Lake Country (20 page)

“Let me help you into the boat before you drown,” he said.

“You goddamn liar!”

“Fine, I lied to you,” he said. “But I can explain.”

“Go die. Liar.” She was accomplishing little more than treading water by now. But she wasn’t giving up yet.

Mike steered the canoe in front of her again.

Again, she changed directions. Back the other way.

It was unbelievably frustrating. He brought the cumbersome rig about and paddled to catch up. They went on like this for an impossibly long time, Juliet trying to find her way past him, Mike turning her away with the hull of the canoe as if herding a wounded otter. He tried to imagine what they must look like from dry land.

At last she began to founder. Her strength was gone, and in a blink their absurd choreography transformed into a critical situation. She was in trouble.

“Juliet, goddammit,” he said. He reached out with the oar and said, “Grab it. Please.”

Still she resisted, sinking below the water for seconds at a time, gagging as she surfaced.

He was getting ready to dive in for her, hoping like hell he had the strength himself to get the two of them to shore, when she succumbed at last. Juliet grabbed the oar above the paddle with one hand, holding on for all she was worth.
Still
holding the damned knife in her other hand. It was a wonder she hadn’t cut her own nose off by now.

Mike leaned back and pulled, hauling her toward the canoe and the canoe toward her. When they met in the middle, she let go of the oar and grabbed on to the gunwale. Her fingers were all but useless, and her grip slipped immediately.

Mike caught her wrist. At the same time, in desperation, she flung the knife into the canoe with a clatter and grabbed the gunwale with her other hand.

Mike took care to place the oar down beside him; it wouldn’t do to drop it overboard and watch it float away. Without feeling his busted knuckle or the bone-deep cut on his wrist, Mike reached over her, plunged his hand into the icy water, and got a grip on her by the back of her jeans.

With the help of some miracle and no doubt the most hellacious wedgie Juliet Benson had ever sustained, he managed to haul her up out of the water and over the gunwale without flipping the whole canoe upside down on top of them.

She collapsed in a pile. Her sprained ankle struck the bow-side bench with such a sickening thunk that Mike flinched at the sound of it.

Juliet didn’t seem to notice. She laid there in the bottom of the canoe, coughing and panting for breath, the lake water from her clothes and hair making new puddles out of her own blood, long dried on the aluminum beneath her. She was beyond spent.

Mike sat, doubled over, catching his own wind. It took a couple of minutes.

Meanwhile, Juliet Benson stopped moving. At first he was worried that she’d lost consciousness.

Then, slowly, he saw a pale hand work its way out from under her body. While Mike watched, she reached out as far as she could. Reclaimed the knife. Brought it back close.

Mike shook his head. Unbelievable.

He picked up the oar and paddled them the rest of the way home.

*  *  *

He carried her to the cabin in his arms as if she were a feverish child. As he was getting her settled on the couch, both of them dripping water all over everything, Darryl came in, carrying an armload of firewood. He said, “Some timing, huh?”

Mike looked at him. “What happened to waiting for me at the lake road?”

“I ran out of cigarettes.”

“Gee. You must have been terrified.”

“Dude, you were taking forever.” Darryl walked past them, dumped the firewood on the hearth, and knelt down to slide open the fireplace screen.

“My bad,” Mike said, disarming the girl carefully. At this point, half conscious at best, she didn’t seem to notice the knife leaving her grip.

He grabbed a wool blanket from the back of the nearest armchair and wrapped her up in it. He found an old T-shirt in Darryl’s rucksack and tied the fabric tight around his sliced wrist with his free hand and his teeth. When he saw Darryl watching, he raised his eyebrows.

“That’s okay,” Darryl said. “You can keep it.”

By two in the morning, Maya estimated that volunteers on the ground outnumbered sworn personnel by a ratio of three or four to one. They worked in groups, combing the timber in overlapping swaths between the freeway and the riverbank.

It was cold and the ground was soggy from the rains. After an hour, Maya tried telling herself that the conditions—unpleasant as they became in no time at all—were still preferable to heat and bugs. Had Juliet Benson been abducted in the middle of August instead of early April, they’d be dealing with overnight temps in the eighties, steam-bath humidity, and mosquitoes the size of Black Hawk helicopters.

