Lake Country (29 page)

Rose Ann winked and touched her cup to Maya’s. “I was going to say big fat book deals,” she said. “But whatever makes you feel better.”

Wednesday came around. With it, an anniversary:

One full week since Juliet Benson’s abduction.

All that day long—cooped up in bed, too spaced on pain meds to read or concentrate on television, by now nearly bored out of her skull—Maya found herself glancing at the clock, trying to place where she’d been the same time a week ago.

Her surgeon came by to check on her incision around 8:30 a.m.; a week ago, Maya had been looking out a window with Juliet Benson in Linden Hills.

Detective Barnhill stopped by around noon. She and Deon were back at the station, eating vending machine cookies in an editing bay.

The nurse brought drugs at 4:00 p.m., just as Maya and Deon arrived at the county facility in Plymouth. Miles Oltman, her assignment editor, came around with a pot of flowers in the middle of the six o’clock news; Maya was looking at an abandoned Buick Skylark on Third Avenue.

Sometime after that, she fell into a dreamless sleep, and when she awoke, the room was dark. Her dad’s chair was empty. Downtown Minneapolis twinkled outside her window.

And she had a visitor.

Maya blinked her eyes. The clock on the wall said 8:23 p.m. Last week, at this very moment, she and Deon had been stuck in traffic, trying to get over to St. Paul. Here and now, in room 517 of the Hennepin County Medical Center, visiting hours were nearly over for the day.

“Darlin’,” the figure in the doorway said.

How long had he been standing there? Maya hit the buttons. Motors hummed in the bed as Buck Morningside came into the room. He took off his Stetson and held it in his hand.

“Hubert,” she said thickly.

When she reached for her water, Morningside said, “Lay back, now.” He tossed his hat on the chair, picked up the water bottle from the roll-around cart, and handed it to her. “That’s a girl.”

In the dim light from the window, Maya could see white tape across the bridge of the bondsman’s nose. Both his eyes were black, and he had stitches over one eyebrow. He was balding on top, she noticed, and it occurred to her that she’d never seen him out of character before. All in all, the one-and-only Buck Morningside looked remarkably humanesque. Maya wasn’t sure she liked it.

“Heard you lost a damn toe,” Morningside said.

Maya shrugged. “Only a small one.”

“Hell of a cute one though, I bet.”

There. She’d used up all her banter. Maya nodded at a fat manila envelope Morningside held in one hand. Even in the dimness, she could see her own name written on the envelope in heavy black ink. “What’s that supposed to be?”

Morningside looked down. He seemed to consider the envelope in his hand as though unsure of where he’d found it.

“Well, now, this last week, I been thinkin’,” he finally said. “Going over things, I guess you’d say. Some of ’em … well. Some I guess I’d do differently. Hindsight-wise.” He shook his head. “But we only do ’em once, don’t we?”

Maya sipped her water. “Usually the way it goes,” she said.

Morningside handed her the envelope. “Had a couple of my gals put this together. Ain’t much, but I
thought you might find a use. Interesting to read, anyhow.”

She took the envelope. It was dense and heavy. Before she could ask about it, Morningside spoke again.

“Now, this one here,” he said, a sly look crossing his bruised eyes, “I already had.”

Maya watched him reach inside his coat and pull out a second manila envelope. This one was much thinner than the first. Crisp along the edges. There was nothing written on it.

He placed the second envelope on the bed beside her leg.

“What are these?” Maya said.

Morningside picked up his hat. He patted her leg gently through the covers on his way out. “Feel better, now,” he said.

That night—after Ernie Lamb returned from the cafeteria downstairs, tucked his poor maimed daughter in, and departed for the Best Western three blocks from the hospital—Maya sat up in bed, going through the contents of the envelopes Buck Morningside had delivered.

She started with the fat one bearing her name. Inside, she found an alarmingly in-depth dossier on one of the state senators she’d interviewed early last week for her highway-safety story.

Senator Bradford Alstad was one of the primary critics of Senate File 5108, nicknamed “Becky’s Law,” a measure he opposed on grounds of enforceability. Maya had sought out his counteropinion to balance the piece.

In a week’s time, Buck Morningside had dug up half a ream of financial-disclosure documentation that appeared to link Senator Alstad’s personal assets to a holding company called Northland Enterprises. Northland, it seemed, held significant investments in long-haul timber trucking—an industry not apt to benefit from the criminalization of excessively fatigued drivers. And a clear conflict of interest for Senator Alstad regarding S.F. 5108.

