“¿Tú McKenzie?” he said.
“Sí.”
“¿El amigo de La Señorita?”
“Sí.”
“¿Qué haces para por ella?”
I didn’t completely trust my Spanish, though, so I answered in English; I knew he could speak it because I heard him when Alice Pfeifer first introduced us. “I’m trying to help Miss Peterson find out who wants to ruin her business.”
“Tony Cremer, él dice que eres policía.”
“Tony’s right. I used to be a cop, but not anymore.”
“You arrested Tony.”
“Ambos éramos personas diferentes en ese tiempo”—at least I hoped we had both become different people since then.
“La Señorita—ella es muy amable con nosotros,” Lozano said.
“From what I’ve seen, Ms. Peterson is kind to everyone.”
“Nadie quiere verla herida.”
“Someone wants to hurt her. Do you have any idea who?”
He shook his head and said, “Tell La Señorita we all sorry.”
“Voy a decirla.”
I watched Lozano turn and cross the parking lot to his car. That’s when I saw Tony. He was sitting behind the steering wheel of his own vehicle and watching us both intently. I gave him a little wave. He started his car and drove off. A moment later, Lozano followed, leaving the parking lot empty. I walked toward the entrance of Salsa Girl Salsa. I glanced at my watch—6:45 exactly.
That’s when the bomb went off.
I saw it first—a red-orange flash beneath the hood of the truck Erin used for local deliveries, painted with the name, colors, and smiling face of Salsa Girl. The explosion lifted the hood off the truck and smashed the engine to pieces.
Then I heard it—a lightning strike close enough to make my head ring, never mind my ears.
Finally, I felt it—a shock wave that lifted me off my feet and threw me to the hard asphalt the way a linebacker might. I felt an intense pain in my shoulder. I rolled to my hands and knees and sat up. I breathed in shallow panting breaths, my hands on my thighs, as I looked at the remains of the truck. The engine compartment and cab were demolished, the front tires melted, yet the trailer part seemed undamaged. Whoever had planted the bomb did as much damage as he had wanted and no more.
I stood and forced myself to breathe slowly and deeply. Erin and Alice sprinted out of the building to where I was standing. It was an interesting study in contrasts. Alice viewed the smashed, smoking truck with amazement and terror. Erin’s face expressed curiosity. It was as if she were thinking, “My truck exploded. I wonder how that happened.”
Alice chanted, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” and dashed back inside the building to call 911.
Erin said, “McKenzie, your shoulder.”
I brought my hand up and gingerly explored it. Something was sticking through the material of my sports jacket. A chunk of metal or a sliver of glass. I pulled on it. The pain—I must have blacked out, but only for a moment. When I came to, I was on my knees again and Erin was holding me upright. I was shaking. The sound of sirens filled the air. Men in yellow slickers and boots surrounded us.
“Easy there, miss,” one of them said. “Move away. I’ve got this.”
I nearly cried when Erin released me; I don’t know why. But someone else’s arms soon replaced hers, and I felt better.
“What the hell is that in his shoulder?” someone asked.
“Shrapnel. Get him an ambulance.”
“On the way. No, it’s here.”
Two pairs of gloved hands scooped me up and carried me across the parking lot. A walkie-talkie squawked; cell phones rang; a hose was drenching the engine of Erin’s truck. I don’t know why. It wasn’t on fire. Both firemen and police officers stood in small groups and talked. I heard one of them ask, “Is that McKenzie?” I was laid on an ambulance gurney and strapped down. The gurney was lifted, and I was shoved inside the ambulance.
A voice asked, “Miss, would you like to go with him?”
Erin said, “Yes.”
Doors were shut. The ambulance left in a hurry, its siren blasting. If I shut my eyes I felt sick to my stomach. When I opened them I felt dizzy. I went with dizzy.
Erin held my hand with such tenderness that if she had asked me to marry her, I would have answered yes.
“Don’t tell Nina,” I said.
* * *
We swooped in through the ambulance entrance to Regions Hospital. I recognized the place instantly. I had been there before.
The triage nurse was asking me a lot of questions that I tried to answer as best I could. I somehow got my wallet out of my inside jacket pocket without passing out and gave it to Erin. She found my insurance card and passed it to a woman with a clipboard who was also asking a lot of questions. “Who’s your doctor?” was one of them.
I told her that I didn’t have one even as I wondered, How is that possible? I have a lawyer. I have a financial adviser. I have an auto mechanic. An IT guy. A man who sharpens my hockey skates. Why don’t I have a doctor?
“I’m his doctor,” a woman said.
I turned my head. I recognized the name on her picture ID before I recognized her.
“Lilly,” I said.
Dr. Lillian Linder, emergency medical specialist, leaned over me and did something unexpected. She kissed my cheek. Someone else stuck a needle into the back of my hand. The needle was attached to a thin hose attached to a clear heavy plastic bottle with LACTATED RINGER’S printed on it
“How are you doing, McKenzie?” Lilly asked.
“I’ve really missed you.”
“You know, I’m available for lunch. You don’t have to keep coming to the ER to see me. We’re going to have to cut away your clothes.”
