“I’m not aware of that schedule,” he said.
“Which is why I’m asking to speak with Officer Hanscomb.”
“Yeah, but you’re not asking nice, though.”
“May I please speak with Officer Hanscomb?”
“If she had anything to speak to you about, I expect she’d be the one out here speaking to you,” Brooks said. “Instead of lucky lucky me.”
What was it with this guy? In Maya’s view they could have been perfectly civil with one another, but, no, he wanted to break her balls for some reason. She shone her brightest TV smile in his face and motioned to Deon, who put the camera on his shoulder. “In that case, should I be talking to you instead?”
“I wasn’t aware you’d stopped.” The two-way radio on the detention officer’s belt beeped twice, then chattered softly. Brooks batted his eyelashes for the camera and stepped a few paces away to answer the call.
Deon said, “I don’t think he wants to talk to you, Maya Lamb.”
“You got that, huh?” In the past quarter hour, a pair of uniformed sherrif’s deputies had materialized outside, in front of the building. They appeared to be standing post on either side of the entrance doors. Maya looked around the empty wooden benches lining the vacant waiting area and said, “What’s going on around here?”
Deon shrugged, working a ragged toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. He turned with the camera and found the cops outside through his viewfinder.
Officer Brooks came back, radio on his belt. “Congratulations,” he said. “Officer Hanscomb is en route.”
“En route?”
“That’s a law-enforcement word. It means you can wait over there.”
“Actually it’s two words,” Maya said. “A phrase, if you want to get technical.”
“Hey, I know another phrase,” Brooks said, but he was interrupted by the door to the secure area behind them, which buzzed, then opened. A woman emerged into the waiting area, striding briskly beneath the arm of another officer holding the door for her. Her ID badge jounced on a lanyard around her neck.
“Well, that wasn’t such a long wait,” Maya said.
Brooks smirked at her.
“Miss Lamb,” the woman said, extending a hand as she approached. She stood five feet flat and weighed all of fourteen ounces in slacks and a blouse, with a springy mop of curly blond hair, owlish eyeglasses, and straight white teeth that seemed half a size too large for her mouth. “Jackie Hanscomb. I apologize for the confusion. And for making you wait.”
“Not at all,” Maya said. She felt like a giant shaking Hanscomb’s small hand. “Has something come up?”
“You could say that.” Hanscomb pressed her lips together in a grim line, and Maya got a good look at her eyes. Efficient posture aside, the diminutive media officer looked as though she’d come through some kind of wringer this afternoon. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to grant your interview after all.”
It wasn’t even supposed to have been an interview, Maya thought. Just a quick bit of B-roll, then done. She said, “Can you tell me why?”
“If you’re able to spare fifteen minutes, I have somebody you can talk to.” She nodded politely at Deon. “But not the camera. I’m sorry.”
Maya glanced at Deon. He worked his toothpick, shrugged, lowered his camera. She turned back to Hanscomb and said, “I’m all yours.”
“All right, then. Please come with me.”
To Deon, Maya said, “Call the station, will you? Tell Miles I’ll touch base in fifteen.”
“Happy to,” Deon said, crumpled pack of smokes already in hand. “Let’s see if I can get a better signal outside.”
The detective from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office was a new face to Maya. He looked to be somewhere in his forties, wore shirtsleeves and dress pants, a clip holster and a wedding ring, apparently took care of himself, and met her with a far more collegial disposition than had Officer Brooks in the waiting area. “Roger Barnhill,” he said, shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” she said, still gaining her bearings. Hanscomb had brought her down a hall and up a flight of stairs to the jail superintendent’s office, which had a bank of security monitors on one wall, leather-bound volumes of the Annotated Minnesota Statutes going back to the 1950s on another, and a massive old wooden office desk in between. Against the edge of the desk leaned the superintendent himself, Terry Spilker, whom Maya had met a couple of times before. “Terry, nice to see you again.”
