Delivering Death: A Novel (Riley Spartz) Page 2

  I was frustrated that our first face-to-face conversation in weeks had turned to smut within thirty seconds. “No, it’s nothing like that.” Not wanting to be alone with him in the dim corridor, I suggested we move to his office. The glass windows of his headquarters looked out on the rest of the newsroom, so I felt comfortable in knowing that witnesses could observe our meeting, but not hear our actual words. The transparent/no-walls look was part of the terms Nicole and I had settled with Bryce.

  Once the door was shut, I dumped the teeth on the center of his desk calendar. The stench caught him off guard and he glared at me before wheeling his leather chair backward to escape a pearly white ricochetting toward him.

  “They’re teeth.”

  Forgetting they might be evidence, I quickly reached out the palm of my hand to block the enamel runaway from falling off the desk. The roots didn’t freak me out so much anymore now that my dentist had explained that they’d had a mysterious life, cut short. I had empathy for their demise, besides curiosity, and wanted to tell their story.

  “Oh. Just teeth?” That seemed to calm my boss, but he couldn’t hide the disappointment in his tone.

  “Not just teeth. Human teeth.”

  “Why do you have human teeth?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No matter what you’d like to think, Bryce, I’m not a news robot. I am human.”

  “You know what I mean, Riley. We’re not talking about your on-air smile, although you might consider some whitening work right here.” He tapped his finger against his front teeth, but I ignored the put-down, figuring it was his way of trying to remind me who was in charge.

  “So where did you get these?” he asked.

  “Someone mailed them to me here at the station. Anonymously.”

  I pushed the envelope toward him. The postmark was from across the Mississippi River in St. Paul. My name—RILEY SPARTZ—was carefully penciled in block letters.

  He wrinkled his nose, but began to perk up. The smell of a ratings spike overrode the odor of decay. I knew the scent of money was also on his mind because Bryce held a degree in business rather than journalism and appreciated stories that were cheap to produce. Under his watch, decreased costs were just as good as increased ratings. No worries about that here. These teeth were definitely past the point of needing root canals or other pricey dental treatments.

  Boldly, Bryce reached for a tooth, but I slapped his hand back. “No touching.”

  “Fine,” he said. “But what do you think? Are they a threat, or a tip? What’s their message?”

  “Sorry, boss. They’re not talking.”

  But if they could, they might have warned us of what lay ahead. Then I would have thrown them in the trash instead of going to the police—story be damned.

  CHAPTER 5

  Inmate 16780-59 had been settled far from home in a tougher penitentiary in New Jersey, where the name Jack Clemens impressed nobody. With a double razor-wire fence patrolled by armed guards, this was no Camp Cupcake. For the first time since high school, he would have traded brains for muscles, and charm for a scary tattoo.

  During intake, he was finally allowed to call his attorney, who warned him that their telephone conversation might be monitored.

  “You got to get me out of here.” He tried to make his words sound more like a command than a plea, like the Jack Clemens whom everybody used to take orders from. But no luck: his voice cracked and came across as thin and nervous.

  “Nothing I can do, Jack,” his lawyer said. “You belong to the Bureau of Prisons now. You messed with BOP and now they’re messing with you.”

  He’d had the misfortune of being housed in a prison bunk room when a cell phone was discovered, hidden behind a toilet. Cell phones were taboo behind bars because of fears they could be used to intimidate witnesses, run drug gangs, or organize escapes.

  He wasn’t plotting any of those misdeeds and few people would have taken his calls, but because the guards couldn’t pin the smuggle on anyone, they blamed everyone. But then a search of his bed revealed a cache of pain pills. No doctor’s prescription appeared under Jack Clemens’s records, so the medicine was considered contraband and confiscated.

  The pills, like many bootleg objects in the prison system, were presumed to have come from a corrupt employee or a prisoner with stash to spare. But just as reporters protect their sources, so do inmates. Maybe even more so.

