Delivering Death: A Novel (Riley Spartz) (3 page)

“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 my 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.

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.

All this may have been for the best. The downside to being a patron saint was that you had to be dead.

I turned off my computer and crawled back between heavy flannel sheets; the fuzzy bedding was to fabric the equivalent of what mashed potatoes are to food—ultimate comfort. All that religious exercise checking out saints had proved worthwhile; by then I felt drained and ready to rest—albeit fitfully.

I
t was a slow news day in the Twin Cities, and Bryce wanted fresh ideas at the huddle. Neither of us mentioned the teeth. We had an understanding to keep our mouths shut about
that
story.

Ozzie spoke up. “A viewer called, mad about the Mall of America’s curfew. Says they only enforce it against minority kids.”

“The mall has a curfew?” Bryce asked.

“They like to call it a ‘parental escort policy,’ ” I said. “Anyone under sixteen must be accompanied by an adult after four o’clock on Fridays and Saturdays.”

Bryce looked puzzled by the rule. “Isn’t that bad for business? After all, they have an amusement park in the middle of that giant mall. Who do they think is going to flock there if not teens?”

“They used to have a gang problem,” I said. “Shoppers were feeling unsafe, or so the mall claimed.”

“But that was at least a decade ago,” Ozzie added. “Once they started the curfew, things calmed down. Except for that one fight with all those kids throwing chairs in the food court that went viral off someone’s cell-phone camera over Christmas break. Now they’re expanding the curfew to school holidays.”

Bryce seemed to be mulling over this information. “We’ve been doing some focus group research.”

After those words, I zoned him out by pretending I’d received an important text message. TV stations like to hire research companies to help them figure out how better to appeal to viewers between the ages of 25–54, the most coveted age bracket for advertisers. To me, that seemed like media hocus-pocus. All I cared about was doing the best reporting I could, and trusting that the ratings would follow.

“The Mall of America tests well with our key demographics,” he continued. “Maybe we should investigate this curfew idea.” He turned to look at me and smiled as he said the word
investigate
. “Riley, what would it take to nail this?”

I would have been elated to chase the story, except for one thing—location, location, location.

I didn’t want to set foot in the Mall of America. My former betrothed, Nick Garnett, was director of security. Things had been said during our breakup that would have been better left unspoken. I had since vowed to do my shopping online rather than cross his turf.

“Riley?” Bryce was sounding exasperated. “What would it take to air this?”

“Sorry.” I stopped daydreaming about lost love and focused on how to convince Bryce to steer clear of the Mall of America. “Trying to document this story would demand a lot of time with no guarantee we’d be able to prove any discrimination. It’s a long shot.”

“That’s for me to decide,” Bryce said. “What would it take?”

“Well, we’d have to set up some surveillance and watch which teens got kicked out,” I said. “Maybe even use some undercover kids. Might be best to have someone hang out there casually some weekend to see what they could observe before bringing in a full team with hidden cameras.”

Ozzie interrupted to point out that the mall required news cameras to register with the media relations office before videotaping on-site.