The hotel manager said she’d seen on TV a composite picture of the man wanted in connection with the killings at Lake Mondac, a man possibly going by the name or nickname of Hart or Harte. Someone looking very similar had checked into the inn there on April 16. The manager had called the local police and they referred her to the Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department.
The name of the guest was William Harding.
Harding…Hart…
“Is it true he’s a killer?” the woman asked uneasily.
“That’s our understanding…. What was the address on the register?” Brynn snapped her fingers at Todd Jackson, who appeared instantly at her cubicle.
As the manager recited an address in Minneapolis, Brynn transcribed it and told the young deputy, “Check this out. Fast.”
Asked about phone calls and visitors, the woman said there were no outgoing calls but the guest, Harding, met in the coffee shop with a skinny man with a crew cut, who the manager thought was rude, and a pretty woman in her twenties with short red hair. She looked a bit like the woman in the other composite picture the manager had seen.
Getting better and better…
Then the woman added, “The thing is, he never checked out.”
“He’s still there?” she asked.
“No, Officer. He checked in for three days, went out the afternoon of the seventeenth and then never came back. I tried to call but directory assistance doesn’t have anybody listed in Minneapolis, or St. Paul, by that name at that address.”
She wasn’t surprised when Jackson slipped her a piece of paper that read: Fake. A parking lot. No name in MN, WI, NCIC or VICAP.
She nodded, whispering, “Tell Tom we’ve got something here.”
Jackson disappeared as Brynn was scanning through her notes, flipping pages. “What about a credit card?” she asked the manager.
“Paid cash. But the reason I called: he left a suitcase here. If you want to pick it up, it’s yours.”
“Really? I’ll tell you, I’d like to drive down there and look through it. Let me rearrange a few things and give you a call back.”
After they disconnected Brynn slouched back in her chair.
“You okay?” Tom Dahl asked, stepping into her cubicle, looking cautiously at her eyes, which she supposed reflected a certain gleam.
“I’m more than okay. We’ve got ourselves a lead.”
MICHELLE ALISON KEPLER
—now brunet and severely collagened—sat in the bedroom of a ritzy house in a ritzy neighborhood of Milwaukee. She was painting her nails dark plum, their color on that terrible night in April. She was reflecting on a truth that she’d learned over the years: that people heard what they wanted to hear, saw what they wanted, believed what they wanted. But to exploit that weakness you had to be sharp, had to recognize their desires and expectations then subtly and cleverly feed them enough crumbs to make them think they were satisfied. Hard to do. But for people like Michelle it was necessary, a survival skill.
Michelle was thinking in particular of her companion that night: Deputy Brynn McKenzie.
You’re their friend?…From Chicago?…I heard you and Emma worked together…. Are you a lawyer too?
My God, what a straight man you were, Brynn.
Michelle had found herself in a tough situation back there at the house. The Feldmans were dead. She’d found the files she’d been after and destroyed them, which meant she no longer needed Hart and Lewis. But then Hart had reacted like a cat…and the evening went to hell.
The escape into the woods…
Then finding Deputy Brynn McKenzie. She knew instinctively just what role to play, a role that the country hick deputy could understand: rich, spoiled girl, not very likeable but with just the right touch of self-questioning doubt, a woman who’d been dumped by her husband for being exactly who that husband encouraged her to be.
Brynn would be irritated at first, but sympathetic too, which is just how we feel about most people we meet under difficult circumstances. We never like victims—until we get to know them and recognize something of them within us.
Besides, the role would keep Brynn from wondering why she didn’t quite seem like your typical houseguest mourning the deaths of her host and hostess, murders she’d just committed.
I wasn’t lying when I said I was an actress, Brynn. I just don’t act onstage or in front of the camera.
But now it was three weeks later. And things were turning around. About time. She sure deserved a break. After all the outrageous, unfair crap she’d been through on April 17 and afterward, she’d earned some good luck.
