“That’s okay,” Nina said. “It’s not like I haven’t heard the word before.”
“It just didn’t make any sense to me. I kept asking, ‘What can of worms?’ They wouldn’t tell me. All I got—my mom said, ‘It happened before you were born.’ I’m like ‘What happened?’ She wouldn’t tell me. Only I wouldn’t give it up—McKenzie, I mean. Elliot and me, we said that we hadn’t actually involved him in anything. We didn’t tell McKenzie about Uncle Charles. My mom said, ‘Don’t. Don’t tell him.’ I said, ‘Shouldn’t we let Uncle Charles make the decision?’ After all—and this is important, at least I thought it was important. He’s the one who put his DNA up on an ancestry website in the first place in case something like this might happen.
“Marshall said, ‘You’re right, you’re right,’ like he agreed with me. He said that it was Charles’s decision and that he would tell him everything I had told him and Mom. That’s where we left it. Elliot and I had to get back to Carleton before quiet time. Only nothing happened. We didn’t hear anything from anybody. Not Tuesday. Not Wednesday. Then Wednesday night, last night, this policewoman showed up at school, a detective, and she told us that McKenzie had been shot and she blamed Elliot and then she said she was kidding, that she knew Elliot didn’t do it and I’m like, What is wrong with you, lady?”
“The detective, was her name Jean Shipman?” Nina asked.
“Yes. Do you know her? Is she always this mean?”
“I couldn’t say. McKenzie doesn’t like her, though.”
“I don’t either, but I started wondering about something she told us. Something unbelievable. She said that a woman delivered a message to McKenzie, delivered it to his building, and that the message might have been what lured him to the place in St. Paul where he was shot.”
“RT’s Basement on Rice Street?”
“Yes. She said, Detective Shipman said, that the woman who delivered the message had short blond hair and told the security guards that her name was Elliot. Only it wasn’t Elliot. She was in Northfield with me when all of this happened. We can prove it, too. Only that’s not what’s unbelievable. What’s unbelievable—I can’t believe I’m saying this or even thinking it.”
“What’s unbelievable?” Nina asked.
“My mother has short blond hair.”
“Your mother?”
“Jenna King.”
Nina took Emma’s hand in hers and spoke to her as if she were her daughter.
“Emma, honey, I need you to talk to someone for me,” she said. “A policeman.”
“A policeman? I … I … I … I can’t do that. It’s family.”
“McKenzie is your family, too,” Nina said.
She told me later that she had felt sympathy for Emma, for the position she was placing her in, but at no time did she consider telling the girl the truth—that I wasn’t her uncle. I told her that I would have done the same thing; that she was starting to think like me. Nina said that was a lousy thing to say and I should apologize. Anyway …
“My mom,” Emma said. “We’re talking about my mom.”
Nina gave the young woman’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
“You don’t really believe that your mother shot McKenzie, do you?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Some of the things she’s done lately because, because…”
Emma closed her eyes as if she was recalling some of the things and opened them slowly.
“No,” she said. “I don’t believe it. Something’s going on…”
“Will you talk to my friend?” Nina asked.
“The policeman?”
“Yes.”
“Not Shipman.”
“No. No, no. His name is Bobby. He’s McKenzie’s best friend.”
“Will I have to go to the police station?”
“I think we can avoid that.”
The way they had left it with Dr. Tucker Hammel—“What you got here is an adverse patient outcome,” Chopper told him. “My advice, forget this one and move on to the next patient. Your practice is still intact, ’kay? I won’t have any more reason to mess with you unless you have reason to mess with me. ’Kay?”
Hammel didn’t respond one way or another.
A few minutes later, Herzog was driving the van south on Lexington Avenue toward I-94.
“We gonna deal with Jenna King ourselves or are we gonna pass her name to the po-lice?” he asked.
Chopper didn’t reply.
“Kinda quiet back there, partner,” Herzog said.
“Hmm? What?”
“Just askin’, are we going to call Bobby Dunston or take care of Jenna King our own way?”
Chopper still didn’t answer.
“Somethin’ on your mind, Chop?”
They were crossing University Avenue; a White Castle restaurant was located on the corner.
“Pull in here,” Chopper said.
“What?”
“Pull in, pull in.”
Herzog swung the van into the parking lot, found an empty slot and stopped.
“You won’t eat a plant-based burger but you’re happy to load up on sliders?” he asked. “Talk about extremes.”
“I need to think.”
“’Bout what?”
“The doc-tor—he wants us to kill Jenna King.”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“He wants us to do his dirty work for him.”
“Chop…”
“He wanted us to have that name, Jenna King. He played the part like we was forcing it outta him, but ask yourself—if he didn’t want us to have the name, why would he have agreed to a meeting in the first place, at least one that we walk away from? Somethin’ else. This woman, Jenna King, who lives on Lake Minnetonka—you know what we’re talking about when we say a person lives on Lake Minnetonka?”
“Money.”
“Lots of it, too. So tell me—what’s a white woman from way out on the rich side of Minneapolis doing on Rice Street? A woman like that, it would be dangerous for her to go down to RT’s.”
“She was looking to get her prescription filled,” Herzog said. “She heard from somebody who heard from somebody that RT’s Basement was the place to go t’ get her Oxy, you know how it works.”
“Except that she already had Jamal doing home deliveries for her. One of his best customers, he said. So why would she go to RT’s?”
Herzog let that sink in for a few beats.
“She went there to see McKenzie,” he said.
“Why RT’s, though? If she arranged the meet, she would’ve picked a spot
