Lake Country (7 page)

Then she turned and started running. Maya ran back up the sidewalk, back into Third Avenue, not waiting for traffic this time. Tires squealed. A horn blared. She hurried across, as fast as her heels would carry her, all the way to where Deon stood smoking a Parliament. Watching her with interest.

“This morning,” she said. “You shot roll outside Benson’s house, right?”

Deon nodded. “You know I did. We cut it in the pack.”

“The master. Is it in the truck or at the station?”

“Brought it with,” Deon said. He tossed his unfinished cigarette in the gutter, where it died with a hiss. “Why?”

Maya grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him along after her, toward the truck. “Because I think I saw that car,” she said.

“What car?”

“That one,” she said, jerking a thumb toward the street, remembering the Skylark clearly now. It had looked just as out of place sitting at the curb in front of Benson’s house as it looked camouflaged by its surroundings here.

“You mean that one?” Deon said five minutes later, as they crowded around the mobile deck inside the truck.

Maya was already on the phone. Three rings, then a voice in her ear: “Barnhill.”

“Detective,” she said, belly sizzling as she stared at the image Deon had found for her on the small monitor. “It’s Maya Lamb. I think I have something you need to see.”

When the news went to commercials, Hal picked up the remote, muted the sound, and stood for a moment, facing the back bar. When he finally turned to Mike, his eyes seemed to express Mike’s own thoughts:
Did I see that right?

The photo of the girl they’d just shown on the news hadn’t come from any high school yearbook. But it put Mike immediately in mind of the photo of Becky Morse they’d shown last night. Wade Benson’s daughter actually looked a little like her. Not sisters or anything, but not Abbott and Costello. They were even the same age.

The comparison didn’t appear to be lost on Hal either.
He looked like he was trying to figure out a math problem in his head. Mike didn’t know if he wanted to hear the answer Hal came up with.

The bell over the door jingled then, and they both turned to see Regina hurry in, digging in her giant purse with one hand, applying an ambitious smear of candy-colored lipstick by feel with the other. Regina was a part-time waitress at the Elbow Room, a mother of two grown girls who lived away and rarely called, and Hal’s third ex-wife. She came over to the bar and planted a fat, lipsticky smooch on Mike’s cheek. “Look at you, all clean-shaved,” she said. “Handsome devil. Where’s Darryl?”

Mike eyed Hal and said nothing. Hal stood with his arms crossed, frowning at the bar. Regina looked back and forth between them. She cocked a hip and planted a fist on it, hoopy bracelets clattering together. “Okay, what did I miss?”

Hal glanced one time at Mike, just long enough to be noticed, and then changed faces. “The start of your damn shift,” he said. “But what else is new?”

“Oh, shut up,” Regina told him. “I had Jazzercise.”

“Well, Jazzercise on back to the time clock and punch in already. Booth four needs a new pitcher.”

“I’ll punch something,” she said, winking at Mike. “Good to see you, hon.” She nodded at the five-dollar bill on the bar. “Put that back in your pocket before some old ugly bastard picks it up.”

Hal leaned across and swatted Regina’s ample backside with his rag. She gave him a smirk and headed toward the back, rooting in her purse all the way.

As soon as she was gone, Hal’s expression changed
again. He acknowledged the guys from the garage across the street, who stood waiting for darts at the far end of the bar. Then he glanced at Mike one last time and said, “Stay put, friend. I want to talk to you.”

Mike wasn’t sure how long he sat there, feeling Regina’s moist lipstick print on the side of his face, staring at the muted television as the rest of the bar noise faded to static in the background.

All he knew was that the evening news kept on playing up there on the dumbstruck Magnavox, as if you couldn’t look out the window and see the weather for yourself, and at some point Regina took over for Hal behind the bar. Then Hal put a firm hand on Mike’s shoulder, and Mike felt himself get up off the stool and follow the man. Past the wrench monkeys throwing darts in the corner. Past the game of eight ball clacking around the pool table in back. Down the cramped hall, past the bathrooms, through the dusty stock room stacked with cases of booze. All the way to the glorified supply closet Hal used for an office.

