surprised to see, two hundred yards away, the men making their way in this direction. They paused and looked around, trying to find the source of the commotion.

  Thank goodness, though, just at that moment Amy fell silent.

  The men continued to look around them for a moment and then started walking again. They vanished behind a stone wall.

  Brynn returned to Michelle and Amy. The little girl, though still unhappy, had stopped crying and was clutching her toy once more.

  “How’d you do that?”

  Michelle shrugged, grimacing. Whispered: “Wasn’t such a great idea. I told her we were on our way to see her mommy. Couldn’t think of what else to say.”

  Well, it didn’t matter. The girl would learn the truth sooner or later but for now they sure couldn’t afford the screaming. Brynn whispered, “They’re back there.”

  “What? Hart and his partner?”

  A nod.

  “How?”

  Hart, of course. Brynn said, “Reverse-reverse psychology. Two hundred yards or so back. We’ve got to move.”

  They headed toward the gorge, the ground being flatter, then north again toward the interstate. They knew the direction, because the river was on their right but, with the landscape more open as they rose higher, they were forced to zigzag—now seeking out brush and trees for cover. It was taking too long, Brynn reflected, feeling Hart’s presence growing closer.

  She led Michelle and Amy back into the thicker woods and they continued north. Suddenly faint light streaked from left to right, a truck or car on the interstate. A half mile, maybe less. Brynn and Michelle shared a smile and started forward again.

  Which is when they heard a snap of a footstep, to their left, somewhere in a thick pine forest. The sound was close. Brynn looked at the little girl, whose gaunt face warned of another outburst.

  Another snap. Closer. Footsteps, definitely.

  Hart and his partner must have moved faster than Brynn had expected, closing the two hundred yards in only fift
een minutes. They’d probably found a smooth trail the women had missed.

  Brynn pointed to the ground. The three of them went prone behind a fallen tree. Amy started to cry again but Michelle pulled her close and worked her magic once more. Brynn picked up handfuls of leaves and, as quietly as she could, spread them on top of the other two. Then she also lay down and camouflaged herself.

  The footsteps grew closer, then were lost in the rustling wind.

  Then Brynn gasped. She believed she heard somebody whispering her name.

  Her imagination, of course. It was just the breeze, which was blowing steadily, swirling leaves and hissing through branches.

  But then she heard it again. Yes, definitely, “Brynn,” in a faint whisper.

  Her jaw quivered in shock. Hart!

  Eerie, as if he had a sixth sense she was nearby.

  Again, though the name was indistinct, lost in the sounds of the forest.

  In her exhaustion and pain she almost thought the voice sounded like Graham’s. But that was impossible, of course. Her husband was home, asleep now.

  Or perhaps not home and asleep.

  “Brynn…”

  She touched her finger to her lips. Michelle nodded, reaching into her jacket for the knife.

  The steps began again, very close, it seemed, and heading directly toward the fallen tree they hid beneath.

  Times to fight and times to run.

  Time to hide too.

  Thinking of the men with their loud, loud guns, another memory came back to her again: her first husband, eyes wide in shock and agony, stumbling back under the nearly point-blank impact of the slug, as Brynn’s service weapon clattered to their kitchen floor after the discharge.

  Was some sort of justice at work here, a divine or spiritual payback?

  Would her fate now be similar to Keith’s?

  The footsteps grew closer.

  Silently Brynn sprinkled more leaves over the threesome. And closed her eyes, recalling that when he was younger Joey believed that doing this would make you disappear.