Lake Country

by Sean Doolittle

  But she seemed to be fine. Mike was no physician, but he knew a good pulse when he felt one. Her breathing was regular. When he eased a pillow under her head, she actually began snoring lightly. He felt he could leave her alone for a bit.

  Mike went out onto the porch, where Darryl sat with his back to the cabin, smoking a cigarette. The first hint of morning twilight had seeped into the sky over the trees across the lake. Dawn would be along soon. A fresh new day for everybody.

  Without turning, Darryl said, “Give it to me straight, Doc. How’s our girl?”

  “Resting comfortably,” Mike said. But we’re not out of the woods yet, he thought.

  “Good,” Darryl said.

  Mike limped down the steps and put the gym bag containing Toby Lunden’s cash on the top riser, next to Darryl’s leg. He dropped Darryl’s rucksack next to the gym bag. Darryl looked at both, then looked at Mike.

  “I figure the cops would be here by now if Hal had called them,” Mike said. “I guess he likes you more than I thought.”

  “Huh,” Darryl said.

  “Which means nobody’s looking for the truck yet.” Mike tossed the keys on top of the gym bag. “It’s got a brand-new starter.”

  Darryl’s eyes followed the jingle of the keys, stopping where they landed.

  “Canada’s that way,” Mike said, pointing. “You’ll be across the border in time for breakfast if you don’t stop and sightsee. But you’d better get going.”

  Darryl leaned forward and sat that way for a bit, elbows on his knees, cigarette trailing smoke between his fingers. He said, “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Take care of the girl,” Mike said. “There’s a hospital in Brainerd. I can drive her in the Sube. Things should take care of themselves from there.”

  “Think so?”

  “As soon as you get the hell out of here and let me do it.”

  Darryl took a drag from his cigarette. The glow of the ember cast his face in orange light and dark shadows. His left cheekbone was bruised and swollen where Mike had tagged him.

  “And what do you think the cops are gonna say when she tells ’em you went ahead and let me go?” Darryl asked. “Thanks for all the help, Mr. Citizen?”

  “Let who go?” Mike said. “You overpowered me and took off in the truck.”

  “Did I?”

  “It’s hard to admit, believe me.”

  “Why’d I do that again?”

  “Because you’re an asshole,” Mike said.

  Darryl chuckled softly. “Guess they’ll believe that, huh?”

  “Can’t think of a reason why they wouldn’t.”

  Darryl finished his cigarette. Instead of tossing it off the porch, he ground it out on the top riser and put the butt in his pocket. No littering at Rockhaven.

  “Probably have to come up with something better than that when you tell Hal how you lost his truck, though.”

  “Yeah, well,” Mike said. He nodded toward the gym bag. “I took out a couple grand. That ought to get something he can drive around. At least until I can do better.”

  “You know, I doubt he likes me all that much,” Darryl said. “I figure I left ’em plenty busy. The cops.”

  Mike didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t want to know. He said, “Either way, sounds like you’re good to go.”

  Darryl sat in silence. Then he said, “Mike?”

  “Still standing here.”

  “When I came up to Minnesota.” Darryl straightened on the stoop. “I never mentioned it, but I was dodging a little business back home. I guess you probably figured that, huh?”

  Mike nodded. “That’s more or less the impression I got, yeah.”

  “I never mentioned it, and you never once asked. Did you?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “I remember,” Darryl said. “You didn’t.”

  “Okay.”

  “How come?”

  Mike hadn’t much thought about it before. “I guess I figured if it was any of my business, you’d tell me about it,” he said.

  Darryl grabbed the truck keys. He stood, slung his rucksack over one shoulder, and picked up the gym bag. He came down the steps, stopped in front of Mike, and stood there. Mike tried to look him in the face, but Darryl wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  Instead, he put a rough hand on the side of Mike’s neck. Pressed his clammy forehead against Mike’s own. He smelled like he’d been buried and dug up again.

