Payment in Kind

by J. A. Jance

  He punched a button on his phone, and Doris Walker's disembodied voice came floating through the intercom. “Yes, Dr. Savage?”

  “Write a memo to Personnel,” he ordered. “Tell them that they are to cooperate fully with these detectives.” Savage turned to us with a frown. “What were your names again?”

  “Detectives Beaumont and Kramer,” I told him.

  He repeated the names into the intercom. “Whatever information they require is to be given the highest possible priority. Be sure to make that clear. As soon as you have the memo typed up, bring it in for my signature, and then I want you to deliver it personally. No. Absolutely not. Don't send it through interoffice mail. You make sure it gets to Kendra Meadows herself. Today. This morning if at all possible.”

  He switched off the intercom and turned back to us, obviously pleased with himself and the way he personally was handling this crisis. “Is there anything else I can do to be of service, gentlemen?”

  I glanced at Kramer, who shook his head and glanced pointedly at his watch. “We really ought to be going,” he said, rising to his feet.

  “There is one more thing you could clear up for us, Dr. Savage. To my knowledge, most security guards in this area don't usually wear weapons, but Mr. Chambers was wearing a holster, and a gun was found at the scene. That troubles me. Why would a weapon be necessary in a situation like this, where he was functioning primarily as a night watchman?”

  Savage's easy affability retreated somewhat. He looked at me warily for several long moments before he answered.

  “This district is currently faced with any number of difficult crises, Detective Beaumont, one of which involves closing several schools. That's always a very emotional issue. We've also had our share of union difficulties.”

  From his obvious discomfort, I sensed that his initial answer wasn't the whole answer. “I know about the strike last fall,” I said. “But having a security guard on overnight and on weekends would indicate some kind of ongoing problem.”

  He shrugged as if to downplay the importance of what was being said, but the seriousness of his concern was plainly written across his face. Kenneth Savage wouldn't have been any better at playing poker than I am.

  “We've had some threats now and again,” he said quietly. “Nothing serious of late,” he added lightly with a quick smile.

  “Threats? What kind of threats?” I pressed.

  He shrugged. “Oh, you know. The usual kind of crazies.”

  “There's no such thing as a ‘usual’ crazy,” I returned. “They're all one of a kind. Exactly what sort of threats?”

  “Bomb threats,” he answered with pained reluctance.

  “And they haven't been reported?”

  For an answer he made a waffling motion with his hand.

  “Have they or haven't they?”

  “To the authorities, yes, but we've tried to keep it out of the media, and so far we've been successful.”

  “Why keep it quiet?”

  “As I said before, gentlemen, we're a troubled district.” He sat up straighter in his chair, delivering his words with guarded intensity. “As such, we can't afford any adverse publicity. We've been handling this situation the best we know how, monitoring the situation, keeping things under control.”

  “I hate to be the bearer of more bad news,” I told him. “With those two murders downstairs, ‘adverse publicity,’ as you call it, is here to stay. You'd better brace yourself for it.”

  Dr. Savage seemed to have shrunk into himself. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “When Doris finishes that memo,” I said, “you have her gather up every bit of information you have on those bomb threats and have it ready for us to pick up when we come back later on this afternoon.”

  “But why? I thought you were investigating the murders. What does that have to do with the bomb threats?”

  “Maybe nothing, but then again, maybe they are connected. I want everything you have, regardless of its seeming importance, understand?”

  Savage nodded. “Right,” he said. “Everything. You'll have it.”

  Detective Kramer was already standing poised by the door when I got up to follow him.

  “Way to go,” he said under his breath as I followed him out the door and down the hall. “Glad to see you can put the screws to somebody when you feel like it.”

  I'm sure Paul Kramer intended that remark as a compliment, but to me it didn't feel like something to be proud of. My mother wouldn't have liked it either.

  Chapter 4

  The address Doris Walker had given us for Alvin Chambers was in the North End. With the streets blanketed by snow and ice, getting there proved both difficult and hazardous.

  It was midmorning now. The City of Seattle no longer appeared to be a ghost town. Despite the frigid cold, the pale crystal blue sky lit by brilliant sunshine had tempted at least a few intrepid souls into venturing outside. Some were making justifiably belated attempts to get to work, while others, especially children in a holiday mood, took advantage of their unexpectedly lengthened Christmas vacation to play in the morning's winter wonderland.

  Seattle drivers don't get nearly enough experience at driving on snow and ice to be any good at it. What little they learn during one year's major storm never carries over to the next. We didn't even make it off Queen Anne Hill without passing several minor spinouts and accompanying fender benders. A departmental traffic advisory warned us that both Aurora Avenue and northbound I-5 were tied up with accidents, so we cut across town on Mercer Street, aiming for Fifteenth Avenue.

