“Are you recording this?” Chopper asked.
“Yeah. Records for seven days before the overwrite thing kicks in.”
“Rewind to when McKenzie was shot.”
RT did, but he was slow about it. Herzog came thisclose to shoving him out of the way and doing it himself. Finally, they had a close-up on me sitting at the bar and sipping Bud from a bottle. Eventually, I left it half-finished and made for the door. My figure receded into the background; I was only an inch high at the top of screen. I looked right. I looked left and kept looking left while Nancy Moosbrugger entered the frame. A figure that seemed to be dressed in dark colors came up from behind me. You could only see about half of the figure through the front window; the other half was hidden behind the wall. The figure seemed smaller than me by six to eight inches and wore a hat. Chopper said later that the figure was out of focus, the camera meant only to capture what was happening close to the bar, and he couldn’t make out the figure’s face or even its race. The figure seemed to raise a hand like it was pointing a finger and I fell. The figure turned and hurried out of the frame.
Chopper, Herzog, and the bartender watched it several times.
“Ain’t much to see,” RT said.
“Can you burn me a copy of the recording?” Chopper asked. “Just the part from when McKenzie enters the club until after the shooting.”
“What you gonna do with it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Gonna give it to the po-lice?”
“Depends on what it’ll buy me.”
“You know,” Herzog said. “The figure in black, my first thought…”
“What?”
“The way it moved, the way it lifted the gun, well, its hand, I didn’t see no gun…”
“What?” Chopper repeated.
“It reminded me of a skirt.”
THREE
Nina, Shelby, and Bobby returned to the waiting area where they found the woman in the white linen coat standing there with a clipboard and several sheets of paper for Nina to fill out and sign. Nina took the clipboard and went to the chair where Shelby had been sitting and started writing.
“What was McKenzie working on?” Bobby asked her. “Was he working?”
“He was doing a favor for a friend but he was being vague about it.”
“Vague?”
“Usually he’s pretty forthcoming about this stuff. Usually he tells me everything.”
“Not this time? Why not this time?”
“He said it involved someone I knew personally. He said it was something embarrassing about someone I knew personally and he felt uncomfortable giving me details without permission from the someone.”
“What was he doing on Rice Street?” Bobby asked.
“He didn’t say.”
“What did he say?”
“Last we spoke was late this afternoon. I told him that Maud Hixson, Arne Fogel, and the Wolverines Quintet were in the big room tonight and he told me to save him a seat in the back where we could neck without being seen. I said I would.”
“The show started when?”
“Seven P.M.”
“He was at RT’s Basement at eight.”
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 of Cinderella’s stepsisters…”
“Says the woman who built a jazz club from scratch while raising a child all by herself…”
“Who has such a complete hold on McKenzie’s heart,” Nina said.
“I don’t love McKenzie. I mean I do, but not like that. And he doesn’t love me like that.”
“I know. I know, I know, I know, but I didn’t know, not for the longest time. I thought he was with me because he couldn’t be with you; that he proposed to me—three times he proposed to me—because he couldn’t marry you. It took me years to figure out that a man could love a woman as much as he loves you and still just be her friend.”
“Just be her friend—you say that like it’s an insignificant thing. Real friendship like the kind McKenzie and I have, and Bobby, too, is momentous.”
“I’m starting to catch on.”
“The friendship you and I have…”
“Shel—”
“Tell me—if you thought McKenzie was in love with me all these years, why did you stay with him?”
“Because he’s the least pretentious man I’ve ever known and he makes me laugh and he makes me feel safe even though he seems to get beat up every other week. Because I’ve loved him almost from the moment we met and because in my arrogance I was convinced I could win him away from you even though I didn’t need to. What an idiot.”
Shelby took Nina’s arm, pulled it around her shoulder, and nestled against her.
“For the record,” she said, “Vic and Katie are jealous of each other and they fight all the time, but if you mess with one, the other will rip your heart out.”
“Sisters.”
“Now and forever.”
That’s when Shelby’s cell phone rang.
* * *
The young woman gave Nina a bag containing all of my belongings, including my bloodstained clothes, yet only after she proved that she was indeed my wife. Apparently, the young woman had a hard time wrapping her head around the idea that a husband and wife could have different last names, even in this day and age, or that a wife would refer to her husband by his last name. Nina signed yet another document without reading it first, took the bag, and handed it to Bobby. Bobby said he would bring the bag to the FSU.
“What’s that?” the young woman asked.
Everyone listened intently.
What that was was Louis Armstrong’s unaccompanied opening credenza to the song “West End Blues,” which helped define early jazz. It was also the ringtone of my cell phone. Bobby opened the bag and Nina dug through its contents until she found the cell. Nina swiped right.
“Hello?” she said.
The caller hesitated before saying “I might have the wrong number. I’m looking for McKenzie.”
“This is Nina Truhler.”