“All of them?”
“You wish.”
They started working on my sports jacket. There was a collective gasp when they discovered my SIG Sauer. I passed it off to Erin.
“Put that someplace safe,” I said.
Only she didn’t have anyplace safe; she had left her coat and bag at Salsa Girl. She wrapped the gun in a towel and tucked it under her arm. Someone told her that she needed to go to the waiting room.
Erin said, “I’ll be right outside.”
I said, “This will only take a minute.”
After she left, Lilly said, “She’s new.”
“Friend of a friend.”
A nurse handed Lilly a syringe with a hypodermic needle. I thought she was going to stick it in me, but instead she inserted it into a valve in the hose that was attached to my hand. When she finished, she leaned over me again. I pursed my lips, looking for another kiss. She opened my eyes with her fingers and looked into them.
“McKenzie,” she said, “what’s the capital of Madagascar?”
I thought about it and said, “Is that a trick question?”
A moment later I was being wheeled into a recovery room. I was surprised enough to ask, “What happened?”
“Surgery happened,” the orderly said.
There was still a throbbing pain in my shoulder, but nothing was sticking out of it. Believe me, I looked. I found only a bandage, and it wasn’t that big. I dozed off. I woke at 11:27 when the resident came in to check my vitals. They had left my all-purpose watch, so I knew the time. I just didn’t know if it was morning or night, so I asked.
“Night,” Nina said. She had been standing near the window and looking out. Her eyes were puffy, but I knew it wasn’t from a lack of sleep.
“I’m sorry about all this,” I said.
The RN left the room. Nina moved near the bed. I tried to reach for her but was hampered by all the cables that attached me to a monitor. Wavy red, green, and blue lines and ever-changing numbers were keeping track of my vital signs.
“When the truck exploded, a piece of the frame shot into your shoulder like an arrow,” Nina said. She held up a thin six-inch-long slice of metal. “Want to keep it?”
“No.”
&nb
sp; Nina was staring directly at me while she dropped it into a wastebasket.
“I really am sorry,” I said.
“We’ve had this discussion before. You are who you are.”
“Where’s Salsa Girl?”
“She’s being interviewed by Bobby and his people.”
“I’d pay money to see that. Bobby caught the case, huh?”
“We don’t get that many bombs going off in St. Paul. Apparently, he thinks it’s a major crime. Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is interested, too.”
“Nina, I really am sorry to put you through all of this.”
“Again.”
“Yeah, again.”
Dr. Linder came through the door. She stopped at the base of the bed and studied the colored lines and numbers on the monitor.
“We’re going to send you home now,” she said.
Both Nina and I were surprised.
“Really?” I said.
“Out of surgery into an Uber. It’s the way we practice medicine these days. If there’s nothing more we can do for you or to you, the insurance company says you’re outta here. It’s basically just a puncture wound anyway. There was some muscle damage, but we managed to take out the shrapnel without nicking any arteries. It should heal nicely. We’ll give you a sling. Wear it, McKenzie. Is it possible for you to get some rest for a day or two?”
“Yes, it is,” Nina said.
“Don’t let the dressing get wet for a week. Come back next week and I’ll change the bandage and see how you’re doing.”
“Isn’t that a little bit below your pay grade?” I asked.
“It’s a service I provide only for regular customers. Nina.”
The two women hugged.
“We need to stop meeting like this,” Lilly said.
* * *
The resident signed my discharge papers and wrote out prescriptions for painkillers and an antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections. We arranged to send it to a pharmacy near the condominium. Nina had brought me a change of clothes. After I dressed and slipped my arm through the sling the hospital provided, a nurse pushed me to the hospital lobby in a wheelchair. Bobby was waiting there along with his partner, Detective Jean Shipman. She was young, beautiful, and smart as hell—at least that’s how Bobby once described her to me, although I couldn’t see it. She had been Bobby’s partner before they made him a commander, and she remained his cohort of choice on those occasions when he stepped away from his role as a practicing bureaucrat and actually did some investigating.
“Hey, Jeannie,” I said.
“That’s Detective Shipman to you.”
Did I tell you—she doesn’t like me one bit.
Erin stood behind them, the white towel pressed against her breasts with both hands.
I stepped out of the wheelchair, and the nurse swept it away.
“How are you?” I asked. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Erin said. “Just worried about you.”
“Apparently I’ll live to fight another day. They don’t even want me hanging around overnight.”
“Nina, I am so sorry.”
“People keep saying that to me,” Nina said.
“Let’s talk,” Bobby said.
“Anyone know a good bar around here?”
“You’re going home,” Nina said.
I thought about arguing with her for about two seconds.
“I guess I’m going home,” I said. “You guys know the way.”
“I don’t have my car,” Erin said. “I came in the ambulance.”
Bobby offered to drop her off at Salsa Girl Salsa so she could retrieve her BMW. It was a nice gesture, I thought, because God knew Nina wasn’t about to do it.
Erin handed me the towel. I unwrapped it to reveal the SIG Sauer. I dropped the weapon into my pocket. Both Bobby and Shipman glared at Erin, probably, I thought, because they had been interviewing her all that time without realizing she had it.