  With Kramer driving, we had just passed the intersection where Queen Anne Avenue North meets Mercer when a sled loaded with two laughing kids came flying down Roy Street and zipped across the street directly in front of us. It was sheer luck that we didn't crush them under our tires. Had the timing been even so much as one microsecond different, there would have been nothing Kramer or anyone else could have done to avoid hitting them.

  “Jesus Christ!” Kramer grumbled. “What the hell do those crazy kids think they're doing?”

  “Stop the car,” I told him. “I'll go set them straight.”

  “Bullshit,” Kramer responded. Instead of slowing down to let me out, he accelerated and reached for the radio. “Kids on sleds are Traffic's problem, not ours. We're Homicide, remember?”

  “If someone doesn't stop them, it could very well become Homicide's problem,” I returned grimly.

  In fact, during the past few years, the number of snow-related deaths in the city had taken an alarming swing upward, particularly due to sled/motor vehicle accidents.

  It would have taken only a moment to give those kids the dressing down they so richly deserved, with the added side benefit of maybe saving their young lives, but Detective Kramer was driving. Intent solely on the case at hand, his type A personality allowed for no diversions or distractions, not even potentially lifesaving ones. Disgusted, I listened while he reported the near-miss incident to an already vastly over-worked traffic dispatcher.

  “They're not going to have time to do anything about it,” I muttered when he finished.

  “We're not either,” he replied.

  I could see that working together wasn't going to be a picnic for either one of us.

  It took us more than an hour to make what normally would have been a simple twenty-five-minute-ride to the North End. The object of our drive turned out to be a modest two-storied complex called Forest Grove located a block off Aurora on Linden Avenue. The weathered shingle structures looked like an early failed attempt at condominiums, one that had deteriorated into lower-middle-class apartments with the passage of time and the dwindling of enthusiasm. Even the pristine mantle of snow couldn't disguise an overall air of near hopelessness, of object poverty held only partially at bay.

  The complex's driveway dipped steeply down from the street, with plenty of spinning tire tracks in evidence to show that those few drivers who had managed to escape the parking
lot that morning had struggled mightily to make their way up to Linden. We parked on the street and walked and slid down into the complex past a grove of evergreens, their branches drooping under the weight of fat clods of snow.

  Number 709 was in the third building and on the second floor. Unable to use the snow-laden railings, we gingerly climbed a rickety set of stairs that groaned and creaked ominously beneath us and the added weight of heavy snow.

  Once on the small landing outside the apartment, we saw that the curtains were solidly closed against the brilliant daylight. The varnish on the flimsy front door was faded and peeling. From inside we could hear the droning hum of a television set. Kramer tried ringing the bell. Predictably, it didn't work, but Kramer's determined knock, curiously muffled by the snow around us, eventually produced a reaction--the audible lowering of the volume on the TV.

  “What's the matter? Forget your key?” a woman's voice demanded as the door was flung open. “Where've you been?”

  The sour-faced woman standing before us was improbably fat and wearing a terry cloth robe that gapped open over her more than ample boobs. Hastily she pulled the robe shut and stood on her toes to peer anxiously over our shoulders toward the parking lot. I knew who she was looking for. She didn't know yet that he wasn't coming. Not then, and not ever.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Thought you might be my husband, Alvin. He's late getting home from work, and he never called, either. Who are you?”

  “Police officers, ma'am,” I began, reaching for my ID. “Are you Mrs. Chambers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you mind if we came in?”

  “Yes, I mind. Couldn't you come back later? I'm right in the middle of The Young and the Restless.”

  “It's very important, Mrs. Chambers,” I insisted.

  “Oh, all right,” she said grudgingly. “Come on in then, but I don't want you to stay very long, not when Alvin's not here. People might talk, you know.”

  She turned and waddled away from the door, clutching the robe around her. Kramer and I followed, making our way through a heavily curtained room whose only light came from the flickering images on a color television set in the far corner. Before my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, I stumbled into a chair and sent a pile of something crashing to the floor.

  “Don't worry about that,” Charlotte Chambers said. “It's only Alvin's books. I keep waiting for him to put them away. Stay there a minute and I'll turn on a light.”

  She switched on a table lamp on an end table by the couch and punched the mute button on the television set's remote control. The room looked like it had been in an earthquake. Boxes with stacks of contents spilling out of them were scattered everywhere. Every available flat surface was covered with junk--clothing, soda cans, dead newspapers, books. A narrow path threaded its way through the debris to where two decrepit recliners sat in front of the television set. Before one of them sat a TV-tray, and on it was a plate with someone's breakfast--two congealed eggs and two pieces of dry toast.

  “Alvin's breakfast,” Charlotte Chambers told us when she noticed I was looking at the plate. “He usually likes to eat just as soon as he gets home, but like I said, he's late today, and he didn't even call. That's gratitude for you, when I got up special to cook for him. You'd think he'd show a little consideration.”

  She flopped into the other recliner, picking up a huge bowl of popcorn as she did so and thumping the protesting chair back into a full reclining position. “Want any popcorn?” she asked. “I popped it just a little while ago. It's fresh.”

  She held out the bowl of popcorn, but both Kramer and I declined. The idea of eating popcorn for breakfast is totally foreign to me. I watched in horrified fascination as she shoved a huge fistful of popcorn into her own mouth, totally heedless of the stray kernels that leaked out of her hand and dribbled down her multitudinous chins only to fall unnoticed to the floor and disappear into the matted orange and green shag carpeting.

  “What is it you wanted again?” Charlotte asked, with her mouth still full.

  “We're here concerning your husband,” I told her.

  “You're out of luck then. I already told you he isn't here. Have a chair if you want to.”

  Kramer made a quick dive for a kitchen chair that was sitting against a wall. He removed a tangle of unfolded clothes and took that chair for himself, leaving me no option but the other recliner--the one with the plateful of greasy, petrifying eggs sitting in front of it.

  “Who did you say you are again?” she asked, munching on a mouthful of popcorn. “And what's this all about?”

  “We're police officers, ma'am, and we're here about your husband.”

  “What about him?”

  “Mrs. Chambers,” I said quietly. “There's been a serious incident down at the school district office. I'm afraid we have some bad news for you.”

  She had just stuffed another handful of popcorn into her mouth. At least she stopped chewing. “What kind of bad news?” she asked.

  “A man has been murdered,” I said, unable to find any less damaging way to give her the news. “We have reason to believe that man is your husband.”

  Charlotte Chambers looked from me to Kramer and back again. “This is some kind of joke, isn't it?” she said.

  I pulled my ID from my pocket and waved it in front of her, but she didn't bother to look at it.

  “It's like some sort of newfangled Candid Camera, isn't it? I've heard about this program. You're waiting to see what I'm going to do.”

  I wasn't making much progress. I took another shot at it.

  “Mrs. Chambers, I can assure you, this is no joke, and it's not a television program either. A man has been killed. He's been tentatively identified as your husband. We've been sent to notify you and to bring someone along down to Harborview who can positively identify the body.”

  Charlotte Chambers shoved another deliberate handful of popcorn into her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully, shaking her head all the while. “You're mistaken,” she said at last. “Alvin is at work. I'm sure he's on his way home by now.”

  I looked at Kramer, appealing for help, but he shrugged his shoulders and left it for me to handle. Clearly Charlotte Chambers' ironclad denial wasn't any of his concern. I probably could have pounded my way through her defenses, but that didn't seem like a reasonable thing to do. Instead, I tried yet another tack.

  “Perhaps you're right,” I conceded. “Maybe he isn't your husband. He was found in a janitor's closet down at the school district office along with a woman.”

  “You say this man was with another woman? That settles it then,” Charlotte Chambers responded triumphantly. “My husband's a happily married man, a man of the cloth, at least he was until he quit. He's not like those despicable men on television and in the movies. Alvin wouldn't be caught dead with another woman.”

  It was an unfortunate choice of words. The ghost of a smile appeared in the corners of Detective Kramer's lips, but I managed to keep a straight face. After all, this was no laughing matter. One way or the other, I had to get Charlotte Chambers to agree to accompany us to the medical examiner's office. We needed her verification.

  “Then you'll come along with us down-town?” I asked. “That's the only way we can be sure it's not your husband.”

  She nodded and heaved herself off the couch. “Sure. I'll have to get dressed first,” she said. “We'll leave a note for Alvin so if he comes home while we're gone, he'll know where I am.”

  “Right,” I said.

  She grabbed up the pile of unfolded clothes Kramer had removed from the chair and carried it into a bedroom, closing the door behind her.

  Kramer clicked his tongue. “This dame's a real Loony Tunes,” he said. “Even if he is her old man, who's to say she'll recognize him?”

  “She'll recognize him, all right,” I replied grimly, “but only if we get her down there in the first place.”

  We fell silent and waited until the bedroom door opened again and Charlott
e Chambers emerged. She was wearing the standard fat lady uniform of black polyester stretch pants expanded to their absolute maximum under a tent-like red blouse that came almost to her knees. She moved away from us, hiking the pants up and smoothing the top down as she went.

  Stopping by her chair, she pulled a pair of snow boots out from under a stack of yellowing discarded newspapers and sat down to pull them on, wheezing with effort at the physical exertion. Once she had the boots on her feet, she made no attempt to fasten them. I could see the fasteners would never close around her wide calves.