My cell pinged as I walked to the Mustang. I took a look—a text message from Bobby.
U busy? it asked.
No, I replied.
Come talk to me.
U home?
Yes.
K.
Twenty minutes later, I parked in front of Bobby Dunston’s house, a large pre–World War II colonial with a wraparound porch directly across the street from Merriam Park. There was a low-slung community center in the park with a decent gym, plus baseball fields where Bobby and I played when we were kids. And a hill dotted with large oak trees where I kissed Mary Beth Rogers, the most beautiful girl of my childhood, for the one and only time. I don’t think I have ever looked at that hill without thinking of her and that very first kiss.
I was greeted at the door with a hug by Victoria, the elder of the Dunston girls.
“How are things at Central?” I asked her.
“I’m way too smart for high school.”
“I believe you.”
“Seriously. They gave me permission to start taking Advanced Placement courses. If I work it right, I could be a college sophomore by the time I graduate.”
“What about Katie?”
“Didn’t you hear?” Victoria said. “She made the varsity basketball team.”
“As a freshman? Good for her.”
“It is, because the only way she’s getting into college is with an athletic scholarship.”
I draped an arm around Victoria’s shoulder as we made our way into the kitchen.
“You’re a mean girl, you know that?” I said.
“I’ve been told that I take after Mom.”
I don’t know why I thought that was so funny, yet I was laughing when I found Shelby chopping vegetables at the island in her kitchen.
“Nobody told me you were coming for dinner,” she said. “You know how I hate last-minute surprises.”
“I’m not staying for dinner,” I said. “I just dropped by to chat with Bobby for a sec.”
“What do you mean you’re not staying? You’re always welcome, you know that.”
“Shelby—”
“Or do you have plans to … hook up with Nina?”
Shelby winked at me, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen her do before, and in that instant I knew that Nina had spilled her guts to her.
“God help me,” I said.
I moved toward the staircase leading to Bobby’s man cave in the basement.
“We’re having marinated chicken breasts,” Shelby said.
“Leave me alone,” I told her.
I found Bobby sitting in a recliner, his feet up, his hands clasped behind his head, watching ESPN’s SportsCenter through half-closed eyes.
“Our tax dollars at work,” I said.
“Not even you can ruin the good mood I’m in.”
“I just heard about Katie. Very cool. Too bad she doesn’t play hockey.”
“Are you kidding?” Bobby asked. “Do you know what it costs just for hockey equipment these days? Start at fifteen hundred a year. That doesn’t count the tens of thousands you could end up paying for camps and clinics and associations and travel and dry-land training during the years it takes just to get a kid ready to try out for high school hockey. On the other hand, the most I’ve ever spent for Katie to play hoops for a year was about eight hundred dollars, and that included shoes. I’m fine with basketball. One of the happiest days of my life was when Kate discovered she could shoot the J from anywhere on the floor. But that’s not why I’m happy now.”
“Why are you happy now?”
“I got that sonuvabitch. Robert Nowak. You should’ve seen his face, too. One of my favorite things—he opens his door and sees me standing there and he knows, he just knows I got him. Up until that moment, see, the suspect always thinks he got away with something. But when they see me smiling at them—it’s priceless.”
“How did you do it?”
“I went back to his credit card statements,” Bobby said. “Nowak had an expense account with his business, RN Management Group. He owned the business; of course he had an expense account. Well, I looked further back than I had before. A couple of years. I discovered that he had purchased two prepaid cell phones and had been adding additional minutes to them ever since. We went to the retailer, learned the IMEI numbers, tracked the locations. Nowak had one; Molly Finnegan had the other. They used them so their everyday cells and landlines wouldn’t provide evidence of their adultery. If they had treated them as burners like real criminals, paying for them with cash, making a few calls, and then tossing them into the trash, we wouldn’t have been able to prove anything, but apparently Nowak was too cheap to replace the phones.
“Add that to the fact that they were both on record claiming that they had no personal relationship whatsoever outside of the office, an obvious lie—a judge agreed that there was enough probable cause to search Molly’s property. The rest, as they say, is history. God, I loved the look on his face. Molly gave us nothing, but Nowak, once I told him we found his wife, he folded like a piece of paper. I couldn’t keep him from confessing. I’m waiting for the evening news so I can watch the perp walk.”
