The Taking of Libbie, SD Read online

“I thought you were gone like Rush,” she said. “I thought you were gone.”

  “Not me,” I said.

  “Oh, you’re hurt. What happened to your eye?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “But I do. I do worry. After you disappeared—I found your sports jacket draped across a chair, and you weren’t in your room, so I called the police, the sheriff—”

  “Where is my sports jacket?” I said. I didn’t need the coat; I needed the cell phone in the pocket. While at Angela’s ranch, I also made a call to Greg Schroeder and told him what I wanted and why. Only to make it work, I needed my cell.

  “They took your coat,” Sharren said. “They searched your room; they confiscated your belongings; they impounded your car. The sheriff, they say he found guns hidden in your trunk. A lot of guns. They thought—they thought the worst. McKenzie, what happened?”

  “Yeah, about that. Where’s Evan? Is he working?”

  “Yes, Evan, he’s tending bar. Why, McKenzie? Why?”

  I pressed my finger against my lips again.

  “Stay here,” I said.

  “McKenzie?”

  I marched through the lobby, under the arch leading to the dining room, and around dining room tables and chairs toward the bar in back. Sharren followed despite my order, but I knew she would. My legs were heavy and stiff, reminding me that I seldom seemed to be in as good a shape as I thought I was. My ribs ached, too, but then they hadn’t stopped hurting, not even for a moment, since I found myself on the Great Plains. I tried to ignore the pain.

  Evan was behind the stick, brushing his fingers through his blond hair with his fingers. He was busy speaking to a girl who looked like she graduated from high school yesterday and didn’t see me until I stepped between two stools and rested my elbows on top of the bar.

  “McKenzie,” he said. He pronounced my name as if it were a particularly deadly virus and stepped away from the bar as if I were a carrier; bottles on the shelf behind him rattled and fell when he backed into them.

  I glanced at the girl and the cocktail in front of her. In South Dakota, an eighteen-year-old can drink alcohol if it’s done in the immediate presence of a parent, guardian, or spouse over twenty-one years of age. I threw a thumb at Evan.

  “Is this your old man?” I said.

  The girl said, “What?”

  “You should leave. Leave right now.”

  The girl glanced first at Evan and then at Sharren. They both looked frightened, and suddenly the girl became frightened, too. She slid off her stool and headed for the exit as fast as she could without actually running. I gestured with two fingers at Evan as if I wanted to place a drink order.

  “C’mere,” I said. I deliberately kept my voice light and nonmenacing.

  “McKenzie—”

  “It’s okay.”

  Evan very slowly, very cautiously inched to where I stood at the bar.

  “Closer,” I said. I was speaking in a whisper.

  Evan turned his head as if he were straining to hear.

  “McKenzie, it wasn’t me,” he said.

  “What wasn’t you?”

  “McKenzie…”

  As soon as he was close enough, I lunged forward, grabbed him by his shirt and his upper arm, pulled him over the top of the bar, and threw him as best as I could onto a round table. The table collapsed under his weight. I clutched my left side.

  Dammit, that hurt, my inner voice said.

  Evan shook his head and tried to rise from the barroom floor. I moved to his side, grabbed a tuft of his blond hair, yanked his head up, and punched him in the jaw with all my strength. A vast pain rippled all the way up my arm from my knuckles to my shoulder. A spray of blood jetted from the side of Evan’s mouth, and he sagged against the floor. I shook my right arm.

  That hurt, too.

  It probably hurt him more, I told myself.

  One can only hope.

  Sharren was taking quick, short steps in Evan’s direction. She seemed to be trembling. I held up my hand to keep her from coming nearer.

  Evan was slumped onto his side. I gripped his shoulder and rolled him over so I could see his face, so he could see mine.

  “I’m going to ask you once and only once—”

  “Don’t hurt me,” he said. Blood splattered from his mouth as he spoke. “Don’t hurt me anymore.”

  “Evan—”

  “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my fault. He made me do it. I’m not responsible. You can’t blame me. I was just following orders. I was just doing what I was told. McKenzie—”

  “Whose orders?”

  “Don’t hurt me.”

  “I’m calling the police,” Sharren said.

  “Go ’head,” I said.

  “No,” Evan said.

  “No?” Sharren said.

  “Evan doesn’t want the cops,” I said. “He doesn’t want to be an accessory to kidnapping and maybe attempted murder, too. Do you?”

  Evan shook his head.

  “Whose orders?” I repeated.

  “He said you wouldn’t leave town of your own free will so you had no one to blame but yourself for what happened.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Miller.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Is he the one who kicked me?”

  Evan hesitated before he answered. “Yes.”

  Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t; maybe it was both of them, my inner voice said. Does it matter?

  “Not one damn bit,” I said aloud.

  “Huh?”

  “Evan, you’re getting off easy.” From the look in his eye, I don’t think he believed me. “I don’t know how badly hurt you are, only it could be considerably worse, trust me. At the very least, I could send you to federal prison. At the very least. Do we understand each other?” He nodded. “Fortunately for you, I happen to be in a good mood. I’m in a good mood because in a couple of hours alot of bad things are going to start happening to a lot of bad people. If you speak to anyone, tell anyone I’m back, especially Miller, some of those bad things are going to happen to you. Understand?”

