Payment in kind

Chapter 10

That night, for the first time in my life, I dreamed about my grandfather.

I was in a cemetery, a cold, wind- and rainswept cemetery, not a real one, and not one I’d ever seen before. Across a wide expanse of grass, I could see a wooden casket poised over a newly dug grave, waiting to be lowered into it. Around the grave a group of men, some leaning on picks and shovels, stood waiting and talking.

Somehow I knew at once that Jonas Piedmont was lying dead in that coffin. Filled with a terrible and inexplicable urgency, I hurried toward the group of men, rushing because I knew I was late. Long before I could cover the distance between me and the grave, however, the casket began sinking slowly and inevitably into the ground. I shouted for them to wait for me, but instead, they all turned and started throwing dirt onto the vanished coffin.

I shouted again, pleading in vain for them to stop, but they wouldn’t. They kept right on flinging the heavy, wet dirt into the hole in the ground. By the time I reached the group and recognized the men as members of the Regrade Regulars, the grave was completely filled in and slivers of grass were already sprouting up through the muddy ground even as Lars Jenssen himself heaved the last shovelful of dirt onto the grave. When he saw me standing there panting, he leaned on his shovel again, pointing and laughing.

I fought my way out of the dream and found that the sheet had somehow come loose during the course of that restless night. It was bunched up and wrapped around my neck. I fought my way out of that too, throwing it on the floor beside the bed, and made my way into the bathroom. I didn’t need an interpreter to explain that particular dream. What I really needed was a steaming hot shower to wash it away.

As I shaved, the radio in the bathroom reported that another day had dawned clear and cold. There was a slight warming trend, all the way up into the low twenties-a big help for Belltown Terrace’s heat pumps, which still rumbled away outside-but the slightly higher temperatures wouldn’t make things that much better for anything else.

I was glad not to have to pay attention while the announcer went through the long list of school closures that would extend holiday vacations for most Puget Sound youngsters for yet another day. And I was relieved to hear that no new incidents of sled/vehicular fatalities had occurred the day before.

Armed with a cup of coffee, I stood at my living room window gazing across the snowwrapped city. From the penthouse level of Belltown Terrace, the snow-covered hillsides still looked picture-pretty, but that sense of beauty changed drastically once it was closer at hand.

Down on street level, standing outside in it, shivering in snow up to my calves, that seemingly pristine white stuff took on a hard and brittle texture. It was dirty and crusted over by the mottled leavings of sanding crews. I waited for the bus in front of Belltown Terrace.

With a badge and ID, police ride free on city buses. “Pray for rain,” the driver of the overloaded Metro bus told me with a cheerful grin as he glanced at my badge. “Rain’s the only thing that’s going to help.”

I was sure that was true, but despite Lars Jenssen’s prediction to the contrary, that morning’s biting cold didn’t make rain a likely possibility.

The slow-moving bus was jammed to the gills. The almost carefree holiday attitude from the day before was completely gone, wiped out by that second frigid morning. There was no lighthearted camaraderie and banter among the people pressed together in the hot, steamy bus. Those few who did talk were mostly weary mothers, comparing the logistics of hastily arranged child care. Along with unaccustomed heavy-duty coats, gloves, and scarves, people wore frowns of grim determination. This was winter, real winter for a change, and the grownups of Seattle weren’t having any fun.

Once on the fifth floor of the Public Safety Building, I went directly to my cubicle, opened Doris Walker’s envelope, and dragged out the bomb-threat folder, which, out of deference to Lars Jenssen, I hadn’t even cracked open before coming to work.

There in my office, I read through it quickly. According to the file, there had been a total of seven threats in all, starting and ending back during the teachers’ strike at the beginning of the school year earlier that fall. Most had come in at night or on weekends, two by phone on the district’s answering machine and the others wrapped around rocks and tossed through plate-glass windows. All of them had targeted the school district administration office itself.

Despite seven thorough searches, no bombs had ever been found. After the first one, round-the-clock security guards had been instituted at the office complex on Queen Anne Hill. That surveillance continued for some time, even though the threats themselves had ceased about the same time striking teachers had returned to work. Now, several months later, round-the-clock coverage had been replaced by two consecutive after-hours shifts.

I was surprised to learn that each of the several incidents had indeed been reported to the school authorities and then passed on to the proper personnel at the Seattle Police Department. The report specifically mentioned the names of several members of the Fraud and Explosive squad. Try as I might, I couldn’t remember anything at all about the case coming through official departmental pipelines. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, had there been any mention about it in the media. That seemed odd to me. Local school district bomb threats are always big news, but these seemed to have fallen into a black hole without a single reporter noticing. I wondered why.

