Highway 61 (14 page)

Does it have to be me?

A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.

“No, not this time,” I said. “I’ve done my bit for God and country.”

“McKenzie, please.”

I left the office and headed for the door. Truhler followed, begging me to reconsider with each step.

“What am I going to do?” he asked.

“My advice, call the cops, call a lawyer. I know people. If you want a few names and phone numbers, I’ll give them to you.”

I opened the front door. Truhler grabbed my forearm. I shook it free.

“Rickie will be disappointed,” Truhler said.

“Maybe so, but Erica will understand.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Jason,” the girl called from the darkened corridor. “How long are you going to beeeeeeee?”

“Erica is more mature than most of the women you know,” I said.

I turned and crossed the threshold into the cool night air. The girl’s giggling followed me out the door.

*   *   *

It was eleven thirty by the time I reached my home in Falcon Heights. By midnight I was sitting in my favorite comfy chair and watching
SportsCenter
on ESPN, a bottle of Summit Ale at my elbow. At twelve forty-five my phone rang.

“McKenzie, it’s Erica.”

I felt a thrill of fear at the sound of her voice. The last time Erica called me in the middle of the night was never.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Don’t let it be Nina, don’t let it be Nina, don’t let it be Nina,
my inner voice chanted.

“It’s my father,” she said.

NINE

Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina was a half hour drive from Truhler’s town house yet it was the nearest health-care facility with an emergency room, so that’s where the paramedics took him. Nina and Erica were in the waiting room when I arrived. Nina looked angry, Erica looked frightened, and the young woman I had met earlier, she of the pearl necklace and high heels, looked like this was the best roller coaster ride she had ever been on. She giggled and waved when I entered the room.

“I know you,” she said.

She started to stand. I pointed at the chair, and she settled back down again.

“I’ll be right there,” I said.

She smiled. I thought she might giggle some more. She covered her mouth with her hand, though, and made no sound.

Nina and Erica were sitting on the other side of the waiting room from the girl and watching intently. Nina crossed the room to meet me. I thought she might need a hug, so I opened my arms to her. Instead, she grabbed the lapel of my jacket and pulled me close. She spoke in an urgent whisper.

“Did you do this?”

“Did I do what?”

“Put Jason in the hospital?”

Another man might have been angry at the question; another might have been hurt. I was neither. Given our history together, and her certain knowledge of the sort of things that happen when I involve myself in other people’s problems, I heard Nina’s inquiry not as an accusation but merely a request for information.

“No,” I said. “I did not. Of course I didn’t.” I spoke loudly enough for Erica to hear my answer. Afterward I dropped my voice so only Nina could hear. “Although the thought had crossed my mind.”

Nina gestured toward the young woman who was watching us from a chair on the other side of the room.

“Who’s your friend?” she asked. Her voice wasn’t nearly as low as mine had been.

“We weren’t formally introduced,” I said. “I met her briefly at Jason’s earlier.”

“Another one of Jason’s sluts. Why am I not surprised?”

“How long has she been here?”

“I don’t know. She was sitting there when I arrived. The police were talking to her earlier, so I thought she might have something to do with Jason, but when I went to say hello she blew me off.”

We made our way to the line of chairs positioned against the far wall where Erica was sitting.

“How are you doing, sweetie?” I asked her.

“What happened,” Erica said.

“I don’t know. I was going to ask you the same question.”

“We got a call from the hospital,” Nina said. “They said that Jason had been hurt. Apparently he listed me as his emergency contact.”

“Was he badly hurt?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” Nina said.

“The woman at the desk said that a doctor would tell us in a few minutes,” Erica said. “That was half an hour ago. She’s been ignoring us ever since.”

I glanced at the young woman. She was still wearing the pearls under a white shirt, but she had changed shoes. She looked like she wanted to come over and talk.

“Let me see what I can find out,” I said.

I crossed the floor to where she was sitting.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hi.”

“We haven’t been formally introduced.”

I offered my hand, and she shook it without rising from her chair.