“Always,” Spilker said. He unfolded his arms and stepped over to join in on the hand-shaking. “Apart from the circumstances.”
“Yeah, I was wondering about those.” Maya looked around the faces in the room: Spilker, Detective Barnhill, Jackie Hanscomb, and a tall, well-heeled man she knew to be Morton Clay, Benson family attorney. Clay, who hadn’t approved of Maya’s presence in the first place, appeared to have softened on that point. Other than that, none of the faces told her much. “I can’t help feeling like I’m missing something.”
“I think we’re all still getting up to speed,” Barnhill said. “Thanks for the time, I know you’re short on it. Frankly, so am I, and I believe we may be in a position to help each other.”
“Is there something News7 can do for the sheriff’s office today?”
“That’s what I’d like to talk to you about. Officer Hanscomb tells me you came to the facility in a broadcast truck. Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right. I’m scheduled to go live from here top of the hour.”
“I’m going to share some information with you,” Barnhill said. “Some of it I need to go out on the air to the public as soon as possible. Most of it I need to stay in this office. For now.”
“That’s not something police normally say to reporters,” Maya said.
“No, I don’t suppose it is. But I want you to understand the situation fully.”
Her senses were on full tingle now. “I appreciate that.”
“First, some ground rules.”
“What kind of ground rules?”
“If you agree to keep a tight lid on everything I want you to hold back, then I won’t hold back anything,” Detective Barnhill said. “And when your competition from the other affiliates and the print outlets show up, I’ll remember all the trust you and I have established.”
“By observing the ground rules,” she said.
Barnhill touched a finger to his nose. “As long as you hold up your end of the deal, no other reporter gets any information from me that you didn’t get first. I’ll give you my word on that. Your thoughts?”
Maya thought that this man Barnhill from the sheriff’s detectives was already planning a press conference in his head, and he didn’t appear to be enjoying it. She glanced at Morton Clay in the corner. Benson’s attorney didn’t appear to be enjoying it either. She said, “I’d say that sounds doable.”
“Then we have an agreement.” Without further preamble, the detective walked over to the desk, where Maya saw two matching BlackBerry mobile phones sitting side by side on top of a plain manila file folder. “What I’m about to show you falls under the stuff-we-keep-in-this-office category.”
Maya nodded.
Barnhill picked up one of the phones. “This is Cheryl Benson’s PDA.” He picked up the other phone, so that he now held one in each hand. “This one belongs to her husband. Mr. Benson arrived here at the facility just over an hour ago. Shortly after that time, both phones received the same transmission, copied simultaneously.”
“What kind of transmission?”
Barnhill fiddled with one of the phones, then brought it over to Maya. “Remember,” he said. “Inside this office only.”
Maya took the device and looked at the screen. At first she couldn’t make sense of what she saw there. “Is that …” She looked closer. Her pulse spiked. “Is this Juliet Benson?”
“Her parents assure me it is.”
Maya drew in a breath.
�
��What you see there was sent from Juliet’s phone,” Barnhill told her. “Whoever sent it went through and picked Mom and Dad out of the girl’s contact list. That phone, hers, is now offline.”
“Holy shit.” Maya stared at the image in the palm of her hand: a digital photo, presumably taken with the camera on board Juliet Benson’s phone. The resolution wasn’t great, but the image was legible enough for Maya to recognize Wade Benson’s daughter, bound and gagged in the trunk of a car. “When did you say this came in?”
“Three fifty-seven this afternoon, according to the time stamp.”
Maya took another look at the image. It was difficult to absorb the details; her mind kept straining to run ahead of her. I just talked to you, she thought.
As if reading her mind, Barnhill said, “I understand that you also may have video images of Miss Benson from earlier today. Her general appearance, what she was wearing, et cetera. Is that correct?”
Maya felt herself nodding. She couldn’t stop looking at the PDA screen. In the photo, Juliet Benson’s pretty dark hair clung to the grimy carpet of the trunk floor beneath her head in wet, matted tendrils. Her mouth had been stuffed with some kind of rag and tied with what appeared to be the belt of her own raincoat. Above the gag, her eyes swam with fear.
