Silenced, I scanned through the incident reports. The information contained in them wasn’t very different from what I already had received from Doris Walker, with one notable exception-the actual texts of the threats themselves. There were typed transcripts of the two that had come in over the phone.
One said: “Start school now or else this place is history.” The other: “Education delayed is education denied. Dynamite is the cure.”
“Cute,” I said, tossing the transcripts back in the file. “The guy must think he’s a comedian. It is a guy, isn’t it?”
Cummings nodded. “Young male Caucasian, that’s about all the experts have been able to tell us so far from listening to the tapes.”
Also included were Xeroxed copies of the other threats, the ones that had been tossed through the windows. The poorly spelled notes had been stitched together, some with whole words and others with individual letters clipped from newspapers and magazines, a real cut-and-paste job. One said, “Teachers should teach. Strikes waist lives. Get school open before I blow this place to peaces.” Another said, “All I need too know is available in The Anarchist’s Handbook. Pipe bombs rule.” Still another said, “You guys are fuking with my life. I want my education now!”
I looked up at Cummings. “This dude can’t spell for shit, and he reads too many kidnap novels.”
Sparky Cummings nodded. “If he reads at all. The more we pay for education, the less we get. Go on.”
“Whose the boss, you or the teachers?” and “I am loosing patients. Stop the strike now.”
“If he’s so opposed to the teachers’ union, how come he’s threatening to blow up the school district office? Why not the union’s office instead?”
“Beats me,” Cummings replied. “Where is it written that kooks have to be smart or logical?”
“Who sat on this report, Sparky? I need to know.”
“All of the above,” Cummings answered. “At the time it was happening, both the teachers’ union and the district asked that we not release the information because they were deeply involved in negotiations. I don’t know who had the horses to keep a lid on it after the strike was over, but of course, by then the threats had stopped as well. There probably wasn’t much reason to raise a hullabaloo after the fact.”
“Particularly not when Her Honor’s primary interest is maintaining the status quo,” I added.
Cummings shot me a warning frown. “You said that, Beau. I didn’t.”
Although the two shouldn’t have been linked, the previous year’s mayoral election had been won and lost with the school district’s future as the central focus of the bitter campaigns. A group of angry and very vocal parents, tired of years of mandatory busing, had brought in some new political blood. Much to the consternation of long-term political lights, the new kids on the block and their off-the-wall candidate had played havoc with what should have been a shoo-in election for the retiring mayor’s handpicked successor.
Elected by such a minute margin that a legally mandated recount had been necessary, the new mayor was now trying her best to keep city government running smoothly while she fought to regain lost ground among the grass-roots electorate. Meanwhile the school district was doing away with busing an inch at a time while student population dwindled, as did money, and those same disillusioned parents, beaten but still pissed, continued to take their children else-where.
Her Honor’s press aide had recently announced that Seattle was once more among the top three contenders for “The Most Livable City Award.” Participants in that kind of national competition can’t afford to wash their dirty underwear in public, and trouble in a school district is civic soil of the worst kind. If you don’t believe it, try asking the City of Boston.
Scanning through the file wasn’t telling me much of anything new. “So what did you guys finally find out about this?” I asked at last.
Cummings shrugged. “For a while the pet theory going around was that someone opposed to the teachers’ union was posing as a student and making the threats, but we couldn’t find any likely possibles. A disgruntled student was the most we ever came up with, although why a ”disgruntled student“ would be so damn eager to have school get started, nobody was ever able to figure out. After the strike was over, though, since no bombs were ever found and since no one was hurt, the case got shifted to low priority.”
“Fast?” I asked.
“You mean did it get shifted fast?” he asked. I nodded. “You bet. It was fast, all right.”
“And nothing’s happened since?”
“That’s right,” Sparky replied. “Zippo.”
“Well, something’s happened now. That security guard is dead. So’s the woman. Maybe it wasn’t love triangle at all. Maybe it was made to look that way, just to throw us off,” I suggested.
“I suppose that’s possible,” Detective Cummings agreed, “but not very likely. I still can’t let you have the file.”
While Sparky Cummings sat there waiting, I went back through the file once more and took some notes, paying particular attention to the threats themselves, which I took down verbatim, sloppy spelling and all. As I went through the exercise, something struck me as strange.
“How many kids do you know who can’t spell the word ”fuck‘?“ I asked.
“Not many,” Cummings admitted with a grin. “It goes with the territory. They usually spell it right when they spray-paint it on bridges and overpasses.”
“So how come this joker doesn’t know it’s got a c in it?”
“My specialty is bombs,” Sparky Cummings said seriously. “I don’t know beans about teenagers, my own included.”
I finished copying what I wanted from the file and tossed it back across the desk to Detective Cummings.
“Thanks for bringing it down, Spark. I’ll try not to make any waves for you guys, unless I have to.”
He waved. “Sure thing, Beau. Glad to help.”
I sat there for several minutes after Cummings left, thinking that it was odd for someone so eager to be in school to be such a rotten speller. The two didn’t seem to mix. People who actually liked school and wanted to be there were usually insufferable teachers’ pets, brownnoses who spelled everything perfectly.
I remembered that back when I was in school, perfect spelling was never one of my problems.
Chapter 11
I sat there for some time thinking about that mysterious C-less fuck, and wondered idly if it was related to Erica Jong’s zipless one. I had meandered on into some self-pitying woolgathering and was mulling about how long I had done without same, with or without the zip or the C, when my phone rang.
“Beaumont? This is Kramer. I’m down in the garage. I finally got us a car. Come on down so I don’t have to turn loose of it. Hurry up, will you?”
Nobody had told me we were scheduled to go touring that morning, but I decided to be agreeable. “I’ll be right there. By the way, where are we going?”
“Back up to the school district office. To see Andrea Stovall.”
Another new person at the Seattle school district. “Who’s she?” I asked.
“Just get down here, would you? I told them we’d be there by nine and we’re going to be late. I’ll tell you about her on the way.”
I threw my notebook into the first available pocket, locked the school district’s bomb-threat file folder in my desk, and made my way down the stairs, bypassing the building’s more and more glitchy elevators. Detective Kramer was pacing the floor of the garage near an idling Reliant, hands planted belligerently on his hips, an impatient frown imprinted across his broad forehead.
“So who’s Andrea Stovall?” I asked again as I got in the car.
“I got her name off the logbook sheets,” he answered.
“Logbook sheets?” I asked. “We’ve got those back already?”
“I thought I told you about them last night.”
“You told me Doc Baker had preliminary autopsy reports ready for us to pick up this morning. I don’t
