In normally placid Spokane, which some here call "the world's biggest small town" and where a road sign proclaims there have been zero traffic fatalities this year, the shocking questions about the mayor and the local newspaper just keep coming.
Is Mayor Jim West a pedophile, as two men alleged to the paper last week? Did he offer young men jobs and perks in a bid to have sex with them? Is he a hypocrite, announcing he is homosexual after a 25-year public career -including a stint as the state Senate majority leader - in which he opposed gay rights? Should he resign? Or be recalled?
And was the Spokane Spokesman-Review justified in lying in a bid to get at the truth? The paper hired a forensic computer expert to pose as a 17-year-old boy who conducted an online relationship with the mayor. West has admitted to using screen aliases such as "RightBi-Guy" and "Cobra82nd," an apparent reference to his service as a paratrooper in the Army's 82nd Airborne division.
Sordid details emerge every day in what newspaper headlines as an ongoing "investigative report" on the Republican mayor's alleged misuse of office. Did he once tell a councilwoman that he had masturbated in his City Hall office? Did he offer a young man, whom he later appointed to the city's human rights commission, $300 to go swimming naked with him?
The scandal has left residents in this city of 200,000 using words like "disgusted,""embarrassed" and "creeped out." It has created "a civic freak show," as columnist Doug Clark wrote in the Spokesman-Review on Tuesday. The mayor's troubles even got a mention on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Many here want the 54-year-old mayor, once touted as a potential candidate for governor or U.S. senator, gone - and not just from office.
"He should get on his horse and ride far, far away into the sunset," said John Kallas, 53, who once served with West as a sheriff's deputy and now is the fishing department manager at the White Elephant, a local sporting-goods store. "His gig is up."
West informed the city council on Monday that he was taking a leave of absence, expressing his "hope that you and the people will reserve judgment on me until the newspaper is done persecuting me and allow me to have the fair opportunity to respond to each of the allegations in due time."
The FBI, meanwhile, said Wednesday that it had opened a preliminary inquiry into a possible public corruption case involving West. A variety of civic leaders, including two former mayors, have called on him to resign.
Certainly, some here are willing to reserve judgment on the most serious allegations - made by two men who are currently in jail, one for burglary and the other for drug use - that West molested them in the 1970s and early '80s, when he was in law enforcement and also serving as a Boy Scout leader. The mayor has denied their accusations.
But there is a widespread sense that West is a hypocrite. Until last week, he was a closeted gay man who once sponsored legislation to bar gays and lesbians from teaching in the public schools. He also voted to prohibit the state from distributing pamphlets telling people how to protect themselves against AIDS during sexual activity, denouncing the information as "something people go buy at dirty bookstores."
Joan Overfield, a Spokane native and author of 26 romance novels, said she was appalled that the mayor contended he was now being "destroyed because I am a gay man," as he told the Spokesman-Review editor in a phone call he placed at 6:37 a.m. Sunday.
Overfield said West bid's for gay martyrdom was absurd. "It's like a member of the Ku Klux Klan saying: 'Ooh, I'm a victim of discrimination because I'm wearing a white sheet,'"she said, shaking her head.
