Lake Country

by Sean Doolittle

  “You don’t have to talk like that,” she said. “I’m not a basket case.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Okay.”

  “And I will totally still cut you.”

  “Loud and clear,” Mike said.

  He pointed the spotlight away from them and locked the trigger with the switch on the handle. He laid the light down on the ground beside him so that the beam pointed straight up in the air, illuminating the tops of the pines.

  “There,” he said. “Now we’re just like a used car lot.” She didn’t laugh, but that was okay. It wasn’t that funny.

  He finally got a better look at her. She was shivering, filthy from head to toe. She wore what she must have worn to campus yesterday afternoon, a sort of thin jersey sweater with a hood. No doubt warm enough for afternoon classes, not so well suited for a night in the woods. He saw that she’d used the knife to cut off her own sleeves at the shoulders. She’d done her best to fashion the material into a pair of makeshift moccasins.

  Her bare arms were covered in scrapes and scratches. In the shadows cast by the spotlight beam, he could see the lean contours of her shoulders and gathered that she took care of herself. He wasn’t surprised. The sweater looked to be some kind of a light-beige color under all the dirt stains. Her feet were black, sodden with blood and mud, bristling with leaves and pine needles.

  Mike reached for the spotlight and angled the beam toward her right foot. She’d turned her ankle badly at some point near the end of her trail. She’d already peeled the fabric down past her heel in order to have a look for herself, and what she’d found could not have been encouraging.

  Her right ankle was easily twice the size of her left, swollen so tightly that the skin shone in the light. Amid the pulpy discoloration, Mike could see weeping gouges in her flesh from the stringer needle, along with angry ligature marks from the zip ties that had bound her. It was the same ankle Darryl had tethered to the spindle bed back at the cabin.

  This, he realized, was the reason she’d gone to ground. She’d stepped wrong, sprained the ankle severely, possibly broken it. She’d gotten as far as she could on it but could go no farther.

  “Can I see this?” he said, nodding toward the ankle.

  She didn’t say no.

  Mike propped the beam against a root and reached out slowly. She stiffened at his approach, renewed her grip on the knife handle. Over the soaked denim of her jeans, he cupped her calf with one hand, lifting gently. He took the base of her heel lightly in the other. She flinched and cried out at the slightest pressure. Her skin felt hot and bloated under his fingers.

  “Sorry,” he said. He kept hold of her calf to keep the foot elevated but took the offending hand away. “Sorry, sorry.”

  “I stepped in a hole,” she said, biting her lip, voice shaking with frustration. “It just folded over and I felt it pop.”

  “Can you walk on it at all?”

  She shook her head tightly. The tip of the knife wobbled in front of her.

  “That’s okay,” Mike said. “No worries.” He pulled over a half-rotted oak limb, eased her leg straight, settled her calf down on the spongy wood. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  “I cut my foot on some glass,” she said. “Bad, I think.”

  Mike nodded. She hadn’t said which foot, but by the look of her wraps he guessed her left. Both feet were so filthy he couldn’t be sure. He pointed, and she nodded again, confirming his worry: she had two bad wheels, not only the one.

  “All that mud is good,” he told her. Something positive. “It stopped the bleeding.”

  “Lucky me.” The knife tip lowered a few inches.

  “How much pain?”

  “Not as much as before.”

  “That’s good too.”

  “They’re so cold I can’t really feel much.”

  Mike leaned back on his heels and tried to sort out their options.

  A ride would be swell. It occurred to him that if he hadn’t chucked the .45 in the lake, and if Darryl had rounds for it rattling around in a pants pocket—as Mike felt reasonably certain he probably did—they could have worked out some kind of signal Darryl would have been able to hear from the lake road.

  Then again, Darryl arriving in the truck to give them a lift probably wouldn’t have done much to strengthen the delicate relationship still forming between Juliet Benson and him.

  Anyway. By Mike’s general calculations, at this point they were closer to the lake than the lake road. Or the lane in, for that matter.

