Payment in kind jpb-9

by J. A. Jance

  After my request for information had been passed around the sheriff’s office there for some time while I cooled my heels on hold, I finally ended up talking to Undersheriff Hank Bjorensen, a man who had actually attended high school with John David Madsen, although Bjorensen had been two years younger.

  What he told me was every bit as baffling as all the other puzzle pieces involved in what the media was now calling the school district murders.

  According to Bjorensen, John David was the only child of a local and once well-to-do farming couple, from the nearby town of Marvin, a couple named Si and Gusty Madsen. John David had graduated from Milbank High School as valedictorian of his class and had gone on to an appointment to West Point. Shipped to Vietnam as a second lieutenant immediately after graduation, he had mysteriously disappeared during an R and R period in Saigon. The Army listed him first as AWOL and later as a deserter.

  “That whole episode almost drove the old man crazy,” Bjorensen said. “Si Madsen was one of those old-time God-and-country men. He set out to prove the Army was wrong, insisting that his son should have been listed as an MIA, not as a deserter, but you know how that goes. The bureaucracy wears you down, grinds you down. They have all the time in the world; Si didn’t.

  “It was like an obsession with him, took over his whole life until he hardly knew which end was up. To the Army he probably wasn’t much more than some pesky gnat. Mrs. Madsen died about five years ago. Old Si kept right on after it for a while, writing letters to his congressmen, writing letters to the editor, but when Gusty died, that took most of the spunk out of him. I think he just lost heart, finally, and gave up. After he died, the farm went to a niece and nephew on his wife’s side.”

  “Are there any other living relatives?” I asked.

  “Not as far as I know, other than the Lunds, the cousins I told you about, the ones living on the farm. But like I said, the Lunds are on his mother’s side. On his father’s, John David was the only child of an only child, so he was the last of the line as far as the Madsens are concerned. Do you want me to call Ruth Lund and see if she knows of anyone?”

  “No, I don’t think that will be necessary,” I replied.

  “So tell me. Why’s a big-city cop from Seattle interested in all this ancient history?”

  Waffling, I said, “I’m working a case that might be connected.”

  I didn’t want to admit straight out that I knew for sure John David Madsen was alive and well and living as a fugitive somewhere far away from Marvin and Milbank, South Dakota. Making an informal inquiry was fine, but at that point I could see no need of officially involving another jurisdiction. After successfully eluding his past for over twenty years, I was relatively certain that South Dakota was the very last place where a missing Pete Kelsey/John David Madsen would show up.

  When I hung up a few moments later, I sat there in my office cubicle staring at the phone as if the answers to my questions were somehow encoded into the touch-tone numbers if only I had the ability to divine them.

  What would have driven a gung ho, patriotic West Point graduate to disappear off the face of the earth as far as both his family and country were concerned? A My Lai incident or some other wartime atrocity? That might have been enough to send him AWOL, but what had driven him underground and kept him there for so many years after the war was over, while in the meantime, back home, his parents died with no word or clue about what had happened to him? What had made someone with a good family leave them all behind without a backward glance? And why would someone with a fine mind, perhaps even a brilliant one, hide out in a lifetime’s worth of low-status, craftsman-type jobs that required some skill, certainly, but didn’t begin to tap his intellect?

  No matter how long I stared, the impassive face of the telephone gave me no answers to these troubling questions.

  In the course of homicide investigations, I often encounter unexpected pieces of people’s past lives. Sometimes those secrets come from the victim’s side of the aisle, sometimes from the perpetrator’s. Often these pieces of history have little or nothing to do with the case at hand. But in this instance, and for no logical reason I could pinpoint, I had the uncanny sense that Pete Kelsey’s hidden past had everything to do with my unsolved double homicide.

  I called down to Seattle Security and was told that Fred Petrie, the owner, was in a meeting and would be out in about half an hour. I figured there was just time enough to pick up a fresh turkey sandwich from Bakeman’s, see Fred Petrie on the way, and make it to a noontime brown-bag AA meeting in one of the missions in Pioneer Square.

  Carrying a paper sack containing my made-to-order sandwich-turkey on whole wheat bread with sprouts, cranberry sauce, and mustard-I headed on down Cherry and First, briskly threading my way through a chilly Pioneer Square until I came to Seattle Security’s office in a decrepit building just east of the Kingdome.

  Seattle Security was still in the exact same location it had occupied years earlier when I had sometimes moonlighted as a security guard to supplement my meager Seattle P.D. salary.