  “You’re the only goddamn friend I ever had,” he said. “If you didn’t know.”

  Mike didn’t speak. They just stood together, breathing each other’s air, until Darryl said, “You still hit like a fourteen-year-old girl.”

  “Jesus, you’re good at wasting time.”

  Darryl squeezed his neck once and broke the clinch. He pressed something into Mike’s palm, then left him standing there.

  Darryl walked to the truck and opened the driver’s side door. He flung the gym bag inside, tossed his rucksack in after it. At the last moment he turned and said, “Sometime I’ll make this up to you, Mikey. You can believe that.”

  Mike took a good look at him, knowing deep down that this would be the last time he ever saw Darryl Potter. Even after everything the dumb grunt had put him through, the thought made his heart a little heavier.

  “Make it up to me now,” he said.

  Without another word, Darryl climbed into the truck, pulled the door shut behind him, and started the engine.

  Mike stood and watched him back away from the cabin, turn around in the grass, and take off down the lane. He watched the Power Wagon trailing dust around the curve of the lake. He watched until brake lights pulsed red and disappeared behind the tree line. He stood there until the grumble of the big old V8 faded away.

  When it was quiet on the lake again, Mike opened his palm and looked down at what Darryl had left for him, having already guessed what he’d find: a set of Subaru keys.

  He dropped them in his pocket and went inside.

  27

  Maya found Roger Barnhill standing with a group of suits and uniforms near a K-9 unit in the Camden Center parking lot. He looked over as she approached, then returned to what he was doing. She waited on the periphery for a moment, then said, “Detective?”

  This time Barnhill recognized her. He leaned back slightly, looking her up and down. He finally said, “You changed something. I can’t put my finger on it.”

  Maya smirked. “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

  The detective broke away and they walked to a spot nearby where they could speak without interruption. There weren’t many such spots available. Barnhill said, “Thanks for getting up here so quickly.”

  Maya nodded. “What about this white pickup?”

  Barnhill regarded her for a moment without answering. He said, “You look like you could use a cup of coffee and a place to sit down.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Have you heard anything more about Macklin’s condition?”

  “If you’re fine, then you’re doing better than I am,” Barnhill said. “Me, I could use a cup of coffee and a place to sit down.”

  Maya didn’t have to study the man very long to take him at his word. And she’d been lying anyway. Fine was not, in fact, among the words she’d have used to characterize herself honestly.

  “Lead the way,” she said.

  On a normal day, the Joy Luck Restaurant in Camden Center wouldn’t begin serving customers until eleven o’clock in the morning. On this day, the owners had opened their doors to law enforcement and volunteers, serving free coffee and hot tea, along with eggs to order, fried pork, duck sausage, and a choice of soups: wonton or hot and sour. They sold the food at half their regular menu prices, which were reasonable to begin with.

  Maya and Barnhill took a booth up front and ordered coffee. They weren’t alone in the place, but there wasn’t a crowd, and the majority of their
fellow patrons appeared to be cops. While the detective scribbled notes, Maya told him everything she could about what she’d seen of the white Dodge Power Wagon that had blocked their news truck hours ago, which amounted to almost nothing beyond what she’d glimpsed of the driver himself.

  “He was wearing a hat and sunglasses,” she said. “That was what struck me funny.”

  “The hat struck you funny?”

  “Not anything specific about the hat,” she said. “Just, you know. Shades at night, ball cap pulled down low. Like a celebrity at an airport.”

  “Like he didn’t want to be recognized.”

  “Maybe,” Maya said. Thinking: How could I have been so close? How could I have been so close twice? “At the time I thought it seemed strange. How he was sitting there, the way he took off when we honked at him. Anyway, strange enough that I wrote down his plate and handed it to you.”

  Barnhill appeared visibly frustrated. Bordering on angry, Maya thought, though she didn’t know the detective well enough to make that determination. She said, “What is it?”

  “What is what?”

  “About that truck,” she said. “It’s connected to Juliet too. Isn’t it?”