I don’t pretend to understand media people, and when I need help in that department, I always turn to Ron Peters, the man who was my partner until a permanent back injury made his return to regular duty as a homicide detective a physical impossibility. Back on the job after months of hospital treatment and rehabilitation, Peters was now ensconced, not entirely happily, in his new job with the Media Relations Department.

Unfortunately, when I called down to talk to him, Peters was closeted in that champion bureaucratic waster of time-a morning-long meeting. He was there, and so was everyone else from his unit. Did I want to leave a message?

I’ve long held the revolutionary belief that if all staff meetings in the world were totally abolished overnight, not only would civilization as we know it survive, it would actually thrive.

“No,” I said. “I’ll call back.”

My next call was to the F amp; E squad itself, where I reached Detective Lyle Cummings, affectionately known around the department as Officer Sparky.

Lyle Cummings had been plain old Lyle Cummings for his first eight years at Seattle P.D. The Sparky handle had come to him in midcareer as the result of an unfortunate incident in which Lyle and his partner, Dave Cooper, had been out test-driving the department’s brand-new$150,000 bomb-disposal truck. Crossing the Spokane Street Bridge, a missing three-cent grommet caused an electrical short circuit in the radio wiring. Unable to summon help, the truck wound up as a smoldering ruin parked in the far righthand lane of the West Seattle Freeway.

When the smoke cleared from around the charred remains and when the dust settled on all the paperwork, it turned out that the damage to the vehicle was completely covered under the truck’s original warranty, but the damage to Cummings’ name and reputation proved to be permanent. The “Sparky” handle was liberally applied, and it stuck. Cummings managed the teasing with a combination of humor and good grace.

“Hello, Sparky. This is Beaumont from Homicide,” I said.

“Top of the morning, Beau,” he said. “What can we do for you?”

“I’m calling about the school district bomb threats.”

Instantly his tone became markedly guarded. “School district bomb threats? What do you know about that?” he demanded.

“Not much, but I’ve got the file right here and…”

“What the hell are you doing with it? That file’s not supposed to be out of this office.”

“Hold on,” I countered. “I don’t have your file, Spark. I have the school district’s file.”

There was a long pause before he said, “Ouch. Me and my big mouth. I guess I blew it, didn’t I?”

“You could say that,” I returned lightly, knowing I had him dead to rights, but I didn’t rub it in. “Look, I’m working yesterday’s school district case. That file of yours may have something to do with it.”

“You mean the suicide/homicide? How could it? I got the distinct impression from what I read in the paper this morning that it was some kind of love-triangle thing. What does that have to do with bomb threats?”

“Beats me,” I answered, “but it’s out job to check all the angles. I want to see that file. ASAP.”

There was another long, thoughtful pause. “Hang tight, Beau. I’ll see what I can do and get back to you.”

Ten minutes later Detective Cummings appeared in my cubicle, file in hand.

“I got the word from upstairs,” he said, handing it over to me. “You can look at it all you want, but only while I’m here. You can take notes if you like, but nothing gets copied, and nothing gets taken out.”

“Wait just a goddamned minute here,” I objected. “What is this? I’m a homicide detective working a case and I can’t have unlimited access to one of Seattle P.D.”s own files?“

Sparky shrugged. “It’s the best we can do under the circumstances. If you’d like a word of friendly advice, I wouldn’t make too many waves about it either. Rumor has it that some of the brass are getting their chains yanked real good on this one by person or persons unknown. My guess is it’s somebody important from across the street.”

“Across the street” was the department’s sarcastically euphemistic reference to the city’s administrative offices located on the other side of Fourth Avenue.

“You mean as in the mayor’s office or somebody on the city council? We’re supposed to be talking squeaky clean Seattle here.”

“We’re also talking partisan politics,” Cummings replied meaningfully. “Now, are you interested in looking at the file or not?”

Silenced, I scanned through the incident reports. The information contained in them wasn’t very different from what I already had received from Doris Walker, with one notable exception-the actual texts of the threats themselves. There were typed transcripts of the two that had come in over the phone.

One said: “Start school now or else this place is history.” The other: “Education delayed is education denied. Dynamite is the cure.”

“Cute,” I said, tossing the transcripts back in the file. “The guy must think he’s a comedian. It is a guy, isn’t it?”

Cummings nodded. “Young male Caucasian, that’s about all the experts have been able to tell us so far from listening to the tapes.”

