The mugger looked up, weighed his nonexistent options, and the knife clattered on the cement.
“Up the stairs, hands on your head!”
I cuffed him, read him his rights, summoned a wagon, and headed for the station to do the paperwork.
“Why’d you check that stairwell, Verazzano?” The top cop had just read my report.
“I really don’t know, Chief, it was just a hunch.”
“Whatever - nice work, Jack; this puke looks good for several assaults.”
The next day, the tempting aroma of espresso seduced me into taking a break. I ordered a soda in the J&M - I seemed to be losing my tolerance for caffeine. As I drank the pop, another chill gripped my body.
“Is there a draft in here, Frank?”
“No. You okay, Jack? You look a little pale.”
“Eh, maybe I’m coming down with something.”
I shrugged it off and headed to the men’s room. In the hallway, I heard a muffled cry from the women’s room. Cracking open the door, I saw a stringy-haired creep with his hand over a struggling woman’s mouth, and her skirt up to her waist.
Seeing my uniform, he bolted for the window. I slammed him to the floor, inviting him to resist, and took him into custody. More damn paperwork when I got off.
At the insistence of my wife, will I never learn to keep my mouth shut, I saw my doctor about the chills I’d felt, but he found nothing wrong, so I dismissed them.
The next day, Alma Crow Feather ducked beneath the yellow barricade of a building under renovation. Tiny, and reclusive, the Native American community claimed she kept the company of spirits, but she had never caused me trouble. I followed her, concerned she could get hurt in the construction zone. She padded silently down a flight of stairs, vanishing into the darkness of the old Seattle underground, normally a tourist attraction, but this part was off limits.
The beam from my flashlight knifed through the blackness as I moved along the clammy passageway. Alma suddenly darted from behind a timber, scampering back up the stairs.
“Alma, wait…” She didn’t.
I took a look around, though I really wanted to leave. An old wooden sign lay on the street, the words “Chief Meredith” hand-lettered in faded red paint now barely readable. I felt the frigid air creep beneath my clothing, and decided I’d seen enough. As I left, I noted the phone number of the construction firm, to advise them of the unsecured door.
That night at the library, I looked up Chief Meredith, learning that on June 25th, 1901, Pioneer Square saloon owner, John Considine, shot and killed Police Chief William Meredith. The chief had resigned after Considine accused him of bribery.
Considine had spread the bribery rumors in retaliation for Meredith investigating him and his brother Tom’s business dealings. John even accused Meredith of impregnating Mamie Jenkins, a female contortionist.
Incensed, Meredith stalked John with a sawed-off shotgun, firing on him in the G.O. Guy drugstore on Second Avenue. Wounded, John called out to his brother, Tom, for help. Tom fractured Meredith’s skull, then John grabbed Meredith’s revolver and shot him through the heart. Arrested, and tried for murder, John was acquitted the same year based on a defense of a “continuous struggle”.
I told my wife, Karen, the whole story about the chills, about Alma, the Underground, and what I’d learned about the sheriff.
“Are you saying Meredith’s ghost is contacting you?”
“I don’t know. It just seems . . .”
“Jack! They’ll put you away for saying crap like that!”
On Monday, I watched four young men who should have been working or in school, huddled in Occidental Square. Seeing me, they scattered. I stopped the closest boy.
“I didn’t do nothin’, pig!”
Paul, the nephew of the man who owned the Merchant Café, was familiar to me, and a smart ass. “What were you doing just now?”
“I don’t have to tell you shit." Are you arresting me?”
“Not yet. But, I will be if you’re dealing drugs.” I watched him swagger away.
The Merchant’s owner met me halfway across the unopened restaurant.
“Officer Verazzano. How can I help you?”
“Hi, Zeke. It’s been awhile.”
“No problem. You’re busy, what with the area you have to cover.”
“That's not an excuse for me not coming by. I wanted to ask about your nephew.”
“Paul? Is he in trouble again? Since his folks died, we’ve tried to look after him, but at nineteen . . . well, you know how it is at that age.”
“He might be involved with drugs.”
“Doesn’t surprise me, considering that bunch he hangs out with.”
“I wanted you know that I’m watching him.”
“I’ll talk to him, but he won’t listen. He’s the last of the hardheaded Considines.”
I was nearly out the door when Zeke’s last comment registered.
“Something else?” Zeke asked.
“You say he’s the last of the Considines? Any relation to the Considine who shot Sheriff Meredith?”
“You know that story? That was Paul’s great-grandfather, John Considine.”
“I stumbled on the story at the library. When you said Paul was the last of the Considines . . . I just wondered if there was a connection.”
A week passed without incident. I’d forgotten about the cold drafts until I walked into an icy curtain near the Elliot Bay Bookstore; how could I not go in? Near the staircase leading to the lower level, cold air brushed my cheek, telling me to descend to the lower level. I hoped I wasn't losing my mind.
Downstairs, Paul and his friends were in the back of the room. They split up when they saw me. Paul ducked under the open stairway, vaulted the hand railing, and taking the steps three at a time, burst through the front door and across First Avenue toward the Alaska Way viaduct. I was ten yards behind him. People don’t run for no reason.
I called for backup as he ducked around the corner of a warehouse. Peering from behind the building, I saw nothing. With no time to run away, he had to be hiding. I had told the dispatcher that he was presumed armed and dangerous. In case he was hiding between parked cars, I kept my back to the warehouses that faced the parking area, moving slowly along the walls.
The first blow from the two-by-four shot up my arm like an electric current, knocking my revolver to the ground. The second one to the side of my head put me down for the count, scrambling my brains for a few seconds. When my mind cleared, Paul had my gun.
“I guess history does repeat itself, huh pig? We shoot nosey cops in my family.”
“You won’t get off as easily as your great-grandfather.”
He smiled, but his eyes said he was surprised that I knew the story.
My backup piece was in my ankle holster, but I needed a diversion to reach it.
“Well, cop, I’ll see you in hell . . .”
As he leveled the gun at my head, a wino stumbled from the doorway behind him.
“Hey, bro! Got some change?”
When Paul looked over his shoulder, I grabbed my backup, rolled over once, raised the weapon, and cranked off three quick shots. The first round caught him in the shoulder, spinning him around to face me. The second shattered the third button on his shirt. The last shot entered under his chin and exited the back of his head.
The blood-spattered drunk attempted to process the scene through a wine-induced fog.
“Holy shit, man! Don’t shoot!” He lurched backward through the doorway as four squad cars pulled up.
A shooting review board cleared me. Two months later, I went by the building where Alma had gone into the underground. The stairwell was covered over with concrete. I looked where the hole had been and whispered, “Thanks, Chief.”
Pulling my coat around me to ward off the bitter December wind, I concluded that Meredith had avenged his death, but I’d keep that theory to myself.
The wet pavement doubled the brilliance of the Christmas lights in Pioneer Square. Now that the last of the Considines were dead, maybe Meredith could rest in peace.
In a dingy Capital Hill apartment, Joanne Haspeller wiped the tears from her eyes. There was no time to mourn Paul’s death; she had his child to take care of.
The End