Next came the second envelope. The thin one.

Here, Maya discovered a set of black-and-white 8x10 photo prints. The photos depicted Senator Alstad—who had served District 42 in the Minnesota legislature for the past twenty-odd years, espousing family values, fighting same-sex marriage, and sponsoring a number of school-prayer initiatives—conducting what appeared to be an intimate romantic relationship with a person who was not Mrs. Senator Alstad. A person who was not, in point of photographic evidence, a woman.

Maya still had Buck Morningside’s mobile number in her phone. It was nearly midnight by the time she dialed it. When he answered, she said, “You’ve been a busy bee.”

Morningside chuckled in her ear. “Shouldn’t you be sleepin’?”

“Where did you get this stuff?”

“Thought I told you. Had some of my gals pull it together. Wasn’t all that hard.”

“Not that stuff,” Maya said. She picked up the top photo, looked at it, put it back in her lap again. “I mean the other stuff.”

“Oh, that stuff,” Morningside said. He sounded pleased with the world.

“Well?”

“Hell, darlin’, you should come have a look at my rainy-day files sometime,” he said. “You’d be surprised what all you might find in there.”

Unbelievable. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” Morningside said.

After he hung up, Maya sat for a long time, staring at the piles of incrimination in her lap. She thought of her old journalism-school professor. What would Gerry Slater have to say about all this?

She fell asleep wondering.

It finally felt like spring to Lily Morse. They’d gone a full week without rain, and the sun had been shining, and the whole world seemed to be abloom.

She met Wade at the cemetery on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of May. A few weeks later than normal, this year, but that didn’t matter. These meetings of theirs hadn’t felt court-ordered in ages, and they no longer took place only once a year anyway.

Wade’s wife and daughter stood with him, as always. When Lily saw Juliet, she said, “Oh, honey,” and wrapped her tight in her arms.

They put their flowers on the graves and stood there awhile, breathing the warm fragrant air. Everybody did their crying. They stayed about an hour, then pulled themselves together and left as a group.

It was Wade’s idea to celebrate the Senate vote: 46–10, the final count had been. They were on the governor’s desk at last. He took them all to a swanky steak place downtown that had been written up not long ago in the
Star Tribune
.

Chevalier, the restaurant was called. It was far too expensive, and Lily wasn’t much of a carnivore. Still,
the fish was delicious, and the wine tasted lovely, and her dessert was so rich and decadent that she felt a little guilty eating the whole thing.

But only a little. Life was too short not to enjoy a good meal.

This book—in all its variations—owes special gratitude to the following folks:

Thanks to Rose Ann Shannon, Rob McCartney, Brandi Petersen, Jeff Van Sant, Marla Rabe, Farrah Fazal, and the entire dayside crew at KETV News-Watch 7 in Omaha, Nebraska, for showing me the view from the other side of the cameras. Thanks also to Amy Dahlman, formerly of WLNS-TV 6 in East Lansing, Michigan, for hours of stories and unfailing generosity in the sharing.

Thanks to Carol Durham, assistant jail administrator, Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office, for arranging the tour.

Thanks to Rick Crowl, attorney at law, and to Detective Craig Enloe, Overland Park PD, for patiently answering breathless questions about all sorts of cockamamie things.

Thanks to Danielle Perez, for telling me what I knew, and for protecting me while I figured out what I didn’t.

Thanks to the great Kate Miciak for faith, mercy, and the steeliest of editorial eyes. No editor knows more about the care and handling of the common writer.

Thanks to David Hale Smith, turbo agent and friend.

Thanks to Jordan Global Media for years of support and lasagna. Thanks to Victor Gischler, Neil Smith, and John Rector for sound-boarding.

Thanks and love, as always, to Jessica, who endures hardships.

And to Brian Hodge, for the road trip, and for the ignition of heavy machinery. Figuratively and literally.

Safer
The Cleanup
Rain Dogs
Burn
Dirt

S
EAN
D
OOLITTLE
is the author of five previous novels: the Barry Award–winning
The Cleanup
, as well as
Rain Dogs, Burn, Dirt
, and
Safer
. He lives with his wife and children in Omaha, Nebraska, where he is at work on his next novel.