Also included were Xeroxed copies of the other threats, the ones that had been tossed through the windows. The poorly spelled notes had been stitched together, some with whole words and others with individual letters clipped from newspapers and magazines, a real cut-and-paste job. One said, “Teachers should teach. Strikes waist lives. Get school open before I blow this place to peaces.” Another said, “All I need too know is available in The Anarchist’s Handbook. Pipe bombs rule.” Still another said, “You guys are fuking with my life. I want my education now!”

I looked up at Cummings. “This dude can’t spell for shit, and he reads too many kidnap novels.”

Sparky Cummings nodded. “If he reads at all. The more we pay for education, the less we get. Go on.”

“Whose the boss, you or the teachers?” and “I am loosing patients. Stop the strike now.”

“If he’s so opposed to the teachers’ union, how come he’s threatening to blow up the school district office? Why not the union’s office instead?”

“Beats me,” Cummings replied. “Where is it written that kooks have to be smart or logical?”

“Who sat on this report, Sparky? I need to know.”

“All of the above,” Cummings answered. “At the time it was happening, both the teachers’ union and the district asked that we not release the information because they were deeply involved in negotiations. I don’t know who had the horses to keep a lid on it after the strike was over, but of course, by then the threats had stopped as well. There probably wasn’t much reason to raise a hullabaloo after the fact.”

“Particularly not when Her Honor’s primary interest is maintaining the status quo,” I added.

Cummings shot me a warning frown. “You said that, Beau. I didn’t.”

Although the two shouldn’t have been linked, the previous year’s mayoral election had been won and lost with the school district’s future as the central focus of the bitter campaigns. A group of angry and very vocal parents, tired of years of mandatory busing, had brought in some new political blood. Much to the consternation of long-term political lights, the new kids on the block and their off-the-wall candidate had played havoc with what should have been a shoo-in election for the retiring mayor’s handpicked successor.

Elected by such a minute margin that a legally mandated recount had been necessary, the new mayor was now trying her best to keep city government running smoothly while she fought to regain lost ground among the grass-roots electorate. Meanwhile the school district was doing away with busing an inch at a time while student population dwindled, as did money, and those same disillusioned parents, beaten but still pissed, continued to take their children else-where.

Her Honor’s press aide had recently announced that Seattle was once more among the top three contenders for “The Most Livable City Award.” Participants in that kind of national competition can’t afford to wash their dirty underwear in public, and trouble in a school district is civic soil of the worst kind. If you don’t believe it, try asking the City of Boston.

Scanning through the file wasn’t telling me much of anything new. “So what did you guys finally find out about this?” I asked at last.

Cummings shrugged. “For a while the pet theory going around was that someone opposed to the teachers’ union was posing as a student and making the threats, but we couldn’t find any likely possibles. A disgruntled student was the most we ever came up with, although why a ”disgruntled student“ would be so damn eager to have school get started, nobody was ever able to figure out. After the strike was over, though, since no bombs were ever found and since no one was hurt, the case got shifted to low priority.”

“Fast?” I asked.

“You mean did it get shifted fast?” he asked. I nodded. “You bet. It was fast, all right.”

“And nothing’s happened since?”

“That’s right,” Sparky replied. “Zippo.”

“Well, something’s happened now. That security guard is dead. So’s the woman. Maybe it wasn’t love triangle at all. Maybe it was made to look that way, just to throw us off,” I suggested.

“I suppose that’s possible,” Detective Cummings agreed, “but not very likely. I still can’t let you have the file.”

While Sparky Cummings sat there waiting, I went back through the file once more and took some notes, paying particular attention to the threats themselves, which I took down verbatim, sloppy spelling and all. As I went through the exercise, something struck me as strange.

“How many kids do you know who can’t spell the word ”fuck‘?“ I asked.

“Not many,” Cummings admitted with a grin. “It goes with the territory. They usually spell it right when they spray-paint it on bridges and overpasses.”

“So how come this joker doesn’t know it’s got a c in it?”

“My specialty is bombs,” Sparky Cummings said seriously. “I don’t know beans about teenagers, my own included.”

I finished copying what I wanted from the file and tossed it back across the desk to Detective Cummings.

“Thanks for bringing it down, Spark. I’ll try not to make any waves for you guys, unless I have to.”

He waved. “Sure thing, Beau. Glad to help.”

I sat there for several minutes after Cummings left, thinking that it was odd for someone so eager to be in school to be such a rotten speller. The two didn’t seem to mix. People who actually liked school and wanted to be there were usually insufferable teachers’ pets, brownnoses who spelled everything perfectly.

I remembered that back when I was in school, perfect spelling was never one of my problems.