What the Dead Leave Behind Read online

  Nina knew something was wrong beyond my lingering guilt over Rebecca Crawford; after all these years, of course she did. She didn’t ask what, though. Instead she pulled the only other chair on the balcony next to mine and sat. She knew I’d tell her all about it in my own good time. Eventually I did.

  “I don’t know what to feel about this,” I said. “After everything else that’s happened, why should this bother me?”

  “Because you don’t really understand what it’s like to be raped. What it means.”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “I worry about Erica.”

  “So do I.”

  “If it had been Erica, if it had been me, what would you have done?”

  “I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Think about it.”

  “I’d probably want to beat someone to death with an aluminum baseball bat, but you see, that’s why we have laws. So people won’t do that sort of thing.”

  Nina thought about it for a few beats and asked, “Why did you shoot the man who raped and murdered Reney Rogers?”

  “Are you asking if this is the same thing?”

  “You could have taken him prisoner. You could have turned him over to the police.”

  “He might have escaped. He might have…”

  “Yes?”

  “I needed to make sure that he got what he deserved.”

  “What does Katie Meyer deserve?”

  “A long and happy life.”

  “Problem solved.”

  “Is it?”

  “What would you have done if she had killed that man when he first attacked her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? You would have praised her courage, admired her strength. Heck, you would have thrown her a parade.”

  “You’re rationalizing.”

  “Isn’t that what you want me to do? McKenzie, you’re not going to turn her in. You’re not going to destroy Katie Meyer’s life. Her family’s. Her friends’. You decided that in New Ulm. You’re just trying to find a way to reconcile your decision with your sense of justice, with the fact that you were a good cop for such a long time.”

  “Nina, it makes me afraid, a decision like this. Not physically afraid, or emotionally. I’ve felt that before and I know how to deal with it. But deep down where the soul lives.”

  “All those discussions we had before we moved in together about why you do the things that you do. One time you told me—I won’t forget it—you said you wanted to make the world a better place, even if it was only a little bit better. Remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Will the world be a better place if Katie Meyer goes to prison?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then?”

  “First do no harm.”

  Nina kissed my cheek and hugged my arm.

  “This is an easy decision,” she said.

  It wasn’t, but I made it and vowed to stick with it.

  JUST SO YOU KNOW

  Randall “Kid” Cardiff was the only one who went to jail, and that was because they found him on the office floor surrounded by guns and dead bodies and a digital recording of him explaining his part in the murder of Frank Harris.

  Most of the others weren’t even charged with a crime.

  Detective Margaret Utley pleaded with her superiors, but at the end of the day the Hennepin County prosecutor decided he didn’t have enough evidence to proceed.

  Yes, it was determined that a nine-millimeter Glock taken from Jonathan Szereto’s study had been used to kill Jonny Szereto, and yes, the fingerprints on the gun matched Jack McKasy’s, but that didn’t prove he used it on Jonny, only that he was the last one to touch it, and that could have been anytime in the past two and a half years.

  Yes, Jack did own a black Toyota Camry that he sold a week after the shooting, but there were over four million Camrys sold in the United States in the past decade, and a lot of them were black.

  Yes, phone records indicated that Candace Groot placed a call to the Szereto estate the evening Jonny was killed that lasted less than thirty seconds, but she said it was made to Evelyn about company business. She said the same thing about several considerably longer calls made to the estate in the days preceding the shooting as well, although it was so long ago she couldn’t recall exactly what business.

  Handwriting experts confirmed that the codicil discovered by Evelyn Szereto was a fraud—too many closed loops, not enough pressure applied to the paper, rising instead of falling line slopes—yet no one could identify the true author. Vanessa did not pursue the matter, happy enough that she now controlled a full two-thirds of the Szereto Corporation stock, which she used to vote Pamela Randall off the board of directors according to the firm’s unfit-to-serve protocols.

