Payment in kind

Chapter 22

We had sent Pete Kelsey back to the jail and were almost ready to go home when Richard Chambers and his mother showed up around seven. Richard was a lean, handsome kid with a short, military-style haircut and ramrod-straight posture. When we had last seen Charlotte Chambers, she had been weeping uncontrollably in the reception area of the medical examiner’s office. If I expected a next-of-kin interview with a still-weeping widow, however, I was in for a big surprise. Charlotte Chambers wasn’t crying anymore. She was mad as hell.

“It’s all those women’s fault,” she raged. “I know it is. It’s their wickedness that caused Alvin’s death. He should have done something to stop them. When he didn’t, God punished him, plain and simple.”

“Now, Mother,” Richard crooned, patting her shoulder soothingly and trying to steer her away from the subject, but Charlotte Chambers wasn’t about to be placated or diverted.

“You know it’s true. If you ignore evil, it sneaks into you and starts eating at your own soul. That’s what it does, you see. Alvin was infected by the evil around him, by the godlessness around him. That’s why he’s dead.”

“When did he tell you about this?” I asked, trying to move away from her aimless tirades and extract some useful information. “About the two women, I mean.”

“I don’t know exactly. How would I remember a thing like that? I didn’t write it on the calendar. He probably knew about it long before he mentioned it to me. He wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t heard him praying about it. Alvin always prayed aloud, you see. It’s a habit he sort of got into being a pastor and all, and I sort of got in the habit of listening. Me and God. Whenever Alvin set about praying, me and God were always both listening away, Him up there and me in the other room.”

“Did he tell you how he found out about them?” Kramer asked.

Charlotte shook her head. “Nope. He never did.”

I considered this whole line of questions and answers distasteful. I didn’t like delving into someone’s private prayer life, asking questions of a third party over what Alvin Chambers had wrongly believed was a confidential conversation between him and his God.

It soon became apparent that no matter what questions we asked, Charlotte, like cagey politicians being interviewed on talk shows, always came back to the answers she wanted to give, to her private agenda. No doubt she had handled the newspaper reporters the same way, but they somehow hadn’t connected with the idea that Charlotte was several tacos short of a combination plate. They had reported her every word in grim detail. As a result, Erin Kelsey and her grandparents were reaping the whirlwind of Marcia’s indiscretions.

Given a choice, I much prefer interviewing killers to interviewing bigots, and I soon found myself agreeing with Alva Patterson’s noncomplimentary opinion regarding her former pastor’s widow-no matter what sins poor Alvin Chambers might have committed during his lifetime, he had deserved better than Charlotte.

Finally, giving the interview up as a lost cause, we escorted Charlotte and Richard Chambers downstairs to the crime lab, where we asked them to examine the shoes and trousers that had been removed from Pete Kelsey’s garage early that morning.

Richard declined and hung back, but Charlotte knew just what to look for. She reached into the front pockets of the trousers and pulled them inside out.

“It’s Alvin’s,” she announced confidently and at once.

“How do you know?” I asked, and she showed me the pockets. The seams at the bottom of both pockets had come undone, and both had been mended-with a series of staples stuck through the cloth.

“Alvin always fixed his pants himself,” Charlotte told us. “And he always did it this way. I don’t sew, you see. My mother never taught me.”

Apparently Alvin’s mother never taught him either, but he had figured out a way to get the job done.

The shoes were tougher. Charlotte studied them for some time without being able to make a decision. They were the right size, but other than that, there were no identifying marks on which to form an opinion. I told her that was all right. Besides, I had every confidence the crime lab would be able to figure it out from trace evidence without the need of a separate identification from a family member.

I turned to Kramer. “Any more questions?” He shook his head. “Why don’t you take your mother home then, Richard,” I suggested. “She probably needs the rest.”

The truth of the matter is, we were the ones who needed a rest. Richard Chambers probably could have used a break as well, but Charlotte was his mother, and he was stuck with her.

I dragged myself home on a bus. The weather was definitely warming, but I was too tired to pay much attention. I let myself into my apartment thinking I’d have a long, quiet evening all to myself, but that wasn’t to be.

The blinking red light on my answering machine tells me how many messages are waiting. This time it wasn’t too bad-there was only one light flashing when I finally arrived home around eight o’clock that night. As I played the tape back, the voice I heard belonged to Ron Peters.

“Call as soon as you get home,” he said. “I’ll come right up.”

Noting a certain urgency in the tersely worded message, I called back right away. Ron Peters, without either Amy or the girls in tow, showed up at my door a scant three minutes later. I peered up the hallway toward the elevator lobby to see if anyone else was coming with him, but he was definitely alone.

“This isn’t a social call?” I asked.

“Hardly.”

Peters wheeled himself over the threshold into the apartment. I had been in the kitchen pouring myself a seltzer. I offered one to Ron, but he shook his head and led the way into the living room, where he parked his chair next to the window seat. That particular spot offers a panoramic view of Puget Sound, which, even at night, teems with lighted ferries, tugboats, and other shipping traffic.

I reached to turn on a light, but Peters stopped me. “Leave it off,” he said. “We can see outside better this way.”

