SITTING IN A

diner in downtown Milwaukee, big, broad Stanley Mankewitz noted his reflection in the glass, intensified because of the dark gray afternoon light. The date was May 1 but the weather had been borrowed from March.

This was an important date in Mankewitz’s life. International Workers’ Day, picked by worldwide labor movements in the late 1880s to honor common workers. That particular date was selected largely to commemorate the martyrs of the Haymarket Massacre, in which both police and workers were killed in May 1886 in Chicago, following rallies by the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions in support of an eight-hour workday.

May Day meant two things to Mankewitz. One, it honored working people—which he had been and which he now represented with all his heart—along with their brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Two, it stood as a testament to the fact that sacrifices sometimes had to be made for the greater good.

He had above his desk a quotation: the final words of one of the men sentenced to hang for his role in the Haymarket Massacre, August Spies (who, like all the defendants, scholars believed, was probably innocent). Spies had said, “The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”

Sacrifices…

Reflecting now on that momentous day, Mankewitz gazed at his image, observing not his rotund physique, which pestered him occasionally, but his exhausted demeanor. He deduced this from his posture, since he couldn’t see his facial features clearly, though they surely would have added to the overall profile.

He took a bite of his club sandwich, noted the American instead of the Swiss cheese, which he’d ordered. And too much mayo in the coleslaw. They always do that, he fretted. Why do I eat here?

The Hobbit detective had been proving scarce lately, which Mankewitz cleverly punned to James Jasons really meant he was proving “scared.”

Life had turned into a nightmare after the death of Emma Feldman. He’d been “invited” to the Bureau and the state’s attorney’s office. He went with his lawyer, answered some questions, not others, and they left without receiving anything other than a chilly good-bye. His lawyer hadn’t been able to read the signs.

Then he’d heard that the law firm where the Feldman woman worked was considering a suit against him for wrongful death—and their loss of earnings. His lawyer told him this was bullshit, since there was no legally recognized cause of action for that sort of thing.

More fucking harrassment.

Mankewitz snapped, “Maybe it’s also bullshit because nobody’s proved I killed her.”

“Yeah, of course, Stan. That goes without saying.”

Without saying.

He looked up from his lopsided sandwich and saw James Jasons approach. The thin man sat down. When the waitress arrived he asked for a Diet Coke.

“You don’t eat,” Mankewitz said.

“Depends.”

Which means what? Mankewitz wondered.

“I’ve got some updates.”

“Go on.”

“First, I called the sheriff up there, Tom Dahl. Well, I called as the friend of the Feldmans—the aggrieved friend. Ari Paskell. I put on the pressure: How come you haven’t found the killers yet? Et cetera.”

“Okay.”

“I’m convinced he believed I’m who I said I was.”

“What’d he say about the case?”

Jasons blinked. “Well, nothing. But he wouldn’t. I was just making sure he wasn’t suspicious about my trip up there.”

Mankewitz nodded, trusting the man’s judgment. “What’s up with our girlfriend?”

Referring to the deputy, Kristen Brynn McKenzie. Right after the events of April 17 and 18, Jasons had looked into who was leading the investigation into the deaths of the Feldmans. There was that prick of an FBI agent, Brindle, and a couple of Milwaukee cops, but it was the small-town woman who was really pushing the case.

“She’s unstoppable. She’s running with it like a bulldog.”

Mankewitz didn’t think bulldogs ran much but he didn’t say anything.

“She’s better than the Bureau and Milwaukee PD combined.”

“I doubt that.”

“Well, she’s working harder than they are. She’s been to Milwaukee four times since the murders, following up on leads.”

“She have jurisdiction?”

“I don’t think that’s an issue anybody’s worried about. What with all the shit that went down in Kennesha County. And the dead lawyer.”

“Why do I end up in the crock pot?”

Slight James Jasons had no response to that, nor should he offer one, the union boss reflected. Besides, the answer was obvious: Because I think immigrants who work hard ought to be let into the country to take the jobs of people who’re too lazy to work.

Oh, and because I say it in public.

“So, Ms. McKenzie’s not going to stop until she gets to the bottom of what happened up there.”

“She’s not going to stop,” Jasons echoed.

“Out to make a name for herself?”

His man considered this, frowning. “It’s not like she wants a notch in her gun or career advancement, anything like that.”

“What’s her point then?”

“Putting bad people in jail.”

Jasons reminded Mankewitz again about being in the forest that night in April—an unarmed Brynn McKenzie on top of a cliff, launching rocks and logs down onto the men pursuing her, while they fired back with a shotgun and automatic pistol. She had only vanished when Jasons himself began firing with the Bushmaster.

Mankewitz knew without a doubt he wouldn’t like Deputy McKenzie. But he had to respect her.

“What’s she found exactly?”

“I don’t know. She’s been on the lakefront, Avenues West, the Brewline, over to Madison, down to Kenosha. Went to Minneapolis for the day. She’s not stopping.”

The running bulldog.

“Anything I can use? Anything at all?”

Speaking from memory—he never seemed to need notes—Jasons said, “There is one thing.”

“Go ahead.”

“She’s got a secret.”

“Give me the gist.”

“Okay, six, seven years ago—married to her first husband. He was a state trooper, decorated, popular guy. Also had a temper. Had hit her in the past.”

“Prick, hitting women.”

“Well, turns out he gets shot.”

“Shot?”

“In his own kitchen. There’s an inquest. Accidental discharge. Unfortunate accident.”

“Okay. Where’s this going?”

“It wasn’t an accident at all. Intentional shooting. There was a cover-up. Might’ve gone all the way to Madison.”

“The kind of cover-up where people’ll lose their jobs, if it comes to light?”

“Lose their jobs and probably go to jail.”

“This just rumors?”

Jasons opened his briefcase. He removed a limp file folder. “Proof.”

For a little runt, the man sure did produce.

“Hope it’s helpful.”

Mankewitz opened the folder. He read, lifting an eyebrow. “I think it’s very helpful.” He looked up and said sincerely, “Thanks. Oh, and by the way, Happy May Day.”

 

HE LIKED THIS

town.

At least he liked it well enough as a temporary home.

Green Bay was flatter than the state park around Lake Mondac, less picturesque in that sense, but the bay itself was idyllic, and the Fox River impressive in that hard, industrial way that had always appealed to Hart. His father used to take him to the steel mill where the man worked in the payroll office, and the son was always excited beyond words to don a hard hat and tour the floor, which stank of smoke and coal and liquid metal and rubber.

His rental house here was on one of the numbered streets, working-class, not so great. But functional and cheap. His big problem was that he was bored.

Biding time never worked for Hart but biding time was what he had to do. No choice there, none at all.

If he got too bored, he’d go for a drive to the forest preserve, which he found comforting, especially since to get there he’d take Lakeview Drive—the name similar to the private road at Lake Mondac. He would go for walks or sit in the car and work. He had several prepaid mobile phones and would make calls about forthcoming jobs.

Today, in fact, he was just finishing one of these walks, and noticed a maypole set up in one of the clearings. The children were running in a circle, making a barber pole. Then they sat down to their picnic lunch. A school bus was nearby, a yellow stain on the otherwise pretty green.

Hart returned to his rental house, drove around the block, just to be sure, then went inside. He checked messages and made some calls on a new prepaid mobile. Then he went into the garage, where he’d set up a small woodworking shop, a tiny one. He’d been working on a project of his own design. It started out being just an hour or two a day. Now he was up to about four hours. Nothing relaxed him like working with wood.

As he sanded by hand, he thought back to that night in the woods, recalling all the trees there—oak, ash, maple, walnut, all the hardwoods that made up the medium for his craft. What he purchased as smooth, precisely cut lumber, with perfect angles at the corners, had begun as a huge, imposing, even forbidding creature, towering a hundred or so feet in the air. In one way it troubled him that the trees were cut down. In another, though, he believed he was honoring the wood by transforming it into something else, something to be appreciated.

He now looked over the project he’d been working on: an inlaid box. He was pleased with the progress. It might be a present for someone. He wasn’t sure yet.

At eight that night he drove to downtown Green Bay, to a woody, dark bar that served pretty good chili and had a bowl and a beer, sitting at the bar. He got another beer when he finished the first and went into the back room, where there was a basketball game on. He watched it, sipping the beer. It was a West Coast game and the hour was later here. Pretty soon the other patrons began to check their watches, then stand and head home. The score was 92–60 well into the second half and whatever interest had existed before the halftime show had evaporated.

Anyway, it was just basketball. Not the Packers.

He glanced at the walls. They were covered with old signs from Wisconsin’s breweries of the past, famous ones, he supposed, though he’d never heard of them. Loaf and Stein, Heileman, Foxhead. An ominous tusked boar stared at him from a Hibernia Brewing logo. A picture of a TV screen on which two women looked out at the audience. Penned below it was, Hey there, from Laverne and Shirley.

Hart asked for his check as the waitress passed by. She was polite but cool, having given up flirting with him when it wasn’t reciprocated the first time, a week or so ago. In bars like this one, once is enough. He paid, left and drove to another bar not far away, in the Broadway District. He stepped out of the car and into the shadows of a nearby alley.

When the man came out of the bar at 1 A.M., which he’d done virtually every night for the past week, Hart grabbed him, pushed a pistol into his back and dragged him into the alley.

It took Freddy Lancaster about fifteen seconds to decide that the impending threat from Hart was worse than the equally dangerous but less immediate threat of Michelle Kepler. He told Hart everything he knew about her.

One glance out of the alley and one single muted gunshot later, Hart returned to his car.

He drove back to his house, thinking about his next steps. He had believed Freddy when he’d said that neither he nor Gordon Potts knew exactly where Michelle lived but the man had disgorged enough information to allow Hart to start closing in on her.

Which he’d do soon.

But for now he’d do what he’d been obsessing about for the past several weeks. He yawned and reflected that at least he could get a good night’s sleep. He wouldn’t need an early start. Humboldt, Wisconsin, was only a three-hour drive away.

 

AT 2:30 P.M.

on Monday, May 4, Kristen Brynn McKenzie was in the bar area of a restaurant in Milwaukee, having chicken soup and a diet soda. She’d just left appointments with an MPD detective and an FBI agent, where they’d compared notes about their respective investigations into the killings of the Feldmans and the meth dealers in Kennesha County in April.