  He nodded his head again.

  “Say it,” I said.

  “I understand,” Evan said.

  I turned and started for the exit. Sharren called after me.

  “McKenzie, where are you going?”

  “To the hospital.”

  Nancy Gustafson did everything a doctor would have done. First, she examined my eye, even though it was my ribs that were killing me. Next, she pushed on my chest to determine where I hurt—which hurt like hell, by the way. She watched me breathe and listened to my lungs to make sure air was moving in and out normally. She listened to my heart. She checked my head, neck, spine, and stomach to make sure there weren’t any other injuries. All the while, she said reassuring things like “A blow that’s hard enough to crack a rib is hard enough to injure your lungs, spleen, blood vessels, a lot of other body parts.”

  Then there were the inevitable X-rays. She secured mine to a light box and pointed. “Look,” she said.

  I followed her finger from my perch on the examination room table. There was a fracture no thicker than a single strand of hair across two of my middle ribs.

  “I bet that hurts,” Nancy said.

  “It does,” I said. “What can we do about it?”

  “Very little, I’m afraid. There’s no cast or splint. The ribs will have to heal on their own. It should take about six weeks. The best we can do is make you as comfortable as possible while you wait.”

  “How?”

  Nancy cut four long strips of two-inch-wide adhesive tape. She placed two of the strips directly over my damaged ribs, stretching the tape from my sternum to my spine. The other strips were placed on either side of the ribs.

  “The tape should help decrease your pain a bit by restricting the movement of the ribs,” she said. “We don’t want to wrap around the entire chest because that’ll restrict breathing. Breathing is important. You want to tak
e deep breaths, and you want to cough every once in a while. It’ll hurt. It’ll also prevent secretions from pooling in the lung; it’ll prevent pneumonia, so man up, okay?”

  Man up? How about a little compassion, lady?

  “In the meantime, I’ll give you something for the pain.”

  “I don’t need any drugs,” I said. To prove it, I winced and groaned as I pulled on my rust-colored polo shirt.

  “That’s very heroic of you, McKenzie, except we’re talking ibuprofen, not narcotics.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Tell me something? Concussions, broken ribs, black eyes—does this sort of thing happen to you often?”

  “I’m just looking for an excuse to spend time with you.”

  Nancy smiled at that.

  “Since I have you here, may I ask a question?” I said.

  “Certainly.”

  “Did you prescribe sertraline for Mike Randisi’s agoraphobia?”

  “Yes, with the approval of a doctor, why?”

  “Mike told me that he couldn’t force himself to come into town to get his prescription filled, and since Spiess Drug Store can no longer fill prescriptions, can no longer deliver drugs to customers like it used to, I was wondering—where did Mike get his meds?”

  “He got them from us.”

  “How?”

  Nancy stepped backward. Suspicion clouded her face.

  “You sound like you’re building up to something, McKenzie,” she said.

  “Your husband told Sheriff Balk that he was with you when Mike and Tracie Blake were killed. At first, I thought he was using you to give himself an alibi. Now I know that he already had an alibi. He was processing a DUI at the time with plenty of witnesses to back him up. That means he wasn’t protecting himself. He was lying to protect you.”

  “He did that?” Nancy said.

  “He thought you killed Mike and Tracie. Why would he think that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You delivered Mike’s meds, didn’t you? You drove out to his place and gave them to him.”

  “Yes, I did. It’s called being neighborly. You should try it sometime.”

  “Were you having an affair with him?”

  “McKenzie—”

  “He seemed like an awfully nice guy. Didn’t take him long to charm Tracie, that’s for sure.”

  “It wasn’t like that. We were friends, we talked, but no, we weren’t having an affair.”

  “Friday night, the night he and Tracie were killed, you didn’t go home after your shift, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you go to Mike’s? Did you find Tracie there? Tracie stole your husband, and now she was with your friend. The gun was sitting on the kitchen counter. Did you pick it up?”

  “No, no, McKenzie. You’re wrong.”

  “That’s not what your husband thinks, or else why would he risk his job and more to give you an alibi?”

  “He believes Mike and I were sleeping together, but we weren’t.”

  “Then why does he believe it?”

  “I wanted him to.”

  “You wanted him to believe you and Mike were having an affair?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though you weren’t?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  A voice behind me answered.

  “It was easier than telling him the truth.”

  I twisted on the examination table. Sharren Nuffer stood in the entrance to the suite. Nancy spun to face her, too. She hesitated just for a moment and moved to Sharren’s side. They hugged like two people who had just escaped a horrific traffic accident. When they finished, they both turned to face me, holding hands, standing straight and still like gunfighters, legs apart, weight evenly balanced, a ferocious expression of defiance on their faces.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “You look disappointed, McKenzie,” Sharren said.

  “I am.”