  If his bearings were correct, and Mike had always had a reliable compass in his head, the shortest way back to the cabin was due east, through the woods. Based on the distance he’d traveled to the ravine and the distance he’d followed it, he estimated the third side of the triangle to be about half a klick’s hike more or less straight to Juliet’s canoe.

  “How did you find me?” she said.

  As the sound of her voice reclaimed his attention, Mike noticed something that did not overwhelm him with optimism: the beam of the spotlight. If it had been pumping out three-million candlepower when he’d started, a couple-odd-million candles had flickered out by now. Locked on full blast the way he had it, the beam was actually dimming before his eyes.

  He reached out and released the trigger switch. Darkness pulled around them like a lead blanket.

  Louder, she said, “How did you find me?”

  “I followed you,” Mike told her. He almost said tracked but edited himself. Tracked, he reasoned, would have sounded far too much like hunted for anyone’s comfort. “You left me just what I needed. You did good.”

  “I mean how did you find me,” she said. “How did you know where to look?”

  “I’m pretty good with—”

  “How did you know where to look for me in the first place?” Her voice regained its edge as she spoke. “Who are you?”

  Mike thought about how to answer.

  Truthfully, he decided. At least as truthfully as he dared.

  “I use this place sometimes,” he said. “The man who owns it is a friend of mine.”

  “A friend?”

  For the first time in two hours, Mike realized that he’d stopped checking his watch. After all this, he’d completely forgotten to call Hal as he’d promised he would. The terms of their deal had long expired by now. Nothing to be done about that at this point. Onward.

  “He lets me come here when I ask him,” Mike said. “That’s how I found you.”

  As his eyes readjusted to the darkness, he could make out Juliet Benson’s shape amid the pine roots. She seemed to have made herself smaller. When she spoke, he almost couldn’t hear her.

  “The guy who brought me here,” she said. “Do you know him too?”

  Mike decided to step away from the truth for the sake of expediency. “No,” he said.

  “He has a gun,” she said. Almost a whisper.

  “You don’t have to worry about him anymore,” Mike told her. “Trust me, you’re safe now. I promise.”

  He must have sounded convincing, because she didn’t ask him how he could promise her such a thing. For a long time she was quiet. Mike waited until she was ready to speak again.

  “Do they …” she started, then stopped and took a breath. “Does anybody else know I’m gone?”

  “You’re not gone. You’re right here. So am I now. And I’m going to get you back where you belong.”

  “My parents—”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Listen, you’re all over the news. The cops are looking for you too. Your folks are going to be a couple of very happy people as soon as we get you out of here.”

  “The police are looking for me?”

  “Turning Minnesota upside down. Believe it.”

  “They’re coming here?”

  Probably any old time now, Mike thought. He thought of Darryl, waiting in the truck at the lake road. Nothing to be done about that either. “Soon,” he said.

  “You called them?”

>   Jesus, she had a lot of questions for a girl hiding under an uproooted tree with sleeves for shoes. His knee was starting to throb from crouching there with her.

  He shifted his weight and said, “There aren’t any phones out here. And I can’t get a cell signal until we’re about three miles down the road. Let’s get you back to the cabin, fix you up, and haul our chilly asses out of here.” He picked up the spotlight. “The minute we hit a signal, we’ll call the whole world and tell everyone you’re safe.” He reached forward carefully, offering her his hand. “Sound like a plan?”

  She didn’t flinch when he reached out to her this time. And she didn’t take long to think about it. She nodded her head.

  “Okay,” he said, and leaned forward. “Grab on to my neck. I’ll help you stand up.”

  Almost without hesitating, Juliet Benson reached out her arms. When she draped them over his shoulders, he could feel the goose bumps all over her cold bare skin. He could also feel the edge of a very sharp fishing knife resting lightly against his earlobe.

  “Hey, Juliet?” he said.

  She nodded against his neck. Her damp hair smelled like rainwater.

