Delivering Death: A Novel (Riley Spartz)

To Alex and Andrew, who make me proud

A
guard checked a number against the ID bracelet on the man’s wrist while marking his name off a clipboard as he stood in line.

Another chained the man’s cuffs to his waist and shackled his feet together, so he had to shuffle to board the prison bus behind other stumbling inmates in orange jumpsuits. He heard some snickering among the jailers about something called “diesel therapy.” The term puzzled him, but amid the scuffling and stern faces, he had no time or nerve for questions.

His answer came thousands of miles later via a road trip through highway hell during which he had to constantly remind himself that he was Jack Clemens and he used to be rich.

After the first day, he had learned not to eat the baloney sandwiches offered for lunch. Not only did they taste like shit, but bathroom breaks were stretched hundreds of miles apart and by the time the bus finally stopped for gas, he’d soiled his pants.

“Idiot. Asshole.” The guy in the next seat swore at him, looking as tough as his talk with cornrows, tattoos, and scars.

“Sorry.” Those who knew him on the outside would have been surprised by such a quick apology. Atonement had never come as naturally to him as blaming others. During his court sentencing, Jack had been given a chance to speak, but instead of expressing regret for his crimes—as his attorney had urged—he
insisted that he’d been unfairly persecuted. All that blather did was piss off the judge and land him ten years in the slammer.

Now, seven hours into this excursion, the entire bus reeked.

This wasn’t the deal Inmate 16780-59 had envisioned. After all, he wasn’t a violent felon. Or a repeat offender. Maybe some of the outlaws on the bus deserved transport torture, but not him. Sure, he had tried to game the penal system and that arrogance had cost him his comfy bunk at a country club prison camp in northern Minnesota . . . but what did they expect? He was a white-collar criminal.

Until his crime made headlines, his wealth wasn’t the kind that made Jack Clemens a household name. He didn’t own a professional sports team, or appear in television commercials, or invent a product that changed the world. He simply moved money around various financial accounts, and thus could walk down the streets of Minneapolis without being recognized. With brown hair and blue eyes, medium height and weight, this middle-aged man was average in every way but income.

That night, after six hundred miles crammed in narrow plastic seats with stiffening legs and sore arms, the chained gang left the bus to be housed at another prison overnight. The inmates were given fresh uniforms and a chance to shower. But he was afraid of the showers and cleaned himself with water from the toilet.

He had no idea where he was, where he was going, or when the journey would end. He’d stopped trying to calculate what direction they were headed in, knowing only that he didn’t belong on this bus with these animals. The guards ignored him when he tried explaining that a mistake had been made. He waited for the attorney to fix things, but days turned into nights and the wheels on the bus kept rolling.

F
rom the postmark date, I could tell that the letter had probably been sitting in my newsroom mail slot for a couple days. Unopened.

Most of the correspondence I care about comes by email or text. My paychecks are direct deposit. My bills are electronic. Checking snail mail isn’t a high priority for me—even at work.

The first thing that caught my attention about the manila envelope was the lack of a return address. Sometimes sources send letters to journalists without wanting the contents traced back to them. They get deniability and anonymity: I get a scoop. I reveled in the possibilities for its contents as I carried the letter back to my office and shut the door.

The second thing I noticed was the package’s bumpy texture. It made me suspect Bubble Wrap might be shielding something fragile—something important. Maybe a compact disc or thumb drive with valuable computer files. The prospect of ratings gold made me smile and take care opening the envelope.

The third oddity hit me as I immediately smelled a foul odor when I opened the envelope. Reluctantly, I looked inside.

Someone had mailed me a bunch of teeth.

The blood was dried; the stench fresh. Some of the roots were long and pointed. Some twisted. Others broken and jagged.
I quickly shut the flap but the stink and the sight stayed with me.

I’m Riley Spartz, an investigative reporter for Channel 3 in Minneapolis. Why anyone would send me such a ghoulish package was a mystery within a mystery. More important: Were the teeth animal or human?

I
stood at the waiting-room counter while the receptionist double-checked her computer screen before insisting that I did
not
have an appointment. “Although I left you several messages over the last two months about coming in for a cleaning,” she snapped, sounding disapproving of both my dental hygiene and manners.

I mumbled something about being busy lately, then explained again, “I’d like to see Dr. Mendes anyway, on a professional matter.”

“He’s with a patient.”

I offered to wait. “It will only take a minute. I have to show him something.”