“Guys,” I said. “You act like you’ve never seen a gun before.”
* * *
Because of the side trip to Salsa Girl, it took Bobby and Shipman longer to reach Minneapolis. While we waited, Nina said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Half of me wants to take you to bed. The other half wants to beat the hell out of you.”
“Do I get a vote?”
“No, you don’t. In fact, it would be better if you didn’t talk to me for a while.”
“Okay.”
I sat on the sofa across from the fireplace that we hardly ever used and held my damaged arm close to my body. The sling pulled at my neck, and I adjusted it. Nina rummaged around in the kitchen area; I had no idea what she was doing. Drawers were opened and shut; cabinet doors were slammed. I turned my head to look.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Nina asked.
“I wasn’t thinking. I was walking across a parking lot. I didn’t know there was a bomb. If I had known there was a bomb, I wouldn’t have been walking across the parking lot.”
“You’re always walking across a parking lot.”
“Ahh…”
“You know what I mean.”
Yes, you do, my inner voice said.
“I’m sorry,” I said aloud.
“Stop saying that.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Say you’re going to stop walking across parking lots.”
“I will. I promise.”
I stared at Nina. She stared at me. She started to smile, although clearly she didn’t want to.
“Shut up,” she said.
A few minutes later, Bobby and Shipman arrived. They had already heard Salsa Girl’s account of events and sent her home. Now they wanted to hear my version, see if I corroborated or contradicted her. Before they asked their questions, though, I had a few of my own.
“Tell me about the bomb,” I said.
“I already have a preliminary from the ATF. Chad Bullert, remember him?”
“He owes me a favor.”
“Who doesn’t owe you a favor?” Shipman asked.
“You two. You’re all paid up.”
“Bullert said it was the real deal,” Bobby said. “Not an IED, but good old-fashioned dynamite. Two sticks.”
“Timer or remote detonator?”
“Timer.”
“Meaning the bomber wanted it to go off after the Salsa Girl employees cleared the area. He didn’t want casualties.”
“Doesn’t mean I like him any better. We know Peterson’s side of the story. Tell me yours.”
I did. It took some time. While I spoke, the anesthesia in my system kept pulling at me. One moment I was alert, the next I felt myself drifting off. At first, both Bobby and Shipman kept challenging me, interrupting every few sentences to demand greater explanation. Eventually they just let me tell it all my way. I might have left out a few parts, but it wasn’t by design and nothing essential, I don’t think. I certainly wasn’t attempting to hide anything. They both seemed satisfied when I finished.
“What do you guys have?” I asked.
“It’s a little early in the investigation,” Shipman said.
I glanced at my watch—1:14 A.M.—and did the math.
“You’ve had nearly six and a half hours,” I said. “What have you been doing?”
“Are you trying to be funny or obnoxious?” Shipman said. “I can never tell.”
“What did the cameras show?”
“Cameras?”
“What cameras?” Bobby asked.
“McKenzie,” Shipman said. “There are cameras?”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
Shipman jumped quickly to her feet. She walked away from us, her cell phone pressed against her ear.
“How are you feeling?” Bobby asked me.
“I’m fine.”
“You look like you’re in pain.”
“No.” I adjusted the sling for the thirtieth time since I sat dow
n. “Just uncomfortable. Tell me about Salsa Girl. I take it she didn’t mention the cameras either.”
“No. Erin … most people would be in hysterics if this happened to them. Erin behaves like it’s just another day in the life, you know?”
“Poise in the face of adversity.”
“I don’t think so. I think it’s something else.”
“Like what?”
“Experience.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Walk up to anyone on the street and punch them in the mouth. Nine out of ten times, the vic will cover up and back away ask, Why are you doing this to me? One out of ten, he’s going to stand his ground and hit back. You know why? Because he’s been hit before.”
“I just spoke to Peterson,” Shipman said. “She apologized about the cameras. Said she’s only had them for less than a day and forgot about them. Said she’d be happy to meet us at Salsa Girl. Said she’d like to see the footage herself.”
“When?” Bobby asked.
“Right now.”
“I’m going with,” I said.
Nina didn’t like it. But she didn’t try to stop me.
* * *
Erin was waiting for us outside her building when we arrived at about one forty. I was disappointed by how quiet it was in the empty parking lot. I don’t know what I was expecting. An army of techs examining every inch of the bombed-out truck under bright work lights while armed law enforcement representatives held their collective breath, I suppose. What I got was the shadow of twisted wreckage surrounded by yellow tape printed with words I couldn’t read at a distance and the sound of light traffic on I-94.
I slipped my hand beneath the sling, rested my hand on my damaged shoulder, and moved toward the truck. I don’t know why. I stopped when Bobby called out to me.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Revisiting the scene of the crime.”
“You can take a selfie tomorrow. We have things to do.”
“I don’t even know why you’re here,” Erin said. “Shouldn’t you be in bed or something?”
“Something,” I said.
“McKenzie is one of those guys who always think someone else is having more fun than he is,” Shipman said. “It kills him.”
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