  Instead of putting a disciplinary note in Jack Clemens’s file and pushing back his release date, the warden put him on the bus—glad to be rid of the scrutiny that comes from housing a high-profile inmate. Since his incarceration, the local news media remained interested in documenting his downfall and his name had become a punch line in Minnesota comedy clubs.

  “This is about them teaching you a lesson, Jack,” his attorney continued. “I can’t change this. I’m sorry.”

  Those words rattled him. He had expected deliverance from the current dilemma. After all, the same attorney had made a convincing argument that the court should grant him “self-surrender” status, meaning he could remain free on bail while awaiting his incarceration date. Yet a month later, when he was dropped off outside the federal penitentiary in Duluth to be processed into the prison population, his identity formally changed to inmate number 16780-59.

  “Remember, Jack, I warned you that the two most important things you could do after you turned yourself in was to be smart and behave. You screwed up and you’re on your own.”

  He figured his banishment had less to do with rule-breaking than with the feds’ determination to break him down. He knew better than to raise that theory just then, but he was convinced the whole brutal transfer business was a ruse to make him talk and spill secrets about money . . . and more.

  Truth was, he was sitting on a whopper.

  The lawyer was blind to that fact. His final remark was to inform his client that their legal relationship was over. So when his connection to the outside ended with a click and a dial tone, Inmate 16780-59 began to seriously sweat.

  CHAPTER 6

  The as-yet unidentified teeth were now in the hands of Minneapolis Police detective John Delmonico. He was more puzzled than repulsed as he peered at the contents inside my envelope, unlike the others I’d confided in about the grisly delivery. After all, the teeth were tame by most crime-scene standards.

  We sat in a conference room down the hall from his office because he didn’t like visitors—especially journalists—near his desk. He once mentioned worrying we’d use reporter tricks like reading documents upside down to gain confidential information. His fear was not unfounded; I’d used that technique occasionally to gain exclusives. If you could see it, you could confirm it. If you could confirm it, you could report it. The first media outlet to break any big story won bragging rights—and hopefully, a growing audience of viewers or readers.

  From my experience, sources sometimes leave paperwork in plain sight because they want to leak something, but don’t want to be held responsible. But whenever gleaning such a lead, I always double-check to make sure my scoop wasn’t really a red herring.

  Still, I contemplated informing Delmonico that desk spying was passé and had been replaced by hacking email accounts, but he kept our discussion focused on the teeth.

  “You got these in the mail?” He went over my story with me again, this time making notes. “Any idea who sent them?”

  “No.” I pointed to the outside corner of the package, overloaded with about three bucks’ worth of postage. “Too bad about the peel-and-stick stamps. Otherwise we might have gotten the sender’s DNA from their saliva.”

  “I know about forensics. It’s my job.” He ignored my efforts to be helpful, making it clear that we were not a crime-fighting team like Holmes and Watson.

  I was giving a statement; he was taking down my report. I’d interviewed him before, in the field, for news stories and found him to be a by-the-book cop. He might not do me any favors, but neither would he screw me over by giving m
y teeth tip to media competitors.

  Still, his manner seemed off today. No chitchat. No grousing about the media. I guessed nameless loose teeth might be enough to make anyone want to protect their own gums by remaining tight-lipped.

  “I didn’t know what else to do with them,” I said. “My dentist suggested I bring the teeth here, and my boss agreed that it wasn’t really a story until we learned more. If they’re simply a means to harass me, we’re not sure we want to give the sender any publicity.”

  “So how many people have actually touched these teeth?” he asked.

  I had been dreading this question, and tried to be contrite with my answer. “My dentist was careful to avoid direct contact, and I made my boss keep his hands to himself, but there’s a chance my handprint might be on one of them.”

  Delmonico’s demeanor didn’t change at my mention of the possibility of contaminated evidence, but that might have been what was eating him. Clearly there was trouble he wasn’t willing to share.

