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

closer to home. People live on Lake Minnetonka; they don’t even cross the river to go to the state fair, man.”

“McKenzie picked the spot. You know how he likes his tunes.”

“He’s too upscale for a second-rate dive like that. ’Sides, RT’s doesn’t have music on Tuesday nights. What I’m thinking, maybe Jenna King doesn’t have anything to do with McKenzie. Maybe she’s a loose end of some sort that the doc-tor wants to snip and he decided to get us to do the snipping.”

“Or Jamal’s behind it.”

“Could be Jamal, only he didn’t want to give her up.”

“He acted like he didn’t want to give ’er up,” Herzog said.

“When we met the first time, Jamal said he didn’t even know McKenzie was shot until someone told him.”

“Unless he was lying. I thought so at the time, remember. Got no reason to change my mind.”

“What we should do, we should find out more about this Jenna King before we do something maybe we regret,” Chopper said.

“How you want t’ go about it? Anybody we could call?”

Chopper gave the question a full-throated chuckle before answering.

“Usually,” he said, “I’d call McKenzie.”

EIGHTEEN

The final phone number on the list that had been given to her by the FSU belonged to Marshall Sohm, Jr., only he refused to meet Detective Jean Shipman at AgEc, Inc. or anywhere near the building where he worked in downtown St. Paul. He didn’t want to talk to her at all, didn’t even want to say “Hello,” and probably wouldn’t have—apparently he understood his rights as well as Justus Reinfeld—except that his daughter had told him about her interview with Shipman.

“You’re the one who accused Elliot of being involved in the shooting,” he said. He was angry when he said it.

“Here’s your chance to explain to me all the reasons why I’m wrong.”

Still, Marshall might have blown off the detective anyway except that when he started to hem and haw Shipman said, “A message was delivered to McKenzie by a woman with short blond hair who claimed her name was Elliot. Immediately afterward McKenzie received a phone call from this number, your number, the number we’re using now. Five minutes later, he left his building. The next time anyone saw him, McKenzie was lying on a sidewalk with a bullet in his back. You may refuse to cooperate with the police. That’s your right. I’m sure the Ramsey County prosecutor will understand. I’m sure a subpoena won’t be issued that would force you to testify in front of a grand jury. After all, McKenzie was a retired police officer and we never take care of our own.”

Marshall agreed to meet with Shipman at his home in Woodbury.

Unlike RT’s, Rickie’s actually had a basement and in it Nina had recently built a lounge complete with bar and small stage that she called—wait for it—the Lounge. She promoted it as an intimate hideaway perfect for private parties and small wedding receptions and she did quite well with it even though Erica and many of her employees insisted that it was haunted. Which is another long story I’ll tell you one of these days.

The Lounge was closed in the late afternoon; there was only Nina, Emma, and Bobby sitting at a square table away from prying eyes, away from the happy hour music and noise found upstairs. Despite the bar, no one was drinking, at least not alcohol. Nina had given Emma a tall glass filled with ice water that the young woman sipped from more to have something to do with her hands than because of thirst.

Like Nina, Bobby spoke to Emma as if he was comforting one of his daughters.

“How much time does Charles have, do you know?” he asked.

“It can’t be much more than a couple of weeks.” Emma’s eyes welled up with tears when she spoke about her uncle, yet she refused to let them fall. “That’s why it doesn’t make sense to me what my mom and Marshall are doing.”

“Do your mother and your uncle get along?”

“Oh, God, are you kidding? They’re like…” Emma wiped her tears away and smiled. “I was going to say they’re like brother and sister only they’re so much closer than that. Their father abandoned them when they were still young. My mom—Mom was sixteen and pregnant with me at the time. Instead of falling apart, though, they united. I don’t know how else to say it. My uncles were at Northwestern and they both transferred to the University of Minnesota to be near Mom and they’ve been taking care of each other ever since. My uncles made sure Mom didn’t drop out of school; made her go to college and she just excelled, you know? They motivated themselves to do well, too. To do fantastically. Meanwhile, the three of them raised me. I have no idea who my father was; Mom never told me; never told anyone as far as I know. That’s okay because I have two fathers and they’re both so damn”—Emma paused if she was searching for the perfect word and came up with—“fatherly. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, something you hear people say. Personally, I think Friedrich Nietzsche was full of crap. But the three of them are so strong, especially together. I think that’s why no one has married, yet.”

“Why would your mother want to arrange a meeting with McKenzie?” Bobby asked.

“I’m not sure that she did, I don’t care what that detective said. My mom doesn’t look anything like Elliot. You would never see them standing side by side and say, oh, they must be related, although—although she does have short blond hair and she is roughly the same size.”

“And she knows Elliot’s name,” Bobby said.

“She knows Elliot’s name.” Emma took a sip of water. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Honey?” Nina rested her hand on Emma’s. “I know this is very hard for you.”

Emma nodded.

“You love your mother,” Nina said.

“Of course.”

“You told me before that your mother was unable to take the tests to see