The meetings had proven to be unhelpful. The goal of the city and the federal investigations, it seemed, was to find a link to Mankewitz, rather than capture those individuals who had slaughtered an innocent husband and wife and left their bodies ignominiously on a cold kitchen floor.

A fact that Brynn pointed out to both the detective and the Feebie, neither of whom was moved by her assessment to do more than curl his lips sympathetically. And with some irritation.

She’d left the second appointment in a bad mood and decided to grab some belated lunch and head home.

In the past few weeks Brynn McKenzie had logged 2,300 miles in her own investigation. She was now driving a used Camry—very used. The waterlogged Honda had died in the line of duty, according to the insurance company, thus excluding it from her personal auto policy. She’d paid for the car herself, from her savings, which hurt, particularly since she wasn’t sure about her financial future.

Graham had moved out.

They’d discussed the situation several times again after April 18. But Graham remained badly shaken by Eric Munce’s death, for which he still blamed himself—though not Brynn, not at all (what a difference between him and Keith).

Graham had been gone only a few days, moving into a rental unit twenty minutes away. She found herself sad and troubled…but in some way relieved. There was also a large numbness factor. Of course, domestics were her specialty, and she knew it was far too early to say for certain where their lives were headed.

He was still paying his share of the bills—more than his share, actually, picking up all of Anna’s medical expenses that the insurance company wasn’t. But their lifestyle had been based on two incomes and Brynn was suddenly much more conscious of finances.

She ate a bit more of the cooling soup. Her phone buzzed. Joey was calling and she picked up immediately. It was just a check-in and she made cheerful comments as he told her a few things about gym and science, then hung up to hurry off to his final class.

After allowing that Graham might have been accurate in his comments about the boy—and about her rearing of him—she’d done some investigating (and interrogating) and learned that the reports of Joey’s ’phalting were true; he’d hitched rides on trucks a number of times. Only by the grace of God had he been saved from serious injury. The class cutting too had occurred.

She’d had several difficult talks with the boy—prodded largely by her mother, which had surprised her.

Brynn had swooped into her son’s life like a tactical officer from a helicopter. He was only allowed to board at a local free-style course, when she was there with him. And he had to wear his helmet, no ski hats.

“Mom, like, come on. Are you kidding?”

“That’s your only option. And I keep your board locked up in my room.”

He’d sighed, exaggeratedly. But agreed.

She also required him to call in regularly and to be home within twenty minutes of the end of school. She was amused to see his reaction when she reminded him that the police have an arrangement with the local phone company that allows them to track the whereabouts of cell phones, even when they’re not in use. (This was true, though what she didn’t share was that it would be illegal for her to use the system to electronically check up on him.)

But if she was getting the rebellious behavior under control, there seemed to be nothing she could do with his moods about Graham’s departure. Although her husband stayed in regular touch with his stepson, Joey wasn’t happy at the breakup and she didn’t know how to do anything about that. After all, she wasn’t the one who’d walked out the door. She’d fix it, though at the moment she didn’t have a clue how.

She pushed the soup away, reflecting that so much had changed since that night.

“That night.” The phrase had become an icon in her life. It meant a lot more than a chronological reference.

She was single again, had an injured mother in her care and a troubled son to keep an eye on. Still, nothing in the world would stop her from finding Michelle and Hart and bringing them in.

She was, in fact, wondering if there was anything she could salvage from the meetings she’d just had with the detective and FBI agent when she realized the bar was deathly quiet.

Empty. The waiter, busboy and bartender were gone.

And then she had a memory: seeing a slight man walking behind her on the way from the police station here. She hadn’t thought anything of it, but now realized that she’d stopped at one point to look in a store window; he’d stopped as well, to make a phone call. Or to pretend to.

Alarmed, she started to rise but felt the breeze of a door opening and sensed people behind her, at least two, it seemed.

She froze. Her gun was under her suit jacket and a raincoat. She’d be dead before she undid two buttons.

There was nothing to do but turn around.

She did so, half expecting to see Hart’s gray eyes as he steadied the gun to kill her.

The heavier of the two, a man in his sixties, said, “Detective, I’m Stanley Mankewitz.”

She nodded. “It’s Deputy.”

The other man, skinny and boyish, was the one she’d seen earlier, following her. He had a faint smile but humor was not its source. He remained silent.

Mankewitz sat on the stool next to hers. “May I?”

“You’re bordering on kidnapping here.”

He seemed surprised. “Oh, you’re free to leave any time, Deputy McKenzie. Kidnapping?”

He nodded to his associate, who went to a nearby table.

The bartender had returned. He looked at Mankewitz.

“Just coffee. A Diet Coke for my friend.” He nodded at the table.

The bartender delivered the coffee to the bar and the soda to Mankewitz’s associate. “Anything else?” he asked Brynn, as if saying, Want some cheesecake for your last meal?

She shook her head. “Just the check.”

Mankewitz prepared the coffee carefully, just the right amount of cream, a sugar packet and a Splenda. He said, “I heard you had quite an evening a few weeks ago.”

That night…

“And how would you know that?”

“I watch the news.” He gave off an aura of confidence that she found reassuring in one sense—that she was in no physical danger at the moment—but also troubling. As if he had another weapon, like knowing something that could destroy her life without resorting to violence. He seemed completely in control.

In this way he reminded her of Hart.

The union boss continued, “Very important to be informed. When I was growing up, before your time, we had an hour of local news—five P.M.—and then national and international. Walter Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley…Just a half hour. Me, that wasn’t enough. I like all the information I can get. CNN. I love it. It’s the home page on my BlackBerry.”

“That doesn’t answer the question of how you happen to be here, when I just decided to come in on a whim…. Unless you’d somehow found out I had an appointment at Milwaukee PD.”

He hesitated only a moment—she’d obviously touched something close to home. He said, “Or maybe I’ve just been shadowing you.”

“I know he has,” she snapped, nodding at his slim associate.

Mankewitz smiled, sipped the coffee and looked with regret at the rotating dessert display. “We have a mutual interest here, Deputy.”

“And what would that be?”

“Finding Emma Feldman’s killer.”

“I’m not watching him drink very bad coffee two feet away from me right now?”

“It is bad coffee. How’d you know?”

“Smell.”

He nodded at the can of soda by her plate. “You and my friend and that diet pop. That’s what’s not good for you, you know. And, no, you’re not in the company of her killer.”

She looked behind her. The other fellow was sipping his soda while he looked over his own BlackBerry.

What was his home page?

“Don’t imagine you work many murders in Kennesha County,” Mankewitz said. “Not like this one.”

“Not like these,” she corrected. “Several people were killed.” Now that she was alive and the bartender was a witness, even a bribable one, she’d started feeling cocky, if not ornery.

“Of course.” He nodded.

Brynn mused, “What kind of cases do we run? Domestic knifings. A gun goes off accidental during a 7-Eleven or gas station heist. A meth deal goes bad.”

“Bad stuff, that drug. Very bad.”

Tell me about it. She said, “If you’ve seen COPS, you know what we do.”

“April seventeenth was a whole different ball game.” He sipped the bad coffee anyway. “You in a union? A police union?”

“No, not in Kennesha.”

“I believe in unions, ma’am. I believe in working and I believe in giving everybody a fair shake to climb up the ladder. Like education. School’s an equalizer; a union’s the same. You’re in a union, we give you the basics. You might be happy with that, take your hourly wage and God bless. But you can use it like a diving board, you want to go higher in life.”

“Diving board?”

“Maybe that’s a bad choice. I’m not so creative. You know what I’m accused of?”

“Not the details. A scam involving illegal immigrants.”

“What I’m accused of is giving people forged documentation that’s better than what they can buy on the street. They get jobs in open shops and vote to go union.”

“Is that true?”

“No.” He smiled. “Those’re the accusations. Now, you know how the authorities tipped to my alleged crimes? That lawyer, Emma Feldman, was doing some business deal for a client and she found a large number of legal immigrants were union members—proportionately a lot higher than in most locals around the country. From that, somebody started the rumor that I was selling them forged papers. All their green cards, though, were legit. Issued by the U.S. government.”

Brynn considered this. He seemed credible. But who knew?

“Why?”

“To break the union, that’s why, pure and simple. The rumors start going around that I’m corrupt. That Local Four-oh-eight is a front for terrorists. That I’m encouraging foreigners to take our jobs…Bang, everybody votes to drop out and go open shop.” He was worked up. “Let me explain exactly why I’m being persecuted here. Why people want Stanley Mankewitz out of the picture. Because I don’t hate immigrants. I am all in favor of them. I’d rather employ a dozen Mexicans or Chinese or Bulgarians who come to this country—legally, I’ll add—to work hard, than a hundred lazy born-here citizens any day. So I’m caught right in the middle. The employers hate me because I’m union. My own membership hates me because I promote people who aren’t Amurican.” He drawled the last word, a good ole boy. “So there’s a conspiracy to set me up.”

Brynn sighed, having lost all interest in her soup and the soda, which had been flat to start with, probably as bad as the coffee, though it didn’t stink.

Mankewitz lowered his voice. “Did you know I saved your life on April seventeenth?”

Her attention swung fully to him now. A frown. She didn’t want to show any emotion but couldn’t help herself.

Mankewitz said, “I sent Mr. Jasons there to protect my interest. I knew I didn’t kill Emma Feldman and her husband. I wanted to find out who really did. That could lead me to who was trying to set me up.”

“Please…” she said, giving him a skeptical glance. Her cheek stung and she rearranged her expression.

Mankewitz looked over her shoulder. “James?”

Jasons joined them at the bar, toting a briefcase. He said, “I was in the forest, near that ledge you and that woman and little girl were on. I had a Bushmaster rifle. You were throwing rocks and logs down on those men.”

She asked in a whisper, “That was you?” Jasons didn’t look like he could even hold a gun. “Shooting at us?”

“Near you. Not at. Only to break up the fighting.” Another sip of soda. “I drove to the house at the lake. I said I was a friend of Steve Feldman. I followed your husband and that other deputy into the woods. I wasn’t there to kill anybody. Just the opposite. My orders were to keep everyone alive. Find out who they were. I broke up the fight but I couldn’t track them down to interrogate them.”

