Lake Country (24 page)

“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 binoculars 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.”

Toby looked out his window. Nothing there to see but trees. Probably like eleven thousand freaking trees.

“Second,” Bryce said. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Toby looked at him.

“It could be a dollar for all I care,” Bryce said. “It could be a cheese sandwich. Hear what I’m saying?”

Toby heard him.

“Nod if we understand each other.”

Toby didn’t understand at all. But he nodded anyway.

Silence.

Bryce pulled his door handle, eased the door open, and slipped out of the truck. Toby heard rocks crunch under the guy’s boot soles as Bryce turned back and leaned in, bracing an arm on the door frame over his head. “Follow me and stay close,” he said. “And, you know. Try not to slam your side when you get out. Right?”

“He could have guns,” Toby said. A last-ditch effort. “Potter. He could have hand grenades for all we know. I told you before, the guy’s crazy.”

Bryce hung his head like someone had snipped a string in his neck. He stayed like that for a minute. Toby sat where he was and waited. When Bryce finally looked up, he was grinning.

“Dude,” he said, inflecting the word in a way that didn’t seem entirely necessary. “Were you not even listening to that story about me I told you before?”

Upon reflection, Mike Barlowe figured it was just about par for the course that after everything—after all he’d been through in the past fifteen hours—his day would end the same way it had started: with Toby Lunden coming through the door.

He’d spent maybe ten minutes in the bathroom. If that. Only enough time to take a leak, scrub his hands, clean and bandage his wrist, put all of Hal’s first-aid stuff back the way he’d found it, take a brief look at the red-eyed, raggedy-assed individual in the mirror, and give Juliet Benson a chance to put on the clothes he’d left for her.

He was about to lean out the door, call to check on her progress before he went waltzing in on her, when she cried out from the front room: a high, startled-sounding hoot, followed by pounding footsteps. Before he could react, Mike heard another cry. A male voice this time. More thudding.

He bolted out of the bathroom into the main room without thinking, as fast as his stiff knee would carry him, and what he saw dumbfounded him: Juliet sprawled on the floor by the couch, looking wild-eyed; Toby Lunden standing over her, prancing in
place, shaking his open hand in the air. Somehow, without understanding what the hell was going on, Mike got the picture that she’d bitten him. She’d yelled, Toby had tried to cover her mouth, and she’d bitten him.

“Toby?” he said, and had just time enough to see the kid’s eyes dart to one side, hear Juliet call his name in warning, and sense movement behind him. All his internal alarms went off, and in that split second Mike recognized the position he’d put himself in.
Shit
, he thought.

“Say good night,” the voice behind him said.

Before Mike could turn, something hard and heavy slammed into his head. He was a three-million-candlepower spotlight flaring white, then fading to dark. He was an empty gun floating to the bottom of a cold black lake. Then he was nothing at all.

They were almost to Little Falls before Maya could get Roger Barnhill to pick up his phone. “I’m here,” he said. “What is it?”

“Listen, I know how this is going to sound,” Maya said, “but I think Morningside may know where to find Juliet Benson.”

“Who?”

“Buck Morningside.” Met with silence, she recalled one of the first things Detective Barnhill had said to her in Jerry Spilker’s office at the jail.
I’m new to this county
. She said, “From all the billboards. The jackass running around your search site with a TV crew, dressed like Marshall McCloud?”

“Oh, him,” Detective Barnhill sounded distracted. “I was informed about him, yes. What about Mr. Morningside?”

“I think he’s found something. I don’t know how or what, but I think he’s found something.”

“What makes you think that?”

“A hunch,” she said. What else could she tell him? That the man had winked at her?

“A hunch,” Barnhill repeated.

“Reporters get them occasionally.” Maya didn’t
mean to go on the defensive, but she’d been trying to reach him for an hour and a half, and her impatience got the better of her. “Detectives too, I hear.”

“I’m sorry,” Barnhill said. “I don’t mean to sound skeptical, but—”

“Last time I shared one of
my
hunches,” she reminded him, “I heard you found a pickup truck registered to some guy in the hospital.”

From behind the wheel, Justin Murdock raised his eyebrows. Maya knew this last comment went over the line, and in the dead silence that followed she could imagine the detective bristling on his end. She didn’t want to break his balls. She only wanted him to listen to her. “Sorry, that was shitty,” she said. “But I think I’m right about this.”