“I’m Caitlin,” she told me. “Caitlin with a
C.
My friends call me Cait. That’s also with a
C.
You’re McKenzie.”

“How long have you been here?”

“A couple of hours. I came in the ambulance with Jason. The lady you were talking to, is she the other woman?”

“I think you’re the other woman.”

“I’m not,” Caitlin said. “Jason said there wasn’t anyone else. If he was lying, that’s not my fault, is it?”

“How old are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Just curious.”

“I turn twenty next January.”

“Are you in school?”

She snickered as though she had never heard a sillier question.

“Jason isn’t seeing anyone else that I know of,” I said. “The woman”—I couldn’t bring myself to use Nina’s name—“is his ex-wife.”

Caitlin thought about it for a moment.

“That’s nice,” she said, “that they can still be friends.”

“Yeah, it’s wonderful. Can you tell me what happened?”

“You mean after you left?”

“Yes.”

She looked up at me and smiled. “I told the police—did I tell you that the cops questioned me?”

“What did you tell them?”

“After you left, Jason came back to the bedroom and said he wanted to do it again, and I said, ‘Where’s your friend?’ because I was hoping you’d be joining us. I thought that would be fun, only Jason, he didn’t like the idea at all, the three of us, and then someone was knocking on the door, and Jason was like, ‘I wonder what that asshole McKenzie wants now.’” The girl put her hand over her mouth. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“So Jason goes to the door, and I kinda follow him because I was hoping it was you, and Jason opened the door, only it wasn’t you.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. Two guys. I never heard any names.”

“What did they look like?”

“They were icky. One was short and had long blond hair that looked like it needed a shampoo and a trim, and the other guy was tall and he had long brown hair that he had in a ponytail. They both had straggly beards, and they were both wearing leather biker jackets.”

“What did they want?”

“I don’t know. When I saw it wasn’t you I went back to the bedroom.”

“What happened next?”

“There was some shouting, and I heard Jason yelling, ‘Don’t kill me,’ and I’m like whoa! I crept back down the corridor, and I saw Jason lying on the floor and the two biker dudes standing over him. One of them was holding a pipe, it looked like a pipe, and he was holding it—there was a handle, like one of those grips that they put on the handlebars of a bicycle. And his partner pointed me out and said, ‘Whaddaya think?’ I knew what he was thinking right away, so I ran back down the corridor to the bathroom to lock myself in, except I stopped in the bedroom for my cell phone first and I called the cops, only the two guys, they never did anything to me, they just left.”

“Then what?”

“I stayed on the phone like the woman said, the woman at nine-one-one. She was really nice. I stayed on the phone until the police came, and then I answered their questions and got dressed and came on the ambulance here to the emergency room with Jason. I didn’t think it would be right to just leave him, you know? So I came here and talked to the cops some more, and now I guess I’m just waiting to see if he’s okay. You know, Jason said he was involved with dangerous people, but I thought he was just trying to impress me. Did I tell you that before?”

“Yes.”

“I thought I did.”

I took her hand and gave it a pat.

“It was good of you to stay with Jason,” I said. “It was a classy move.”

“You really think?”

“I do.”

She giggled as I patted her hand again.

*   *   *

I recrossed the waiting room and sat next to Erica. Nina was in the chair on the opposite side of her daughter.

“What did she have to say?” Nina asked.

“Her name is Caitlin,” I said. “With a
C.
”

“And?”

“Someone attacked Jason in his home; she doesn’t know why. She called the police and got Jason to the hospital.”

“How virtuous of her.”

“I thought so.”

If our conversation had any effect on Erica, she kept it to herself.

We sat, without speaking, for another half hour. Finally a doctor wearing blue scrubs beneath a white lab coat stepped into the room, a chart in his hand. He read from the chart as if he were calling passengers to a waiting bus.

“Truhler?” he asked.

“Yes,” Nina said.

The doctor couldn’t be bothered to move to where we were sitting, or to even meet us halfway. Instead, he waited for us to join him. He spoke to Nina.