“Sit,” Hal said. He pointed to a metal folding chair with most of the paint worn off. The voice he used was not the endearingly gruff barkeep who wouldn’t let Mike Barlowe pay for drinks or ham sandwiches; this was the born-hard gunny sergeant Mike knew Hal Macklin to have been in his life but had never glimpsed for himself before just now.

Mike sat.

Hal shut the door. Firmly. He came around and leaned against the invoice-littered desk in the corner, facing Mike in the chair. He crossed his arms and studied the floor a minute, then looked up and said, “Tell me what you know.”

“Hal, I know what you know,” Mike said. It was mostly true but felt like mostly a lie, and he couldn’t make himself meet Hal’s eyes.

Right there he lives
, Mike kept thinking. It was all he kept thinking, remembering the sight of Wade Benson’s sleeping glass house from the curb between last call and dawn. The promising glimmer of the city beyond the lake. The look in Darryl’s eyes.
Some punishment, huh?

Had that actually been the last thing he’d heard the guy say?

Mike couldn’t remember. He remembered it had been a quiet ride home.

“Son,” Hal said. “I’m not asking.”

Mike exhaled carefully. His leg was starting to hurt. He said, “He was bent out of shape about that architect when we left your place last night.”

“Yeah, he was,” Hal said. “I was here. And so were you.”

Mike started to tell Hal about their after-hours joy-ride over to Lake Calhoun, but at the last minute he swerved away and said, “He was gone when I woke up today, and he’s not answering his phone. It sounds like he took some money that didn’t belong to him, and he took my car. After that I’m in the dark, Hal. Believe me.”

Hal leaned against the desk with his arms folded,
scowling at the floor. The next time he spoke—and it took a minute, long enough that Mike started to hope maybe the conversation was over—he spoke very quietly, and he didn’t raise his eyes.

“Is it possible he went and took that girl?”

Mike didn’t know how to answer. He rubbed his eyes. “Possible covers a lot of ground.”

“Don’t hand me that shit. You served with him, kid. You fought next to him. You’re the guy took him in when he showed up here without a pot to piss in or a goddamn friend in the world.” Hal finally put Mike directly in his high beams. “So I’m asking you, and it’s the last time I’m asking, so take a goddamn minute before you open your mouth. Could he have taken that man’s daughter or not?”

Mike took more than a minute. He wanted to say that he couldn’t imagine it. The only problem was that Mike had seen enough crazy shit in his time that he could imagine just about anything if he tried, and, deep down, he’d already answered Hal’s question.

Hal didn’t need to hear him say it. He shook his head. “Christ.”

“Hal?” Mike sat up. “Where you going?”

“Where the hell you think I’m going?” Hal had already returned to the door. “I’m gonna write down that number they’ve got up there on the TV screen, come back here, and dial it.” He paused and cocked his head. “Does that spook-eyed son of a bitch have it in his head that I wouldn’t? Because we used to wear the same initials?” He held up his forearm and smacked the old tattoo there with the flat of his hand. “Do
you
?”

“No,” Mike said. “Hal, wait a second.”

“Wants to use my place.
My
goddamn place.”

“That’s what I mean.” Maybe this was like a bad episode from one of those cops-and-lawyers shows on television: Some guy in a bar blurts out how he’d sure like to teach so-and-so a lesson. Next morning, so-and-so turns up dead, and who’s the main suspect? Everybody goes apeshit looking for him, but then surprise: They all find that the guy who made the threat was really off screwing somebody’s wife when the murder happened. “If Darryl was … Look, he sure as hell wouldn’t tell anybody where he was going, right? Why would he do that?”

“Because he’s a goddamn head case,” Hal said.

“Yeah, well, who isn’t?”

Hal snorted. But he was listening.

“Anyway, he’s not stupid.”

“You say.”

“Pretty far from it, Hal. Trust me.”

Hal shook his head again. Still listening.

“Give me a chance to get up there and see what’s what,” Mike said. He rose from the chair and joined Hal at the door. “He’s probably just hacked off at Toby, trying to make a point.”

“Yeah? What kind of a point would that be?”

“A memorable one?”

“Don’t be a wiseass.”

“I’m just saying, one thing might not have anything to do with the other.”

“Might not,” Hal said. “And if it does?”

“Hal, this girl’s been missing, what, a couple hours? Come on. She could be anywhere.”

