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

“No,” Shipman said. “I did not. But Elliot does know who delivered the message to McKenzie’s building the night he was shot. So do you.”

Marshall stood up straight; his eyes narrowed. Shipman’s right hand went to the butt of her Glock. With her left hand, she pointed at a photograph on the wall. Marshall’s head turned. He couldn’t have known which pic Shipman was pointing at, yet he said, “Sonuvabitch,” just the same.

“I’m not accusing anyone of anything,” Shipman said. “I just want to get the answers to some questions in case McKenzie doesn’t wake up and answer them himself.”

“McKenzie.”

“You spoke to him.”

Marshall slouched against the back of his chair.

“Yes,” he said.

“When you called that night, the night he was shot, did you tell him to come here?”

Marshall nodded.

“He sat right where you’re sitting now,” he said.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that I wanted him to go away.”

“He refused, didn’t he?”

“He was polite about it, but yeah, he refused.”

“Did you threaten him?” Shipman asked.

“What? No. God no. I don’t—I don’t … We’re not that kind of people. What happened to him later; that had nothing to do with us, what we were talking about.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because…”

Marshall took another pull from his coffee mug.

“Because,” he repeated.

“Because what?”

“Because I told him the truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth, what they say in court. Once I told him what happened there was no reason—ah, fuck.”

“What truth?”

Marshall shook his head.

“So long ago,” he said. “It should have been forgotten. It would have been forgotten if not for McKenzie.”

“Mr. Sohm…”

“Look. It’s about family and none of your damn business.”

Shipman’s eyes went back to the wall. So many photographs of Marshall’s wife and parents and daughter and brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and of his cousins, but not one photo of anyone who could have been identified as Gerald King. Her instincts—okay, they were good instincts, I admit it, although, you know what? I had figured it out, too, sitting on the same damn sofa as she was. That’s why Marshall revealed his truth to me.

Shipman’s instincts told her to say, “Gerald King.”

Marshall flinched as if he had heard a loud noise.

“Is that what you and McKenzie discussed?” Shipman asked. “Gerald King?”

Marshall squirmed in his seat.

“What do you know about it?” he asked.

“Only what the Minneapolis Police Department told me. That he disappeared twenty-one years ago. He disappeared before Emma was born, didn’t he? He disappeared, if I’m not mistaken, before Elliot was born.”

“My wife had just told me that we were expecting. I remember being so happy…”

“What happened to Gerald King?”

“If you spoke to the Minneapolis cops, you know what happened to him. He got tired of being Gerald King and ran away from home. They found his car at a marina on Lake Superior. I think he took a boat to Canada and was eaten by wolves.”

“That’s one theory,” Shipman said.

“You want another? Gerald fucking King was a sick pervert who assaulted his female employees, who raped them, and one of the woman he raped was McKenzie’s mother and McKenzie’s father found out about it and he hid in the backseat of Gerald’s car and when Gerald was about to drive home after work, McKenzie’s father strangled him and drove the car to Gitche Gumme and threw the body into the lake never to be seen again. How’s that for a theory?”

“I like it. Do you have another?”

Marshall stared at her for a few beats while he wondered what he could say that would make Shipman go away without causing any more trouble. He decided to tell her what he told me in just the way he told me.

“I’m just speculating here,” he said. “Just telling a story.”

“That’s right,” Shipman said.

“I’m not confessing to any crimes; I’m just making shit up.”

“I understand.”

“I think Gerald King raped his own daughter.”

Marshall took a long pull from his coffee mug before continuing.

“I think he raped Jenna,” he said. “After Charles and Porter went away to college and he was all alone with her. I think he raped her and she became pregnant and Gerald found out and he decided he was going to beat the baby out of her and during the fight he slipped and hit his head on the edge of a kitchen counter. Or maybe Jenna hit him with a baseball bat; Charles was always leaving his shit lying around. Or maybe she pushed him and he fell down a flight of stairs. Whatever, it was self-defense.”

“I’m sure it was,” Shipman said. “Why didn’t she call the police?”

“I think—this is just me talking here—I think that the family didn’t trust the system. That the police, the courts could have just as easily decided that Jenna was a little whore who killed her father when he tried to—when he tried to discipline her and charge her with murder. Being a cop you know, you know personally, that never ever happened, especially twenty years ago, putting it on the woman, the girl, right? Instead of taking that chance, though, the family—I think maybe a cousin just happened to come by while all this was going on. The cousin had studied agriculture at the University of Minnesota and decided afterward to stay in Minneapolis to work and get married instead of going back to the family farm in Wisconsin. He came over to visit, came over to check on Jenna because his mother was always worrying about her because Jenna’s own mother had died four years earlier and she knew that Jenna’s father was a complete asshole. I think the cousin called his mother after he discovered what had happened and his mother and his father drove all the way from Shell Lake, a two-hour drive. Maybe they parked Gerald’s car in the attached garage and with the door closed so no one could see, they put Gerald’s body in the backseat and his father took it back to Shell Lake and buried it on the farm and