“Oh, hey, Nina. Hi. This is Dave Deese. We met a while ago…”
“I remember.”
“I’m sorry to call so late, sorry to disturb you, it’s just that I heard—I just heard that McKenzie was shot. Is that true?”
“Yes, it is, but he’s going to be fine.”
“Is he? Oh, okay. Great. God. I’m just … wow. That’s a relief. You say he’s going to be okay?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Dave, but I have to go.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry to disturb you like I said. It’s just—it’s just that I’m feeling really guilty about all of this.”
“Guilty? Why?”
Deese answered with a question.
“McKenzie was doing me a favor and I’m afraid—is it possible that he might have been shot because of it?”
“Hang on.”
Nina held the phone for Bobby to take.
“It’s for you,” she said.
* * *
Barbara Deese was wearing fluffy pink slippers, red pajamas, and a long, thick black robe that she wrapped tight around herself. Bobby said she reminded him of a woolly bear caterpillar. She was sitting on the sofa next to Deese. Deese kept dropping hints—it was late and she had to get up early in the morning; it was going to be a long, boring conversation and he wouldn’t blame her if she just went to bed. Only Barbara wasn’t going anywhere. How often did a commander of police drop everything to interview her husband? In their home? In the middle of the night?
Bobby was sitting in a wingback chair facing the sofa.
“Tell me about this, DD,” he said.
Deese had played hockey with Bobby and me for more than a dozen years and poker nearly once a month for the past five and like old friends we rarely used each other’s first names. It was usually last names or nicknames, the nicknames often derogatory in nature because that’s the way we rolled.
“The more I think of it, the more I’m convinced that this has nothing to do with me, McKenzie getting shot,” Deese said. “I mean it’s not like I asked him to steal the plans for the Death Star or anything. He’s going to be all right, though?”
“That’s what the doctor says,” Bobby said.
“Is there any permanent damage? I mean, can he still play hockey?”
“I don’t know. C’mon, man.”
“I asked McKenzie to do me a favor.”
“What favor?” Barbara asked.
“That’s what I was going to tell—are you sure you don’t want to go to bed? It’s awfully late.”
“Dave…”
“Yeah, Dave,” Bobby said. “What favor?”
“It’s—it’s embarrassing.”
“How embarrassing?” Barbara asked.
Deese was staring at his wife when he answered. “I asked him to find out who my father was.”
“Your father?”
“Didn’t your dad die last year sometime?” Bobby asked.
“Fifteen months ago. He died almost a year to the day after Mom died. He just didn’t seem to care about anything after she passed. I appreciate it that you and McKenzie came to the funeral; I don’t know if I told you at the time.”
“I don’t understand,” Barbara said.
“Neither do I,” Bobby said.
“You know my sister T,” Deese said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Teeeeeeee,” Barbara said, drawing the name out. “Never Theresa. Never Terese. Never Terry or Resa like my friend from college. Always Teeeeeeee.”
“C’mon,” Deese said.
“She is the loudest, most inappropriate person I know.”
“I thought you liked her.”
Barbara held her thumb and index finger about an inch part.
“Your sister is terrific in very small doses,” Barbara said. “Just ask her ex-husbands.”
Deese shook his head at his wife and returned his gaze back to Bobby.
“T had her DNA tested by one of those ancestry websites,” he said. “For the longest time she said I should do the same thing, track down all of our long-lost relatives, and I’m like, I have way too many relatives as it is. Finally, I gave in. The ancestry company, whatever, had a half-price sale around Easter; don’t ask me what any of this has to do with Easter. So I bought a kit.”
“You never told me this,” Barbara said.
“I bought a kit. What they do, they send you a vial and you’re supposed to spit up to this line—you’re not supposed to eat or drink anything, not even water, for a half hour before you spit. You spit in this vial and you pack it up in the return box they send you and then you wait, maybe six weeks or more. I think it was shorter in my case. Still, I kind of forgot about it. Then they sent me an email telling me that my report was ready. They sent it to me the Monday after Mother’s Day, do you believe that? I linked on to the website and followed the prompts. It turns out I’m forty percent French. I was always convinced I was like half Scottish; the name Deese having Scottish origins and the things my father told me. Remember I used to joke with McKenzie about being his long-lost cousin? We’re not cousins, by the way.”
“Uh-huh.” Bobby was becoming increasingly impatient, but he was a good investigator. Once he had a suspect talking, he knew it was often best to just let him keep talking until he said something important.
Suspect. Dave Deese was a suspect. Bobby nearly shook the thought from his head, only he didn’t want any abrupt movements to distract his friend, our friend, from his soliloquy.
“Turns out I’m not Scottish at all,” Deese said. “Not even one percent. Also my Neanderthal markers say that I’m more likely to have straight hair, which I do, and that I am not likely to have red hair, which I don’t. All this is important.”
What Doesn't Kill Us--A McKenzie Novel Page 4