  “The teeth might be nothing,” I continued, “but they might be something.” And if they were something, I tried extracting a promise that he’d let me know by reminding him that Channel 3 had video of the teeth that we could air at any time. “But we decided to hold off for now until we had better context.”

  He made me sign a statement affirming my story about how I came into possession of the teeth. “I’ll stay in touch,” he told me.

  “So will I.” I knew better than to take him at his word. He was a cop and I was a reporter. Sometimes our goals meshed, but often, not.

  “Are you being cynical?” he asked.

  I shrugged off his criticism. “That’s such an ugly word.” As journalists we sometimes claim we’re not jaded, but merely critical thinkers in a messed-up world. Other times we use cynicism as a way to keep our emotions in check during harrowing experiences like knocking on the door of a family who has lost a child. “I’m being realistic.”

  That seemed fair, considering we all have hidden motives on the job and off. I wasn’t yet at the point where I knew the purpose of the package wasn’t just mailing teeth: it was delivering death.

  CHAPTER 7

  I called my mom from my cell phone as I walked from the cop shop toward the station via the skyway to avoid the brisk January wind. I’d trained her not to call during newscasts when I might be live on the air, but she sometimes forgot. Reaching out to her when it was convenient gave me leeway to duck her calls when it wasn’t.

  She immediately tried persuading me to attend my fifteen-year high school class reunion, about a hundred miles south of the station. “It would be a nice way for you to keep in touch with your old friends.”

  I’d received an email urging me to attend because if enough alums showed up, the bar would give us a free keg. Turnout had been on the decline for previous reunions, so the organizers thought they’d try moving the gathering to winter when farmers—who made up much of the class—weren’t so busy.

  I’d deleted the invite, but Mom had seen the event mentioned in the Monitor Review, my hometown’s weekly newspaper. “It says your classmates are even touring the Spam Museum.”

  “Mom, I’ve spent a lifetime trying to escape jokes about Spam.”

  I’d grown up on a family farm in southern Minnesota where Hormel was legendary. My folks and our neighbors all sold cattle and hogs to the Fortune 500 meatpacking company. Funny thing was, I’ve never actually tasted Spam. We’d butchered our own beef and pork on the farm, so it was cheaper to eat it off the hoof than from a tin.

  But without a doubt, Hormel had put money in my family’s pockets, so my mom started lecturing me about how canned meat had won World War II for America and our allies. “Without Spam, we might be living under communism.”

  “I can’t hear you, Mom. You’re breaking up. Must be all the tall buildings downtown. Sorry.”

  Then I hit end on my cell phone just as I reached the parking ramp where I’d left my car. I knew Bryce would be preoccupied with the evening newscasts, so I left him a message that the police had custody of the teeth, and that we had no story—yet.

  “This may be one of those that takes weeks to chase down evidence and even run forensic tests,” I explained.

  Chatting with my mom made me think of my childhood priest, Father Mountain, who was currently assigned to a church in St. Paul. I decided to stop by the rectory before heading home for the evening. As he welcomed me, the smell of cinnamon drew my attention to a still warm apple pie on the kitchen counter.

  He noted my interest. “Mrs. Houle just made that pie.” His parishioners were always dropping off homemade treats to remain in his good graces. He demonstrated his generosity by serving me a hefty slice oozing with apples.

  “This must be the best part of being a priest,” I said. “Warm pie on a chilly day.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “The best part is saving souls.”

  “When are you going to save mine?” I asked, digging in.

  “Only you know that answer, Riley. You can’t be saved until you want to be saved.”

  I regretted teasing him about his calling. Eternal salvation was not a discussion I wanted to have just then, so instead, I told him about my incognito package. “At least people don’t send you creepy things in the mail, Father.”

  “Instead, they tell me creepy things in person and I hold their guilty secrets forever in my heart.”

  That was more theatrics than I usually heard from him; typically he used humor to make a theological point. “Is that a hint I’m due for confession, Father?” My priest. My dentist. My boss. I was surrounded by people with a claim on my time.