Mankewitz said, “We have reason to believe that the rumors about my alleged illegal involvement came from someone in a company called Great Lakes Intermodal Container Service. Mr. Jasons here managed to find some documents—”

“Find?”

“—some documents that suggest that the president of the company was in bad financial shape and trying desperately to kick out the union so he could cut wages and benefits. The head lawyer of Great Lakes provided us with some documents that prove the president was behind the rumors.”

“Did you tell the prosecutor?”

“Unfortunately, this documentation—”

“It was stolen.”

“Well, let’s say it isn’t discoverable under the Federal Rules of Evidence. Now, here’s the situation. Since I have never sold any illegal papers, nobody can prove that I did. So eventually the charges will be dismissed. But rumors can cause as much damage as convictions. That’s what the Great Lakes Containers and the other union shops are hoping for—to ruin me by destroying my reputation and break the union. So I need to stop as many of those rumors as I can. And my number one priority is convincing you that I didn’t kill Emma Feldman.”

“In police school they teach us not to give up when a suspect says, ‘Really, I didn’t do it.’”

Mankewitz pushed the coffee away. “Deputy McKenzie. I know about the shooting seven years ago.”

Brynn froze.

“Your husband.” He looked at Jasons, who said, “Keith Marshall.”

Mankewitz continued, “The official report was accidental discharge, but everybody believed you shot him because he attacked you again. Like he did when he broke your jaw. But since he was wearing his body armor and survived, he could testify that it was accidental.”

“Look—”

“But I know the truth. I know it was your son, not you, who shot Keith, trying to save you.”

No, no…Brynn’s hands were shaking.

Another nod toward Jasons. A file appeared. It was old, limp. She looked at it. Kennesha County Board of Education Archives.

“What’s this?” she gasped.

Mankewitz pointed to a name on the folder. Dr. R. Germain.

It took her a moment to recognize it. He was Joey’s counselor in the third grade. Joey’d been having trouble in school, aggression, refusing to do homework, and had seen the man several times a week. The boy had been further traumatized when the counselor had died of a massive heart attack the night after a session.

“Where did you get it?” Without waiting for an answer she ripped it open with sweating hands.

Oh, my God…

They’d assumed Joey, just five at the time of the shooting, had forgotten, or blocked out, that terrible night when his parents had fought, grappling on the kitchen floor. The boy had run to his parents, screaming. Keith had pushed him away and gone to hit Brynn in the face again.

Joey had pulled her weapon from the holster on her hip and shot his father in the chest, dead center.

They’d pulled in every favor they could and Brynn took the hit for an accidental discharge, which alone nearly ended her career. Everybody figured that she’d shot Keith on purpose—he was known for his temper—but no one suspected Joey.

As she now learned from the report, the boy had given Dr. Germain a coherent and detailed account of what happened that night. Brynn had no idea that Joey recalled the event with such clarity. Apparently, she realized now, the only thing that had saved him from going into foster care—and if a witch hunt had ensued, having Brynn and Keith criminally investigated for endangering a child because of the weapon—was Germain’s death and the file vanishing, unread, into the school archives.

Mankewitz added, “The FBI and Milwaukee PD were close to finding this.”

“What? Why?”

“Because they want you off the case. Their investigation is meant to nail me. Yours is to find out what really happened at Lake Mondac.”

The assistant added, “They’ve been looking into every aspect of your life. They’d use this for leverage to discredit you.” A glance at the file. “Maybe even get you prosecuted and anybody who helped in the cover-up about Keith’s shooting.”

Her jaw trembled as badly as on that night when she’d climbed from the pungent waters of Lake Mondac.

They’d take her son away from her…. Her career would be over. Tom Dahl would be investigated too, for abetting the cover-up. People at the State Police would also come under investigation.

Mankewitz looked into her eyes, now swimming with tears. “Hey, relax.”

She glanced at him. He tapped the file with a thick finger. “Mr. Jasons here assures me that this is the only file. There were no copies made. Nobody except you, Keith and your son knows what happened that night.”

“You do now,” she muttered.

“The only thing I’m doing with that file is giving it to you.”

“What?”

“Shred it. No. Do what I do. Shred it, then burn it.”

“You’re not…”

“Deputy McKenzie, I’m not here to blackmail, I’m not here to leverage you into dropping the investigation. I’m giving this to you as a show of good faith. I’m innocent. I don’t want you off the case. I want you to keep investigating until you find out who really did kill those people up there.”

Brynn clutched the file. It seemed to give off radiation. She slipped it into her backpack. “Thank you.” With a trembling hand she drank some soda. She considered what he’d told her. “But then who wanted Emma Feldman dead? What would the motive be? Nobody else seems to have one.”

“Has anybody looked for one?”

True, she admitted. Everybody’d been assuming all along that Mankewitz was behind the crimes.

The union boss looked away. His shoulders slumped. “We’ve drawn a blank too, though there were some other cases Emma was working on that might have been sensitive enough to motivate somebody to kill her. One was a trust-and-estate matter for a state representative, the one who killed himself.”

Brynn remembered the story. The man had tried to cut his wife and children out of his will and leave all his money to a twenty-two-year-old gay prostitute. The media had broken the story and the politician killed himself.

“Then,” the labor boss continued, “she had another case that was curious.” A glance at Jasons, the king of information and sources, apparently.

He said, “A products liability case involving a new hybrid car. A driver was electrocuted. The man’s family sued Emma Feldman’s client, a company in Kenosha. They made the generator or electrical system or something. She was hard at work on the case but then all the files were pulled and nobody heard anything more about it.”

A dangerously defective hybrid? Something you didn’t hear about much. In fact, never. There’d certainly be big money involved. She’d found something she shouldn’t’ve?

Maybe.

And Kenosha rang a bell…. She’d have to look at her notes from the past few weeks. A call to be returned. Somebody was interested in some of Emma Feldman’s files. Somebody named Sheridan.

Mankewitz continued, “But we couldn’t come up with any particular leads. You’re on your own now.” He waved for the check, paid, nodding at Brynn’s unfinished soup. “I didn’t pay for that. Appearance of impropriety, you know.” He pulled his coat on.

The associate remained sitting but he fished a business card from his pocket. It contained only a name and phone number. She wondered if the name was real. He said, “If you need me for anything, if I can be of any more help, please call. It’s a voice mail only. But I’ll get right back to you.”

Brynn nodded. “Thank you,” she said again to both men, tapping her backpack.

“Think about what I told you,” Mankewitz said. “Seems like you and the FBI and everybody else’s been looking in the wrong place.”

“Or,” the skinny man said, sipping from his glass as if the soda were a vintage wine, “looking for the wrong who.”

 

THE POLICE LINE

bunting on the front porch had come undone; it wagged like a bony yellow finger in the breeze.

Brynn hadn’t been back to the Feldmans’ vacation house on Lake View Drive since that night, now almost three weeks ago. Oddly, in the afternoon daylight, the house looked starker than it had then. The paint was uneven and peeling in many places. The angles sharp. The shutters and trim unpleasing black.

She walked to the place where she’d stood beside her car, nearly hyperventilating with terror, in a shooting stance, waiting for Hart to rise from the bushes and present a target.

From that memory, her thoughts slipped back naturally to the school counselor’s report that Mankewitz had given her, now indeed both shredded and burned in the backyard barbecue. The counselor had transcribed the incident pretty much the way it happened.

The night was also in April, curiously. She pictured herself blinking in horror as Keith, just home from a long day of patrol, sat at the kitchen table and his anger slowly unraveled. She didn’t know what had sparked the outburst; often, she couldn’t remember. Something about their taxes and money. Maybe she’d misplaced some receipts.

Small. It was usually something small.

But the incident had escalated fast. Keith, getting that crazed look in his eyes, so terrifying. Possessed. His voice was low at first, then cracking, rising to a scream. Brynn had said the worst thing she could: “Calm down. It’s no big deal.”

“I’m the one who’s been working on it all day! Where’ve you been? Handing out parking tickets?”

“Calm down,” she’d snapped back, even as her heart stuttered and she found her hand protecting her jaw.

Then he’d snapped. He’d leapt up, kicking the table over, tax forms and receipts flying through the air, and charged her, beer bottle in hand. She’d pushed him away, hard, and he’d grabbed her by the hair and muscled her to the floor. They’d grappled, knocking chairs aside. He’d dragged her toward him, balling his fist up.

Screaming, crying, “No, no, no.” Seeing his massive hand rearing back.

And then Joey was charging into them, sobbing himself.

“Joey! Get back,” Keith raged, intoxicated—though, as usual, not from alcohol but anger. He was completely out of control, drawing back his huge fist.

She tried to twist away, so the terrible blow wouldn’t shatter her jaw again. Trying to protect Joey, who was stuck in the middle, screaming right along with his mother.

“Don’t hurt Mommy!”

Then: Crack.

The bullet struck Keith directly in the center of the chest.

And the boy began screaming once more. The five-year-old had slipped his mother’s Glock from her holster, probably meaning just to threaten. But the weapon has no traditional safety catch; just gripping the trigger could cause it to go off.

The gun spun to the floor as mother, father, son were frozen in a horrible tableau.

Keith, blinking, had stumbled back. Then dropped to his knees and vomited. He passed out. Brynn had gasped, sped to him and ripped his shirt open, seeing the disk of hot copper and lead fall from the Kevlar vest.

Ambulances and statements and negotiations…

And of course the indelible horror of the incident itself.

Yet Mankewitz and that skinny fellow Jasons didn’t know the worst part. The part that she regretted every minute of her life.

After that night, life got better. In fact, it became perfect.

Keith found a good psychiatrist and went into anger-management and twelve-step programs. They went to couple’s therapy. Joey too went into counseling.

And never again was there a harsh word between them, let alone a touch not motivated by affection or passion. They became the most normal of couples. Attending Joey’s events and church. Anna and her husband warily returned to their daughter’s life, having distanced themselves because of Keith.

No more big blowups, no harsh words. He became a model husband.

And nine months later she asked him for a divorce, and he had reluctantly agreed.

Why had she asked for one?

She’d spent hours, days wondering. Was it the aftershock of that terrible night? The accumulation of the man’s moods? Or that she wasn’t programmed to live a calm, normal life?