“Around her wrists,” Maya said, squinting. “Are those flex cuffs?”
“Possibly,” Barnhill said. He didn’t elaborate. Maya finally noticed him standing patiently, palm out.
She pulled herself together, shook her head, handed the BlackBerry back to him. “And that’s all there is?”
“That’s all.”
“No note? Anything?”
“Just what I’ve showed you,” Barnhill said. “Our office is preparing a press release to the other outlets now. But you’re here, and I’m new to this county, and I believe it’s time I made a friend in the TV business.”
“I feel like we’re old pals already,” Maya said. “What do you know that won’t be in the press release?”
“I haven’t seen a draft yet, so I’d say that determination is ongoing,” Barnhill said. “What we know so far is that Juliet Benson has a two-o’clock class on Wednesdays and that she attended class today. We know that she missed a study date at a coffee shop off campus at four o’clock. I have deputies on campus now, and Minneapolis PD is supporting us there. Personnel from that group have determined that the girl’s car is not currently located in the student parking lot she normally uses. According to Mr. Benson, it could be her car in the photo, but there’s not enough for him to make a positive ID. Either way, the Bolo call on that vehicle went out over police channels twenty minutes ago.”
Listening to all of this, Maya couldn’t help extrapolating time frames in her head. A two-o’clock class, a four-o’clock study date. It was entirely possible, she realized, that at the very time she and Rose Ann had been sitting around at the station, chatting about happy endings, Juliet Benson was being forced into the trunk of her own car.
Detective Barnhill went back to the desk, replaced the phones, and picked up the file folder. From inside the folder he took a sheet of paper with another photograph—a good old-fashioned print this time—paper-clipped to the corner.
“This is part of what’s going out to everybody,” he said, handing the page to Maya. “Juliet Benson’s full description, our hotline info, so forth. This photograph came from her mother’s purse and I’m told it’s recent, though certainly not as recent as whatever footage you’ve obtained. You’ve done the rest before, I assume.”
“Police are seeking the public’s assistance in locating a Minneapolis woman,” Maya said, appraising the new photo: Cheryl Benson and her daughter in tennis dresses, arm in arm. Juliet had her dad’s eyes and her mother’s smile. Maya looked at Detective Barnhill. “Surely we’re using the word missing?”
“Missing and endangered,” Barnhill said. “We’ll want to name the campus as her last known location, mark the time at three p.m. this afternoon. Everything else …”
“Authorities have yet to disclose further details,” Maya said.
At last, Benson’s attorney spoke up from his spot in the corner. “Detective, about the reward.”
Maya looked at Clay. Looked at Barnhill. Detective Barnhill took what seemed like a measured breath, then nodded toward the page in Maya’s hand. “Mr. Clay’s firm wishes to secure a private cash reward for any information leading to Miss Benson’s safe return. That information is also included on the sheet you have there.”
Maya looked back at Morton Clay. He seemed unsatisfied but remained silent. She slipped the photograph free of its clip. “Do you have a soft copy of this?”
“Our public-information office does. Give me an email address and I’ll tell them where to send it.”
Maya was already eyeballing the multifunction office printer on Terry Spilker’s desk. “That has a scanner, right?”
Spilker nodded. “If you know how to run the thing. I don’t.”
“May I?”
“By all means.”
Five minutes later, from behind Terry Spilker’s computer monitor, Maya used the superintendent’s office phone to call Miles Oltman at the station.
“Ticktock,” her assignment editor said. “How we doing?”
“I sent you something,” Maya told him. “Check your mail, you should be—”
“It just popped up. Hang on.” A pause. She heard Miles tapping away on his laptop in the background. In a moment he came back on the line. “Okay, what am I looking at?”
“Tonight’s top story, I’d think,” Maya said.
