Free Lake Country by Sean Doolittle Page B

could tap out the letters with this thumbs:
    copy—call me soon as u can talk ok?
    He hit send. In a few seconds, the screen told him the message had gone where it was supposed to go.
    Mike couldn’t think of anything else to do after that but sit there and wait, so he tossed the phone onto the seat beside him and started the truck. It took him two or three tries. He hoped those guys from the garage had finished their dart game.

8
    Dobry Automotive opened at 6:00 a.m. and closed at 6:00 p.m. every day but Sunday, according to the sign out front. Apparently, exceptions could be made.
    The guys were waiting for Mike when he arrived. Their names were Ray and Wayne, he learned. One of them rolled up the door to the service bay while the other brought him in with hand signals, stopping him with a show of his palms. When they were set, Mike cut the engine, got out, and said, “Guys, you’re really helping me out here.”
    “Don’t sweat it,” Wayne told him. Or maybe it was Ray. One was taller, but they didn’t have names on their coveralls, and they both had beards. Being distracted, Mike had already lost track. He felt bad meeting them this way; he’d seen them maybe three or four hundred times at the Elbow, always in the same corner after they got off work, and he’d never once bothered to exchange much more than a nod with either one of them. They didn’t seem concerned about it.
    “Take a load off,” Wayne or Ray said, leading him through a door to a customer waiting area. “Parts are in stock, shouldn’t be long.”
    “Thanks,” Mike said, genuinely meaning it, but WayneRay had already left him. Mike caught the broadside of his back as he lumbered out into the shop, where RayWayne had his head under the hood of the Dodge.
    Mike took a seat in the deserted lounge, which had a few chairs, a few issues of
Field & Stream
magazine, and a lonely, after-hours vibe. A cold, forgotten inch of complimentary coffee sat in the pot on the counter. A girl in a bikini smiled at him from the muscle car calendar on the wall. He could hear a faint electric buzz coming from the ancient yellowed
Drink Dr Pepper!
clock hanging over the coffeepot. The clock said it was 7:36.
    At 7:53, the door to the service bay opened again. WayneRay leaned in, held out Mike’s phone between two thick, grime-stained fingers, and said, “This rang a couple times.”
    Crap
, Mike thought, only then realizing he’d left the phone behind in the truck. He had to get his head screwed on straight. He went over to the door, took the phone. “Sorry about that.”
    “Don’t sweat it,” WayneRay said. Back to work.
    Mike flipped the phone open. Tanya had tried him three times in the past three minutes, according to the caller-ID log. Mike wasn’t sure whether to call her back or wait, but the phone rang in his hand while he was standing there wondering.
    “Hey,” he answered. “I’m here.”
    “Mike, good grief,” Tanya said. “Where are you?”
    “Not far,” he said. “What’s going on?”
    “You tell me,” she said. The way she paused, it sounded to Mike as if she was smoking a cigarette.Last he knew, she’d quit a while ago. “The house is totally crawling with cops.”
    “Yeah, I got your message. You went by there?”
    “They called me,” she said. “To come open the place up.”
    “The cops called you?”
    “An hour ago. I’m at the curb out front right now, watching them go in and out. So are all the neighbors.”
    “Jesus, Tanya. I’m sorry.” Mike tried to run through possibilities. There seemed like a lot of them all of a sudden. “Did they show you a warrant?”
    “Oh, they showed me a warrant.” Puff. Exhale. “They showed me a warrant, all right.”
    “What does it say?”
    “It says your name, Mike. On the first page.” Puff. “Want to know what else it says?”
    “Tell me.”
    Tanya was quiet a moment. “You already know,” she said. “Don’t you? I can hear it in your voice.”
    The house is