  “Not beyond what you’re telling me, as far as we know. If that constitutes a connection.”

  “Then you’ve got something else.”

  “We’ve got lots of things we didn’t have last time you and I communicated,” Barnhill said. “But nothing that tells me where I can find Juliet Benson.”

  “Then I guess that explains it,” she said.

  “Explains what?”

  “Why you’re sitting there looking like you want to crumple that coffee mug like it’s a Dixie cup.”

  Barnhill lowered his head. He pondered the mug between his hands, then said, “You passed me the tag number on that pickup around nine p.m. last night. Is that about right?”

  “Around there,” she said.

  “Harold Macklin closed his bar, for reasons we haven’t yet determined, a little after ten p.m. He was discovered unresponsive on the floor of his place by one of his employees, who happens to be an ex-wife, just after midnight. Evidence on site suggests a robbery—emptied register, what have you—but the ex-wife says Macklin never closes early and that he’d been acting out of the ordinary for most of the evening up to that point. Which is what eventually brought her back to check on him.”

  The reporter in Maya saw the problem with the detective’s timeline even as he laid it out. It might have taken the sheriff’s office an hour to trace a license plate under the circumstances, but it wouldn’t have taken three. Not if that tag number had been given much priority as a lead. It hadn’t.

  She didn’t mention it. “I guess it hasn’t been a joy luck kind of night,” she said.

  “No.” Barnhill shook his head slowly. “Not very joy lucky so far at all.”

  Maya put her elbows on the table and rested her head on her hands.

  Barnhill watched her, sipping his coffee. “Would it be okay if I asked you a personal question?”

  “Sure.”

  “When’s the last time you slept?”

  She hadn’t thought about it until the detective asked. Counting the two or three hours she’d taken to sleep off Rose Ann’s birthday party, she’d put in nearly a twenty-four-hour day by now.

  “That’s what I thought.” Barnhill finished his coffee and collected his things. “I’m on my way over to United Hospital to check on Harold Macklin firsthand. Talk to the ex-wife. Why don’t you let me drop you off at your station on the way? I assume that’s where you left your car?”

  “It is,” Maya said. “And thank you. But I need to get back to my group.”

  “Looks to me like you’d do better with some rest,” Barnhill said. “If you don’t mind my opinion.”

  Maya found that she did mind, in fact. Partly because it rubbed her the wrong way to be told what was good for her, and partly because the offer seemed so tempting. The warmth of the restaurant and the comfort of the booth had sapped the strength out of her, the way a deep winter night drained a worn-out car battery. The thought of her apartment—a hot shower, dry pajamas, bed—was almost too much to withstand.

  “I appreciate it,” she said. “But I’d rather keep going.”

  Barnhill rubbed his eyes. “Fair enough.”

  As he slid out of the booth and stood to go, Maya lifted her head and said, “Detective?” When he turned back, she glanced at his vacant spot across the table. “Don’t you want to see what yours says?”

  Barnhill took a moment to consider the fortune cookies their server had brought out with their coffee. Two golden-brown crescents centered on white porcelain saucers, one fortune for each of them.

  He said, “Don’t you?”

  Maya hadn’t touched hers either. “I think I’d rather not know,” she said.

  Barnhill nodded. “That was my thought.”

  28

  It took only ten minutes before Bryce emerged from the bait shop, walked back to the Navigator, and climbed in. He shut the door behind him, leaned over, and slid the keys into the ignition.

  Toby didn’t want to ask. “Well?”

  Bryce smiled and returned Toby’s phone. “The moment you’ve been waiting for. Go ahead and make the call.”

  Toby looked at the phone in his hand. “Call who?”

  “Your uncle,” Bryce said, fastening his seat belt. “Who else?”

  29

  At the southern border of the park, between the Camden Bridge and the Soo Line railway trestle, sat an industrial plywood distribution complex with a freight yard along the westbound tracks. The Webber–Camden Homeowners Association had set up a volunteer shuttle service from the freight yard back up to the command post at Camden Center. Meanwhile, all the network affiliates had set up for their daybreak live shots.

