Lake Country

by Sean Doolittle

  She saw the Suburban, and she saw the TPT crew. She even saw the scruffy director in the peacoat and Chuck Taylors, milling around with a cup of free coffee while everyone else did the lifting. But she didn’t see the star of the show anywhere in their midst.

  Then she spotted a familiar bolt of sheepskin: Buck Morningside, standing alone by the chain-link security fence, talking on a cell phone.

  That struck her as odd. Every network affiliate in the Cities was preparing to go live from this freight yard; the Buck Morningside she knew should have been right there in the thick of it, mugging for the cameras. Yet the American Manhunter and his Northstar Justice League appeared to be packing up shop instead.

  She angled toward him almost without thinking. Morningside saw her coming, finished up his call, and vacated his spot. He touched the brim of his Stetson as he met her going the other direction.

  “Until next time, darlin’,” he said. “Pleasure as always.”

  He’d turned his back on the KARE 11 crew set up by the entrance. Maya fell in step beside him. “Leaving so soon?”

  “Been a hell of a long night,” he said. “I know when I’m licked.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Morningside slipped her a sidelong glance. His mustache quirked. If he’d been a cat, he’d have had canary feathers caught in his whiskers.

  “You’ve got something,” she said. She couldn’t believe it, couldn’t imagine how it was possible, and at the same time absolutely knew in her gut it was true. It was all over his smug, folksy face. “Don’t you? You’ve actually got something.”

  “Sure wish I did.”

  “Hubert, tell me that was one of your cop buddies you were talking to on your phone just now.”

  “Oh, hell, darlin’. These cops got all the job they can handle as it is. Last thing I came down here to do is get in anybody’s way.”

  Then he winked at her.

  Something about that stopped Maya in her tracks.

  “ ’Course, if you’re really interested,” Morningside said over his shoulder, “you know that job offer’s still good. No dress code either.”

  The cheese-eating son of a bitch winked at me, she thought. Winked and kept walking.

  Maya finally snapped. She looked all around. She turned in a full circle where she stood, scanning for somebody in a uniform. Anybody. What would she tell them when she found them? Buck Morningside was leaving the premises? She’d have to figure it out as she went.

  Just then she caught sight of Eliott Martin in the near distance, hurrying from another direction toward the Suburban, carrying his clipboard under his arm like a football.

  Maya intercepted him at a hard angle. “You!” she said, pointing a finger. “I want to talk to you.”

  The young producer’s eyes went wide. He veered off to avoid her.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “Come here.”

  “I can’t talk now,” Martin said. “I have to go.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “Me?”

  “I’m on to you,” Maya said. “Do you hear me? Tell me where you’re going.”

  Martin looked genuinely afraid of her. He adjusted his glasses and tried to steer clear, but Maya cut him off every time he changed directions. “I have to go,” he kept saying.

  “Listen to me, you little shit weasel,” Maya said. “You’re out of your league.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You ever hear of interfering with a police investigation? Obstruction of justice? You can go to jail for that, Eliott. Do you want to go to jail?” He tried to slide past her. She jumped in front of him. “Come on. You’re a PBS affiliate. Do you want really want blood on your hands? Think it through.”

  Eliott Martin clammed up and kept his eyes locked straight ahead of him. He seemed to be on the verge of panic. Maya sensed a tremor in his resolve and knew she’d gained the upper hand.

  Then, just when she thought she had him, the kid yelped and put a move on her. He juked one way, spun the other, and then fled away toward the Suburban, pumping his arms.

  At the Suburban, Buck Morningside leaned against the open rear door as the crew finished loading in their gear. He stood with arms folded, Stetson propped back on his head, watching the scene with amusement. He gave Eliott Martin a thumbs-up in encouragement.

  “I’m going to get you, Eliott!” Maya called after him. “Do you hear me? I’m going to take you apart a piece at a time!”

  Martin kept on running toward safety. Morningside waved at her.