“Yeah, and she could be somewhere real specific, too,” Hal said. “Could be there right now while we’re
standing here talking about it. You’d better think about that, son.”

Mike hadn’t stopped thinking about it. None of it made any sense. Making sense wasn’t always a priority with Darryl, but still. “It’s a couple hours to Rockhaven,” he said.

“I know where the hell it is.”

“Hal, give me a head start. If he’s up there alone, playing some game on Toby, I can sort it out. Without a bunch of cops.”

The way the muscles in Hal’s jaws rippled, Mike could tell that he was grinding his teeth. “If he’s not?”

“Hal …”

“If it turns out he was up there helping himself to this girl while you and me were busy making deals? I guess you won’t mind carrying that around, huh?” Hal gave Mike a withering look. “I guess you won’t mind if I have to either.”

Mike took care not to answer too quickly. He took care to stand straight and to address Hal without direct eye contact, indicating that he was at full attention, not at ease. He took care to make sure that he believed his own answer before he spoke it. He found that what he believed, in his gut, was that Darryl Potter was a lot of things, not all of them charming, and not many of them predictable. But he wasn’t
this
thing.

“If I thought that was a possibility,” he said, “this conversation wouldn’t be happening. I promise you that.”

Hal said nothing. He only grimaced. Folded his arms.

“I’ll check in,” Mike said. “You’ll hear from me by closing time. Promise you that too.”

“Closing time, huh? Is that all?”

Of course it was asking for too much, but Mike wanted room to negotiate if necessary. “Not a minute later.”

Hal looked him over. “Tell me how I hear from you.”

“I’ll call, Hal. By closing time, if not before.”

“You’ll call?”

Mike started to repeat himself, to guarantee it, then understood the question for what it was: a trap.

No phones at Rockhaven. No cell signals either. He could have guessed Hal’s next words:
Well, you’ve just thought this through up down and sideways, haven’t you, son?

“From town,” he said. “Or the highway.”

Hal stood with the same hard look on his face. “Got it all figured out. Is that right?”

“No, sir.” Mike faced Hal. He took a breath, reached deep down and way back, and said, “But Corporal Potter served under my command, and I believe my judgment of his nature to be sound.” He lowered his eyes to the door knob between them, waiting to be turned. “I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t.”

Hal was quiet a long time.

Mike waited.

Hal said, “I guess the next thing you’ll tell me is you need to borrow a damn car.”

Mike left the Elbow Room at a quarter past seven with the spare keys to Hal Macklin’s old Dodge pickup in his jacket pocket. Hal lived over the bar but kept the truck on hand for errands and the occasional Sunday afternoon keg delivery, though, according to Hal, the truck needed plugs and a new solenoid before he’d trust it on a road trip. He made a deal with the grease monkeys throwing darts: free pitchers through the weekend if they could open the garage and get the work done inside the hour.

Mike walked to the end of the alley and found the Dodge in the lot behind the building, where Hal told him it would be. His plan: run the truck across the street, walk home, grab some cash, his Vicodin, some outerwear, maybe a coffee thermos, anything else he figured he’d need and could carry with him. With any luck, by the time he got back, the guys would have him ready to roll out of town.

He’d climbed into the cab when his jacket pocket chirped. Mike dug out his phone and saw a text message from Tanya Ellerbe:

Where r u??

Nobody he knew sent him text messages, including Tanya. Mike hated trying to string together an answer one character at a time, and by the time he finished he could have called the person. Hell, they were already using phones.

He fiddled with the buttons, looking for the command that let you automatically dial back the incoming number. While he was doing that, the phone chirped again.

Cops @ yr house rite now. 4 Darryl
.

Mike had to read the words twice. He sat behind the wheel of Hal’s truck in the fading daylight, staring into the bright glow of the phone’s small display screen, thinking,
Shit
.

Chirp.

4 U 2!

Double shit
.

Now what? Mike tried to think.

Chirp.

! ! !

“All right, cripes, gimme a second,” he said to the phone. He looked around, as though anyone else might have reason to be back here on this weedy patch of asphalt. But there wasn’t anybody else. He was alone.

Mike cobbled a reply as quickly as he could tap out the letters with this thumbs: