J. Jance - Payment in kind

She said it softly enough, and the smile on her full lips didn’t change, but I knew she’d landed a blow. Hospitality or not, pot roast or not, Amy Fitzgerald-Peters had put me in my place.

Maybe deservedly so. Probably deservedly so. After all, I was the one who had started it.

Early Wednesday morning, a steep hill combined with a patch of black ice, a lightly loaded Metro bus, and a fully loaded bread truck all conspired together to help us to locate Marcia Louise Kelsey’s missing Volvo.

The bus, turning off Denny Way onto Broadway, was shoved sideways by the out-of-control truck. The bus skidded backwards, taking out three parked cars as it slid back down the hill and inflicting a good deal of damage along the way. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.

The investigating officer on the scene realized almost immediately that the middle squashed car belonged to Marcia Kelsey. Due to the murder investigation and Pete Kelsey’s subsequent disappearance, that missing Turbo Volvo was right at the top of the Patrol Division’s high-priority list.

Nobody lost any time. As soon as the patrol officer radioed in with the information, Dispatch called me. It was only six-fifteen, and the phone call woke me out of a sound sleep.

“Detective Beaumont?”

The voice wasn’t one of my usual early morning callers. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “Who is this?”

“Lieutenant Congdon with Dispatch. One of our patrol officers found that Volvo you were looking for, if you still want it, that is.”

That got my juices flowing. “You’d better believe I still want it. Where is it?”

“Just west of Broadway, up on Capitol Hill. The tow truck driver’s on the horn right now. He’s been in touch with the owner, and they want it towed to a repair shop up in the University District, but I told him I thought the vehicle was involved in a homicide investigation and that I’d have to check with you first.”

Patrol doesn’t get nearly the credit it deserves. The detective divisions would be lost without them. Routine traffic stops pick up more crooks by accident than detectives do on purpose, but those guys, the ordinary foot soldiers in the war on crime, don’t show up in the press unless they screw up and shoot somebody they shouldn’t have. Or unless somebody shoots them. The only time patrol officers get to be heroes is when they’re dead.

“Good work, Lieutenant. You’re absolutely right. Thanks for checking. Tell the officer on the scene to impound that vehicle and have it taken into the garage to be searched. Nobody’s to touch it until after the crime lab team goes over it, you got that?”

“Got it,” Congdon replied.

“And thanks,” I told him.

“Sure thing,” the lieutenant replied. “Always glad to help out.”

“How long do you think it’ll take to bring it in?”

“About half an hour or so. Not too long.”

“Good,” I told him, glancing at my watch. “I’ll be there by then, too.”

I hurried in and out of the shower and was one leg into the process of putting on my pants when the phone rang again. This time it was Ron Peters.

“Your calling me early in the morning like this seems just like old times,” I said, holding the phone pressed to my ear with one shoulder while I used both hands to zip up my pants and fasten my belt. “What’s happening?”

“Tell me everything you know about the bomb threats,” he said quietly.

I didn’t like the dangerously calm way he spoke, and it wasn’t a request so much as it was a direct challenge.

“Look, I thought we went over all that last night. Captain Harden told you to back off. That strikes me like very good advice.”

“I’m not interested in well-meaning advice, Beau, not from Harden and not from you. And I’m not backing off, either. I’m a cop, Beau, a cop who’s sworn to uphold the law. Bomb threats to public property aren’t something that ought to be swept under the rug, but in this case, not only are we not supposed to investigate it, the public isn’t supposed to know about it either. I won’t work that way.”

“But…”

“No buts, Beau. With just the few phone calls I made yesterday before Harden chewed my ass, I found out that somebody across the street is behind this thing, someone very close to the top in city government. I want to find out who that person is and what they’re up to. If somebody in this department’s in on it, if they’re dirty, too, then I want to know about that as well. I don’t like crooked cops, and I particularly don’t like crooked cops who work for crooked politicians.”

“What about Harden?”

“You mean about him ordering me to lay off? I won’t do anything about the bomb threats during my shift, but nobody tells me what I can and can’t do during my off hours. So tell me what you know, or I’ll have to track it down myself. That might create some real waves.”

And so I told him, because, God help me, I felt exactly the same way he did. During the next ten minutes, I recapped for Peters everything I had learned from Dr. Kenneth Savage and from Doris Walker as well, including all the details I could recall from Sparky Cummings’ off-limits file.

“Do you still think this has something to do with your two homicides?” Peters asked when I finished.

“I can’t say. Maybe the only real connection is that the security guard who was killed wouldn’t have been at the school district office if it hadn’t been for the bomb threats back in September. Whether or not the bomb threats have anything directly to do with his death still remains to be seen.”

“But you don’t have any specific evidence that links the two?”

I laughed. “The only thing linking them so far is pure old J.P. Beaumont cussedness.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Peters replied with a chuckle of his own. “I’d better get going.”

“Don’t stick your neck out too far, Ron,” I cautioned. “You’ve already had it broken once.”

“I noticed. Believe me, I’ll be careful.”

By the time I got off the phone with Peters, my half hour of travel time was almost gone. I was still too damn stubborn to want to bring my shiny 928 out of hiding to take its chances of being smashed to pieces on icy streets. Instead, I ran a full block and a half and crossed against a DON’T WALK light to catch up with a bus. Phone call and bus notwithstanding, I still beat the tow truck to the garage by several minutes.

I tagged along after the driver while he unhitched the crunched remains of the Volvo, dogging at his heels and asking questions.

“Was it locked?” I asked.

“What, this Volvo? Hell no, it wasn’t locked. Somebody from an apartment building around there said it had been parked there ever since the storm came through on Sunday night. Funny, ain’t it,” he added with a bucktoothed grin. “Just goes to show some people don’t even think these here hummers are good enough to steal. I don’t like ‘em much myself.”

Peering in through the windows after he left, I caught sight of a piece of yellow paper protruding from under the plastic seat belt clip on the driver’s side. It looked like another one of those Post-it telephone messages. I was eager to read it. Whatever was written there might very well contain information that would point us in the right direction.

But I had to wait, because nobody, including me, was allowed to touch the vehicle until after the crime-scene technicians did. Eventually the techs showed up, and I paced the floor impatiently while they methodically went through their interminable preliminary procedures. Forty-five long minutes later, they finally let me have a look-look but don’t touch-at the piece of wrinkled yellow paper.