5
By five o’clock Mike felt more or less human. He took three Vicodins for his leg and stayed a long time in the shower, then shaved, brushed his teeth, and got dressed. By the time he was finished, he’d organized a rough order of business in his head. First item on the list: Eat something.
The cupboards were bare, so Mike grabbed his jacket, locked up the house, and walked over to Hal’s place. The Elbow Room wasn’t licensed to serve food, but each day Hal made up a couple dozen ham sandwiches with mayo and mustard, wrapped them in plastic, and loaded them into the cooler under the bar. Hal didn’t advertise the sandwiches, but if you knew to ask, he’d sell you one on a napkin with a beer or whatever you were drinking for a buck or two extra. What he didn’t sell by last call he took the next morning to the soup kitchen over by Como Park Lutheran. Mike had gotten to like those sandwiches.
The rain had quit, and the air smelled like early morning instead of late afternoon. Mike breathed it in through the nose as he walked, let it freshen up the inside of his head. It was still cool for April, but they’d finally turned the corner on winter; he could hear the ground sucking and popping beneath the humpbacked lawns along Front Avenue, thirsty after an early thaw and a cold, sunless March. The robins were out in numbers, hopping about in the wet grass, hunting for earthworms. Mealtime for everybody.
By the time he made it to the Elbow, Mike’s stomach was rumbling. He pulled open the door to the clack of pool balls, Jeopardy! on the television over the bar, and the scattered voices of a few other early birds getting a head start on happy hour.
“That was a quick trip,” Hal said as Mike took a stool. “Fish weren’t biting, huh?”
Mike felt like he’d walked in on somebody else’s conversation. “Fish?”
Hal brought up a sandwich, pulled a beer to go with it. “I guess you stayed home.”
“You lost me at trip, Hal. Thanks for the grub.” He put a fiver on the bar, which Hal ignored. Mike left the money anyway. He slid the sandwich toward him by the napkin, began undoing the plastic wrap. “What are we talking about?”
Hal chuckled. “Potter came by first thing this morning, asked if he could borrow my place a couple days. Said he needed to dry out, thought he’d see what the walleye were up to. Hell, I didn’t have the heart to tell him walleye season don’t open ’til May.”
Hal owned a little place up in the lake country,
a ramshackle cabin on a pretty piece of water he’d inherited from his grandfather twenty years ago. Rockhaven, the older man had named the spot, planting the sign at the end of the long narrow lane that stood today. Mike had used the place himself on occasion, at Hal’s invitation, and he’d hauled Darryl along up there one weekend last August, after Darryl got off probation, thinking the peace and quiet could be good medicine for both of them. They’d run out of booze, and then cigarettes, and Darryl had spent the last day sweating, slapping bugs, and crawling out of his skin.
Mike evaluated this news with mixed feelings. On one hand, his chore for the day had gotten easier. On the other hand, Darryl didn’t fish.
“That’s funny,” he told Hal. “I was about to ask if you’d seen him around here today.”
“Uh huh.” Hal smirked and wiped down the bar. “You ain’t the first either.”
Shit. Mike took a bite of his sandwich. It tasted better than eleven thousand dollars. “I guess Toby Lunden’s been by.”
“That’s his name? Milky-lookin’ kid, glasses like Coke bottles?”
“That’s his name,” Mike said.
“So that’s Mr. Big, huh?” Hal shook his head slowly. “Jesus, I must be older than I thought.”
Mike said, “I suppose he probably had a friend with him.”
“Shoulder holster. Face like he got in a fistfight with some guy who had hatchets for hands.”
“That’d be Bryce. We only just met.”
“Yeah, well, they both met the end of my foot kickin’ their asses outta here.”
Mike couldn’t help smiling. “Yeah?”
“You don’t bring a gun into my place. Not unless you’re a cop. And that asshole wasn’t a cop.”
“Not to my knowledge, no.”
“So,” Hal said, ignoring the guy down the bar trying to flag him for another beer. “Who is he? Besides the reason Potter figured he ought to get the hell out of town.”
Lake Country Page 5