Stuffing cotton balls between the toes of her left foot, she continued painting.
Yep, God or fate was back on her side. She’d finally managed to track down Hart’s full name and address—he lived in Chicago, as it turned out. She’d learned, though, that he wasn’t spending a lot of time there lately; he was frequently in Wisconsin, which was sobering, but expected, of course. He was looking for her as diligently as she was looking for him.
He was looking for a few other people too, and apparently he’d found one. Freddy Lancaster had stopped returning phone calls and text messages. Gordon Potts would also be on Hart’s list, though he was hiding way out in Eau Claire.
Michelle was cautious but not panicked. She’d cut nearly all ties between herself and the events of April 17. Hart knew her real name—he knew it from looking through her purse that night—but locating Michelle Kepler wouldn’t be easy; she always made sure of that.
Ever since her teens Michelle had been an expert at working her way into other people’s lives, finagling them into taking care of her. Playing helpless, playing lost, playing sexy (with men mostly, but with women too when necessary). She was presently living with Sam Rolfe, a rich businessman in Milwaukee (nobody saw, heard or believed what he wanted to better than Sam). Her driver’s license listed an old address and her mail went to a post office box, which she’d changed first thing on April 18, no forwarding.
As for the evidence implicating her in the Lake Mondac crimes—well, there wasn’t much. She’d stolen from poor Graham’s truck everything that contained her fingerprints—the map she’d given Hart and her purse. And when she’d swapped boots with her poor dead “friend,” Michelle had wiped down her Ferragamos with glass cleaner (Brynn, leaving $1,700 Italian leather? God, I hate you).
Now, the evidence from Lake Mondac was no longer a threat. But one very real risk remained. It needed to be disposed of.
And that would happen today.
Michelle dried her toenails with a hair dryer, pleased with the results, though irritated that she hadn’t been able to get to the salon; with Hart loose she had to limit her trips out.
She left the luxurious bedroom and stepped into the living room where Rolfe sat on the couch with her daughter, Tory, five, and her son, Bradford, a skinny boy of seven, who didn’t smile much but had a wad of blond hair you just could not resist ruffling. She couldn’t look at her children without her heart swelling with a mother’s love.
Rolfe had a pleasant face and lips that weren’t too disgusting. On the negative side, he needed to lose about forty pounds and his hair smelled of lilac, which was gross. She hated his tattoo. Michelle had nothing against tats in general but he had a star on his groin. A big star. The pubic hair grew through part of it and his belly covered up another part depending on how he sat.
Oh please…
But Michelle was no complainer if the script didn’t call for complaining. Rolfe had plenty of money from his trucking company and she could put up with making her sculpted body frequently available to him in exchange for…well, just about anything she wanted.
Michelle was an expert at spotting the Sam Rolfes of the world—men who heard, saw and believed. If God gives you a lazy streak, a slow mind for school or a trade, expensive tastes, a pretty face and better body, then you damn well better be able to sniff out men like that the way a snake senses a confused mouse.
&n
bsp; Of course, you had to be watchful. Always.
Now, seeing her son and Rolfe laugh at something the TV judge was saying, looking like father and son, Michelle was enraged with jealousy. She had a momentary urge to tell Rolfe to go fuck himself and to walk out the door with her children.
But she pulled back. However angry she became, which was usually red-hot angry, she was usually able to control it. Survival. She did this now and smiled, though she also thought, with some glee: No blow jobs tonight, dear.
She wondered if he’d been talking about her to the children. She sensed he had been. She’d interrogate the boy later.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said and ushered her son off the couch and ordered him to get her a soda from the kitchen.
She watched Brad wander off. And the jealousy switched, finger snap, to overwhelming love.
Unable to have children, despite trying since she was sixteen, Michelle Kepler had been lucky enough to befriend a single mother in Milwaukee’s netherworld, on the pretext of volunteering with a nonprofit organization to help the disadvantaged.