  Within minutes of giving my name to the receptionist, I was shown into the private office of Fred Petrie. Instead of the familiar, portly-bodied and bald-headed countenance of Fred Senior, I encountered Fred Junior, the new owner and much younger son of the original.

  I remembered Freddie Petrie from those earlier days as a whiny, miserable adolescent, a loudmouthed and none-too-talented Little League player who dreamed of one day making it in the Majors. He hadn’t made it. From the looks of things, he was having a difficult enough time just trying to fill Fred Senior’s unambitious shoes.

  As I listened to him rail on, I was struck by how little he had changed. He was still the very same spoiled and obnoxious shit he had been as a child. Longhaired and clad in a ragged shirt and scruffy tennis shoes, he looked as though he should still be knocking around on some high school campus carrying a civics textbook instead of hanging out in an office with his name on the door and a brass plaque on the desk that labeled him president and CEO.

  When I gave him my card, he didn’t remember me from Adam, but then, why should he? After all, security guards are a dime a dozen. Just ask Alvin Chambers.

  But I will say this much for Freddie Petrie. He, at least, was prepared to talk about Alvin Chambers.

  “I know why you’re here, Detective Beaumont,” he said with a doleful shake of his head. “It’s a terrible thing. In fact, I still can’t believe it happened. We’ve been in business in this same location for nearly forty-five years, and this is the first time we’ve ever had an on-the-job fatality.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said. “I worked for your dad years ago when I was first on the force.”

  Petrie looked up at me. “Oh, did you?” he asked vaguely and without much interest.

  “How is your father, by the way?”

  “You know him?” he asked.

  It was a dumb question, and I couldn’t quite believe he had asked it. Back in those days everybody at Seattle Security knew everybody else. It had been a typical mom-and-pop operation, with Fred Senior handling the hiring and scheduling, and his wife, Mazie, doing the books and payroll.

  “I knew them both,” I said.

  “The folks are off enjoying themselves, cruising the Bahamas,” he said resentfully. “I wish I were too. Seems like I’m always scrambling for money these days. I’m buying out their interest, at least I’m trying to. Having somebody die on the job like this is going to send our insurance costs out of sight.”

  I knew for a fact that Fred Senior would have been far more worried about Alvin Chambers’ family than he would have been about his company’s insurance premiums. Fred Senior was a likable guy, a people person. With the changing of the name on the office door, Seattle Security’s bottom line had changed as well. It made me feel old and more than a little sad.

  “What can you tell me about Alvin Chambers?” I asked.

  It’s always best to start interviews with non-th
reatening, mundane questions and gradually ease into more substantial inquiries. I figured it would be best to ask for the handwriting sample only after Fred Junior had gotten used to giving me what I wanted. It’s the old door-to-door salesman’s technique of getting the customer accustomed to saying yes.

  Petrie shrugged. “Not much. Been with us about six months or so. Hold on while I go get his records.”

  Freddie was away from his desk for only a few moments. He returned carrying a file folder, thumbing impatiently through its loose paper contents as he sat back down.

  “Like I said, he was only with us for six months. Bounced around from location to location in the beginning and until we put him on the school district job about two and a half months ago. He really settled into that one. Seemed to like it a lot.”

  Fred Junior smiled at me indulgently as though I might need some further clarification. “These older dudes generally prefer that, you know. They like going to the same place day in and day out. They like doing the same thing over and over. It’s like they want the continuity. The younger ones like moving from place to place, doing the rock concerts, the more far-out stuff.”

  Freddie’s smiling condescension said far more than he realized about where he lumped me. I was right in there with all those unfortunate “older dudes.” That kind of categorizing didn’t endear him to me, and it probably didn’t endear him to his father, either.

  “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 m
y 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?

  Chapter 19

  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.

  The Queen Anne had been done up in spades, complete with a porte cochere, which, I believe, is French for a covered driveway designed to keep passengers out of the rain. Set smack in the middle of the circle was a solidly frozen fountain of sculpted lions with fangs of icicles dripping from their fierce muzzles. If the rehab folks had been paying attention, they would have used Queen Anne High’s grizzly mascot instead of lions to create their driveway fountain, but then again, rehab developers as a species have never been known for their sentimentality.

  I was headed for the main doorway when I encountered a man in coveralls who was standing on a tall ladder under the portico. He was busily taking down a long plastic garland that had been draped over the doorway.