I wouldn’t trade the life I lead for anything. Look at most of the rest of the world—the walking dead. 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….

She thought back to that night after she and Graham had returned from the hospital after Anna had been shot. What he’d said to her.

Oh, Graham, you’re right. So right. But I do owe my son. I owe him big. I put him in a situation where he actually used a weapon to try to save his mother, when I should have taken him out of that household years before.

And then I left after everything got better, I took Joey away from a man who moved heaven and earth to turn his life around.

How can I help but spoil the boy, protect him? And hope for his forgiveness?

Touching her jaw, she now climbed onto the porch of the Feldmans’ house. The scene had been released but a State Police lockbox was still on the door. She worked the combination, took the key and stepped inside. The place smelled of sweet cleanser and fireplace smoke, lured out by the damp air.

She saw bullet holes—from Hart’s, from Lewis’s shotgun, from Michelle’s, from Brynn’s own weapon as well. In the kitchen the floor had been scrubbed clean. Not a trace of blood remained. There were companies that did this, cleaning up after crimes and accidental deaths. Brynn had always thought that would be a good murder-mystery novel: a killer who works for one of those companies and cleans the scene so completely the police can’t find any clues.

In the kitchen she saw a half dozen battered cookbooks, several of which she herself owned. She pulled down an old Joy of Cooking. She opened it up to the page where the red ribbon marked a recipe. Chicken fricassee. She laughed. She’d made this very dish. In the corner was written in pencil, 2 hours. And the words Vermouth instead.

Brynn put the book back.

She wondered what would happen to the house now.

Abandoned for another generation, she supposed. Who’d want to be up here anyway? Imposing, harsh woods, no grocery stores or restaurants nearby and that lake cold and dark, like an old bullet hole.

But then she cut all of these reflections loose, pushed them away, just like she and Michelle had shoved the canoe into the black stream and gone on their urgent way.

With a glance at where the bodies had lain—where she had almost joined them in death—Brynn returned to the living room.

 

“WE HAVE TO LEAVE.”

“Okay,” Joey replied to his mother and trooped down the stairs, wearing an Old West costume that Anna had made. Man, that woman knew her way around Singer sewing machines, Brynn thought. Always had. Some people are born to the skill.

Brynn had spent the past several days in Milwaukee and Kenosha, running down leads, some successful and some not. But she’d made a point of returning in time that evening to get to Joey’s pageant.

Brynn called, “Mom, are you okay in there?”

From the family room Anna said, “I’m fine. Joey, I wish I could come. But I’ll come to your party when school’s over. I’ll be fine by then. Who’re you playing?”

“I’m this frontier scout. I lead people over the mountains.”

“It’s not about the Donner party, is it?” Anna asked.

“What’s that?” Joey wondered aloud. “Like the Democrats?”

“In a way.”

“Mother,” Brynn scoffed.

Hobbling into the doorway Anna said, “Turn around…. My, look at that. You look like Alan Ladd.”

“Who?”

“A famous actor.”

“Like Johnny Depp?” the boy asked.

“Heaven help us.”

Joey wrinkled his face. “I don’t want to put that makeup on. It’s all greasy.”

Brynn said, “You have to wear it onstage. People can see you better. Besides, it makes you look so handsome.”

He gave an exaggerated sigh.

Anna said, “Honey, I think Graham might like to go.”

“Yeah,” the boy said fast. “Mom, can he?”

“I don’t know,” Brynn said uncertainly, angry that her mother had—tactically, it seemed—asked this in front of Joey.

Her mother held her eye and gave her one of her patented ironclad smiles. “Oh, give him a call. What can it hurt?”

Brynn didn’t know the answer to that. And therefore she didn’t want to ask him.

“He’d like the show, Mom. Come on.”

“It’s short notice.”

“In which case he’ll say he has other plans, thank you very much for the invitation. Or he’ll say yes.”

She glanced back. Anna had been supportive emotionally after the breakup, but hadn’t offered any opinion about it. Brynn assumed she was being her typical uninvolved self. But she wondered now if the pleasant smile—the smile of a spokeswoman for AARP on a television ad—hid a carefully planned strategy about her daughter’s life.

“I’d rather not,” Brynn said evenly.

“Ah.” The smile faltered.

“Mom,” Joey said. He was angry.

Her mother’s eyes slipped, for a split second, to her grandson. And she said nothing else.

Joey muttered, “I don’t know why he moved out. All the way over to Hendricks Hills.”

“How’d you know he was there?” Graham had just moved into a new rental yesterday.

“He told me.”

“You talked to him?”

“He called.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“He called me,” the boy said defiantly. “To say hi, you know.”

Brynn wasn’t sure how to react to this. “He didn’t leave a message?”

“Naw.” He tugged at his costume. “Why’d he move there?”

“It’s a nice neighborhood.”

“I mean why’d he move at all?”

“I told you. We had a different way of seeing things.”

Joey didn’t know what that meant but neither did Brynn. “Well, can’t he come to the play?”

“No, honey.” She smiled. “Not this time. Maybe later.”

The boy walked to the window and gazed outside. He seemed disappointed. Brynn frowned. “What’s that?”

“I thought maybe he was here.”

“Why?”

“You know, he comes by sometimes.”

“He does? To see you?”

“No. He just sits outside for a while then drives off. I saw him at school too. He was parked outside after class.”

Brynn kept her voice steady as she asked, “You’re sure it was Graham?”

“I guess. I couldn’t see him real good. He had sunglasses on. But it had to be him. Who else would it be?”

Looking at her mother, who was clearly surprised at this news. “But it might not have been him.”

Joey shrugged. “He had dark hair. And he was big like Graham.”

“What kind of car was he in?”

“I don’t know. Something kind of blue. Looked neat. Like a sports car. Dark blue. I couldn’t see too good. When he called he told me they never found his truck so he got a new one. I figured that was it. What’s wrong, Mom?”

“Nothing.” She smiled.

“Come on. Can’t you call him?”

“Not today, honey. I’ll call him later.” Brynn scanned the empty road for a moment. Then turned and, smiling again—one of her mother’s stoic smiles—said, “Hey, Mom, you are looking better. Maybe you should come to the play after all.”

Anna was going to scold—she’d been after Brynn to let her come to the play all along—but she caught on. “Love to.”

Brynn continued, “We’ll go to T.G.I. Friday’s after. I’ll help you throw something on. I’ll be there in a minute.” She walked to the front door, locked it and went upstairs.

She opened the lockbox and clipped her holster containing the Glock to the back of her skirt waistband, pulled on a jacket.

Staring out the window at the empty road in front of the house, she called Tom Dahl.

“Need a favor. Fast.”

“Sure, Brynn. You okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Go on.”

“Graham. I need to know what cars are registered in his name. Everything. Even the company cars.”

“He causing you trouble?”

“No, no. It’s not him I’m worried about.”

“Just hold on a minute. I’ll get into the DMV database.”

Less than sixty seconds later the sheriff’s easy voice came back on the line. “Rolling Hills Landscaping’s got three forty-foot flatbeds, two F150 pickups and an F250. Graham himself has a Taurus he’s leasing through his insurance company—’causa that woman stealing his pickup last month, I’d imagine.”

“The Taurus? It’s dark blue?”

“White.”

“Okay…”

She was thinking back to that night.

You should have…. You should’ve killed me.

“Tom, I need somebody to watch the house again.”

“What’s going on, Brynn?”

“Somebody was outside, parked. Checking out the place. Joey saw him. You know kids, might’ve been nothing. But I don’t want to take any chances.”

“Sure we can do that, Brynn. Anything.”

 

ON THURSDAY, MAY 7,

Brynn was sitting in her cubicle clutching a cup of hot chocolate, really hot. This had become a recent addiction, though she’d given up her much-loved saltines and Brie sandwiches in compensation. She could drink three cups of cocoa a day. She wondered if this was because she’d been so chilled on that night. Probably not. Swiss Miss made a really good product.

She reflected that she and Graham had sipped hot chocolate at the Humboldt Diner at the end of their first date. The beverages had started out near 212 degrees when they’d begun talking, and the cups had been cold when they’d finished.

She was reading through her notes—hundreds of jottings, setting out the conversations she’d had after her meeting with Stanley Mankewitz. She’d never worked so hard in her life.

Looking for the wrong who…

Her office phone rang. She took a last sip and set the cup down. “Deputy McKenzie.”

“Hello?” asked a Latina voice with the reserve most people displayed when calling the police. The caller explained she was the manager of the Harborside Inn in Milwaukee.

“How can I help you?” Hearing “Milwaukee,” Brynn sat forward quickly, tense. The most likely reason for someone from that city to call was the Feldman murder case.

That was indeed the purpose and Brynn grew more and more interested as she listened.

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.

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 Milwaukee, 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.

Then right on the dot she saw the Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department car pull into the parking lot of the Harborside Inn. Her palms began sweating.

God or Fate…

“Okay, Brad.” Michelle popped the locks and stepped out. Her son got out of the other side. “Mommy’s going to go around there,” she whispered. “And I’ll walk up behind that woman. Don’t look at me. Pretend I’m not there. You understand that?”

He nodded.

“Do not look at me when I come up to the car. Say it.”

“I won’t look at you.”

“Because if you look at me, that woman will take you away and put you in jail. She’s that kind of woman. I love you so much that I don’t want that to happen. That’s why I’m doing this for you. You know all the trouble I go to for you and your sister?”

“Yes.”

She hugged him. “Okay, now go tell her what I said. And remember ‘upset.’”

As the boy walked toward the car, Michelle, crouching, slipped around a row of parked cars. She pulled the Glock from the pocket of her leather jacket, a new one, bought by Sam Rolfe to replace her favorite, a really beautiful number from Neiman Marcus, which had been totally ruined on their walk through the woods that cold night in April.

 

AS HE DROVE

along the road in Humboldt, toward Brynn McKenzie’s house, Sheriff Tom Dahl was thinking about her years in the department.

The job had been tough on her, especially taking on the worst assignments, the hurt kids, the domestics. Been tough too thanks to her fellow deputies’ attitudes because she was the overachiever, always had been. The girl in the front row, raising her hand because she knew every answer. Nobody liked that.

But, hell, she’d gotten results. Look at what she’d done that night at Lake Mondac. He didn’t know another deputy who would’ve pushed as hard as she had.