Barnhill sighed in her ear. “All right,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“All I know is that Buck Morningside left your park an hour and a half ago doing his best impression of a guy who didn’t want to get caught talking to anybody with a news camera,” she told him. “If you’re new around here, you might not realize how out of character that is, but believe me, it’s out of character. When I talked to him, he was acting like he’d just come back from screwing the next-door neighbor’s wife, and now he and Twin Cities Public Television are tearing ass up Highway 10 like they’re late for a party somewhere.”

“Twin Cities Public Television.”

“They’re filming some idiot reality show,” she said. “
American Manhunter: Northstar Justice
. If you can believe that horseshit.”

“I was informed of that, too.”

“So then you know they’re busy shooting their big Juliet Benson episode.”

Barnhill seemed to have a bunch of things demanding his attention, and local television programming did not top his list of concerns. Nor did this phone conversation. Still, he said, “How do you know where they’re going?”

“I don’t. That’s my point.”

“I mean how do you know where they are? You said Highway 10. How do you know their location?”

“Because I’m right behind them,” Maya said.

“You’re
following
them? Right now?”

“In a Toyota Yaris, if you can picture it.” She rolled her eyes at Justin, who smirked and held up his middle finger. “It’s like riding around in a milk carton.”

“Miss Lamb, I’m not sure what you think you’re doing,” Barnhill said. “Whatever it is, I’m advising you to stop.”

“I’m not breaking any laws,” Maya said. “And we’ve driven a hundred miles already. I’m not going anywhere. And you’re still not taking me very seriously, are you?”

She heard Barnhill take a deep breath. “Where are you specifically?”

“Morrison County. South of Little Falls.”

“Are you still in verbal contact with Morningside?”

“No,” Maya said, and at that moment—after all this time cooped up in Justin Murdock’s uncomfortable toy car, watching the rear bumper of the Suburban in front of them, needing to pee like crazy, and yet still struggling to keep from falling asleep in the passenger seat—Maya wanted to slap her own forehead.
She said, “Hang on a minute. I’ll call you right back.”

“Miss La—”

Maya hung up on the detective and plunged one hand into the front pocket of her hoodie. She felt all around. Watching her instead of the road, Justin said, “Was that the sheriff’s investigator?”

“That was him.”

“What did he say?”

“Tell you in a minute.”

“This is still my story, you know. You gave it up.”

“Just keep driving,” she said. “Don’t lose them.”

She rummaged past the drugstore lighter and Deon’s nearly empty pack of cigarettes, finally closing her fingers on the thing she was looking for. Until this minute she’d forgotten all about it. She was so tired her brain must have stopped working. Maya pulled out the business card Buck Morningside had given her and dialed the number embossed on it.

He answered after three rings. “That you back there, darlin’? I wondered.”

“Right behind you,” she said.

“Hell, you coulda rode with us. This rig seats nine up here. Who’s your friend?”

“My friend?”

“Driving that little old thing behind us.”

“That would be News7’s Justin Murdock,” she said. Mistaking the sound of his name for an introduction in progress, Justin eagerly reached out for the phone. She batted his hand away. “This is his story now.”

“Trainin’ your replacement, are you?”

“Something like that.”

Morningside chuckled. “That was a trick question. Can’t replace you, darlin’, but what the hell. The more the merrier, I say.”

Cut the crap, Hubert
, she almost said, but held herself in check. “I’ll admit it, I’m impressed,” she told him. “I just got off the phone with the lead investigator on this thing. You’ve got ’em paying attention, Morningside, let me be the first to hand it to you.”

“Well, that’s all right. I got a feeling they’ll be paying real close attention soon enough.”

“So where are we going?” Maya asked.

“Follow right along. We’ll all see when we get there.”

“Oh, come on. I can’t stand the suspense.”

Morningside didn’t take the bait. He was enjoying himself, she could tell.

“Fine, be that way,” she said. “At least tell me one thing. One manhunter to another.”

“Shoot.”

“A hundred cops out beating the bushes, and somehow you’re the one with the hot lead,” Maya said. “What’s your trick?”

“Oh, now, I know you can do better than that. I already told you I’m too old for flattery.”

“Fair enough. But I’m still dying to know.”

“Well, let me put it to you this way,” Morningside said. “While all them cops were running around beating bushes? Me, I had my two best guys finding out where Potter and Barlowe do their drinking.”

Maya processed the information on the fly. Michael Barlowe: the owner of the Buick Skylark police had tracked to the shabby little house in St. Paul. Darryl
Potter, his roommate. She said, “Your best guys, huh?”

“Well. My best guy and my half-blind nephew. Point is, cops think like cops. My guys think like guys. No real trick to it.”

“Just like that, huh?”

“You’d be surprised what all a regular old neighborhood bartender can tell you,” Morningside said. “If you know how to ask.”