  “Don’t let your hand slip, okay?”

  After a pause, he felt the blade of the knife turn away from his ear. The hand with the knife in it stayed where it was.

  Fair enough.

  “Upsy daisy,” he said.

  22

  They found a twenty-four-hour gas-and-shop off the state highway north of Brainerd. Attached to the station was a small, well-lighted diner called Okerlund’s, which started serving breakfast at the inexplicable hour of 3:00 a.m.

  Sitting in a booth by the window, Toby watched a Crow Wing County sheriff’s deputy chat up the waitress behind the register as he paid for his coffee and eggs. He felt like he wanted to crawl underneath the table, having a cop right there under the same roof with them, standing so close Toby probably could have blown a paper straw wrapper and hit the guy. But Bryce’s mood only seemed to improve.

  The deputy was short and overweight and shaped like a bowling pin, with hammy cheeks and a mustache like the kind they gave out at deputy school. When he finished at the counter, he hitched up his gun belt and weeble-wobbled for the door, nodding as he passed their booth. Through the window they watched him shove into his prowler, back out of his parking space, and drive away.

  “Crow Wing County,” Bryce mused, after the deputy had rolled out of sight. “How much ground would you guess that covers?”

  Toby stared at his plate: hash browns and two sausage patties sitting in twin puddles of grease. Food had smelled good when they came in, but now he didn’t feel like eating anything. “How much ground does what cover?”

  “Crow Wing County.”

  “I have no idea,” Toby said.

  Bryce sipped his coffee. “Well. Good a place to start as any, right? As long as we’re up here?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Let’s do this,” Bryce said. “Fire up your space phone and find me the website for the Crow Wing County Assessor.”

  Without looking up, Toby shoved his phone across the table. After a moment of silence, Bryce pushed it back gently. Toby looked at the phone, sitting by his hand where it had started.

  He looked at Bryce.

  “You’ll feel better if you’re able to contribute,” Bryce said. “I want us to feel like partners.”

  Toby sighed, shoved his plate aside with his elbow, and called up the browser on the phone. In a minute he found the site Bryce wanted.

  “Nicely done,” Bryce said. “Now. Are the tax valuations online?”

  At the top of the page, there was a link that said Find Property. Toby tapped the link, and a search page came up. “Guess so,” he said.

  “Look at us, with the teamwork,” Bryce said. “See what they’ve got under Macklin.”

  “Can’t,” Toby said.

  “No?”

  “You can search by address or parcel number,” Toby told him. “Can’t search by name.”

  Bryce nodded. “A sound policy, privacy-wise.”

  Toby didn’t want to be involved in this anymore. But he couldn’t help asking, “What makes you think the place is even in Crow Wing County?”

  “That would be what we in the fugitive-recovery business refer to as a hunch,” Bryce said.

  “What makes you think there’s a place at all?”

  “Let’s try to stay optimistic.”

  You stay optimistic, Toby thought.

  “Lake Country Realty,” Bryce said. “Is that here in Brainerd?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  Bryce nodded toward the phone.

  Toby didn’t bother arguing. He went back to the browser, ran a keyword search, found the answer. “Main office is in Baxter,” he said. He linked to a map and had the GPS show their location. “About two miles from here, looks like.”

  Bryce sat with his coffee and didn’t say anything for a minute. Finally he reached behind his hip, pulled out his wallet, and handed Toby a twenty-dollar bill.

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” he said. “Go up front and buy us a Minnesota road map and a red ink pen. And one of those yellow highlighters, if they have them. Actually, it doesn’t matter what color. Any kind of highlighter will do fine.”

  Whatever. Toby took the twenty. “What are you going to do?”

  “Finish my coffee,” Bryce said.

  Toby slid out and stood up, thinking, You do that, you creepy bastard.