The light stayed off. I settled comfortably into my old leather recliner, which creaked under my weight. “So what’s up, Ron?”

“You want the good news or the bad news?” he asked.

“Good,” I said. “If I have a choice, I always want the good news first.”

“I’ve located the kid behind the bomb threats.”

That grabbed my attention. My second wind blew in full force. “Hot damn, Ron! That’s not good news, that’s great news. Who is it?”

“That’s the bad news,” Peters returned grimly. “His name’s Todd Farraday.”

The name was indeed bad news, bad enough to take my breath away. There may have been lots of other Farradays living in the Puget Sound area, but I knew of only one for sure, a lady named Natalie Farraday, who happened to be Seattle’s newly elected mayor.

“He can’t be any relation to…” I began, but Peters cut me off.

“He is,” Ron said. “He’s fifteen years old and Her Honor’s only son.”

I whistled under my breath. “No wonder the case was under wraps. Let me guess. He was doing the threats. When mama-san figured it out, everybody down the line got their marching orders to keep it quiet, and everybody played ball, right?”

Peters nodded. “That’s right, everybody, up to and including the media. But then, Natalie Farraday’s been a media darling since she first ran for city council. If this had been her opponent’s kid, you can bet it would have been a different story.

“The way I heard it was that once Her Honor found out what he was up to, she was so pissed that she’s kept him under virtual house arrest ever since.”

“How did you find all this out?”

“I’ve told you over and over, Beau, it doesn’t hurt to become friends with a reporter every once in a while. There are times when they really can help.”

“Why did he make the threats, and how?”

“How is the easy part,” Peters replied. “They live up on Kinnear, just a few blocks west of Queen Anne Avenue. So it was no trouble at all to scoot down to the school district office, do the dirty deed, and then make tracks for home again. As to why, I wouldn’t even hazard a guess.”

“What you’re saying is that this was done just for the hell of it by some stupid punk who can’t even spell?”

“Actually, that’s the funny part. According to what I can find out, Todd Farraday is now and always has been an honors student. That’s one of the reasons his mother was able to convince everybody that, except for the glass breakage, it was nothing more than an innocent prank. She’s already paid for the broken windows, by the way.”

“False reporting of crimes is a crime, not a prank,” I said.

“Unless your mama’s the mayor,” Peters returned.

We sat there silently for several moments, watching two slow-moving ferries lumber past each other as they approached the Coleman dock.

“Chances are he has nothing whatever to do with my homicides, then.”

The idea that the bomb threats and the murders were somehow connected had always been a long shot, but it had been my long shot and it hurt to have to give it up.

“Probably not,” Peters agreed.

Again we were silent for a time. “But wouldn’t you like to tweak him a little?” I asked. “Just for the hell of it?”

In the gloom of the darkened room, I saw Peters’ ghostly face turn in my direction. “What do you mean tweak?”

“Actually, I mean scare the living shit right out of him, make him think we’ve connected him to something that his mother won’t be able to hush up or fix. Having a homicide detective turn up on his doorstep might light a fire under that little jerk’s privileged ass.”

“Now, Beau,” Peters cautioned. “Let me remind you, his mother is the mayor, duly elected by the people of this city.”

I grinned back at him through the darkness. “That in itself will make the look on his face worth the price of admission.”

“It could also get you fired.”

“That’s all right. Think about it. There’s a certain justice here, Ron. You know as well as I do that some of the guys go down to the Central District and bust kids for a hell of a lot less than false reporting. The way I see it, if I scare the shit out of this spoiled creepy kid over something he didn’t do, it’ll even the score a little. What do you think?”

“Is my answer on or off the record?” Peters asked.

“Jeez, they’ve already taught you the finer points of PR double-speak, haven’t they? It’s off the record, Ron; now, tell me.”

“I think it’s a hell of a fine idea. I only wish I could be there to see it.”

“Want to ride along? Maybe I’ll go right now. You said he lives just up the hill.” I started to get up and then stopped. “Wait a minute. I can’t do that, not without having his actual address.”

“I just happen to have it right here,” said Ron Peters with a grin. “What are we waiting for?”

Down in the garage, Peters heaved himself into the rider’s side of the low-slung 928. Once he was inside, I loaded his chair into the hatch. It stuck out some, but I fastened it in with a collection of bungee cords. With the hatch open, however, it was going to be a mighty cool ride.

The engine roared to life as soon as I turned the key in the ignition. It was none the worse for all its storm-enforced rest. By now the streets were pretty much clear. We drove up Queen Anne to Kinnear with no difficulty.

Had the Farradays’ house been on the north side of Kinnear, it would have been impossible for Peters to be in on the interview, because all of those houses seemed to have a minimum of fifteen to twenty steps leading up to their front doors. The Farraday house, however, was on the downhill side of the street.

It was a huge, old-fashioned brick place with four white columns lining the front porch. With the exception of a single step leading up onto the porch, it was a straight shot from the street into the house.

I brought the chair around from the back and helped Peters back into it. Once settled, he looked at the house appraisingly. “I don’t think Natalie Farraday ran for office because she needed a job,” he said. “Now tell me this. What do we do if the mayor happens to be at home?”

“Punt,” I declared with a grin. “Punt and run like hell. Every man for himself.”