“What was it Dad used to say—the man who loves his job never works a day in his life.”
“Him and Confucius.”
“So what can I do for you?” I asked.
“This was a clean bust. We obtained the IMEI numbers legally. Tracked the phones legally. Obtained a search warrant legally. I read Nowak his rights and got him to confess on camera legally. The idea of trying to connect Molly Finnegan with Robert Nowak in the first place—that just came to me, as hunches often do when detectives work an investigation.”
“Of course. That’s how they got El Chapo, you know. The Mexican marines had a hunch and followed a takeout order of tacos to his front door.”
“My point being—you and I did not go to New Richmond, Wisconsin, Saturday night.”
“I don’t even know where Wisconsin is.”
“Just as long as we’re on the same page.”
“Always,” I said. “But you knew that before you called.”
“Yeah.”
“So why did you call?”
“It would be inconvenient if a psychic medium went on TV and announced to the world and the suspect’s defense attorneys that she told me where to find Ruth Nowak’s body.”
“You could always argue that’s what prompted you to take a closer look at Molly and Nowak, where the hunch came from.”
“I’d rather not if I could avoid it,” Bobby said.
“I don’t blame you. All the other kids might laugh.”
“Can you reach out to Kayla Janas for me?”
“I can,” I said. “I will.”
“Thank you.”
“I still can’t believe she knew where Ruth was.”
“I’ve been turning it over in my head ever since,” Bobby said. “I even looked into her background to see if she was in any way connected to Nowak or Molly or even Ruth. Please, don’t tell her I did that.”
“Okay.”
“This just rattles my view of the world and how it works, you know?”
“Mine, too,” I said. “I understood—remember that online prostitution ring I helped bust a few years ago? And the wannabee drug cartel working out of Lakeville?”
“The Iron Range Bandits,” Bobby said. “Don’t forget them.”
“All that I understood. But this?”
“Simpler times,” Bobby said. “Simpler times.”
“By the way, any word on the Fogelberg investigation?”
“It always has to be about you, doesn’t it, McKenzie?”
“I shouldn’t be concerned that someone is trying to shoot me—”
“For a reward offered by a dead man?”
“Yeah.”
“A couple of days ago I would have told you that you were nuts. Now … Detective Gafford tells me that Frank Fogelberg’s first divorce cost him half of his net worth, so he planned his second divorce more carefully. He took out loans against their home, vacation home, cars, and boat; he drained their savings and investment accounts and transferred all the money into an account in the Cook Islands and then convinced a judge that he was broke, leaving his ex-wife with nada. Later he funneled the cash through a couple of shell companies into an LLC, which paid him a healthy salary as a consultant.”
“Clever,” I said.
“His ex thinks so, too. So do a few former business partners who apparently were also taken for a ride.”
“Do any of them have experience boosting red Toyota Avalons from the parking lots of Holiday Stationstores?”
“How much experience do you need?”
The Dunn Brothers on the corner of Snelling and Grand Avenue in St. Paul was the first coffeehouse built by Ed and Dan and remains one of their most iconic stores even though the chain has grown into one of the ten biggest in the nation. There were plenty of chairs and small round tables for the nerds, artists, and liberal revolutionaries that it catered to, plus a tiny stage where performers with guitars channeled the folk singers of the sixties and seventies. The boys were smart enough to roast their coffee in the store on a daily basis, so the place always vibrated with a mood of fellowship that few other aromas could conjure. Like just about every other retail business in the world, it was well decked out with Christmas decorations.
I parked in the lot next to the coffeehouse and walked inside. Most of the tables were filled, and there was a short queue in front of the cash register. The folk singer, apparently in between sets, was standing near the door and chatting with a couple that looked more like family than fans.
Kayla was sitting toward the back of the coffeehouse as she had said she would be when I had called earlier and arranged to meet her. She was wearing an orange sweatshirt with the name and logo of Macalester College, tight jeans, and knee-high boots. Her feet were propped up on the seat of the chair across from her; I didn’t know if she was hoarding the chair for me or just trying to get comfortable. A large textbook was in her lap and she was sucking on a yellow highlighter as if it were a cigar while she read. The image made me smile, brought me back to when I was in school with Bobby and Shelby and everything seemed possible.