  Maya turned and hustled away in the opposite direction, across the loading yard. After scrambling her way upstream through another bunch of volunteers returning from one of the other groups, she raised up on her tiptoes and found Justin Murdock, who was not gathering news from the woolliest reaches of Minnesota but rather chatting up the little blond morning reporter from Channel 9, well within view of Kimberly Cross and the nearby News7 broadcast truck.

  Kimberly scowled and pretended to be looking in another direction. The Channel 9 reporter recoiled visibly when she saw Maya bearing down on them.

  “Come on, Indy,” Maya said. She grabbed Justin by the back collar of his photographer’s vest, turned, and pulled him along after her.

  “Hey!” he said. “Take it easy. What’s the—”

  “Your car,” she said. “Where is it?”

  “My what?”

  “Your car,” Maya said. “The thing you used to drive yourself here. Focus now.”

  “My car’s over there,” Justin said. He pointed in the general direction of the main entrance, where Buck Morningside’s smoke-windowed Suburban now sat idling in line behind two minivans, a car, and three SUVs, all filled with passengers, waiting to turn out onto Soo Avenue. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Hang on to your backpack,” she said, and started running.

  VACATION LAND

  30

  Mike unwrapped Juliet Benson’s savaged feet and washed them in a plastic dish tub filled with warm soapy water. He gently cleaned away the pine needles and grit. At one point he heard her suck air through her teeth and found her awake, still wrapped to her chin in the blankets, watching him work in the warm light of the fire.

  He tried to be as soft-handed as he could. She said nothing, and he said nothing in reply. When the water turned black with mud and blood, he rested her feet on a towel, dumped the tub over the porch railing, came back inside, and started over fresh. He had to change the water three times before he was through.

  She’d been right about the cut on her left foot. It was bad. Long and plenty deep, swollen wide open, running crossways from the base of her pinky toe to the curve of her instep. But it looked to be a clean slice, and it had stopped bleeding freely.

  Mike went to the bathroom and came back with an armload of stuff from the closet where Hal kept all the med supplies: bandages, gauze pads, ointment, tape, iodine swabs, half a bottle of Tylenol 3. He ran a tub of clean water, tore open a fistful of swabs, and swizzled them around in the tub. The iodine turned the water a clear amber color that made Mike think of the last bit of whiskey left in the bottle on the coffee table.

  “This probably won’t feel great,” he said. “But I’ll be quick and then we’ll be done. Okay?”

  She nodded her head.

  “Ready?”

  She nodded again, and he lowered her feet into the tub. She flinched but didn’t make a peep. She took in deep breaths through the nose and let them out through her mouth, handling herself like a pro as he cupped his hands and sloshed the disinfectant solution up over her calves and ankles.

  “So,” he asked as he worked, meaning to distract her from the sting. “Where’d you learn to paddle a canoe, anyway?”

  It sounded completely stupid, and she went so long without responding that he assumed she wouldn’t respond at all. Not that he could blame her. So much for small talk.

  “Camp Chickadee,” she finally said.

  “What’s that, like a summ
er camp?”

  “Up in the north woods,” she said. “Every summer until the year I turned sixteen.”

  Mike grinned. “They must have been a hardcore bunch,” he said. “Those Chickadees.”

  “Power Girls.”

  “What?”

  “Camp Chickadee Power Girls,” she said. “That’s what they called us. I still have all the guide booklets.”

  “Guide booklets?”

  “ ‘Camp Chickadee Power Girls’ Guide to Canoeing,’ ” she said. “ ‘Camp Chickadee Power Girls’ Guide to Knots.’ ‘Camp Chickadee Power Girls’ Guide to Being Lost.’ ” She paused in thought. “No ‘Camp Chickadee Power Girls’ Guide to Being Tied to a Bed,’ though.”

  “No,” Mike said, lifting her feet out of the tub, setting them down gently on another clean towel. “No, I don’t expect there was.”