He didn’t know another deputy who would have survived.

Dahl massaged his game leg.

He parked in front of the small house; they all were on Kendall Road. Brynn’s was a neat place, trim and well kept up. And, thanks to Graham, it had the hell landscaped out of it. A lot different from the others here.

He got out of the car. Stood and stretched. A joint snapped somewhere. He’d given up worrying where such sounds originated or what they meant.

Tugging on his hat, a habit, Dahl walked slowly through the gate and then up the serpentine sidewalk, bordered by more kinds of plants than he knew existed.

At the door he hesitated only a moment and then rang the bell. A double chime sounded.

The door opened.

“Hey, Sheriff.”

Brynn’s son stood there. Seemed he’d grown another eight inches since they’d been together last, a department Christmas party.

“Hi, Joey.” Beyond him, in the living room, Anna McKenzie was moving toward the kitchen with a cane. “Anna.”

She nodded cautiously.

And behind her, in the kitchen, Brynn was taking the temperature of a roasting chicken as she stood beside the stove. He thought she didn’t cook. Or even knew how. The chicken looked pretty good.

She turned and lifted an eyebrow.

“We got her, Brynn. We got her.”

 

THEY SAT IN

the family room, sheriff and deputy.

Iced tea, courtesy of Anna, sat between them.

Brynn said, “Took longer than I thought. Been on pins and needles.”

Which didn’t begin to describe her anxiety, waiting for the news.

Sheriff Dahl explained, “There was a complication. The teams were in place around Rolfe’s house. But when she came outside she had her son with her. She took her boy to the Harborside Inn.”

“She what?”

“She even sent him up to the car the decoy was in while she moved around back to shoot you, well, her, from behind.”

“Oh, my God.”

“The tactical team didn’t want to move in while Michelle and the kid were together. They were afraid she’d use him as a hostage. They waited till they separated at the parking lot. The boy’s fine. He’s in CPS with his sister.”

Thank you, Brynn prayed silently. Thank you. “She was going to use her own child as a diversion and then shoot me right in front of him?” Brynn could hardly believe it.

“Looks that way.”

“What’s the boyfriend’s story?”

“Rolfe? They’re questioning him now but looks like he was in the dark. If he should be arrested for anything it’s bad judgment in women.” His cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. “Better take this. S’the mayor. We’re holding a press conference about the whole thing. Gotta get some notes.”

He rose and stepped outside, walking stiffly to his car.

Brynn sat back on the couch, staring at the ceiling, silently thanking Stanley Mankewitz and his slim assistant—James Jasons, she’d learned—for leading her to Michelle Kepler.

Maybe you’re looking for the wrong who.

After their get-together in the bad-coffee restaurant, Brynn had looked into other motives for murdering Emma Feldman, specifically the ones suggested by Mankewitz: suicidal state politicians and the Kenosha company making dangerous hybrid car parts. Some of her other cases too. But none of them had panned out.

She then considered Jasons’s comment and wondered: What if “the wrong who” could mean not who wanted to kill her—but who was the intended victim?

As soon as Brynn began to consider that Michelle had wanted Steven Feldman dead, not Emma, the case fell into place. Feldman was a caseworker for the city’s Social Services Department, part of whose job function was checking out child abuse complaints and, in extreme cases, placing victims in foster homes.

Recalling how the young woman had silenced poor Amy that night in Marquette State Park, Brynn had wondered if he’d been investigating Michelle, with an eye toward placing children she might have.

There was no record of a file involving anyone named Michelle but Brynn had recalled that at the lake house that night Steven’s backpack was empty, while a number of Emma’s files were scattered on the floor. Had Michelle thrown his files, including the one about her own children, into the fireplace?

When she’d returned to Lake Mondac, Brynn had taken samples of ash from the fireplace. She intimidated the state lab in Gardener into analyzing it ASAP and learned that it was identical to ash produced by burning the manila folders issued to city workers. She also found the coiled bindings of steno pads, which Feldman had used to take notes during field interviews.

Eventually, by talking to his colleagues and friends and reviewing scraps of notes and logs of phone calls, Brynn had discovered that some neighbors of a businessman named Samuel Rolfe had complained about his new girlfriend’s treatment of her young children.

The girlfriend’s name was Michelle Kepler.

Bingo.

The Milwaukee police had set up surveillance around Rolfe’s house but before they could get a warrant to move in, Brynn had gotten the phone call from the purported manager of the Harborside Inn. It struck her as suspicious and, after hanging up, she’d checked the incoming number. A prepaid mobile.

She was sure the “clerk” was Michelle, setting her up to be shot.

Tom Dahl called Milwaukee PD and they put together a tactical team to collar the woman as soon as she left Rolfe’s elegant house.

Only one question remained. Did Brynn want to arrest Michelle in person?

The debate raged—oh, how badly she wanted to. But she finally decided no.

A detective from the Milwaukee Police Department dressed in a Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department uniform and using a department squad car drove to the rendezvous at the Harborside Inn.

Brynn McKenzie went home.

The bell rang again—Tom Dahl, ever proper—and Joey let the sheriff back into the house. He was grinning as he stood in the doorway to the family room. “Get this. They’ve got reporters everywhere!” He laughed. “Fox, CBS and I’m not talking the local affiliates. Even CNN. The mayor’s wondering if everybody who works there’s blond.”

Brynn laughed. “That’s the way they grow ’em in Atlanta.”

The sheriff continued, “Michelle’s being transported to our lockup tonight. You’ll want to interview her, I assume.”

“You bet. But not tonight. I told you. I have plans.”

So, is what I’m about to do now a good idea, or a bad idea?…Why even bother to ask the question? It doesn’t matter. I’ve already made the decision.

She’d done what she needed to capture the Feldmans’ killers; now it was time to begin reassembling her life. Or trying to.

She rose and walked him to the front door. Stepping outside, he said, “So what’s going on that’s so important?”

“I’m making dinner for Anna and Joey. And then we’re watching American Idol.”

Dahl chuckled. “It’s a rerun. I can tell you who wins.”

“’Night, Tom. See you in the office bright and early.”

 

AT 9 A.M.

on a stormy Friday, Michelle Alison Kepler sat in one of the two interrogation rooms in the Kennesha County Sheriff’s Office. Originally for storage, the rooms had been stripped of shelves and boxes and set up with fiberboard tables and plastic chairs, along with a Sony video recorder from Best Buy. One of the deputies had installed a mirror he’d bought at Home Depot but it was for effect only. Any experienced perp could see it wasn’t two-way. But in Kennesha County pinching pennies was part of law enforcing.

Minus her gun, armed only with pen and paper, Brynn sat down across from Michelle. She looked over at the woman who had lied to her so ruthlessly. Yet Brynn was oddly calm. Sure, she’d felt some sting of betrayal at the deception, thinking that they’d begun that night as survivors, then become allies, and finally friends.

But Kristen Brynn McKenzie was a cop, of course. She was used to being lied to. She had a goal here, information to gather, and it was time to get to work.

Michelle, confident as ever, demanded, “Where’s my son and daughter?”

“They’re being well taken care of.”

“Brynn, please…They need me. They’ll go crazy without me. Really, this is a problem.”

“You took your son to Milwaukee to help kill me?” Brynn’s voice couldn’t quite hide astonishment.

Michelle’s face blossomed in horror. “No, no. We were just going to talk to you. I wanted to apologize.”

“He’s seven. And you took him with you. With a gun.”

“It’s for protection. Milwaukee’s a dangerous town. I have a permit but I lost it.”

Brynn nodded, her face neutral. “Okay.”

“Can I see Brad? He’s miserable without me. He could get sick. He inherited my low blood sugar.”

“Wasn’t he adopted?”

Michelle blinked. Then said, “He needs me.”

“He’s being well taken care of. He’s fine…. Now, you’ve been arrested for murder and attempted murder and assault. You’ve been advised of your rights. You can withdraw from this interview at any time and speak to an attorney. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Michelle glanced at the red light on the video recorder and said, “Yes.”

“Do you wish to have an attorney present?”

“No, I’ll talk to you, Brynn.” She gave a laugh. “After all we’ve been through…why, we’re sisters, don’t you feel that? I shared with you, you told me about your problems at home.” She glanced at the camera with a sympathetic wince. “Your son, your husband…. We’re like soul mates. That’s pretty rare, Brynn. Really.”

“So, you’re waiving your right to an attorney?”

“Absolutely. This is all a misunderstanding. I can explain everything.” Her voice was soft, reflecting the burden of the injustice that had befallen her.

“Now, why we’re here,” Brynn began. “We’d like a statement from you, telling the truth about what happened that night. It’ll be much easier on you, on your family—”

“What about my family?” she snapped. “You didn’t talk to them, did you? My parents?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t have any right to do that.” Then she calmed and gave a hurt smile. “Why’d you do that? They hate me. They lied to you, whatever they said. They’re jealous of me. I was on my own from day one. I made a success of my life. They’re losers.”

Brynn’s research had revealed that this was a woman whose background appeared normal and stable but whose personality was not. She’d grown up in a middle-class family in Madison, Wisconsin. Her parents still lived there, mother fifty-seven, father ten years older. According to them, they’d tried hard but had thrown up their hands at what Michelle’s mother called the “vindictive little thing.” Her father called her “dangerous.”

The couple, horrified at what their daughter was accused of, though not completely surprised, explained how Michelle had made a career out of jumping from man to man—and in two cases a woman—living off them, then picking fights and scaring the hell out of her lovers with her enraged, vengeful behavior; ultimately they were grateful to see her go. Then she’d be onto someone else—but only if she had that someone else all lined up ahead of time. She’d been arrested for assault twice—attacking boyfriends who’d dumped her. She’d stalked several men and had three restraining orders in force.

Michelle now said, “You can’t trust anything my family says. I was abused, you know.”

“There’s no record of that.”

“How’s there going to be a record? You think my father would admit it? And they threw out my complaint. My father and the local police chief, they were in on it together. All I could do was get away. I had to fend for myself. It was hard for me, so hard. Nobody ever helped me.”

“It’ll be easier,” Brynn continued, deflecting the woman’s sob story, “if you cooperate. There’re still a few things we’d like to know.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” she whined. “I just wanted to talk.”