  Pamela was hiding out in Barcelona at the time. She kept drifting from one country to another until her army of attorneys was able to squash any attempt to link her to the killing of Frank Harris or the kidnapping and assault of Diane Dauria and myself. She did plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit corporate fraud—in a Minnesota court, not a federal one—and received a sentence of one year probation, two months community service, and a $10,000 fine. I have often wondered how much all that had cost her.

  Evelyn married Jack and moved out of state. To this day I don’t know for sure if she was in on it. Do you think it’s possible for a mother to murder her only child? She asked me that once. My answer was based on time and experience—Yes.

  Candace Groot moved to the Florida Keys. I have no idea what happened to her after that.

  I was content to let Katie Meyer go unpunished, but the cop in me couldn’t leave Clark Downing hanging. After a while, I told him to match the contents of Katie’s rape kit against the DNA collected on Raymond Bosh—and then destroy both.

  “What will that tell me?” he asked.

  “Nothing you can take to court,” I said.

  Detective Downing called me a couple of weeks later.

  “Damnedest thing,” he said. “Katie Meyer’s rape kit, the evidence gathered on the Raymond Bosh homicide, somehow it’s all gone missing.”

  “Butterfingers.”

  “I ever thank you for the Frank Harris thing?”

  “I think you just did.”

  I haven’t heard from the detective since, but I noticed that the New Brighton Police Division deleted Bosh from its cold case Web site a month later.

  The third week of March, Katie Meyer contacted me and insisted that we meet at the Bru House. I didn’t want to go; didn’t want to face her. Yet I did.

  She looked me in the eye and said, “You know, don’t you? That’s why you’ve been avoiding me. Diane told us all about Frank Harris and Szereto and how you were both taken prisoner, and McKenzie, oh my God, that woman who was going to shoot you and Diane, and you shot her first, and the man, the boxer who was shot by the woman by accident, it was an accident, wasn’t it? And him confessing to everything, what a terrible thing. It’s all so, so terrible, and I know that you know what I did; I can see it in your eyes just looking at you, and I don’t know what to do about it. Should I tell you what happened? You know, after I was raped, my whole life changed. Even now I have issues. Remember that story I told about the college boys trying to pick me up in the bike shop? I was flattered, I told you that, but what I didn’t tell you, oh my God, I was also terrified. When I went back to my car, my hands were shaking so much I couldn’t drive. I sat there in the parking lot for I think it was an hour, could have been longer, and my heart was beating so hard it was like I was going through it all over again.”

  “I’m sorry, Katie.”

  “I don’t need your comfort, McKenzie. That’s what husbands are for. And children. And my friends. Diane was my rock when it first happened, kept me strong; that’s why I love her so much, and last week at the Hotdish she actually told a joke, oh my God. I have the best frie
nds in the world. They all took care of me. They’re still taking care of me. But you know what I did and they don’t, and if they did know…”

  “They would love you just as much as they do now,” I said, although I wondered briefly if they did know; maybe from Critter or Malcolm quietly blabbing to someone who told someone else. It would explain why Diane Dauria wanted me off the Frank Harris investigation and why Annette Geddings followed me that night: the Hotdishers looking out for one of their own.

  “McKenzie, when I saw him walking in the park—”

  “I don’t need to know.”

  “I need to tell you. When I saw him … All my life I’ve been a certain person, then for five minutes I became someone else. That’s all the time it took. I walked up to him; he was pouring chalk into one of those things that they use to line the baseball field, and he looked at me and he smiled, actually smiled, no, not smiled, something else that was like a smile but wasn’t, and he said, ‘Back for more, honey?’ I didn’t even realize that I had Critter’s bat in my hand until I hit him with it. I’m not making that up. Afterward, I looked at the bat and I thought, Where did this come from? I walked back to the field where the boys were going to play and I propped the bat against the backstop because that’s what the boys liked; they always got upset when you dropped the bats in the dirt. I didn’t even think to look for blood. And I’m sitting there and Philly, Jalen Phillips, he’s one of the boys who played baseball, a very good player, and he appeared and I was like, oh my God, Philly, why do you look so sad, and I gave him a hug and I forgot all about what happened. Well, I didn’t forget, but it was like something that happened in a dream, not real at all, but I knew, McKenzie, I knew it wasn’t a dream. It was something I wished was a dream and oh my God, now what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was only five minutes, but that doesn’t matter. What I did, I deserve whatever happens to me, I know that, only, tell me, would it be better if I go to the police? What will they do? I’ve been wondering. For weeks now I’ve been wondering.”