I bought a café mocha and joined her. Kayla removed her feet from the chair when she saw me approach and sat up.
“Hi,” she said.
I gestured at the textbook as I sat across from her. “Studying?” I asked.
“Some people, boys I’ve dated, they think I can read minds.” Kayla closed the book, placed it on the table, and set the highlighter on top of it. “I wish I could; then I’d be able to find out what the prof was putting in the test.”
“Isn’t it hard to concentrate with all this noise?”
“No, it’s easier. When it’s really quiet, like in the library or alone in my dorm room, that’s when I get the most spooked.”
“Spooked? As in ghosts?”
“You have no idea. What can I do for you, McKenzie?”
“You had a very profound effect on Bobby Dunston the other night.”
“The commander? I did?”
“Because of you, he took a much harder look at a woman who was employed by Robert Nowak, a woman who just happened to own an alpaca farm near New Richmond, Wisconsin.”
“It’s true, then,” she said. “What I read online. They found Ruth?”
“Yes.”
“On a farm?”
“Yes.”
“Wrapped in a purple-and-gold quilt? Hidden in the trees between a small pond and the back fence of a farm?”
“I don’t know the exact details,” I said.
I could hear Kayla even though she had covered her mouth with both hands.
“Oh God, oh God, it’s true, it’s true. I can do this.” She removed her hands. “Hannah said I could. She said she had never met anyone with my gifts, my skills, I don’t know what to call it. Not a skill. You learn skills. It’s a, it’s a … Well, a gift then. I don’t know if I should be happy or scared to death. Both. McKenzie, is Robert Nowak going to prison for killing Ruth?”
“That would be my guess. Him and Molly Finnegan, provided no one screws up.”
“Molly is the woman’s name?”
“Yes. She and Nowak were having an affair. Bobby used those facts to get a search warrant to search her property.”
“I helped the police, then.”
“Yes, you did.”
Kayla stared at me for a few beats.
“Would they want me to testify?” she asked.
“Absolutely not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jury trials are iffy things.”
Kayla stared some more.
“They’ll think I’m lying about Ruth talking to me,” she said. “They’ll think I’m making it up. People do, you know. Think I’m making it up. The principal in my high school, even my family. McKenzie, do you think I’m making it up?”
“No.”
“Thank you.”
“Neither does Commander Dunston.”
Kayla picked up a paper coffee cup with both hands and brought it to her mouth, yet did not drink.
“He doesn’t want me to say anything about this, though, does he?” Kayla asked.
“Not at the present time.”
“Because he doesn’t want to complicate the case. He doesn’t want a defense attorney to tell the jury that I must have done all those terrible things myself even though there’s not evidence to prove it, because how else would I have known where Ruth was—we all know there is no such thing as ghosts.”
“It’s possible.”
“Hannah said that might happen, the attorney trying to create reasonable doubt. She said we should hold a press conference anyway, so I’ll get credit.”
“What do you think?”
Kayla didn’t answer straightaway. Instead, she slowly set the coffee cup back on the table. It was because she took her time wrestling with my question that I believed her when she answered, “It’s not about me. It’s about Ruth. She deserves justice. If I fucked that up…”
Kayla clamped a hand over her mouth as if it was the worst thing she had ever said. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“You’re a good person,” I said. “I think only good people should be allowed to do what you do.”
She smiled weakly at the compliment.
“Hannah will not be happy,” Kayla said. “Did I tell you? She’s invited me to be a guest on her TV show. She thinks something like this would be a huge boost to our chances of getting an on-air commitment from the network.”
“Hannah wants you on her show?”
“As a recurring character while she helps me develop my gifts. She wants to mentor me. There’s so much I need to learn.”
Who exactly would be helping who? my inner voice wondered.
“The producers—I’m talking to television producers, do you believe that?” Kayla said. “The producers think it would be a good idea, too. They made me answer a lot of questions, though. Made me read them. One at a time. I guess they wanted me to prove I could read people before they agreed to let me on the show.”