“You pretended to be the hotel clerk. You changed your voice to sound Hispanic.”

“Because you wouldn’t understand. Nobody understands me. If I’d been me, somebody would have arrested me and I’d never have the chance to explain. I need you to understand, Brynn. It’s important to me.”

“You had a weapon.”

“Those men at the house…they tried to kill me! I was scared. I’ve been the victim of attacks before. My father, a couple of boyfriends. I have restraining orders out.”

She’d filed complaints against several lovers for domestic assault but the magistrates had rejected them when the police determined that the men had solid alibis, and concluded that Michelle had filed out of spite.

“You have three orders against you.”

She smiled. “That’s how the system works. They believe the abuser. They don’t believe the victim.”

“Let’s talk about the night of April seventeenth.”

“Oh, I can explain that.”

“Go ahead.”

“I was scheduled to have a meeting with Steven Feldman, the caseworker. I suspected Brad had been abused by one of his teachers.”

“Okay. Was this reported anywhere?”

“That’s what I was going to meet with Mr. Feldman about. I took the afternoon off work and went to see him but there was a problem with the buses and by the time I got to his office he’d left for the night. I knew it was important and I found out he was going to his place in Lake Mondac. He told me to come see him anytime to talk about Brad. He gave me his address. So I asked this guy I knew, Hart, to drive me up there. That was my mistake.” She shook her head.

“What’s his full name?”

“That’s it. He only goes by Hart. Anyway, he brought his friend along, Compton Lewis. Disgusting…gross. I should’ve said no right there. But I really wanted to see Steve. So we all drove up to the house together. I was going to talk to Steven and then we were going to leave. But as we’re driving up there, they start getting weirder and weirder. They’re like, ‘Bet there’s some nice shit in these houses.’ And, ‘Gotta be some rich people here.’ Next thing I know they see the Mercedes and they pull out guns, and I’m like, shit, oh, no. They go inside and start shooting. I tried to stop them. I grabbed this gun—”

“That compact Glock in your possession was stolen from a gun show a half mile from where you lived with Sam Rolfe.”

“It was their gun!” Michelle raised her hands to her face, crying or pretending to.

“Would you like some coffee? A soda?”

Some crackers for your low blood sugar…like the one’s you scattered behind to lead Hart and his partner after us? Brynn kept a completely neutral face.

Michelle looked up. Eyes red, face dry. It reminded Brynn of how she’d looked throughout much of that April night.

I’m an actress….

Brother, what I bought into.

Michelle continued, “I was devastated. I couldn’t breathe I felt so terrible. Here it was, my fault. I’d brought those men up there. I can’t tell you how bad I felt…. I panicked. Sure, I lied a little. But who wouldn’t? I was scared. And then I see you in the wilderness. Sure, I had the gun. But I didn’t know who you were. Maybe you were with them. You had your uniform on. But you could have been part of it. I didn’t know what was going on. I was just scared. I had to lie. My life has always been about survival.

“And what I feel worst about—I couldn’t believe I did it: at your house. I had a panic attack. I was so scared…. It was post-traumatic stress. I’ve always suffered from that. I thought Hart was in the house. You scared me. The gun went off. It was an accident! I’ll live with that forever. Hurting your mother by accident.”

Brynn crossed her legs and looked at the waifish, beautiful woman, whose eyes now filled with tears.

An Academy Award performance…

“The evidence and witnesses tell a little different story, Michelle.” And she gave the woman a synopsis of how they’d come to learn her identity and what they knew of her plan. The ballistics, the ash in the fireplace, Steven Feldman’s phone records, the reports of her children being abused.

“I talked to Social Services myself, Michelle. Steven Feldman’s supervisor. And to the witnesses and to your son’s teacher. Brad regularly had bruises on his arms and legs. Your daughter, Tory, had marks too.”

“Oh, they have an accident or two. You take a child into the emergency room and right away you’re an abusive parent. I’ve never beaten him…. Oh, what a politically correct world this is,” she snapped. “Everybody swats their kids. Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Well, you should.” She was smiling cruelly. “Maybe you wouldn’t be having so much trouble with Joey, like you were telling me. And you let him get away with it. My son won’t get run over by a car or break his neck skateboarding…. Children need direction. They don’t respect you if you’re not firm. And they want to respect their parents.”

Brynn now said, “Michelle, let me run through the case that we’ve got against you.” She rattled off summaries of expert testimony, witness statements and forensic evidence. It was overwhelming.

The woman began to cry. “It’s not my fault! It isn’t!”

Brynn reached over and shut off the camera.

The woman looked up cautiously. She dried her eyes.

“Michelle,” Brynn said softly, “here’s the situation. You heard the case against you. You will be convicted. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind about that. If you don’t cooperate you’ll go into a ten-by-four cell, solitary confinement, forever. But if you do cooperate you’ll stay out of a super-prison, probably go to medium security. You may have the chance to see life outside before you’re too old to appreciate it.”

“Can I see my children? I’ll agree if I can see my children.”

“No,” Brynn said firmly. “That’s not in their interest.”

This troubled Michelle for a moment but then she asked brightly, “A nicer cell? I’ll get a nicer cell?”

“Yes.”

“And all I have to do is confess?”

“Well, that’s part of it,” replied Brynn, as Michelle stared at the place on the camera where the glowing red eye had been.

 

BRYNN MCKENZIE SAT

in the lunchroom of the Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department, opposite Tom Dahl, who was reading through the transcript of the interview. The chairs were small, almost like the chairs at Joey’s school. Dahl’s body overhung his considerably. Brynn’s did not. Her issue was tummy, not thigh.

Brynn was looking over her upside-down notes and the transcript.

Dahl startled her by slapping the transcript and looking up. “Well, you got yourself a confession. Good job. And won’t cost us much in terms of a plea. She’ll go into Sanford? Medium-sec?”

“No furloughs, though. She sees the kids only if the social worker okays it.”

“And twenty-five minimum, no parole.”

Dahl ate some macaroni. “You’re not hungry?”

“No.”

“What about Hart? She say anything about him?”

“Hardly a word.”

“Maybe he’s just gone away.”

She laughed. “I don’t think people like him do that. They may hide out for a while but they don’t beam themselves off the planet, like Star Wars.”

“That was Star Trek. TV show. Before your time.”

Brynn said, “Well, too bad he can’t. Somebody better find him fast, the FBI or Minneapolis PD or somebody. For his own sake.”

“Why’s that?”

“Apparently he’s on a few lists. He’s done work for a lot of people who don’t want him caught—professional hits and robberies, extortion. Now the word’s out that he might get collared for the Lake Mondac thing, they’re afraid he’ll roll over. And Compton Lewis’s family aren’t real happy either about what happened to their kin.”

Dahl looked at her notes. She studied his baby skin. His face looks younger than mine, even subtracting the broken jaw and the buckshot wound.

Where’s the justice in life?

“Why’d a pro like Hart get involved in something small like this, with the Kepler woman?” Dahl asked. “Money? Sex? That woman wasn’t ugly.”

“You don’t think so?”

The sheriff laughed.

Brynn said, “Don’t think either of those would’ve swayed him. You want my opinion? He was bored.”

“Bored?”

“He was between jobs. It came along. He wanted a rush.”

Dahl nodded and wasn’t smiling when he said, “You,” pointing a dramatic finger at her.

She blinked. “Me?”

“Just like you.” The sheriff waved his arm around the department. “Well, you don’t exactly do this for the money. You like the excitement, don’tcha?”

“I do it ’cause I love my boss.”

“Heh. So what’s next? You’re going after Hart, I assume. I need to beg the county supervisor for a budget increase?”

“Nope. I’m leaving the whole thing to the State Police to follow up on.”

Dahl stopped the massage. “You are?”

“We’ve got enough going on here.”

“Am I hearing this right?”

“They find Hart, I’ll interview him, you bet I will. But I’ve done my bit. Anyway, you need somebody on the ground in the perp’s turf. It’s local contacts that solve cases.”

“You just wanted to say that. ‘On the ground.’ Okay, ship everything to the state boys. You’re sure about this?”

“I am.”

A deputy stuck his head into the lunchroom. “Hey, Brynn. Sorry to bother your lunch.”

“Yeah?”

“We just brought that guy in, the one hanging around the schools. You want to talk to him? You said you did.”

“Sure. What’d you get him for?”

“Fly was undone.”

“He waive his rights?”

“Yep. He has an explanation.”

Dahl guffawed. “Sure he’s got an explanation—he’s a goddamn pervert.”

Brynn told him, “I’ll be right there.”

 

THE TALL MAN

with broad shoulders and a crew cut was standing on the ladder leaning against the old but well-maintained colonial house in a pretty neighborhood south of Humboldt. It was a clear, cool Saturday morning and tasks like this were being replayed at thousands and thousands of homes around the country.

The man was painting the shutters dark green. Funny, Brynn reflected, in her ten years of living here, she’d always thought that green would be a pleasant color for the trim, but never wondered why. Now she understood. The house was set against a verdant pine forest, a shining example of the word “evergreen.” She’d seen the trees every day but had never really been aware of them.

Glancing over his shoulder as the Camry approached, he hesitated, caught in mid-brushstroke, then slowly climbed down off the ladder. He set the paint bucket on the worktable he had set up and wrapped the brush in plastic, so the latex enamel wouldn’t dry on the bristles. Keith Marshall was forever meticulous.

Brynn braked to a stop in front of the garage. Joey climbed out and grabbed his suitcase from the backseat.

“Hi, Dad!”

Keith hugged his son, who tolerated the gesture and charged into the house. “Bye, Mom!”

“I’ll pick you up after school on Monday!”

“Don’t forget the cookies!”

Her ex-husband started to say something but seemed to forget what it was as Brynn shut the engine off and climbed out. In the past two years she’d never spent more than sixty seconds here when dropping Joey off for a visit with his father.

“Hello,” she said.

Keith nodded. His hair was flecked with a bit of gray but he hadn’t gained a pound in the past ten years. What a metabolism that man had. Well, there were the sports too.

He strode over to her, gave her a brief hug. Not too hard, not too soft. And she was reminded of his good side, of which there was much. He was a cowboy, of course, but in the classic sense of a movie hero, not like poor Eric Munce, whose idea of policing wasn’t confidence and quiet, but hardware and drama.

