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

As it was, DNA testing—remember that? DNA testing proved that Emma was, in fact, Gerald and Jenna’s daughter and that Jenna, Charles, Porter, and, yes, Dave Deese, were her half siblings. Rask confronted Jenna with the findings. Jenna was outraged yet also unruffled. She admitted that her father had raped and impregnated her. She suggested that’s why he abandoned the family; why he ran away rather than take responsibility for his crime. I remember saying “Good for her” when Shipman told me that part of the story.

Still, armed with the DNA evidence and Marshall’s semi-confession, Rask was able to convince a judge in the Fourth Judicial District Court to issue a warrant stating that “you, Lieutenant Clayton Rask, peace officer of Hennepin County in the State of Minnesota, and any other authorized person, are hereby commanded to enter and search between the hours of seven A.M. and eight P.M. the above-described premises, for the described remains of Gerald King, and to seize and keep said remains in custody until dealt with according to law.”

Rask took the warrant to the Washburn County Sheriff’s Office in Shell Lake, Wisconsin, and asked that he be allowed to use ground-penetrating radar to search Marshall and Mary Ann Sohm’s farm for the body of Gerald King. The sheriff told him to stick his warrant where the sun doesn’t shine. He had no intention of besmirching the sterling reputation of a good man and his darling wife on such flimsy, unsubstantiated, and unconvincing evidence.

“Sohm was a veteran,” the sheriff said. “He served in ’Nam. He was a volunteer firefighter for Christ’s sake.”

Rask revealed all of this to an assistant Hennepin County attorney who told him that there was never a chance that he would have prosecuted the case anyway given the flimsy, unsubstantiated, and unconvincing evidence.

“Why are you wasting my time?” he wanted to know.

“Well, I did my bit,” Rask said and closed the case.

“Good for him,” I said.

“You understand why I called LT, though, don’t you?” Shipman said. “Why I had to call him?”

I told her something then that I wish I hadn’t; that I wish I could take back.

“You’re a good cop, Jean,” I said.

She seemed as surprised by the declaration as I was.

“So were you, McKenzie,” Shipman said.

Still, I couldn’t let it go at that, could I?

“All the crap I’ve given you over the years?” I said. “I wish I could go back and do it all over again.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Shipman said.

Eventually, I summoned Dave Deese to my sickbed. By then I was feeling pretty good and getting anxious to leave the hospital. Yet when he arrived I made it seem as if I had about three minutes to live, cough, cough, and he needed to do me a favor before I, cough, cough, passed on. ’Course, Deese had known me for a long time, so he stood at the foot of my bed, folded his arms across his chest, and said, “What?”

That’s when I told him about the King family. It was a long conversation and Deese ended up sitting for most of it. What hurt was my theory of how his mother became pregnant by Gerald King. He had a hard time accepting it and probably wouldn’t have if not for the DNA evidence. He wondered aloud if his father, the man who raised him, had known the truth and decided he hadn’t. Otherwise, Gerald would have “disappeared” a half dozen years before he actually did—the quotes were DD’s.

That’s when I hit Deese with the news about Charles King and his desperate need for an immediate liver transplant. I told him that I would have taken the tests myself to see if I was compatible even though we weren’t related because, well, that’s the way I’m wired. Unfortunately, my current state of health had made that impossible; the doctors had forbidden it. I asked Deese if he would help. He said no.

I don’t think he was afraid of the risks associated with being a live-donor or because he was indifferent to his half brother’s plight. He wanted to punish someone for what had happened to his mother and Charles was the closest someone at hand.

I told Deese that he wasn’t Gerald King’s only “victim”—this time the quotes were mine. He didn’t care. So, I guilted him into it, telling him that he owed me one; reminding him that I had been shot in the back and had been clinically dead for four minutes and ten seconds and yet I had been willing to help the Kings.

Finally, he agreed to take the tests, hoping, I’m sure, that they would prove he was incompatible. Only he was compatible and that news alone was enough to convince Deese to go through with the transplant. If you know you can help save someone’s life and you don’t even try, that makes you an asshole. Deese was not an asshole. He was a “good guy” and in the neighborhood where I grew up that was considered the highest praise.

I was proud of him. DD saved Charles King’s life and oh boy, did Charles appreciate it. Suddenly, this charismatic, billionaire entrepreneur was treating Deese as if he was, well, as if Deese was his long-lost brother from St. Paul, showering him with gifts. And he had plenty to give him, too. There had been a stunning dip in the KTech stock price when news of Charles’s condition went public followed a few weeks later by a meteoric rise when his liver transplant was deemed a resounding success on every media platform known to man, most of it orchestrated by Porter. If Jamal Brown had played by the rules, he would have made a fortune. Justus Reinfeld, too.

It’s really too bad that shortly after Charles King had his long-delayed meeting with the Securities and Exchange Commission—held in his hospital room the day before his surgery—the Enforcement Division of the SEC charged Reinfeld and three other traders with willfully violating Sections 17(a)(1) and