Every few seconds, a smashing sound echoes out of the small room, the kind of noise that slams through the ears into the bones. Amber, Melinda, the detectives, and I stand and sit in the Governor’s Office. One of the guards had opened it for the cops. It’s still just the way it was the day he died. The newspaper that day sits atop his modest wooden desk, now wrapped in plastic to preserve it. His smoking jacket dangles from the coat rack. The 1920s-style lights hang from the ceiling, casting light and shadow.
The bathroom at the far end of the office isn’t preserved. Just as Karl Zimmer had told me, the old toilet and sink had been removed. And where the toilet once sat is a recently poured concrete slab, flush with the floor. The slab sits atop a dead space between the floors of the brawny old building. New floor covering was supposed to be installed on top, to make the room look like a storage area. Zimmer never got that far. Now the cops are digging into the slab. One will give a few blows with a large pick, and then the other will step inside to bang with the sledgehammer. It has all come down to this. It’s slow going.
Melinda sits in the Governor’s desk chair, her eyes dazed. She holds the search warrant in her hands but she hasn’t looked at it. She asks me what they’re looking for and I don’t answer. I look at my hand, where I had held the pendant, and I wonder. Coincidences happen. This is just an ugly one on a night like this. The digging echoes through the room.
The digging goes on for half an hour, then the detectives take off their jackets and take over for the other cops. Their uniform shirts are dark with sweat. Mazolli gives me a vinegary expression and lugs the pick into the bathroom. In a few moments, the heavy blows of steel against concrete begin again. A fine dust begins to drift through the air in the Governor’s Office.
“We ain’t getting anywhere.” This is Mazolli’s verdict as he emerges from the bathroom, his face bright red and dripping sweat. My abdomen tightens. “We can bring in a crew tomorrow. Maybe it’s just bad information. Wouldn’t be the first time that came from a newspaper.”
He sees my expression. “Unless the columnist wants to try some manual labor.”
I’m already up and stripping off my jacket. “Sure.”
He hands me the pick. It’s even heavier than it looks. The uniformed cops snicker. I walk into the bathroom nearly dragging the thing. Mazolli leans against the doorjamb.
I know the principle. Use the force of gravity and the weight of the tool to do the work. But just raising it above my shoulders using a two-handed grip is difficult. I aim the first swing into the eight-inch diameter hole that the cops have already made in the middle of the slab. It’s a pathetic effort, the pick nearly coming out of my hands. The cops laugh.
I get mad.
Again. Again. After the fourth swing, I find a cadence of sorts, letting the bounce-back from the concrete help move the pick into the air for the next trip down. I stop to loosen my tie, and then I resume. My heart is pounding and I breathe in the dusty air like a runner pacing himself. Again. Again. Shards of concrete fly out of the growing hole and scuttle across the aged tile of the room. I aim for the deepest part of the hole, missing it sometimes, hitting it more and more.
The next strike sounds different, deep and hollow, and the pick doesn’t come out. I lean forward on its shaft, breaking out more concrete, and I pull it out to make another try.
Then the smell is in my nostrils. I’ve smelled it once before in my life. You’d never mistake it. You want to throw up.
“Okay, okay.” Mazolli gently grasps my shoulders and backs me into the office. He nods to the officers. “Back at it.”
I turn and see that the night cops reporter, Kathy Deane, has joined us.
“I thought you were dead,” she whispers to me. Then she sits on the edge of the desk, swinging her legs, reading the search warrant, and making notes in a reporter’s notebook. The cops don’t pay attention.
“My God, what it that awful smell?” Melinda is by my side, giving me a beseeching look. I just wipe the sweat off my face and shake my head. Amber stares grimly ahead, her arms folded across her chest. More slams of pick and sledgehammer reverberate out of the bathroom. Melinda nearly yells, “What?”
Then the cops stop and silence falls like the concrete dust.
Kathy refolds the warrant and says, “That’s Megan Nyberg.”
Chapter Forty-eight
When I look back to check Melinda’s reaction, she’s gone.
I ask and nobody’s noticed. Then I am walking quickly through the empty Governor’s Library, the red leather chairs misarranged, the big conference table littered with newspapers, and then out into the ghost newsroom. It’s deserted.
Adrenaline powers me as I take the flights of stairs to the main newsroom. I rush through it, but she’s not there. The computer in her cubicle is turned off. The desk drawer where she keeps her purse is empty. The wall clock says midnight. So I take the elevator down to the lobby and run out into the street, only vaguely aware of the burning pain in my shoulders and back from swinging the pick. The street gleams from a light shower that has passed through, but it’s not raining now and Melinda’s not on the sidewalk. I jog to the corner and look down the hill. One set of taillights has reached First Avenue and a signal flickers a right turn. The sidewalk is empty. That couldn’t have been Melinda’s car. She couldn’t have moved that fast, wouldn’t have been able to park that close to the building.
Returning to the corner, I take another long look each way. Something makes me stare up at the newspaper building. The lights are on in the newsroom, as they should be even at this time of night, and the windows of the Governor’s Office are bright. The rest of the tower is dark. Except for several sets of windows on the top floor, shining out into the night. The first of what promises to be many Seattle Police cruisers to visit rounds the corner and parks. Before the cops get out, I go back in the employee entrance. I ask the guard to find Amber and tell her where I’m going.
***
When the elevator door opens, I see light streaming out of the publisher’s office and I hear Melinda’s voice, shrill, nearly hysterical.
“You told me you were going to pay her to go away!”
I can’t hear the response.
Then
, “Why did you get involved with her in the first place?!… I don’t care!… Do you know what you’ve done?”