“Did they do the same thing with Hannah?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
I wanted to give Kayla some sage advice about who to trust and who not to trust and how to tell them apart, yet for the life of me, I couldn’t think of what that would be. There are some things you only learn as you go. I decided to change the subject somewhat.
“Speaking of which—do you know an African American kid named Jackson Cane?” I said.
“Jacks? Yes, I know him. He’s a friend of Kyle’s. Well, me, too, I guess. Economics major.”
“Did you tell him about Leland Hayes?”
“No, well yes, I mean, he was one of the people in the dorms when I—McKenzie, what happened?”
“He came to me last night. He wanted me to help him find the money Leland hid.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “He was reasonably polite about it.”
“But why? Why would he do that?”
“You said that Macalester is an awfully expensive college. Maybe he has student loans to worry about.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything, though. I shouldn’t have. Not to, well, not to anyone. I talk about readings being like visits to a doctor or a lawyer and then I blab it around—”
“Blab?”
“That’s a word,” Kayla said.
“That’s okay.”
“No, McKenzie, it isn’t. I have to be professional. Oh my God.” Kayla reached across the small table and set a hand on my wrist. “McKenzie, I told him I would be seeing you here tonight. Well, I told Kyle, but Jacks was standing there at the time.”
“Where’s your boyfriend now? I thought he was your designated protector.”
“Kyle is not my boyfriend or my protector. He’s more like”—Kayla tilted her head back and glanced at the ceiling—“I don’t know what he is.” After a moment, she brought her head forward and looked at me again. “Like I said, there’s so much I need to learn.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“But I do.”
“Listen.” This time I reached across the table and rested a hand on Kayla’s hand. “You do need to learn discretion. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice…”
“Polonius to Laertes in Hamlet.”
“But you’re going to be fine, Kayla. You’re on the side of the angels.”
“Thank you, McKenzie. Wait. Does that mean the angels are also on my side?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it does.”
“I hope they’re with me during my test tomorrow morning.”
I thought that would have been a good time for me to thank her again and depart, only Kayla wouldn’t think of it. Instead, she took hold of my arm and told me to finish my coffee. The folk singer had returned to the stage and was channeling Bob Dylan—of course she was—and doing a very nice job of it, I had to admit, giving “The Times They Are a-Changin’” an anarchistic tone. Next she slid into a nice rendition of Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” and I decided that I was way too hard on folk singers.
While I listened, Kayla leaned in close to me and whispered.
“There’s a woman with long white hair standing on the stage,” she said. “She’s singing along.”
“What woman?” I asked. “I don’t see a woman.”
Kayla looked at me and grinned.
“Oh,” I said.
Apparently Kayla wasn’t the only one who had a lot to learn, because I was taken completely by surprise when the kid rose up in front of me with a gun in his hand.
What happened, I had left the Dunn Brothers and walked east on Grand Avenue until I came to the lot where I had parked my Mustang. It was way in the back, the only empty slot I could find when I arrived. I aimed my key fob at it as I approached. In quick succession the lights flashed, the locks clicked open, and I heard a voice say, “Don’t move.”
Only, I did move, turning toward the voice, and found Jackson Cane pointing a semiautomatic handgun at me.
“Don’t move,” he repeated.
Yet again I ignored him, this time by cautiously raising my hands to shoulder height.
Jackson eased closer to me.
I waited.
“You’re going to help me.” Jackson’s words came out as puffs of white vapor that drifted away into the night. There was the noise of traffic, but I heard no other voices.
“Okay,” I said.
He moved closer.
“I mean it,” Jackson said.
“So do I.”
And closer still.
He raised the gun so that the barrel was pointed at my forehead.
“Don’t mess with me, McKenzie.”
I knocked the gun up and away with my left hand, even as I shifted my head out of the line of fire. I closed my hand on his wrist, keeping the handgun pointed upward, slammed my knee into Jackson’s groin, and hit him just as hard as I could with a palm heel under his jaw.
He fell.
As he fell, I twisted the gun out of his grasp.
I ended up standing above Jackson as he writhed across the dark asphalt, holding his groin with both hands.
Take that, Dave Gracie, my inner voice shouted.