“So. How’ve you been?” she asked.

“Not bad. Busy. Get you anything?”

She shook her head. Looked up at the side of the house. “Good color.”

“Had a sale at Home Depot.”

“What’re you two up to this weekend?”

“Fishing. Then we’re going over to the Bogles’ barbecue tonight. Joey likes Clay.”

“He’s a good boy.”

“Yeah, he is. His father’s got some lacrosse gear. We’re going to try it out.”

“Is there a sport that boy doesn’t like?” Brynn smiled. “You playing too?”

“Thought I might try it.”

“I’m riding again.”

“Are you?”

“When I can. Once a week or so.”

She and Keith had gone to a nearby stable a few times. He wasn’t, though, a natural equestrian.

“I took Joey last time. He was good. Hates the helmet.”

“That’s Joey. I’ll make sure he wears one—and the face guard—at lacrosse.” Keith then looked away. “We’re just going on our own, Us two boys.”

After all these years, divorced and the past buried if not wholly dust, Keith still seemed guilty about dating. She found this amusing. And charming.

“How’s the State Police?”

“Same old same old. I heard they got that woman. The one you saved that night.”

The one I saved…“That’s one way to put it. She took a plea.”

“Was it as bad as the rumors?”

As soon as he’d heard about the events at Lake Mondac, Keith had called to find out if Brynn was all right. Graham had answered while she was out, and though the men were always civil to each other, Keith had kept the conversation short, content to learn that she was safe. The rest of the information he would have gotten from the news or law-enforcement contacts.

As they leaned against the front porch railing she now gave him the details. Some of them at least. He lifted an eyebrow. He was most interested, curiously, not in the gunplay, the bolos or the spear but in the compass. “You made that?”

“Yep.”

He gave one of his rare smiles and wanted to know the details.

There was silence for a time, heavy and hot. When it was obvious she wasn’t getting into the car and leaving, as usual, Keith said, “I put a new deck on.”

“Joey told me.”

“Want to see it?”

“Sure.”

He led her around to the back of the house.

 

THE LAST WEEKEND

of May, Hart walked into a tavern in Old Town, in Chicago, near North Avenue, on Wells. The neighborhood was different from when he’d first moved here, in the seventies. Safer but a lot less atmospheric. Professionals had pushed out the old-time locals, the transient hotel dwellers, the folk singers and jazz musicians, drunks and prostitutes. Fancy wine and cheese shops and organic groceries had replaced the IGA and package stores. The Earl of Old Town, the great folk club, was gone, though the comedy venue Second City was still here, and probably would be forever.

The bar Hart was now striding into was born after the folk era but was still antique, dating to the disco craze. The time was just past two-thirty, Saturday afternoon, and there were five people inside, three at the bar with one stool between them. Protocol among drinking strangers. The other two were at a table, a couple in their sixties. The wife wore a brimmed red hat and was missing a front tooth.

Living underground for a month and a half, Hart had grown lonely for his neighborhood and his city. He also missed working. But now that Michelle Kepler was in jail and his contact told him she’d given up trying to have him killed, he was comfortable surfacing and getting back to his life. Apparently, to his shock, she hadn’t dimed him out during her interrogations.

Hart dropped down heavily on a stool.

“My God, Terry Hart!” The round bartender shook his hand. “Been a month of Sundays since you been in here.”

“Away on some work.”

“Whereabouts? What do you want?”

“Smirnie and grapefruit. And a burger, medium. No fries.”

“You got it. So where?”

“New England. Then a while in Florida.”

The bartender got the drink and carried the square of greasy green paper with Hart’s order to a window into the kitchen, hung it up and rang a bell. A dark brown hand appeared, grabbed the slip then vanished. The bartender returned.

“Florida. Last time I was there, the wife and I went, we sat on the deck all day long. Didn’t go to the beach till the last day. I liked the deck better. We went out to eat a lot. Crab. Love those crabs. Where were you?”

“Some place. You know, near Miami.”

“Us too. Miami Beach. You didn’t get much of a tan, Terry.”

“Never do that. Not good for you.” He drained the liquor.

“Right you are.”

“I’ll have another.” He pushed the glass toward the bartender. Looked around the place. He sipped the new drink. It was strong. Afternoon pours were big. A few minutes later the bell rang again and his burger appeared. He ate part of it slowly. “So, Ben, everything good around town?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Anybody come in here asking about me?”

“Ha.”

“What, ha?”

“Like a line out of some movie. James Garner. Or some detective, you know. A PI.”

Hart smiled, sipped his drink. Then ate more, with his left hand. He was using that arm, the shot one, for everything he could. The muscle had atrophied but was coming back. Just that day he’d finished with the triple-0 steel wool on the box he’d started up in Wisconsin, using his left hand for most of the work. It was really beautiful; he was proud of it.

The bartender said, “Nobody while I was here. Expecting somebody?”

“I never know what to expect.” A grin. “How’s that for a PI line?”

“You got a haircut.”

It was much shorter. A businessman’s trim.

“Looks good.”

Hart grunted.

The man went off to refill somebody else’s drink. Hart was thinking: If people drink liquor during the day it’s usually vodka. And mixed with something else. Sweet or sour. Nobody drinks martinis in the afternoon. Why is that?

He wondered if Brynn McKenzie was eating lunch at that moment. Did she generally? Or did she wait for dinner, a family dinner?

Which put him in mind of her husband. Graham Boyd.

Hart wondered if they’d talked about getting back together. He doubted it. Graham’s place, a nice townhouse about four miles from Brynn’s, didn’t look very temporary. Not like Hart’s apartment, when he’d broken up with his wife. He’d just crashed and hadn’t gotten around to fixing up the place for months. He thought back to being with Brynn in that van, next to the meth cooker’s camper. He’d never answered her question, the implicit one when she’d glanced at his hand: Are you married? Never answered it directly. Felt bad, in a funny way.

No lies between us…

The bartender’d said something.

“What?”

“That okay, Terry? Done right?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“No problem.”

ESPN was on the tube. Sports highlights. Hart finished his lunch.

The bartender collected the plate and silverware. “So you seeing anybody, Terry?” he asked, making bartender conversation.

Looking at the TV, Hart said, “Yeah, I have been.” Surprising himself.

“No, shit. Who?”

“This woman I met in April.” He didn’t know why he was saying this. He supposed because it made him feel good.

“Bring her in here sometime.”

“Ah, think we’re breaking up.”

“How come?”

“She doesn’t live around here.”

The bartender grimaced. “Yeah, I hear that. Long distance. I had a stint in the reserves and Ellie and me were apart for six months. That was tough. We’d just started going out. And the fucking governor calls me up. When you’re married it’s one thing, you can be away. But just going out with somebody…it sucks to commute.”

“Sure does.”

“Where is she?”

“Wisconsin.”

The bartender paused, sensing a joke. “For real?”

A nod.

“I mean, it’s not like we’re talking L.A. or Samoa, Terry.”

“There’re other problems.”

“Man and woman, there’re always other problems.”

Hart was thinking, Why do so many bartenders say things in a way that sounds like it’s the final word on a subject?

“We’re like Romeo and Juliet.”

The bartender lowered his voice. He understood. “She’s Jewish, huh?”

Hart laughed. “No. Not religion. It’s her job more.”

“Keeps her too busy, right? Never gets home? You ask me, that’s bullshit. Women oughta stay home. I’m not saying after the kids are grown, she can’t go back part-time. But it’s the way God meant it to be.”

“Yeah,” Hart said, thinking how Brynn McKenzie would respond to that.

“So that’s it between you guys?”

His chest thudded. “Probably. Yeah.”

The bartender looked away, as if he’d seen something troubling in Hart’s eyes—either scary or sad. Hart wondered which. “Well, you’ll meet somebody else, Terry.” The man lifted his soda, which had some rum “accidentally” spilled into it.

Hart offered his own bartenderism, “One way or the other, life goes on, doesn’t it?”

“I—”

“There’s no answer, Ben. I’m just talking.” Hart gave a grin. “Gotta finish packing. What’s the damage here?”

The bartender tallied it up. Hart paid. “Anybody comes around asking for me, let me know. Here’s a number.”

He jotted down a prepaid mobile he used for voice mail only.

Pocketing the twenty-dollar tip, Ben said, “PI’s, huh?”

Hart smiled again. He looked around the place and then headed out.

The door eased shut behind him as he stepped onto the sidewalk, the late May sky brilliant. The wind usually didn’t blow in from Lake Michigan but Hart thought he could smell the ripe scent of water on the cool breeze.

He pulled on sunglasses, thinking back to that night in April, thinking about the absence of light in Marquette State Park. There was no such thing as a single darkness, he’d learned there. There were hundreds of different shades—and textures and shapes too. Grays and blacks there weren’t even words to describe. Darkness as plentiful as types of woods, and with as many different grains. He supposed that if—

The first bullet struck him in his back, high and right. It exited, spattering his cheek with blood and tissue. He gasped, more startled than hurt, and looked down at the mess of the wound in his chest. The second entered the back of his head. The third sailed inches over him, as he dropped, and cracked obliquely into the window of the tavern. The glass began to cascade toward the ground.

Limp, Hart collided hard but silently with the sidewalk. Window shards flowed around him. One of the bigger sheets cut his ear nearly off. Another sliced through his neck and the blood began to flow in earnest.

 

“MORNING,” TOM DAHL SAID.

He was standing in Brynn’s cubicle, holding his coffee mug in one hand and two doughnuts in the other. Cheryl from reception had brought them. They rotated the duty. Every Monday, somebody brought pastry. To take the sting out of coming back to work maybe. Or maybe it was one of those traditions that had started for no reason and kept going because there was no reason to stop it.

She nodded.

“How was your weekend?” the sheriff asked.

“Good,” she said. “Joey was with his dad. Mom and I met Rita and Megan for brunch after church. We went to Brighton’s.”

“The buffet?”

“Yep.”

“They do a good spread there,” Dahl said reverently.

“Was nice.”

“So’s the one at the Marriott. They have an ice statue swan. Gotta get there early. It melts down to a duck by two.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Brynn said. “You guys do anything fun?”