  “They’ll think that you’re a crazy person and ask why you’re trying to complicate their lives by confessing to a crime that there’s no evidence was ever committed.”

  “No evidence?”

  “Nope.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Go home. Have a good life.”

  “What did you do?”

  Katie was sitting in a chair opposite me. I rose from my own chair, circled the table, leaned down, took her face in both of my hands, and kissed her on the mouth. She didn’t resist.

  Afterward I said, “Be happy,” and left the Bru House and never spoke to her again.

  *   *   *

  I returned to the condominium. Erica was standing in front of the small washer and dryer that were built into the wall off the kitchen next to the guest restroom. Her huge suitcase was open, and she was sorting soiled clothes into piles.

  “Seriously,” I said. “You flew your dirty laundry here all the way from New Orleans?”

  “I ran out of quarters for the machine in the dorm.”

  “I’m surprised that you’re actually spending spring break at home for a change. I expected you to go off somewhere with that kid from Notre Dame—Robin.”

  “Did you know that Evanston, Illinois, is only two hours’ driving time from South Bend?”

  “What’s in Evanston, Illinois?”

  “An English major attending Northwestern University. On the other hand, Tulane is fourteen hours away. Do the math. That’s what Robin told me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You learn as you go. Isn’t that one of things you like to say?”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

  “I’m okay. Really.”

  “What about Malcolm Harris?”

  “We don’t see much of each other anymore. Apparently I’m a bad memory. Or I remind him of bad memories. Whatever.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “McKenzie, it’s all good. I mean, look how long it took Mom to find the right guy.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. I didn’t know what else to say. But this time I wrapped Erica in my arms and held her tight.

  She giggled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re hugging me.”

  I loosened my grip, but Erica said, “Don’t you dare,” so I hung on.

  “I love you, McKenzie,” she said.

  “I love you, too.”

  Featuring Rushmore McKenzie

  A Hard Ticket Home

  Tin City

  Pretty Girl Gone

  Dead Boyfriends

  Madman on a Drum

  Jelly’s Gold

  The Taking of Libby, SD

  Highway 61

  Curse of the Jade Lily

  The Last Kind Word

  The Devil May Care

  Unidentified Woman #15

  Stealing the Countess

  Featuring Holland Taylor

  Dearly Departed

  Practice to Deceive

  Penance

  Other Novels

  The Devil and the Diva

  (with Renée Valois)

  Finders Keepers

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DAVID HOUSEWRIGHT has won the Edgar Award and is the three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for his crime fiction. He is a past president of the Private Eye Writers of America. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  For email updates on the author, click here.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Just So You Know

  Also by David Housewright

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  WHAT THE DEAD LEAVE BEHIND. Copyright © 2017 by David Housewright. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

  Cover photographs: cityscape © Greg Lundgren Photography; sky © SJ Travel Photo and Video / Shutterstock.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Housewright, David, 1955– author.

  Title: What the dead leave behind / David Housewright.

  Description: First edition.|New York: Minotaur Books, 2017.|Series: Twin Cities P.I. Mac Mckenzie novels; 14

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017005603|ISBN 9781250094513 (hardcover)|ISBN 9781250094520 (e-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: McKenzie, Mac (Fictitious character)—Fiction.|Private investigators—Minnesota—Fiction.|Ex-police officers—Fiction.|Murder—Investigation—Fiction.|BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Traditional British.|GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3558.O8668 W48 2017|DDC 813/.5
4—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005603

  e-ISBN 9781250094520

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].

  First Edition: June 2017