I glanced around to see if anyone had filmed the encounter with their smartphones or, worse, called the cops. I saw no one, heard no sirens.
I bounced the gun in my hands, a nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson, a member of its M&P series, very popular because of its ergonomics, reliability, and soft recoil.
“Nice piece.” I shoved the gun into the pocket of my heavy leather jacket after making sure the safety was on. “I gotta tell you, though, Jacks, that was pretty sloppy for a kid who grew up in Ventura Village.”
“Fuck you.”
“I met your mother this morning. She told me that she was so proud of you that sometimes it made her want to cry. I wonder what she’d think if she could see you now.”
“Fuck my mother.”
I nudged him probably a little harder than I should have with the toe of my shoe.
“Don’t you dare talk about her like that. What’s the matter with you?”
He didn’t say.
I reached down, grabbed him by his shoulders, and helped him to his feet. I half pushed, half carried him between my car and the one parked next to it and leaned him against the hood.
“You want to explain yourself, or what?” I asked.
Jackson was still breathing hard; the white puffs reminded me of the engine of a train.
“My mother lied to me,” he said.
“About what?”
“About my father.”
“Do I really need to know this?”
“She said it was a boyfriend who ran out on us after she became pregnant. But it was really Leland Hayes.”
I have to admit, that was a bigger surprise than the gun, and for a few moments I didn’t move; I didn’t even breathe.
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, just stayed bent over, his hands resting on his thighs, staring at the ground.
“Jackson,” I said. “What makes you say that?”
“I grew up hearing Leland’s name. Not from Toy, never from Toy…”
He calls his mother by her nickname?
“The neighbors, though. I heard what an asshole he was, what a racist, how he was supposed to be haunting the house next door. I didn’t pay any attention. Why would I? Fuck ’im. But then I heard from Kayla about how Leland was supposed to be threatening some asshole from the grave, no offense.”
“Why would I be offended?”
“So I looked him up. I found photos of him online because of the robbery—and I knew. The second I saw his photo I knew. Don’t you think I look like him?”
“No.”
“Look past my skin tone, I’m lighter than my mom. Look past the hair. My eyes. My mouth. My chin. I look like Leland Hayes.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I know, McKenzie. I fucking know.”
“Did you ask your mother about this?”
“Why? So she can lie to me some more?”
“Do you honestly believe that your mother had sex with Leland Hayes? Because I’ve known her for all of five minutes and I don’t believe it, not a word.”
“I didn’t say it was consensual.”
“You think she was raped and she didn’t tell anyone?”
“Who would she tell? McKenzie, I was born almost exactly eight months after Leland was killed.”
“Jackson, you need to talk to your mother about this.”
He shook his head.
“Is this why you think the money he stole belongs to you? Do you think it’s your goddamn inheritance?”
He shook his head some more.
“You pointed a gun at me, you little prick.”
He glared at me with an expression that suggested he didn’t like the word. I shoved him hard enough that he nearly fell down again.
“You talk shit about your mother and now you feel insulted?” I shoved him again. “You pointed a gun at me. Why?”
“I can’t find Ryan on the internet,” Jackson said.
“He hasn’t been out of prison long enough to leave a footprint.”
“You know where he is.”
“Do you expect me to lead you to him? Why? So you two can have a family reunion? He’s your half brother if what you’re telling me is true.”
Jackson didn’t have anything to say to that.
“God, kid,” I said. “You need to talk to your mother.”
“Will you help me?”
“Do you need a lift to her place? Is that what we’re talking about?”
“Never mind.”
“Go home, Jackson.”
“Give me back my gun.”
“No.”
“It’s mine.”
“Tell you what—I’ll give it to Toy. You can get it from her.”
“What are you going to tell her?”
“I’m sure she’ll ask how I got your gun. If she does, I’ll tell her the truth.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t you do that.”
“If you want to talk to her first, I’ll be happy to give you a head start. Now get out of here.”
Jackson wandered into the center of the parking lot and made for the exit. Halfway there he paused as if he wanted to come back and plead his case some more, then thought better of it and kept walking. As he left the lot, my cell phone started playing “West End Blues.”
I read the caller ID—Ryan Hayes.
Why not? my inner voice asked.