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 m
ight 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?"