  They fell silent again for a little while. He dabbed her feet and legs carefully with the ends of the towel. When her skin was dry, he smeared ointment on a bandage pad and taped it over the big cut, then wrapped her feet in rolled gauze.

  “Almost out of here,” he told her. “Are you still cold?”

  She shook her head.

  “Good. I think Regina’s got some dry clothes in a drawer somewhere around here. When I’m done I’ll clear out so you can change.”

  “Who’s Regina?”

  “Ex-wife of the guy I was telling you about. Guy who owns this place.”

  “You mean that really wasn’t him?”

  Mike shook his head. No need to ask who she was talking about. “No. I didn’t lie about that part.”

  “But you do know him.”

  “Yeah. I know him.”

  “He’s a friend of yours.”

  Mike nodded. We went to war together, he almost said, but he held back. What did he want? To impress her? Sympathy?

  She said, “Why did he do this to me?”

  Mike didn’t know what to tell her. God knew the girl deserved some kind of explanation, but how far back would he have to go to find one that made any sense?

  “It’s something to do with my father,” she said. Not a question this time.

  He nodded again.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Darryl,” Mike told her. “His name is Darryl.”

  “Did Darryl know Becky Morse? Is that it?”

  Mike considered telling her the simplest version of the truth: that they’d served with Becky Morse’s brother, that Darryl believed Juliet’s father hadn’t been held sufficiently accountable for Evan Morse’s death, and that somehow in Darryl’s tangled-up mind he’d decided that it was his job to even the score a bit. But he realized that telling her all of that wouldn’t really answer her question, so he kept it even simpler.

  “He knew the family,” he said.

  Juliet was quiet a moment. “Did you know the family?”

  “A little.”

  “Do you hate my father too?”

  Mike looked at her. Even as a half-drowned wreck, she was still a very pretty girl. And not just pretty. There was something about her. She looked back at him openly, calmly, waiting for his answer.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t hate anybody.”

  “Not like Darryl.”

  “I don’t think Darryl hates your dad either,” he told her. “Not really.”

  “Then why did he do this?”

  Mike finished taping off the gauze, then took up the elastic compression bandage and wrapped her bad ankle. Snug, but not tight enough to cut off her circulation.

  “You’re not answering,” she said.

  Because there isn’t an answer, he thought, but she deserved one anyway.

  “The guy who owns this place,” he finally said. “His name is Hal. A good man. Runs a bar down in St. Paul.” Mike fastened off the compression bandage with the aluminum clips, crimping them in place with his fingers. “Two weeks a year, Regina takes over so Hal can come up here. Every year, the old goat comes back looking like a new man. I asked him one time, what was his secret? Want to know what he told me?”

  Juliet shifted positions on the couch. “What did he tell you?”

  “Everything makes sense up here,” Mike said. “That’s what he told me. He grew up fishing with his granddad on this lake, and every time he comes back, he says, it reminds him who he is. Where he came from, where he wants to go. What matters.” He took her feet off his lap and settled them on the floor. All clean and bandaged. Ready to go. “He told me that no matter how tired he is, no matter how low he goes, no matter how shitty or screwed up life ever seems to get, for him it’s nothing a couple weeks in the lake country can’t fix.”

  “That sounds nice,” she said.

  “It does,” Mike agreed. He stood up. “Want to know what I think?”

  She raised her eyes and waited.

  “I think some people find a place like that,” he said. “And Darryl ain’t ever going to be one of ’em.”

  Juliet Benson seemed to study him closely. Mike looked at her, then looked away. What a hell of a pretty girl.

  “What about you?” she said.

  “What about me what?”

  “Do you have a place like that?”

  Mike thought about it honestly. It took longer than he would have liked to come up with a truthful answer. “I have a place I can borrow,” he said. “But it isn’t mine.”

