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

used for six-fifty that sounded just as good. I was detecting a trend.

Eventually, Shipman perused our library. She said she was impressed by both the variety and number of titles we owned. She asked if we had read them all. Between Nina and me we had read about eighty-five percent, I told her. She said she didn’t know I could read. I said I didn’t actually read the books, just looked at the pictures. She said she was a big reader, too, but that she got most of her books from the public library. Well, okay then.

Shipman was half a beer down by the time she arrived at my desk. The first thing she did was riffle through the stack of papers, mostly bills, on the top of the desk and then searched the drawers. She was looking for the note in the envelope I had been given and didn’t find it. Next she checked the wastebasket at the desk. When that proved fruitless, she examined the contents of the wastebaskets in the kitchen, the master bedroom, and the bathrooms. Still nothing. She wondered if I might have left it in the Jeep Cherokee and made a note to herself to check.

Afterward, Shipman sat behind my desk again and fired up the computer, using my code to gain access—KILLEBREW3. While Bobby wore the number four when he played sports, I had always worn three because that was the number worn by Hall of Fame slugger Harmon Killebrew, whom I met at TwinsFest when I was just a kid. I remember him as being very cool and very kind.

It didn’t take Shipman long to find what she was searching for. I had a folder labeled FAVORS on the desktop. She clicked on it and found a bunch more folders. She clicked on the one tagged DEESE. There was only one document in the folder, also tagged DEESE. She opened it and found my notes.

I kept notes on all my “cases” pretty much the same way I had when I was with the SPPD, utilizing the “Just the facts, ma’am” approach that I had been taught when I studied criminology at the U way back when, although I sometimes recorded my impressions about the people I met and the places I visited as well. What you need to remember, I didn’t write my notes with the idea that Shipman or someone else might read them. I kept them only for myself; I knew what it meant when I wrote “CakeWalk late afternoon,” even if no one else did. From my notes, Shipman was able to more or less figure out what I had been up to; who I spoke to and why. Only it required a certain amount of translation and interpretation. (And some say she’s a substandard investigator.) I won’t ask you to work that hard. Instead, I’ll just tell you.

This is what happened.

MONDAY, MAY 18

Northfield, Minnesota, was a college town. It was home to both Carleton College, founded in 1866 by descendants from the English Puritans, and St. Olaf College, which was started by a group of Norwegian-American immigrants in 1874. It was best known, though, for being the home of Malt-O-Meal and the place where the Jesse James–Cole Younger outlaw gang was decimated during an attempted bank robbery in 1876, an event reenacted every September during the Defeat of Jesse James Days. In fact, if you visit the Northfield Historical Society on Division Street, you’ll come away believing those were the only two things of any significance that ever occurred in Northfield.

The Historical Society was housed in the actual building where the First National Bank had been located, the target of the James–Younger gang. I visited it while I killed time waiting for my meeting with Dave Deese’s second cousin on his father’s side.

I had met Deese in his office Monday morning. He told me about his DNA discovery and that he wanted me to find out who his father was. I offered an argument about why this wasn’t necessarily a good idea only he wasn’t having any of it.

“I need to know,” is what he told me.

I explained that there were things that you can’t unlearn.

“I get it,” Deese said. “Believe me, I get it. The DNA people, they tell you right off the top that by surrendering a bit of saliva, you’ll also be surrendering a bit of privacy, yours or someone else’s. They tell you that you might learn something that could make you uncomfortable, only I didn’t pay any attention. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t…” Deese paused long enough to shake his head. “Now that I know the truth I want to know all of the truth. Here’s the thing, though—that doesn’t mean anyone else needs to know the truth. I have a sister, kids, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins—they don’t need to know the truth. I mean, this affects all of them, doesn’t it? In one way or another? Do they really need to know that they have no biological connection to people they believe are blood relatives?”

“I can see how that might make for an awkward Thanksgiving dinner conversation,” I said.

“How would you feel if you found out that your father wasn’t really your father?”

“It would shake me to my core.”

“Then you’d know how I feel.”

“On the other hand, there wasn’t a day in my life when he didn’t make me feel loved.”

“My father was the same way. My father … jeezuz, McKenzie.”

“Tell me what you know about your mother.”

“She was an angel come to earth.”

Not always, my inner voice said.

“What was her name?” I asked aloud.

“Anna.”

“Maiden name?”

“Chastain. It means chestnut trees, something like that.”

“Middle name?”

“Theresa.”

“Did she meet your father right out of school?”

“No, she was what? Twenty-five when she met”—Deese hesitated before finishing—“Dad.”

“What did she do?”

“She was a secretary.”

“For who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your aunts and uncles—you could reach out to them.”

“And ask them what?”

“About your mother when you were born. Where was she working? Was she a member of a