HIV-positive from sex or drugs or both, Blanche was often sick and would leave her son and daughter in Michelle’s care. Despite her prescription-drug cocktails to keep AIDS at bay, the poor woman’s condition worsened fast—but she could take some solace in her written agreement to name Michelle as the custodian of the children if anything happened to her.
Which was fortunate because the woman died much sooner than expected.
A sad event.
Not long after which Michelle spent some time flushing down the toilet the six months’ worth of prescription AIDS medicines she’d withheld from Blanche, substituting Tylenol, Prylosec and children’s vitamins (which, thriftily, she also gave to the kids).
Now these two children were hers. She loved them with all her being. Doing what they were told, adoring her and—as the therapist told her in a court-ordered session years ago—validating an otherwise unremarkable life. But fuck the therapists; Michelle knew what she wanted. Always had.
In fact, one of the tragedies of that night in April—thanks to the unexpected appearance of Brynn’s husband with a gun—was Michelle’s loss of Amy, another girl she could have brought into her family. After killing Brynn and Hart (Lewis too, if Hart hadn’t done that for her), she’d have slipped away with her new daughter.
But that hadn’t worked out.
Add one more offense to Brynn McKenzie’s charge sheet.
Michelle now glanced at Tory, who was showing a picture she’d drawn to Rolfe. Michelle thought: The fat pig’s not your daddy. Don’t you dare ever think he is.
It was then that her phone rang. She noted caller ID, said to Rolfe, “I better get this.”
He nodded complacently, complimented the little girl on the picture and turned back to the TV.
Brad brought the soda for his mother. He held it out.
“Do I look like I’m on the phone?” Michelle snapped, then stepped into the bedroom. In a Latina accent she answered, “Harborside Inn. Can I help you?”
“Hi, yes. This’s Deputy McKenzie. From Kennesha County. You called about a half hour ago?”
“Oh, sure, Deputy. About that guest. The one with the suitcase.”
“Right. I’ve checked my schedule. I can be in Milwaukee about five.”
“Let’s see…could we make it five-thirty? We have a staff meeting at five.” Michelle was pleased at her performance.
I’m really an actress….
“Sure. I can do that.”
She gave Brynn the address.
“I’ll see you then.”
Michelle hung up. Closed her eyes. God or Fate…thank you.
She walked to the closet and took out a locked suitcase. Opened it. She removed her compact Glock, put it in her Coach purse. She stared out the window for a moment, feeling both nervous and exhilarated. Then she returned to the living room. She said to Rolfe, “That was the nursing home. My aunt’s taken a bad turn.” She shook her head. “God, that poor woman. It hurts me to the bone what she’s going through.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” he said, looking at her tormented face.
Michelle hated the endearment. She winced. And said, “I have to go see her.”
“You betcha….” He frowned. “Who is she again?”
Cool eyes turned his way. Meaning: Are you accusing me of something, or have you forgotten my relatives? Either way, you lose.
“Sorry,” he said fast, obviously reading her expression. “Haddie, right? That’s her name. Hey, I’ll drive you.”
Michelle smiled. “That’s okay. I’d rather it was Brad and me. I’ve got to deal with it with family, you understand.”
“Well, you betcha. It’s okay for Brad to see her, you think?”
She looked at the boy. “You want to see your auntie, don’t you?” He damn well better not say that he didn’t have an auntie. She held his eyes as she took the soda from his tiny hand and sipped it.
He nodded.
“I thought you did. Good.”
BRYNN MCKENZIE GATHERED
up her backpack and pitched out her second cocoa cup of the day. Thought again about Graham and their first date. Then about the last time they’d been out together alone—at a woodsy club on Route 32, dancing until midnight. It was one week before she’d found out he was “cheating.”
Why didn’t you ask me to go with you?…
And why hadn’t he invited her to a therapy session?
