What Doesn't Kill Us--A McKenzie Novel by David Housewright (most read books txt) 📗

Nina shrugged.

“He didn’t call to tell you he would be late to Rickie’s?” Bobby asked.

Nina shrugged some more.

“Goddammit.”

“Bobby,” Shelby said.

“He must have said something,” Bobby said. “He must have given you a clue, a hint about what the favor was, who he was doing it for?”

Nina looked up from the clipboard.

“The way he was being so secretive,” she said, “up until a few minutes ago, I thought it was for you.”

Dave Deese was watching hockey. Specifically, he was watching the St. Louis Blues at the San Jose Sharks in the NHL Western Conference Playoffs. The Minnesota Wild had already been eliminated. They insist on calling Minnesota the State of Hockey and we are. We have fifty-eight natives playing in the NHL. More than one thousand more have played D1 hockey in the past eight years. Men’s and women’s teams from Minnesota have won twenty NCAA championships between them and finished second thirteen times. We have sixty thousand high school kids—at least—lacing them up every year. And that’s not counting park and rec. Yet our NHL teams haven’t won anything ever. Don’t get me started …

While Dave watched the game, Barbara Deese came through the door carrying a couple of bags printed with the logos of different box stores. Deese didn’t ask her what she bought or how much it cost. They didn’t have that kind of marriage. Instead, he said, “Have a good time?”

“I did,” Barbara said. “I felt a little left out, though. Some of the girls started complaining about how big a jerk their husbands were, only I had nothing to add to the conversation.”

Deese thought that was funny and laughed.

“Oh, hey.” Barbara put her bags down. “Something I heard on the radio in the car, your friend McKenzie? The guy you play hockey with?”

“What about him?”

“They say he was shot.”

“What?”

“I heard on the radio. At least I think it was him. Rushmore McKenzie, right?”

“Yeah, although—no one calls him Rushmore. Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. It’s probably already on the internet; you could check. Didn’t he used to be a cop or something?”

Bobby went back down to the emergency room. From there he was directed to a corridor lined with a series of small offices that reminded him of rabbit hutches. He knocked on the door of one that was painted orange and yellow. The young woman sitting at the desk asked, “Can I help you?”

Bobby flashed his badge, identified himself, and said, “A man was brought into the emergency room a few hours ago named Rushmore McKenzie.”

“Yes.”

“You bagged his belongings.”

“Yes.”

“Where are they?”

“We have a secure storage area—”

“I want them.”

“Sir?”

“His belongings. Get them for me.”

“Umm, Officer Dunston—”

“Commander Dunston.”

“Commander, we’re in a kind of gray area here.”

“How so?”

“If Mr. McKenzie had been murdered—”

“He wasn’t.”

“If he had been murdered we’d turn over his belongings without a fuss. That’s because a murder victim doesn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy…”

Did some lawyer tell you that? Bobby thought but didn’t ask.

“Because Mr. McKenzie wasn’t murdered,” the young woman said, “then he does have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

“What’s your point?”

“I got into trouble over this once before.”

Okay, a lawyer did tell you that, Bobby thought.

“What’s your point?” he repeated.

She answered as if she was asking a question, “I can’t give you his belongings without a subpoena?”

Bobby stared at the woman while thinking that he should take yoga classes, that he should learn how to stay calm, to control his emotions like Shelby.

“McKenzie’s wife is upstairs in the SICU,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Will you give his belongings to her?”

“That would be much easier.”

Herzog aimed his key fob at the black van as they approached and pressed a button. There was a clicking sound and the side door unlocked and slowly rolled open. He pressed another button and a platform slid out of the vehicle and descended until it came to a rest in front of the door. Chopper wheeled himself onto the ramp and locked his chair down so that it wouldn’t roll around while more buttons were pushed and the ramp lifted him and his chair up and pulled both back into the van. Herzog closed the door and climbed behind the steering wheel. He turned to look at Chopper.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Now we earn the undying respect, admiration, and gratitude of the St. Paul Police Department.”

“I don’ wanna ask, but—how we gonna do that?”

“Do you know where Merriam Park is?”

Nina and Shelby were sitting side by side in the SICU’s waiting area. Nina was fiddling with her wedding ring. Shelby didn’t know if it was because she was nervous or because she was still unused to wearing it.

“You don’t need to stay with me,” Nina said.

“Yes, I do.”

“You’ve always been kind to me, Shelby. From the moment we met. Treated me like a sister. Yet I’ve always been jealous of you—from the moment we met—jealous of you while you were being kind to me. I’ve never had a sister or brother, never had many friends, either, mostly because of my mom—you know all about my mom. Well, maybe not all. And my father who abandoned my mom. I don’t blame him for that. I abandoned her myself as soon as I was able. Then I abandoned that abusive creep I married to get away from Mom, God what was I thinking? My ex. There wasn’t a lot of stability in my life until—until I took charge of my life; found people I could count on. Then you—I can be jealous of a sister and still love her, can’t I? Victoria and Katherine are jealous of each other, they must be. I’ve heard them fight. Both so smart, so talented, so pretty, so, so, so … Jesus, Shelby, I’m gibbering like a, like a—you should just reach over and slap me like they do in the movies.”

“Wait,” Shelby said. “The gorgeous, successful nightclub owner is jealous of the lowly housewife?”

“Lowly housewife? You’re a graphic designer.”

“Freelance.”

“Who risks her life mapping caves. Who scuba dives. Who makes me look like one