  He responded with only a demure smile, hinting perhaps at being the keeper of some of my secrets. I diverted an uncomfortable conversation by sharing details about the teeth. “The cops just grilled me on how I ended up with them, and frankly, I’m still baffled about what to do next.”

  I shrugged, as if the whole episode were no different than any of the hundreds of news tips I’d received during my career. But the plain truth—I was a little spooked, hence my eagerness to hand the teeth over to the cops. Nobody mails a letter like that to a TV station without a mission. To seek glory for a crime? To scare me silent? If the former, I was supposed to broadcast something. If the latter, I was supposed to keep something quiet. I had no idea which, but a wrong guess might upset the sender and bring us face-to-face in the dim alley behind the station.

  “You seem uneasy.” Father Mountain startled me from my internal debate. “Perhaps you should pray to St. Apollonia for guidance.”

  “Saint who?” I routinely say a prayer to St. Anthony whenever I lose something. Sometimes my prayers are even answered. But for grace to work, the item has to be tangible. After all, once a television sweeps month is lost, not even God can change viewer demographics.

  “St. Apollonia,” he repeated.

  “Apollonia?” I recalled the rock movie Purple Rain, part of Minneapolis’s music and film culture. “Wasn’t Apollonia Prince’s hot love interest? I know creative geniuses can be a challenge to work with, but that shouldn’t qualify her for sainthood anymore than me having to work for a bozo.”

  “The Apollonia I’m referring to is the patron saint of toothaches.”

  Father Mountain pulled a leather-bound Catholic Encyclopedia from a shelf and turned to a painting of a beautiful woman holding a set of pincers against her chest. Her story: Apollonia was a virgin martyr whose teeth were pulled from her mouth during an uprising against Christians in the year 249. Afterward, when her attackers gave her the choice of renouncing her God or being thrown into a fire . . . she leaped into the flames.

  “Wow. That’s a pretty disturbing tale,” I said. “But how did she become a saint? I thought the Catholic Church disapproved of suicide.”

  “Apollonia was making a statement,” he said. “Dying for a cause is quite different than dying for one’s own sake. One is noble; the other, selfish.”

  This
was another topic I regretted raising because once, in a closed garage with a running engine, I considered leaving this world behind. Nothing as dramatic as St. Apollonia’s exit, but Father Mountain never missed an opportunity to confer with me about my nearly fatal error. That spell of despair was the selfishness he had alluded to. He didn’t want a repeat performance and regularly claimed his priestly prerogative to probe my state of mind and ensure I was keeping a healthy distance from the dark abyss that had once tormented me.

  My husband had died a hero’s death in the line of duty while our marriage was barely past the newlywed stage. Grief and guilt messed me up for a while. Not in a mood to watch reruns of that part of my life just then, I thanked Father Mountain for his hospitality and left to brush a light coating of snow off the windshield of my car. On the drive home, I worried about slipping from cynical to bitter.

  • • •

  Flossing that night, my gums bled. I envisioned horrific scenarios involving my own teeth as I spit blood into the sink. Later, I buried my face in my pillow but couldn’t shake the bad omen. I prayed to Apollonia for distraction.

  Too haunted to sleep and too cowardly to lay awake, I got out of bed to search online religious history websites on my computer to ponder what might be a suitable cause for me to aspire for sainthood. My curiosity did not pay off; the good causes were already taken. St. Francis de Sales had become the patron of journalists because, back in the sixteenth century, he wrote the first religious tracts. I had no problem with him receiving that honor: being first is what journalism is all about.

  But I was unconvinced that St. Clare of Assisi deserved sainthood. She was named patron of television because, bedridden with illness, she apparently heard and saw Mass on the wall of her room—even though the service was happening miles away. Was her experience a thirteenth-century miracle or a mere hallucination?

  And while I felt that I could make a persuasive case to be deemed patron of lost causes, St. Jude had already locked that one down.