“Hey, B?” a woman’s voice interrupted. “How ’bout Bennigan’s later?” Jane Styles, another senior deputy, continued, “I’m meeting Reggie. Oh, and that cute guy from State Farm’s going to be there. One I told you about.”
Brynn whispered, “I’m not divorced, Jane.”
The words “not yet” tagged along at the end of the sentence.
“I just said he was cute. That’s only information. I’m not calling the caterer.”
“He sells insurance.”
“We need insurance. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Thanks, but I’ve got something going on. Buy a policy for me.”
“Funny.”
Thinking of Hart, thinking of the Harborside Inn in Milwaukee, Brynn McKenzie walked down a corridor she’d been up and down so often that she tended not even to see it. On the walls were pictures of deputies killed in the line of duty. There were four over the past eighty-seven years, though Eric Munce’s portrait wasn’t up yet. The county had the photos mounted in expensive frames. The first fatality was a deputy with a handlebar mustache. He’d been shot by a man involved in the Northfield, Minnesota, train robbery.
She passed a map of the county too, a big one, pausing and glancing at the azure blemish of Lake Mondac. She asked herself, So, is what I’m about to do now a good idea, or a bad idea?
Then she laughed. Why bother to ask the question? It doesn’t matter. I’ve already made the decision.
She fished the keys out of her pocket and pushed outside into a beautiful, clear afternoon.
Is it true he’s a killer?
That’s our understanding.
DRIVING THROUGH A
gritty neighborhood of Milwaukee toward Lake Michigan, Michelle Kepler was saying to her son, “What you’re going to do is go up to this woman and say you’re lost. She’ll be parked and when she gets out of her car you go up to her and say, ‘I’m lost.’ Say it.” “I’m lost.”
“Good. I’ll point her out to you. And make sure you look, you know, upset. Can you do that? You know how to look upset?”
“Uh-huh,” said Brad.
She snapped, “Don’t say you know something when you don’t. Now, do you know how to look upset?”
“No.”
“Upset is what I look like when you’ve done something wrong and you disappoint me. You understand?”
He nodded quickly. This, he got.
“Good.” She smiled.
In downtown Milwa
ukee, Michelle drove past the Harborside Inn then around the block. Returned to the hotel. The parking lot was half full. It was 5 P.M. Brynn McKenzie wasn’t due for another half hour.
“Better work.”
“What, Mommy?”
“Shhh.”
She circled once more, then pulled into a space on the street, twenty feet from the parking lot. “What we’re going to do is when the woman drives in, she’ll park somewhere there. See?…Good. And then you and me both get out. I’m going to go around that way, behind. You go up to her and knock on the window closest to her. Tell her you’re lost. And scared. She’ll get out of the car. What are you going to tell her?”
“I’m lost.”
“And?”
“Scared.”
“And what do you look like?”
“Upset.”
“Good.” She rewarded him with another big smile, tousling his hair. “Then Mommy’s going to come up and…talk to her for a minute, then we both run back to the car and drive home and see Sam. Do you like Sam?”
“Yeah, he’s fun.”
“You like him more than you like Mommy?”
The hesitation was like a hot iron against her skin. “No.”
She pushed the jealousy away as best she could. Time to concentrate.
Michelle studied the area. Cars passed occasionally, a customer would come out of a tavern across the street or an elderly local would amble along the sidewalk. But other than that the neighborhood was deserted.
“Now. Be quiet. And shut the radio off.”
Her phone buzzed. She read the text message, frowned. It was from a friend in Milwaukee. The words were sobering. The man had just heard, about twenty minutes ago, that Gordon Potts had been killed in Eau Claire. freek accd’t, it reported.
Michelle’s face tightened. Bullshit about the accident. It was Hart’s work. But it was good news for Michelle. She’d been uneasy being out in public here in Milwaukee with Hart still loose. Now at least she knew he wasn’t in town at the moment.
God or Fate, smiling on her.
The Bodies Left Behind: A Novel Page 36