  Nancy said, “Who would have thought you’d be another heterosexual male intimidated by—”

  “Oh, don’t give me that crap,” I said. “I don’t give a damn about your sexual orientation. You two lied to me. Both of you. I’m starting to feel like Diogenes wandering around with my lantern held high in search of an honest man and finding only—God, I can’t believe you lied to me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nancy said.

  “All that nonsense about your husband and Tracie Blake. The noble, long-suffering wife—you played the part well, you know? Tell me, who started cheating first? You or him?”

  Sharren said, “McKenzie—”

  I cut her off.

  “And you. What was it you told me? ‘I was married three times and not once did I cheat on my husband.’ What do you call this?”

  “Eric Gustafson is not my husband,” Sharren said.

  “Yeah, that makes all the difference in the world.”

  “Why are you angry at us?” Nancy said.

  “Be honest,” said Sharren. “You weren’t angry at Eric or Tracie or Dawn Neske or Ed Bizek. Why are you mad at us if it isn’t because we’re gay?”

  “Because I like you,” I said.

  “You like us?” Nancy said.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then why did you accuse me of murder?”

  “I didn’t accuse you of murder.”

  “You said I shot Mike and Tracie.”

  “I did not. I already knew who shot Mike and Tracie. I asked those questions to make sure I was right. I had to know why your husband lied. Now I know. Dammit, you guys.”

  “Does this mean that we’re not friends anymore?” Sharren said. There was a smirk on her face as if she expected an insult and was all set to reciprocate.

  “That night in the lobby of the Pioneer, when you gave me the sandwich,” I said. “You told me that you finally found someone you couldn’t live without. Remember?”

  Nancy smiled as if she had just heard the best compliment.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about you and Nancy then?”

  Sharren looked at Nancy. “It’s a small town,” Nancy said. Sharren nodded as if it were a conclusion they had both reached long ago.

  “I don’t care. If you’re in love, you should be together. It’s that simple.”

  Yet even as I said the words, I flashed on my relationship with Nina.

  It’s never simple, my inner voice said.

  I slipped off the examination table and winced some more. Nancy rushed to my side. I guess she thought I might collapse from the pain. I found myself smiling in spite of myself.

  “Libbie, South Dakota,” I said. “Rules, regulations, and respect.”

  “I’ve always wondered who came up with that motto,” Sharren said.

  “Someone with a sense of irony,” I said.

  “Maybe it was just wishful thinking,” Chief Gustafson said.

  This time he was the one standing in the entrance to the examination suite. Sharren and Nancy glanced at each other with the same alarmed expression. Like them, I wondered how long the chief had been standing there and how much he had heard. He didn’t offer a clue. Instead, he said, “I heard you were back in town, McKenzie. Do you want to tell me what happened to you?”

  I glanced at my watch. Time was starting to slip away.

  “I’ll explain on the way,” I said.

  I wedged past the chief into the corridor.

  “Wait a minute,” the chief said. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m going to identify the Imposter. I’m going to show you what happened to him. After all, that’s why I came here. Where’s my Audi?”

  “Your Audi? It’s in the lot at headquarters.”

  He said “headquarters” like there were police precincts scattered all over the place.

  “We’ll take my car,” I said.

  “Just so you know, I confiscated all of your guns,” the chief said. “I locked them in the vault in my office.”

 
“All of those weapons are legally registered—”

  “Including the Colt submachine gun with the 40 mm grenade launcher?”

  “I have a carry permit, too.”

  “In Minnesota you have a carry permit. This is South Dakota.”

  I glared at the chief for a couple of beats. He glared right back.

  “Fine,” I said. “You drive. Oh, by the way, I need my cell phone.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  When we arrived, the bison hanging above the front entrance to Grandma Miller’s bar and grill was committing the sacrilege of singing the old Louis Armstrong standard “What a Wonderful World”—if you call what he was doing to the song singing. If I could have reached, I would have punched it right in the mouth.

  We had paused at the cop shop to retrieve my black sports jacket and cell. By the time we reached Grandma Miller’s, most of the lunch crowd had already drifted out, and there were plenty of empty tables and booths inside. The chief and I paused next to a sign that read please seat yourself while I scanned the dining area. Sara Miller was policing a table near the corner. She smiled when she saw us, gave a wave, and gestured at the table near the center of the room.

  “Remember,” I said. “You promised.”

  “I remember,” the chief said.

  We made our way to the table while Sara took the dirty dishes into the kitchen. We were sitting when she returned.

  “Hi, McKenzie,” she said. “Chief.”

  “How are you doing, Sara?” I said.

  She smiled brightly. I think she was still getting used to her new name.

  “I’m doing well. I really am. What happened to your eye?”

  I flashed on her father.

  “It ran into something,” I said.

  “Sorry to hear that.” She pulled an order pad from her apron pocket. “What would you gentlemen like?”

  “Information,” I said.

  “Information?”

  I pulled an empty chair away from the table and beckoned her to sit.

  “What is it, McKenzie?” She was looking at the chief when she spoke the words.

  I gestured again, and reluctantly she sat.

  “What is it?” she repeated.

  “It’s about Rush,” the chief said.

  “Rush?” she said.

  I gave the chief a hard look. He read my face and directed his gaze out the window at the highway.