“Not really. In-laws over. That father of hers…man is skinny as your pencil. Had three helpings of chicken and before we were done he was dunking his bread in the mushroom soup at the bottom of Carole’s green bean casserole. I mean, for pity’s sake.”

“That’s a good casserole,” said Brynn, who’d had it several times.

“God made serving spoons for a reason.” Dahl glanced down at the doughnut balancing on a paper plate atop his coffee mug. “Krispy Kreme today. I myself am partial to the ones you bring.”

“Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“Right. They don’t make ’em with that little knob anymore, do they?”

“I don’t know, Tom. I just ask for three dozen. They mix ’em up for me.”

She kept waiting.

He said, “So. You heard, didn’t you?”

“Heard?”

He frowned. “Milwaukee PD called. That detective working on the Lake Mondac case?”

“Nobody called me.” She lifted an eyebrow.

“Hart was killed.”

“What?”

“Looked gangland. Shot in the back of the head. North side of Chicago. That’s where he lived, it turned out.”

“Well. How ’bout that.” Brynn sat back, eyed her own coffee. She’d seen the doughnuts but hadn’t given in.

“You were right. Man had some enemy or another.”

“Any leads?”

“Not many.”

“They find out anything about him?”

Dahl told her what Chicago PD had relayed to Milwaukee: Terrance Hart was a security consultant, with an office in Chicago. He made $93,043 last year. He would provide risk assessments to warehouse and manufacturing companies and arrange for security guards. Never been arrested, never been the subject of any criminal investigation, paid his taxes on time.

“Man traveled a lot, though. A lot.” The sheriff said this as if that alone was a cause for suspicion.

Dahl added that he’d been married briefly, no kids.

Marriage doesn’t suit me. Does it suit you, Brynn?

His parents lived in Pennsylvania. He had one younger sibling, a brother who was now a doctor.

“A doctor?” Brynn frowned.

“Yeah. The family was pretty normal. Which you wouldn’t expect. But Hart himself was always living on the edge. In trouble at school a lot. But, like I said, no arrests. Kept up a good front. His company’s done okay. And, get this, he was a woodworker. I mean, high-class stuff. Furniture, not just the bookshelves I hammer together. Had this sign above his workbench, what a teacher of mine told me: ‘Measure twice, cut once.’ Not your typical hit man.”

“What was the story with the shooting?”

“Pretty simple. He’d moved back to his townhouse from Green Bay, where he’d been hiding out. But with Michelle away there was no reason not to go home. He went to one of his old hangouts for lunch on Saturday afternoon. Walked out and somebody got him from behind.”

“Any witnesses?”

“Not really. Everybody in the bar hit the deck as soon as the gunplay started. Chicago, after all. Nobody could tell the cops anything concrete. Street was deserted. A few cars took off fast. No tag or IDs.” He paused. “There’s a connection here.”

“Here?” Brynn asked, watching him take a bite of the fried dough, as crumbs parachuted to the faded carpet.

“Well, Wisconsin. The ballistics on the slugs match a weapon might’ve been used in a shooting in that gas station thing over in Smith about six months ago? Exxon. The clerk nearly got killed.”

“I don’t remember.”

“The State Police handled it. Nobody here was involved.”

“The same gun?”

“They think. But who knows? That ballistics’ stuff. Not as easy as CSI makes it look.”

Brynn said, “So the perp here ditched the gun and somebody found it and it got sold on the street.”

“Guess so.”

“Recycling at its worst.”

“Amen.”

Brynn sat back, made a bridge across the top of her coffee mug with a skinny wood stirrer. “What else, Tom? Looks like there’s more.”

Dahl hesitated. “Guess I should say. Hart had your name in a notebook in his pocket. And your address too. And in the apartment they found some other things. Pictures.”

“Pictures?”

“Digital ones he’d printed out. Of the outside of the house. Taken recent. You could see the spring buds. The pictures were in this wooden box—a fancy one. Looks like he made it himself.”

“Well.”

A long sigh. “And I have to say, there were some of Joey’s school too.”

“No. Of Joey?”

“Just the school. I was thinking he might’ve been staking it out to get a feel for your schedule…. In his apartment he had a suitcase being packed. Inside was a weapon and a sound suppressor. I’ve never see one of those. Except in the movies. I thought they were called silencers but the detective called them a suppressor.”

She was nodding slowly. Kept stirring coffee that didn’t need it.

“We’ll take your house off the special patrol route, if you’re comfortable with that.”

“Sure. Sounds like everything’s accounted for, Tom.”

“It is. Case closed. I don’t think I ever said that, not in fourteen years.” Clutching his breakfast he wandered back to his office.

 

CHESTNUT HAIR PINNED

up, a concession to a surprise Wisconsin heat wave, Kristen Brynn McKenzie was walking past a dozen pines, round and richly green. Sweat blossomed under the arms of her tan uniform blouse and trickled down her spine. She was looking at the plants, studying them closely. They weren’t much taller than she was. As she moved along she lowered her hand and let it drag across the three-inch needles. They yielded without prickling.

She paused and looked at them.

Recalling, of course, April. She’d been thinking a lot about those twelve hours in Marquette State Park, remembering with odd clarity the sights and smells and feel of the trees and plants that had saved her life. And that had nearly ended it.

Why, she wondered, gazing at the pines, would they have evolved this way, these shapes and shades, some the color of green Jell-O, some the shade of Home Depot shutters? Why were these needles long and soft, and why had barberry brambles, where Amy’s toy, Chester, was probably still entombed, developed those terrible thorns?

Thinking of the foliage, the trees, the leaves. Wood alive and wood dead and decaying.

Brynn continued on, found herself next to several huge camellias, the blossoms widely unfolded from their tight pods, cradled in waxy green leaves. The petals were red, the color of bright blood, and her heart tapped a bit at that. She kept walking. Now past azaleas and ligustrum and crepe myrtle, ferns, hibiscus, wisteria.

Then she turned the corner and a short, dark-complexioned man holding a hose blinked in surprise and said, “Buenos dias, Mrs. McKenzie.”

“Morning, Juan. Where is he? I saw his truck.”

“In the shed.”

She walked past several piles of mulch, fifteen feet high. A worker in a Bobcat was stirring it, to prevent spontaneous combustion. It could actually smolder up a storm of smoke if you didn’t. The rich smell surrounded her. She continued on to the shed, really a small barn, and walked through the open door.

“I’ll be with you in a second,” Graham Boyd said, looking up from a workbench. He was wearing safety goggles and, she realized, seeing only her silhouette. He’d be thinking she was a customer. He returned to his task. She noted that the carpentry was part of an expansion project and he seemed to be doing the work himself. That was Graham. Even after he’d moved the last of his things out of their house he’d returned to finish the kitchen tiling. And had done a damn good job of it.

Then he was looking up again. Realizing who she was. He set the board down and took the goggles off. “Hi.”

She nodded.

He frowned. “Everything okay with Joey?”

“Oh, sure, fine.”

He joined her. They didn’t embrace. He squinted, looking at her cheek.

“You had that surgery?”

“Vanity.”

“You can’t see a thing. How’s it feel?”

“Inside’s tender. Have to watch what I eat.” She looked around the building. “You’re expanding.”

“Just doing what should’ve been done a long time ago. Anna says she’s doing better. I called.”

“She said. More house-ridden than she needs to be. The doctors want her to walk more. I want her out more too.” She laughed.

“And Joey’s been off skateboards without a cop present, hmm? Grandma gave me a report.”

“That’s a capital crime in the house now. And I’ve got spies. They tell me he’s clean. He’s really into lacrosse now.”

“I saw that special. About Michelle Kepler and the murders.”

“On WKSP. That’s right.”

“There were some cops from Milwaukee. They said they‘d arrested her. You didn’t even get mentioned. Not by name.”

“I didn’t go along for the party. I was off that night.”

“You?”

She nodded.

“Didn’t they interview you, at least? The reporters?”

“What do I need publicity for?” Brynn was suddenly awkward; her face burned like that of a middle-school girl alone at a dance. She thought back to her very first traffic stop. She’d been so nervous she’d returned to her squad car without handing the driver his copy of the ticket. He’d politely called her back and asked for it.

Nervous now, nervous all last night—after her mother had said she’d “run into” Graham at the senior center, and Brynn had stopped her cold.

“So, come on, Mom. What is this, a campaign to get us back together?”

“Hell, yes, and it’s one I aim to win.”

“It’s not that easy, not that simple.”

“When’ve you ever wanted easy? Your brother and sister, yes. Not you.”

“Okay, I was thinking about going to see him.”

“Tomorrow.”

“I’m not ready.”

“Tomorrow.”

A worker stuck his head in and asked Graham a question. He answered in Spanish. All Brynn caught were the words for “in the middle.”

He turned back, said nothing.

Okay. Now.

“Just wondering,” she said. “I’m on break. You’ve been up since six, I’ll bet. And I’ve been up since six. Just wondered if you wanted to get coffee. Or something.”

And, she was thinking, to spend some time talking.

Telling him more about what happened that night in April.

And telling him a lot of other things too. Whatever he’d listen to, she’d tell him.

Just like a few weeks ago when she’d sat in the backyard with Keith and done the same. Part confession, part apology, part just plain talking. Her ex, though cautious at first, had been pleased to listen. She wondered if her present husband would. She surely hoped so.

Several heartbeats of pause. “Sure,” he said. “Let me finish this board.”

“Okay. I’ll be at the diner.”

Graham turned away. And then stopped. He looked back at her, shook his head, frowning.

Brynn McKenzie found herself nodding. She understood. Understood completely.

Graham Boyd had been flustered at first, seeing her just appear like this. He’d agreed impulsively, not knowing what to make of her invitation. Now, reality had returned. He was recalling his own anger and pain from that night in April. And from the months leading up to it.

He had no interest in whatever she was up to here.

Ah, well, she couldn’t blame him one bit. The moment for conversations of the sort she had planned had come and gone long ago.

Flawed jaw set and fixed cheek taut, Brynn gave a wan smile. But before she could say, “That’s okay,” Graham was explaining, “I’m not really into the diner much anymore. There’s a new place in the mall opened up. Coffee’s a lot better. Pretty good hot chocolate too.”

She blinked. “Where is it?”

“Downstairs, next to Sears. I’ll be ten minutes.”