  She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t know what more to say. So he left her on the couch while he went to get clothes. He found some of Regina’s things in the bottom drawer of the dresser in the bedroom at the top of the stairs: wool socks, a sweatshirt, a pair of flannel lounging pants with a drawstring. The clothes smelled a little musty, and they weren’t exactly high on style, but they would do.

  He went across the landing to the other bedroom, which was still in scrambled disarray, and grabbed the unopened water bottle from the night table. He went back downstairs and laid the folded clothes in a stack at the end of the couch. He handed Juliet the water bottle, grabbed the Tylenol, and shook three caplets into her palm.

  “Use as directed for pain and inflammation,” he told her. He shook out a few more for himself and picked up the last of the whiskey to wash them down. Something stopped him, and he stood there a minute, pondering the image of the black crow on the bottle in his hand. He finally put the bottle down on the table where he’d found it and swallowed the caplets dry.

  “Mike?” she said.

  He looked at her.

  “I’m sorry I cut you,” she said.

  Mike looked at Darryl’s T-shirt cinched around his wrist. The material had soaked through on top. A small blob of red, no bigger than a dime.

  “You let me off easy,” he told her.

  She took the Tylenol. Drank some water.

  He said, “Ready to hit the road?”

  She nodded.

  Mike stooped, collected up the scattered first-aid supplies, and went off to the bathroom so she could have some privacy.

  “Hey, numbers guy,” Bryce said, looking through his binoculars. “You don’t happen to remember the license plate the cops put out on that girl’s car, do you?”

  “Nope,” Toby said. He laid his head back and looked at the ceiling.

  They’d been parked for fifteen minutes in the middle of another narrow rock lane, deep in another bunch of thick woods, a few yards from the spot where the trees opened up and the lane continued on into another clearing. This road didn’t end in a real estate sign.

  They sat there doing the same thing they’d been doing when all of this started back in St. Paul: no headlights, no engine, Toby behind the wheel, Bryce surveilling the little cabin on the far side of the lake. The sky grew pale with the light of dawn.

  “Yeah, me either,” Bryce said. “How about the make and model?”

  “Subaru Outback.”

  “Green, right?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  “Damn, I’m good.” Bryce lowered the binocu
lars and gathered himself. “All right, I’m satisfied. Let’s move.”

  Toby raised his head off the seat back. “Move? Move where?”

  “Jesus, kid,” Bryce said. He grabbed the keys and the phone. “It’s like you’re not even trying.”

  Toby looked at him in disbelief. “We’re not going in there.”

  “We’re not?”

  “Dude. We found the place.”

  “We sure did.”

  “And we called my uncle.”

  “Called your uncle. Check.”

  “So now we wait, right?”

  Bryce tilted his head. “Wait for what?”

  “For my uncle,” Toby said, increasingly alarmed. “And the cops. Like, backup. Right?”

  “Backup,” Bryce said. “Your uncle’s two hours away. And you know he’s not bringing any cops. How long were you planning on waiting, exactly?”

  “Dude, until they get here,” Toby said.

  “Oh,” Bryce said. “And what do you think Potter might be doing to that poor girl in there while we’re sitting out here waiting around?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Exactly,” Bryce said.

  Like you care about the girl, Toby thought.

  “What about your money? You remember your money, don’t you?” Bryce snapped his fingers as though trying to jog Toby’s recollection. “The whole reason you needed my help in the first place? The reason we’ve had the opportunity to spend all this quality time with one another?”

  “I remember it.”

  “I guess you’re planning on letting a bunch of dumb cops put it in an evidence bag, now? Is that the new plan, partner?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be serious?”

  “Dude, it’s eleven grand.”

  “And?”

  “And whatever. It’s nothing. Take the stupid reward yourself if you want eleven grand so bad.”

  Bryce leaned back in his seat. He seemed to need a moment to regroup.

  “Okay, couple things,” he said. “First, stop calling me dude. You sound like a moron.”