It worked for a while, but eventually she ran up against the truth: She was in the worst shape of her life. There had been a time when Maya hit the gym faithfully after work, no matter how late the hour, but it had been too much gin and not enough stair-stepper these past couple of years; slogging off path through the woods, trying to hold her place in line, proved far more demanding than churning out script at her desk. She wasn’t prepared for it.

It didn’t help that the overall vibe from the supervising
officers did not exactly pulse with optimism. Judging by what she overheard, catching occasional low snippets of conversation between cops, many of them seemed to have settled on the notion that the whole thing was little more than a snipe hunt in progress.

After all, the dogs had yet to find so much as a whiff of scent to follow, even with Juliet Benson’s clothing items for aid. If she was in the creek—possibly even carried to the river by now—they weren’t going to find her until she washed up or until someone broke out the scuba gear, whichever came first.

Either way, what kind of kidnapper would have taken time to stuff the girl’s coat and shoes—along with her cell phone, conveniently—into a drainpipe? Just off a major freeway? And for what possible reason if not as a decoy, a way to keep everybody busy playing grab-ass in the trees for a while?

After three hours, seeing her lime-green clown shoes radiate in the darkness below the cinched elastic of her yellow sweatpants, Maya began to feel like a character in an off-kilter cartoon. Her overtired brain started up its own batty Dr. Seuss narration in the back of her head:
The searchers kept searching. They kept searching for more. They searched and they searched ’til their search feet were sore
.

So far she’d personally found half a dozen discarded snack wrappers, the random beer can, a child’s pink sock, what looked like a used rubber, countless deer turds, and no sign whatsoever of Wade Benson’s missing daughter.

She’d tripped a hundred times and had fallen to her hands and knees twice. Her palms were scraped raw.
The knees of her sweatpants had turned into wet, muddy circles. Her search feet were sore.

She ran across Buck Morningside and his crew several times along the way. Eliott Martin pretended he’d never seen her before, and who knew? Maybe he didn’t realize that he had. Maya watched the young producer stumble along with his clipboard through the underbrush and wondered where he saw himself five years from now. She wondered where he’d seen himself this morning.

At one point, Morningside himself sidled up alongside her, touched the brim of his hat, and said, “You changed clothes, darlin’.”

“Oh, these?” she said.

“Word around the campfire is you went and quit your job too.” He nudged her with an elbow. “Was it something I said?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Hell, I’m too old for flattery. Here’s an idea: Why don’t you come work PR for me?”

Maya might have laughed if she’d had the energy. “Thanks anyway,” she said. “But I’m sure Twin Cities Public Television has a capable publicity department.” Thinking:
They’d better
.

“Who said anything about
public
television?” Morningside looked both ways in front of them as if checking for traffic. “Between you and me, I’d already had lines in the water with that Spike channel on cable. Couple others too. Let’s say we’ve had nibbles. I’d guess this oughta turn some of ’em into bites.”

“Sounds like an exciting time for you.”

“Don’t it, though?” He handed her a business card.
Maya shone her volunteer-issue flashlight on it. The card said
Morningside Media Corp
. in embossed lettering and featured a studio head shot of Morningside himself, Stetson, mustache, and all. “Just had these printed. Like ’em?”

Maya clicked off the flashlight. “They’re something.”

“I could order some with your name on ’em.” He touched his brim again. “Give it some thought.”

Before she could answer, he’d peeled away, leaving her to marvel at the notion that this patch of woods might well stand forever in her memory as the setting where Maya Lamb’s career in television ended and where Buck Morningside’s began.

Every so often, her phone rang in the front pocket of her hoodie, as it had been doing since she’d piled all her regular clothes into the back of the news van. Each time, she pulled the phone out and looked at the screen, hoping for word from Roger Barnhill; each time, she found the same name waiting for her.

Rose Ann calling.

Maya had switched off the ringer after a while, leaving the phone to buzz in her pocket like an irritated dragonfly.