  It was nearly five in the morning by the time Maya’s group trudged into the mix. The sky had lightened in the east. Birds had begun chirping in the trees. Reporters cherry-picked incoming searchers for interviews, looking for last-minute color for their stand-ups.

  Maya steered clear of anything resembling a camera or a microphone, especially anything bearing a News7 call sign, and in doing so ran nearly headfirst into one of her colleagues in disguise.

  Justin Murdock apologized without really looking at her. Then he looked at her and said, “Holy shit. Maya?”

  She almost didn’t recognize him either. Justin was decked from the ground up in what looked, at first glance, like safari gear: hiking boots, khaki trousers hanging with cargo pockets, a pullover made of some kind of tech fabric. On top of all that, he wore a stiff new Domke photography vest that must have cost an arm and a leg.

  “That’s me,” she said. “Holy Shit Maya.”

  Justin looked her up and down. She braced for the inevitable questions: What happened to you? Is it true you quit the station? Are you okay? But he only smirked and said, “Nice outfit.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “You too.” With the rucksack strapped over his shoulder, he looked like he was preparing to report live from a hot zone in Afghanistan. She’d have laughed if she’d had the energy. “Who are you supposed to be, anyway? Indiana Jones?”

  “Ha ha,” he said. “Rose Ann gave me the backpack gig full-time this morning. Welcome to the future, News7.”

  Well, well, Maya thought. There goes the neighborhood.

  It had been bound to happen sometime. In his rucksack, Justin Murdock would be carrying his own digital video camera, digital audio recorder, high-powered laptop computer, satellite phone, and probably enough spare batteries to sink a jon boat—everything he needed to shoot, write, edit, and file his own stories from the field, without ever setting foot near a truck or a newsroom.

  So-called “backpack journalism” had been slow in coming to News7, in part because Rose Ann Carmody thought like Maya: Very few reporters were good at everything, and giving some kid out of J-school all the technology he needed to prete
nd otherwise was a good recipe for sloppy reporting.

  It was also a hot trend, and sooner or later Rose Ann had to give in to what their network competitors had already embraced. Justin—who had done this kind of work in his previous market, had done it fairly well, and had been lobbying for the job ever since he’d arrived here—was a logical choice.

  Still, Maya couldn’t help imagining Rose Ann sending her a personal message in cargo pants: How do you like giving up your big story now, Miss Maybe I’ll Write a Book?

  “Congratulations,” she told him. “It’s a hell of a pilot piece.”

  “I guess I owe you one there.” He seemed to recognize the way that sounded and added, “Hey, you kicked ass on this thing. Everybody knows that. I’ll nail it for you.”

  “You’d better,” Maya said. “Who’s on the live shot?”

  “Kimberly.”

  Now, there’s a team, Maya thought, remembering the awkward scene between Justin and Kimberly Cross at Rose Ann’s birthday party. But she left it alone. That party seemed like ancient history anyway.

  “Hey, let me interview you.” Justin perked up. “Right here, coming out of the park. What is it, seven hours since anyone saw you on camera? It’ll be perfect.”

  Maya looked at him.

  “What do you say?”

  She discovered that she had the energy to laugh after all.

  * * *

  Maya Lamb became a reporter again on her way to the command shuttle, seven hours since anyone last saw her on camera, five hours after she’d stopped being a reporter in the first place.

  But not a reporter, exactly—Maya didn’t exactly know what it was that she became. Possessed came to mind.

  It started the moment she spotted the crew from Twin Cities Public Television. They were packing their gear into the back of a black Chevy Suburban the size of a river barge, which was parked around the side of a low Quonset building. Maya glimpsed the Suburban on her way across the freight yard to the main entrance, where a handful of Webber–Camden minivans sat with their doors open, loading in a steady stream of bedraggled volunteers.