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And Hart had told him to stand still, then shot him-casual as could be.
She looked around, the circus of flashing lights. Heard voices shouting, the crackle of radios.
In addition to Dahl, there were other deputies from the Ke
Head down, Michelle sat on the grass, her back against a tree, cradling sleeping Amy, both wrapped in blankets. The medics had looked them over and neither was badly injured. Michelle’s ankle turned out to be just a pulled muscle.
Somber, Michelle clutched the girl tightly, and Bry
Bry
“They’re on their way.” Then her voice faded and she gave a stoic smile. “Never got a message from my husband.”
“Did you call him?”
She shook her head. And her body language said she wanted to be alone. She brushed Amy’s hair gently. The child was snoring softly.
Bry
“One of Rudy Hamilton’s people?” an FBI agent said, hearing Bry
“Rudy said somebody named Fletcher might be in the area.”
The agent nodded. “Kevin Fletcher, sure. Meth and crack bigwig. But no evidence he operates around here. He sticks close to Green Bay. Makes ten times as much up there. No, I’m still betting the shooter was some muscle Mankewitz sent.”
“Drove down here to protect his hit men?”
“I’m guessing,” the other said.
Of course they were eager to pin anything on Mankewitz, short of the Ke
“You get a look at him?”
“Nope. Don’t even know where he was.”
The agent looked out over the woods. “That’s not going to be an easy crime scene.”
And then they all grew silent as a recovery team carried Eric Munce’s body from the woods. The bag was dark green. The men started to set it near the body of the other killer, but hesitated and, out of respect, set it farther away, on the grass, not the shoulder.
“I’ve seen those bags a dozen times,” Bry
The driver of the SUV and his girlfriend were sitting dazed on the ground near the ambulance. Their seat belts had kept them from any damage other than bruising. The man who’d been pulled from his car by Hart was uninjured but his fear or ego kept prompting him to mutter about lawsuits until somebody suggested he could sell his story to People or Us. It was meant sarcastically to shut him up. But he seemed to like the idea. And he did shut up.
Bry
A sigh. “I’m going by there now. In person, no calls.”
Graham looked at the body bag containing the deputy. “Well,” he said, as if it hurt to take enough breath to speak. Bry
Deputies Pete Gibbs and big Howie Prescott, breathing hard, came out of the forest with several state troopers. They were carrying clear plastic bags. Inside were shell casings and an empty ammunition clip.
They placed Comp’s personal effects into another bag. Michelle’s purse and Hart’s map went into others.
Bry
“Sure. Found about five hundred prints. Mostly the Feldmans’. None of the others set off alarms. The stolen Ford had about sixty and they were negative too. Those boys wore gloves the whole time. Smarter’n our criminals round here.”
“What about the spent brass and shells?”
“Found a ton of it. Yours, theirs. Went over the whole place with a metal detector. Even fished some out of that creek beside the garage. But no prints on a single shell.”
“None?” Bry
“Looks like it.”
Yep, smarter than our criminals…
Then she jabbed a finger at one of the evidence bags. “Tom, this’s our chance. Maybe there’re no prints on the brass-Hart’d expect to leave that. But he’s taken his weapon apart to clean and load it. There’s a print on one of those clips, I guarantee it. And the map. And they were carting around Michelle’s purse. They must’ve opened it. I’m taking the evidence up there myself-to the lab in Gardener.”
“You?” Dahl scoffed. “Don’t be nuts, Bry
“I’ll get some sleep in the car on the way home. Grab a shower and head over there.”
Dahl nodded at the troopers. “Half these boys’re stationed in Gardener They’ll drop everything off at the lab.”
She whispered, “And everything’ll sit gathering dust for two weeks. I want that guy.” A nod up the highway, where, peering over the ribbed pistol barrel, she’d last seen Hart in the ’jacked car speeding away. “I’m going to stand over the tech like a school teacher till I get some names from AIFIS. I want that man bad.”
Dahl looked at her grim, determined expression. “All right.”
Bry
She leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder again. “Oh, honey. What a night.” He looked up. “You came. You came to find me.”
“I did, yes.” He gave her a distracted smile. He was clearly shaken-who wouldn’t be?-having seen and experienced what he had tonight.
“Let’s get home. I called A
Then another State Police car pulled up and a trooper and a short woman in a suit, Latina, climbed out. She was from Child Protective Services.
Bry
Bry