Madman on a Drum

by David Housewright

  I kissed her again. “I must have been a helluva a guy in a previous life to find you in this one,” I said.

  We held each other for a long time, even after the sirens were silenced and the house began to fill with serious men demanding answers to serious questions.

  Finally Nina said, “How did Teachwell know about Erica and me, about us, that we were together?”

  “Someone told him.”

  It was a small house and not as well kept up as it should have been. I rang the doorbell, and when nothing happened I rapped on the door. Karen opened it slowly. She was wearing a clingy blue robe that looked good on her and nothing else that I could see. “McKenzie,” she said. She tightened the cinch on her robe. At the same time, she threw a glance at the room behind her as if there were something she didn’t want me to see.

  “I’m happy to see you,” she said, but I didn’t believe her. “What brings you here?”

  “Hi,” I said. “I hope it’s not too late.”

  “Not at all.” She swung the door wide. “Come in. Please excuse the mess.”

  There didn’t seem to be much of a mess. Only a large soft-sided suitcase standing alone in the living room.

  “Going somewhere?” I asked.

  Karen casually wheeled the suitcase against the wall. “No,” she said. “I’ve been getting my winter clothes out of storage, my sweaters and long-sleeve blouses and other things, and packing away my summer clothes before the cold weather sets it. It’s getting colder.”

  “So it is.”

  “I’m glad to see you.” This time she smiled brightly when she said it. I still didn’t believe her. “What have you been doing since we parted? Have you found the T-Man?”

  “Yes. He’s dead.”

  “Dead? What happened?”

  “Another ambush. The same as with Joley Waddell. Only this time, he was holding Nina hostage. I got the drop on him and I killed him.”

  “Just like that? Jesus, McKenzie. You killed him just like that?”

  “No, not just like that. We talked a bit first.”

  “You talked? About what?”

  “About why I was killing him. About how things got to that point.”

  “Is everyone else okay? Are you okay? Nina?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good, anyway.”

  “Sure.”

  Karen folded her arms across her ample chest and looked me hard in the eye. “Why are you here, McKenzie?” she said. “I’m glad you’re here. I really am. But I’ve been flirting with you since we met and you’ve resisted all my charms. So why are you here now? You could’ve called me.”

  Oh, my, she’s good, my inner voice told me. I paused, trying to see the words in my head before I spoke them. I didn’t want to be excused later of leading or confusing her.

  “The T-Man,” I said aloud. “His name was Thomas Teachwell. Did you know him?” She shook her head, but that wasn’t good enough for my purposes. “Did you know him?” I repeated.

  “No,” she said.

  “Ever hear the name?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Why do you keep asking?”

  “A lot of little things, they all make sense now. Scottie returning to the halfway house the evening we went looking for him. I think you called him. While I was in Lehane’s shooting pool and you were outside, I think you called him.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “The next day we didn’t hear from the kidnappers at all. Yet the morning of the following day, when Scottie called, he didn’t ask if we had the ransom money. He already knew. He knew because you told him, because I told you when you called me while I was at the remote vault.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Teachwell knew he could ambush me at Joley’s because you told him we were friends.”

  “I didn’t tell him. Scottie must have told him.”

  “He knew he could ambush me at Nina’s for the same reason—you told him. Neither Scottie nor Teachwell could have possibly known about Nina, but you knew about my relationship with her.”

  “That’s crazy talk. How can you blame me for this? I tried to help you.”

  “No, you were helping them. Victoria said there was a woman involved, a woman T-Man called ‘babe’ when he spoke to her on the phone. You’re a babe. You told me so yourself.”

  “Not me.”

  “It’s all easy to deny. No proof. No evidence. Nothing. Except— when we first started looking for the T-Man, we reviewed all the names of convicts Scottie did time with at Stillwater and came up empty. That’s because T-Man, Teachwell, did his time in St. Cloud. There’s no way they should have known each other, you said so yourself. But they did. How? Why? Because you were their parole officer. Both of them. I looked it up on the S3 Web site. Which makes your insistence that you don’t know Teachwell a little suspect, Karen. Which makes me think you planned it all, Karen.”

  Karen’s bag stood open on a chair against the same wall where she deposited the suitcase. She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing and edged toward the bag.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked. That stopped her. “With the money, I mean.”

  “I don’t have the money.”

  “Karen”—I made a big production out of sighing like the tiredest man on the planet—“I don’t care anymore. Scottie’s dead. Teachwell’s dead. Victoria is safe and sound. Nina’s safe. All I want is my money. I’ll even give you a finder’s fee. Ten percent.”

  “Not half?” Karen moved closer to the bag. “That’s what the insurance company gave you when you caught Teachwell.”

  “How would you know that if the T-Man didn’t tell you?”

