J. Jance - Payment in kind

“Where did he come from?” I asked.

Petrie consulted the file. “Algona Freewill Baptist Church. He came to us after fifteen years in the ministry.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why’d he leave the ministry?” Petrie inquired. I nodded and Fred Petrie shrugged. “Says here he left for personal reasons, but it doesn’t go into exactly what.”

“Did you do any kind of background check?” I asked.

“We called his references, I’m sure,” Petrie answered. “We always do that. If anything negative turns up, we don’t hire ‘em. Since we did, he must have checked out. We hire lots of people around here, Detective Beaumont, and when we do, we don’t go digging into their reasons for leaving a previous job. People come here asking for work, and we’re glad to have ’em. We’re always looking for people, especially these older ones. They’re usually more dependable.”

“You still pay minimum wage?” I asked.

“To start out. Al Chambers was doing some better than that, of course, because he’d been with us awhile.”

“Doesn’t it strike you as curious that a man with his background would leave the ministry and come to work for minimum wage?”

“He must have had his reasons, but like I said, that was Chambers’ business, not ours. We’ve always got more jobs than we can fill. Supply and demand.”

“Could you tell me how it happened that Mr. Chambers ended up with the school district job?” I asked. “Did he ask for that one in particular?”

“Just rotated into it, as far as I know,” Petrie answered. “One guy quit suddenly, and we needed somebody to take his place that very night. It was Al’s regular night off from another job site over in Bellevue, but he jumped on the chance to take an extra shift. Once he had been there, at the school district, I mean, he liked it, especially since there was usually some overtime available with that job. He kept it from then on. I got the impression that he needed the extra money from those overtime shifts.”

“Speaking of money, will there be any insurance?”

“Some, but not much. We only carry a small death benefit. Ten thousand, including double indemnity.”

“Did you ever hear any rumors about Chambers becoming involved with someone from the school district?”

“Involved? As in romantically?” Freddie stifled a snort of incredulous laughter.

“Yes. Did any of the other guards he worked with mention anything to you about it?”

Petrie shook his head. “Nope. I never heard anything like that at all, but it doesn’t really sound right to me either. Preach to her maybe, but Al Chambers didn’t strike me as the type to mess around with another woman, although I don’t suppose you can always tell that just by looking, can you?”

The wolfish grin and conspiratorial wink that accompanied that last statement made me think that Fred Petrie Junior wasn’t entirely blameless on that score himself.

“So you’ve got someone else scheduled into the school district office for tonight?” I asked.

“We sure do. We covered it last night, as a matter of fact,” he said. “We’re having to pass it around again some. It’ll take time for us to find someone to take that shift on a permanent basis again. The overtime doesn’t seem to have much appeal at the moment.”

“I can’t imagine why, but tell me, how does that coverage break down?”

“You mean in hours?”

I nodded.

“During the week, one guy comes on at four and another at midnight until eight in the morning.”

“And on weekends?”

“If the guys working it don’t mind, we break it into two twelve-hour shifts. That’s what Al liked. I mentioned that before. It gave him a crack at overtime every week. He always took it, too.”

“So Saturday and Sunday, he would have worked eight to eight?”

“Right.”

“And who was his opposite number?”

“That I’ll have to check on the time cards.”

Again Petrie left the room. When he came back he said, “There were two guys. Sam Burke on Saturday, and Owen Randall on Sunday. Here are their names and phone numbers in case you want to talk to either one of them.”

I shoved the proffered piece of paper into my notebook. “Would it be possible to have a copy of that application?” I asked.

“You mean Chambers’ job application?”

I nodded. “It would be a big help.”

“I never had a request like that before,” Petrie said dubiously. “I mean, if the guy’s alive, then his application is confidential, right? But after he’s dead, what does it matter?”

I kept quiet and gave him a chance to make up his own mind. “I don’t see that it would hurt anything,” he said finally. “Wait here. I’ll go make a copy.”

Petrie left the office briefly for the third time, taking the application with him. Actually, there probably could have been confidentiality problems, if someone had found out about it and had wanted to make trouble, but I wasn’t going to mention it, and I doubted Petrie would either. He came back in and handed me a barely legible copy.

“The copier’s a little low on toner right now,” he said. “That’s the best I can do.”

“It’ll be fine,” I told him. I glanced down at the precise printing on the application. I’m not a handwriting expert, but even to my unpracticed eye, it didn’t seem likely that Alvin Chambers’ neat hand was the same one that had written that hastily scrawled message.

Folding the copy and putting it into my jacket pocket, I rose to go.

“Wait a minute,” Petrie said. “Aren’t we going to talk about the gun?”

“Which gun?”

“The one Chambers was wearing. It belongs to us, I mean. To Seattle Security. We own it, and we issued it to him. Will we be able to get it back? Guns aren’t exactly cheap, you know.”

Fred Petrie Junior was back worrying the bottom line. That. 38 may have been Seattle Security’s rightful property, but as far as I was concerned, it was first and foremost a murder weapon, and murder weapons are sacred.

“I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you,” I said. “It could be some time before you see it again, if ever.”

“Damn,” Petrie muttered. “If it’s not one thing, it’s three others.”

I went back out on the street and walked up to the mission. Another day another meeting, although going didn’t make me feel particularly virtuous. Once again, there was talk about families and the kind of pain people deliver to one another in the name of love.

And as I listened, it crossed my mind that Pete Kelsey and I both had something in common. For whatever reason, we had both turned our backs on our blood relatives. Lars Jenssen’s son, Danny, had been dead for years before Lars finally came to his senses. The same was true for the Madsens. Now that their long-lost son had resurfaced, Si and Gusty Madsen had gone to their rewards.

But Jonas Piedmont, my crusty old son of a bitch of a grandfather, wasn’t dead, at least not yet. And what, if anything, was I going to do about it?

As soon as the meeting was over, I went back to the department long enough to grab a car and set out for Andrea Stovall’s place on Queen Anne Hill. As I drove up to the apartments, I noticed that somebody had spent a lot of time and effort in scrubbing the grime off the face of the old high school building. Its gray facade looked almost tawny in the hazy winter’s light.

I parked on Galer and went up to what had once been the main entrance, only to find that use of that particular door was limited to residents only. All others were directed to use the courtyard entrance.

As I started around the building, walking on a cleanly shoveled sidewalk, a school bell rang across the street, and John Hay Elementary’s children, bundled from head to toe, came racing outside for a chilly recess. I didn’t wait to see if I could catch sight of Tracie and Heather. It was too damn cold.