Finally, at about half past three in the morning, while Maya and her group broke for coffee and a rest break at the picnic shelters, her phone buzzed again. A short zap against her belly button. Not a call this time but an incoming text message, also from Rose Ann. The message said:

Fine, screw you then. See if I lose any more sleep at my age
.

Five minutes later, the phone resumed its regular pattern.

Maya finally gave in. “Hey, Rose Ann,” she said. “Sorry. I had my phone off.”

“Bullshit,” Rose Ann said. There came a heavy silence, then: “So. I hear you’ve gone off and joined the natives, is that right?”

“Something like that,” Maya said.

Rose Ann humphed. “Find the girl yet?”

“Not yet.”

Another pause. “Are you
smoking
?”

Maya felt like she’d been caught by a parent. She ground out the butt she’d just finished under the heel of her sandal and said, “They’re Deon’s.”

“What the hell am I going to do with you?” Maya heard sheets rustling and imagined Rose Ann sitting up in bed, putting on her glasses. “Actually, check that. What the hell are you going to do with yourself? You’re too young to retire, unless you hit the lottery and didn’t mention it. Did you hit the lottery?”

“No,” Maya said. “I didn’t hit the lottery.”

“So what, then? By all means, do tell.”

“I don’t know,” Maya said, and it was the truth. “I’ve got some money saved. I can take a few months to figure it out.”

“That’s your plan? Take a few months and ‘figure it out’?”

“Maybe I’ll write a book.”

“Oh, God save your soul.”

“If nothing else, Buck Morningside offered me a job.” Maya couldn’t resist. “Have you seen anything on this
American Manhunter
show they’re doing over at TPT?”

“No,” Rose Ann said. “I can’t say that I have.”

“Well. It’s an option.”

“It’d serve you right too.”

Rose Ann sounded honestly peeved. Maya didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry, Rose Ann. I guess I haven’t handled my departure with a whole lot of class, have I?”

“What departure? As far as I’m concerned, you just started your vacation early.”

“Rose Ann—”

“You don’t get off the hook that easy. I’m not finished with you.”

Maya started to tell her that, with all due respect, she didn’t necessarily have any choice in the matter. But then she realized she was only talking tough to a bunch of dead air. Rose Ann had already hung up the phone.

The group mustered for duty again over by the footbridge to the lower side of the creek. Maya rubbed her hands and stretched her aching back and joined the others. As the young state trooper assigned to their detail started giving instructions, her pocket buzzed again.

Maya grabbed out the phone and said, “Rose Ann, I love you, but I’m not talking about this anymore tonight. I’ll be in touch. After I’ve slept for about a week.”

“Miss Lamb,” a male voice said in her ear. “This is Roger Barnhill.”

Maya straightened, groping automatically for her pen and notebook. She thought,
Quit that
, stepped
away from the group, and said, “Detective. What’s the news?”

“We traced that tag number you gave me,” Barnhill said.

Af first Maya didn’t know what he was talking about. Then it came to her: the white pickup, back on Front Avenue. She’d forgotten all about it.

“Oh. Right,” she said. “And?”

“The truck is registered to a neighborhood business owner named Harold Macklin,” Barnhill said. He sounded very, very tired. “Macklin is in critical care at United Hospital in St. Paul with a skull fracture. And related issues.”

Maya didn’t understand. “What happened to him?”

“We’re trying to sort that out,” Barnhill said. “In the meantime I’d like to hear more about that vehicle you saw. Where are you now?”

“Still in the park,” she said. “The picnic shelters. Where are you?”

“Command,” Barnhill said. “Parking lot of the mall. When can you be here?”

Maya watched the search group moving off from the footbridge, heading into the trees along the west bank of the river, spreading out into a line as it moved.

“On my way now,” she said.

A couple of miles south of Nisswa, they found a roadside bait shop with a sign out front that read:

“You’ve got to hand it to these lake people,” Bryce said, as they pulled into the gravel lot and parked. “They do get up early in the morning.”

“Uh-huh,” Toby said. He killed the engine and shut off the headlights. It was 4:05, according to the readout on the stereo. He leaned his head back. Closed his eyes.