  “Didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Hmm.” She stopped. Smiled. Looked up to her right. Took a small step, then another. “It seems I do remember a Thomas Teachwell now. A glorified accountant who thought he was some kind of urban thug, who gave himself the nickname T-Man. He’s one of the hundred or so parolees I supervise. There are so many that sometimes I forget who’s who.”

  “A very plausible defense,” I said.

  “He was always whining about a man named McKenzie, an ex-cop who took all of his money and ruined his life.”

  “What about Scottie Thomforde?”

  Karen was very close to the bag now.

  “Scottie,” she said. “He was another whiner who blamed all of his problems on someone else, who never took responsibility for his own actions. He moaned and groaned about a man named Bobby Dunston, who later became a big-time cop. I didn’t pay much attention. They all whine, my parolees. Then one day Scottie mentioned his rich friend McKenzie and wondered how he and the cop could be so close.”

  “You connected the dots.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Why did you do it, Karen? Why did you bring Teachwell and Scottie together? Why did you kidnap Victoria Dunston?”

  “So I could have a car just like yours.”

  As simple as that, my inner voice said.

  “Why didn’t you just take the money, then? Take it and run. Why try to kill me?”

  “That wasn’t my idea, McKenzie. You have to believe me. That was all Teachwell. I didn’t want to kill anybody. Least of all you. I liked you. I really did. I even thought we might be able to get together. Teachwell was desperate to kill you. That’s what attracted him to the job in the first place, the chance of hurting you, and he had the money. He wouldn’t give me my share unless I helped him.”

  I wanted to say something—winners never cheat and cheaters never win, something like that, only pithy. I didn’t get the chance. Karen dove for the bag and the .380 Colt Mustang inside it, as I knew she would. I was quicker. My Beretta was in my hands and leveled at her chest and I was shouting, “Don’t you do that,” before she could get her fingers around the pocket gun. She froze for a moment, then slowly brought
her hands out of the bag. They were empty.

  “Please,” Karen said. “Please.”

  “Where’s the money?”

  “You won’t shoot me, will you, McKenzie? I like you, McKenzie. I told you. I wanted to go to bed with you. From the moment I met you I wanted to. I still do. I know you want me, too.”

  “I said, where’s the money?”

  “I’m not going to tell you if you’re just going to shoot me anyway.”

  Another theatrical sigh, and I lowered my gun just so. “Don’t worry about it, Karen.” I was going for weary resignation, trying to make her feel that nothing bad was going to happen. “Too many people have died over this already.”

  “The money is in the suitcase.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured. I just wanted to make sure.”

  “You said ten percent.”

  “To hell with that.”

  “You said—”

  “You knew when DuWayne Middleton gave up Donny Orrick it was only a matter of time before I identified Teachwell. You told him that he had one last chance to get me. You offered him a trade, didn’t you? You traded Nina’s name for the money. Didn’t you?”

  “I had no choice.”

  “None at all,” I said.

  Karen glared at me. “Take it and go,” she said.

  I brought my gun back up and sighted between her breasts. “Just leave you here? I don’t think so.”

  “You said—”

  “People were hurt because of you, Karen. People died.” I counted seven but only listed four. “Then there was Victoria. An innocent. A child. There’s a separate hell for people like you, Karen. For people who hurt children. I’m going to send you there.”

  “You said you wouldn’t shoot me!”

  “You hurt my friend’s daughter—a child I love as well as if she were my very own. Did you honestly think I was going to let you get away with that?”

  “You promised.”

  “I made a promise to Bobby Dunston, too. Not in so many words, but a promise just the same.”

  “McKenzie, please.”

  “I promised to kill the bastards who terrorized his daughter.”

  “You like me. I know you do.”

  “Two are already dead.”

  “McKenzie.”

  “You’re the only one left.”

  “Please.”

  “Say good-bye, Karen.”

  “No!”

  I squeezed the trigger.

  Click.

  Karen’s eyes were wide and unblinking, her breath a locomotive’s chug. “You, you—you’re insane!” she cried.

  “You betcha.”

  Five minutes later I was standing in Karen’s front yard. My shirt was unbuttoned, and Harry was pulling at the tape that held the body wire to my chest.

  “On the count of three,” he said. “One, two—” and he ripped off the tape.

  I cried out in pain. “That was cold, man,”

  “What were you thinking, pulling a gun on her, making her squirm like that?”

  “She had it coming.”

  “Yeah, but a good defense attorney might be able to do something with it.”

  “She confessed before I pulled my gun, which was in self-defense, I might add. Besides, you have the money. Now that you know the rest of the story, it should be easy for you to put all the evidence together. You probably won’t even need the tape.”

  “It’s already happening. The gun we took off Teachwell’s body, it was used to kill both Scottie and Tommy Thomforde. And Schroeder’s operative. Guess who bought it?”

  “Karen?”

  “It’s not as easy for ex-cons to get firearms as people believe.”

  “Why did Teachwell shoot Tommy, do you think?”