“You’re Mrs. Truhler?”

Nina didn’t bother to correct his misassumption.

“Yes,” she said.

“Your husband suffered a concussion,” the doctor said. “However, a CAT scan indicated no swelling of the brain or bleeding. There is no apparent memory loss or confusion. His vision, hearing, balance, coordination, and reflexes seem normal. We will keep him twenty-four hours for observation.”

“Is he going to be all right?” Erica asked.

“I believe that is what I just said.”

The doctor turned to walk away.

“Wait a minute,” I said.

He stopped, but he wasn’t happy about it.

“Your shitty bedside manner aside,” I said, “can we see him?”

The doctor shrugged away the question. “Talk to the nurse,” he said.

As he walked down the hospital corridor, a man dressed in a black sports coat brushed past him. The jacket bulged beneath his left armpit where he carried his gun.

“I’ll be dammed,” he said. “Rushmore McKenzie.”

I stared into his face, trying to place him.

“John Brehmer,” he said. He offered his hand. “When we met a few years ago, I was a deputy with the Carver County Sheriff’s Department.”

“That’s right.” I shook his hand. “Deputy Sergeant Brehmer. I remember. You helped me out. I never did thank you. Sorry about that.”

“That’s okay. I wasn’t looking for thanks.”

“You’re with Eden Prairie now?”

“The criminal investigations unit. I made the move a couple years ago so I could work plainclothes. So tell me, what’s your connection to all this?”

“Just a friend of the family.”

“Yeah? What do you know about what happened tonight?”

I gestured toward Caitlin. She was standing near her chair, watching.

“Only what the girl told me,” I said.

“Do you know the two men who assaulted Mr. Truhler?”

“Not at all.”

The smile on Brehmer’s face didn’t shift so much as a centimeter. Yet I knew he didn’t believe me.

“Ms.”—he glanced at his notebook—“Ms. Brooks said you left just before the two suspects arrived.”

“That’s true.”

“Did you see them when you left?”

“No.”

“See any vehicles lingering in the vicinity?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea who they could be?”

“No.”

“Mr. Truhler didn’t mention that he was expecting guests?”

“No.”

“How about you, Mrs. Truhler?” Brehmer asked.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Nina said.

“Do you know any of Mr. Truhler’s associates?”

“Jason and I don’t live together,” Nina said. “We’ve been divorced for eighteen years. I’ve spoken to him just once in the past twelve months.”

Eighteen years,
my inner voice said.
That meant Jason divorced Nina while she was pregnant with his daughter. Or maybe it was Nina who did the divorcing. You really ought to get your facts straight.

“I don’t even know why we were called here,” Nina added.

Brehmer didn’t attempt to venture a theory. Good for him, I told myself. A cop needs to garner as much information from the family as possible, yet he doesn’t want to get involved with the family. There is nothing more dangerous than a domestic dispute.

“Did you interview Jason?” I asked.

“Just finished,” Brehmer said.

“What did he say?”

Brehmer held up his notebook for me to read. The page was empty.

“Apparently no one came to Truhler’s door and no one assaulted him,” Brehmer said. “It’s all been just one terrible misunderstanding.”

“I’ve come across misunderstandings like that myself over the years,” I said.

“Except they’re never really misunderstandings, are they? What’s going on, McKenzie?”

“I don’t know, John. I really don’t.”

Throughout the conversation, Erica had remained a silent bystander. Now she spoke up.

“Excuse me, Officer,” she said. “Do you believe we had anything to do with the attack on my father?”

“I have no evidence to suggest that.”

“Then please get out of the way.”

Brehmer gave Erica a hard look, but she held her ground. He switched his gaze to Caitlin, and she took a step backward. His eyes came back to me.

“You owe me one,” he said.

“I know I do.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

My inner voice spoke to me as I watched him heading for the exit.

You did it again,
it said.
You lied to a cop, lied to his face, without thought, without hesitation—the second time within twenty-four hours.

*   *   *