I texted Malik to bring his camera inside. He used the time we lingered in my dentist’s office to complain about having to shoot the teeth. Malik fancied himself an artist as well as a news photographer and to him, the fangs seemed more crass than creative. At this point, without any obvious news value, he would have rather been assigned to shoot weather video of interesting clouds over urban sprawl.

I had gotten his initial cooperation by reminding him that vampires were hot these days and perhaps the teeth might lead to a story about real-life urban bloodsuckers, which might lead to a movie deal. It was quite a stretch, I had to admit, but the pitch hooked him. Still, he remained grouchy.

“This may not be as bad as the time I had to video that puppy mill,” he said, “but it ranks right up there.”

“We need to document each step.” I tried to hush him by motioning toward a patient sitting on the other side of the room. She was pretending to read a magazine, but I could tell our conversation, and the Channel 3 camera on the floor, interested her more than diet tips or fashion advice.

I wasn’t about to confess that I carried a purse full of extracted teeth, but did confirm that, yes, she might have seen me on the news, when Dr. Charles Mendes stuck his head through the door.

“Riley Spartz. About time you showed up. You’re overdue.” He waved me in, and I whispered for Malik to wait behind for a few minutes to give me time to land the interview.

Dr. Mendes directed me toward the chair in one of the exam rooms. Obediently I sat down and he leaned it backward. “Open wide.” He flipped an overhead light. “Now what is it you want to show me?”

“Not my mouth.” I pulled out the envelope from my black bag. “This.”

The smell didn’t seem to unnerve him when he peeked inside. He gave an appreciative whistle and raised an eyebrow. “Where did you get all these?” He pushed the dental instruments to one side and dumped the teeth out over a piece of paper on the tray. Under this light, and up close, I could see that the roots looked more yellow than the crown. Two-tone teeth.

“Are they human?” I asked.

He used a sharp probe to roll them around. “Most definitely.” He pointed out several fillings. “But I see that you still have your pearly whites intact, so who are these from? The tooth fairy?”

I explained all I knew, which wasn’t much. “I was hoping you might be able to give me some clues.”

“Well, I can tell you that these are not senior citizen teeth. They did not fall out from natural causes. They put up a fight.”

Dr. Mendes put on plastic gloves to examine the teeth and estimated the age of the owner to be between twenty and thirty years old. Then he indicated scratch marks on the enamel where they had been gripped prior to being yanked. “I would also venture this person was a smoker.” He noted places where one tooth had a silver filling and another had signs of early decay. “But certainly not to the degree they needed to be removed.”

“Male or female?” I asked.

“That, I can’t tell you. You’d need a forensic dentist to determine the subject’s sex. But DNA can be found in tooth pulp tissue, and that should reveal the answer.”

He looked inside the envelope once again and counted the teeth out loud until he reached the number twenty-seven. “Are you sure that’s all? We seem to be missing a few.”

“What do you mean?”

“The human mouth has thirty-two adult teeth. You are short five. Of course, some might have been removed earlier for cosmetic or dental purposes.”

By then Malik was standing in the hallway, holding his camera and listening to the details unfold about molars, incisors, and bicuspids. He seemed more interested in the assignment upon learning that every tooth has a story. Especially the rotten ones.

“Would you mind talking about this on camera, Dr. Mendes?” I asked. “Just in case I end up needing it? I’m not sure where I’m going with this.”

“Maybe you should go to the police,” he said. “I can’t think of any good reason why these teeth shouldn’t still be in someone’s mouth instead of the mail.”

I had been wondering the same thing ever since he declared the teeth
human
. But journalists like covering news, not making it. And I could imagine the headlines after some cop leaked my report to the other media. The newspapers would have fun playing with lines about me sinking my teeth into the investigation, taking a bite out of crime, and of course, my own big mouth.

“I need to discuss my next move with my boss first, but in the meantime, how about that interview?”

“Certainly, Riley.” My dentist glanced down at a file folder, apparently containing my dental chart. “As long as you make an appointment to come in next week for a cleaning and bite wing X-rays. You’re overdue.”

Dr. Mendes packed up the teeth after our interview, handing over the envelope and giving Malik and me each a new toothbrush and floss. On the way out, I observed the woman from the waiting room leaning back in a chair in another examination room with a dental hygienist looming over her mouth. Still, she noticed us leaving and interrupted her polishing procedure to ask what day this story would be on TV.

T
echnically, I’d done my dental research over lunch. That’s where I had told Ozzie, the assignment editor, Malik and I were going, and I even bought him a Reuben sandwich to go at Cecil’s Deli on the way back to the station to keep our story straight.