  “We spoke to Tommy’s ex. She said that he said that he was about to come into some serious cash. We think Scottie must have let something slip when he was drinking with Tommy at Lehane’s. Tommy was probably using the information for blackmail. You said it yourself—he needed money.”

  “That’s what it’s always about, isn’t it? Money.”

  “Tell me something.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Just between us—you were wired, you knew we were listening in. But if we hadn’t been here, would you have?”

  “Would I have what?”

  “Killed her, McKenzie. Would you have killed Karen?”

  “If I had wanted to kill her, I wouldn’t have called you.”

  “With us waiting outside, it gave you a good excuse for not killing her. I understand. I wonder if Bobby will.”

  Just So You Know

  Contrary to popular opinion, victim impact statements don’t usually affect sentencing. Most prison terms imposed are mainly the result of plea agreements or strict adherence to sentencing guidelines. So when Victoria Dunston rose in federal court to confront Karen Studder at her sentencing, we knew that it wasn’t going to accomplish much except, possibly, to give her some emotional closure. Only she didn’t address Karen. Victoria stared at her long enough for all of us to get nervous about it, but then turned to the judge and said, “I have nothing to say to her. I did, I mean, I thought I did. I had a nice speech I memorized, only I think I’d rather talk to you.”

  “Go ahead, young lady,” said the judge.

  “I thought that this was going to be okay, coming to court and everything. Only it’s not what I expected. I don’t feel any better. I feel—I kinda feel worse because nothing bad is gonna happen to her. Not really bad, you know? I wanted something bad to happen to her. I wanted her to die.”

  “I understand,” the judge said. I was happy that he didn’t give her a lecture about the pitfalls of capital punishment.

  “Daddy says that she cut a deal so that she would get out of jail. He said she’d be in jail for a long time, but that she made a deal.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know there’s not much we can do about that, the deal, I mean. But there’s something you can do, though, as judge, so I don’t have to worry about it, so I don’t have to be afraid that I’ll ever see her again.”

  “What can I do?”

  “When she gets out of prison, can you make it so that she can’t live here anymore?”

  “Do you mean in your neighborhood?”

  “I mean in the entire state of Minnesota.”

  “Yes,” said the judge. “I can order that.”

  The defense attorney objected. In exchange for her guilty plea, the federal prosecutor had offered Karen twenty-seven years and agreed to drop twenty-three other felony charges including a RICO beef, and he expected the judge to honor the deal. Only the judge reminded him that it was well within his power to amend the agreement, and if the defendant didn’t like it, she could withdraw her guilty plea and take her chances at trial. “Just think how effective this young lady will be telling her story to a jury,” he said. Karen quickly accepted the conditions.

  It made Victoria smile for the first time in weeks. She was still smiling when her mother drove her to see the therapist later that afternoon. I told Bobby that despite the ordeal, I thought Victoria was going to be fine. He agreed with me. I never asked if he forgave me for not shooting the woman who was responsible for kidnapping his daughter, and he never said.

  The day after Teachwell was killed, I returned to DuWayne Middleton’s mama’s house and dropped five grand in cash in the big man’s lap; it caused him to spill some of his Cocoa Puffs. I told him that his client was dead, that I killed him, that it was in the papers. I told him that the contract on me was closed. I told him to pass the word. I said, “If I hear any more about it, I’ll put a hit on you. Maybe save a few bucks and do it myself.” He was watching Regis and Kelly at the time, so I didn’t know if he was paying attention until Chopper called me a couple of days later at the St. Paul Hotel and said that the contract had been lifted, “with prejudice,” he said, although I doubt that’s the term DuWayne used.

  Nina wanted to go out and celebra
te. So we did. I took my gun. It was a long time before I went anywhere without it.

  Also by David HouseWright

  Featuring Rushmore McKenzie

  A Hard Ticket Home

  Tin City

  Pretty Girl Gone

  Dead Boyfriends

  Featuring Holland Taylor

  Penance

  Practice to Deceive

  Dearly Departed

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Bob Berkel, Jan Buchholz of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, Special Agent Michael G. Goergen of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Ret.), Mark Hausauer, Keith Kahla, Douglas M. Mock, CFP, Alison J. Picard, Gary and Pat Shulze of Once Upon A Crime Bookstore in Minneapolis, John Seidel, Ben Sevier, and Renée Valois.

  I also would like to express my debt to the crime writers who came before me, specifically Carroll John Daly, Dennis Lehane, and the late, great Mickey Spillane, to whom I pay homage in these pages (you’ll know where).

  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.

  MADMAN ON A DRUM. Copyright © 2008 by David Housewright. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Housewright, David, 1955–

  Madman on a drum / David Housewright—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-4668-0276-6

  1. McKenzie, Mac (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators— Minnesota—Fiction. 3. Ex-police officers—Fiction. 4. Kidnapping—Fiction. 5. Minneapolis (Minn.)—Fiction. 6. Saint Paul (Minn.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3558.O8668 M33 2008