  He was happy to be allowed to leave the booth by himself. He was going to be even happier walking out the front door alone. He was going to be straight-up ecstatic peeling out of the parking lot in the Navigator while this lunatic his uncle had sent him watched out the window, wondering how he could have been so stupid. Wondering how he could have managed to misjudge Toby Lunden the Numbers Guy. Toby hoped the asshole enjoyed his coffee.

  “Be right back,” he said.

  As he turned to go, Bryce said, “Hey, do me a favor.”

  Toby waited.

  “Leave the phone,” Bryce said.

  Toby put the phone on the table. Whatever. He’d buy a new phone. An even better one. With a different number. Maybe a different area code. Someplace warmer.

  “And the truck keys,” Bryce said.

  At that, Toby glanced up too quickly. Over the rim of his coffee mug, Bryce gave him a wink.

  Shit. “The keys?” Toby said. He stood there as his heart sank slowly, settling down somewhere in the silt at the bottom of his stomach.

  Bryce sipped his coffee. “Something wrong?”

  Toby didn’t know what to say. After feeling for the past few hours like he’d been shuffling along through some kind of long, bad dream, everything seemed to tighten into high-def clarity all at once. Now was the time, Toby thought. Wasn’t it? If he was going to do it—ever in his life—now was the time for Toby Lunden the Numbers Guy to take a stand.

  He looked away.

  Bryce sipped his coffee.

  Toby dug out his keys. Put them on the table next to the phone. He’d walked maybe half a dozen steps away from the booth when he heard Bryce call out behind him, “Thanks, partner.”

  23

  Mike carried her all the way out on his back.

  It was tough going at first, but coming out of the marsh he found a deer path that cut through the woods on a line more or less back to Rockhaven. He took to the path and the ground evened out beneath them. If not for the dark and the cold, and the smell of mud and pine trees, and the ache in his overstressed knee—not to mention the sting of a well-cared-for Rapala fillet knife making shallow hash marks on the side of his neck every time he stumbled or misjudged his footing—he might have been a high school jock giving his cheerleader girlfriend a piggyback ride down the midway at the county fair.

  At one point they had to leave the deer path, which gradually meandered in the wrong direction. Shortly after that, they lost the spotlight’s battery altoge
ther. But Mike could already see the western shore of the lake through the trees by then.

  He expected to see police flashers as well. In his mind he’d imagined returning to the same kind of scene at Rockhaven that he’d left behind in St. Paul.

  But no. They emerged from the woods to find a solitary cabin across a peaceful lake in a sleepy moonlit clearing, not far up the shoreline from the grove of staghorn sumac still faithfully concealing Juliet’s blood-smeared canoe.

  He felt her arms tighten around his neck. “Where’s your truck?” she said.

  These were the first words either one of them had spoken since striking out from the marsh, and Mike had fallen out of conversation mode.

  He was utterly gassed. His back and neck and shoulders screamed with the strain of carrying her, and his knee felt like someone had gone to work on it with a hammer. He hadn’t wanted a Vicodin—or a handful—so badly in as long as he could remember. For the past couple hundred meters he’d been daydreaming about the last gulp of Old Crow Darryl had left behind in the cabin, and now that the cabin was in sight, he found himself physically salivating.

  “My what?” he said. It was the best he could come up with.

  “Your truck. You said you came in the white pickup. Where is it?”

  Across the lake, he could see her little Subaru sitting dark and deserted in front of the cabin. All the lights still burned in the cabin’s ground-floor windows as he’d left them.

  Mike thought of Darryl waiting for him on the lake road. It had been at least two hours since they’d split up. A big part of him wondered if Darryl had waited around at all. It was approximately the same part of him that hoped Darryl hadn’t.

  “It’s around back,” he lied, too exhausted to lift the truth at this point. “Where you climbed out the window. We can’t see it from here.”

  It wasn’t a very good lie, but it seemed to be enough for her. He felt the extra tension leak out of her arms as they released their tourniquet grip on his neck. She was at the end of her rope, just like he was. She wanted to believe things.