Until Proven Guilty

Chapter 17

When I woke up, Anne’s fingers were tracing a pattern through the hair on my chest. It was morning, and rare Seattle sun streamed in the bedroom window, glinting off the auburn flecks in her dark hair. She was sitting on the bed, fully dressed and smiling.

“It’s about time you woke up. Coffee’s almost done.”

I pulled her to me. “Did I dream it?” I asked, burying my face in a mass of fragrant hair.

“Dream what?” she countered.

“That you asked me to marry you.”

“And that you accepted. No, you didn’t dream it.” She pushed me away. “And now you’d better get up because we’re about to have company.”

“Company?” I protested, glancing at the clock. “It’s only a quarter to seven.”

“I told him to be here at seven so we could go to breakfast.”

“Told who?”

“Ralph Ames, my attorney. You talked to him on the phone, remember?”

She went to the kitchen, and I ducked into the bathroom, ashamed that she knew I’d been checking on her.

I was shaving when Anne tapped on the bathroom door and brought me a steaming mug of strong coffee. She set it on the counter, then perched on the closed toilet seat to visit in the custom of long married couples. She watched me scrape the stubborn stubble from my chin. “No second thoughts?” I asked, peering at her reflection in the mirror.

She shook her head. “None,” she replied. “How about you?”

“I’m not scared if you’re not.”

A pensive smile touched the corners of her mouth. “I was just like your mother, you know.”

I paused, holding the razor next to my jaw. “What do you mean?”

“I thought once was enough.”

The phone rang just then. She hurried to answer it, and I heard her direct Ralph Ames into the building. She came back to the bathroom as I was drying my face. She put her arms around my waist, resting her cheek on the back of my shoulder. “I love you, J. P. Beaumont,” she said.

Turning to face her, I took her chin in my hands and kissed her. “I love you, too.” It was the first time since Karen that I had uttered those words or experienced the feelings that go with them. It amazed me that they came out so easily and felt so right. I kissed her again. A thrill of desire caught me as her lips clung to mine. There was a knock on the door, and she pushed me away.

“Hurry,” she said.

When I walked into the living room a few minutes later, a man with a trench coat draped over one arm stood with his back to the room, gazing out at the city. I felt a twinge of jealousy when he turned. He was younger than I by a good ten years, well built, handsome in a dapper sort of way. He was wearing a natty three-piece pinstripe. He extended his hand, and his grip was unexpectedly firm.

“Beau,” Anne said, “I’d like you to meet Ralph Ames, my attorney.”

I managed a polite enough greeting. “Care for some coffee?” I asked.

Ralph’s eyes swung from Anne back to me. “Do we have time? You said we’d grab some breakfast on our way to the courthouse. Then I have a plane to catch.”

Seeing my look of consternation, Ames glanced quickly at Anne, who smiled brightly. “We have time.”

“But you did say we’re going to get the marriage license this morning, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “Ralph has agreed to be our witness down at the courthouse.”

That brought me up short. When had Ralph Ames been scheduled to serve as a witness? Before Anne had popped the question? Before I had accepted? Or had she called him that morning while I was still asleep?

“Great,” I said, trying to sound casual.

Anne handed Ames a cup of coffee and motioned him into my leather recliner. “We’ve got time,” she said, returning to the kitchen for two more cups. I settled grudgingly on the couch, determined to be civil. My first halting attempt at conversation wasn’t much help.

“What brings you up here, Ralph?” I asked.

His eyes flicked from me to Anne, who curled up on the couch beside me. She shook her head slightly in his direction, and Ames turned back to me. “Anne had some legal matters she wanted me to straighten out for her before the weekend. When she calls, I drop everything and go. I got here yesterday afternoon.”

“It must be nice.” A trace of sarcasm leaked into my voice. It offended me that Ralph Ames and Anne Corley shared secrets to which J. P. Beaumont was not privy. Theirs was obviously a long-standing relationship, although I could detect nothing overt to indicate it was anything other than one between a client and a trusted attorney. Trusted retainer, actually. Ames asked a series of pointed, proprietary questions that gave me the distinct impression he was doing a quick background check to see if I measured up.

When it was time to go to breakfast, I led them to the Doghouse. That was pure cussedness on my part. I wanted to drag Ralph Ames someplace where his pinstripe suit would be just a tad out of place. Ames, however, continued to be absolutely amiable. Good-naturedly, he wolfed down the Doghouse’s plain breakfast fare.

Throughout the meal, I couldn’t shake the sense that I was being examined by some sort of future in-law. It irked me to realize that Ralph Ames knew far more about Anne Corley than I did — that she liked her bacon crisp, for example, or that she preferred hotcakes to toast. J. P. Beaumont was very much the outsider, but I decided I could afford to play catch-up ball.

After breakfast we caught a cab down to the courthouse. I guess I should have been nervous or had some sense of being railroaded, but I didn’t. Anne’s hand found mine and squeezed it. The radiant happiness on her face was directed at me alone, and it made my heart swell with pride.

We were first in line when the licensing bureau doors opened. I had no idea King County wouldn’t take a check for the twenty-six-dollar marriage license fee. Luckily, Ralph had enough cash on him, and he came up with the money. That, combined with his picking up the check for breakfast, made me more than a little testy. As far as I was concerned, he was being far too accommodating.

Ames took a cab to the airport from the courthouse. “Will you be here for the wedding?” Anne asked, as he climbed into the cab.

“That depends on how much work I get done tomorrow,” he replied.

Once again the little snippet of private conversation between them made me feel like an interloper. When the cab pulled away, Anne turned back to me. “What are you frowning about?”

“Who, me?” I asked stupidly.

“Yes, you. Who else would I mean?”

“How long have you known him?”

“A long time,” she answered. “You’re not jealous of him, are you?”

“Maybe a little.”

She laughed aloud. “Don’t be silly. Ralph is the last person you should be jealous of. He’s a good friend, that’s all. I wanted him to meet you.”

“To check me out? Did I pass inspection?” Even I could hear the annoyance in my voice.

“You wouldn’t have a marriage license in your pocket if you hadn’t passed. What’s the matter with you?”

I shrugged, unwilling to invite further teasing about my jealousy, but making a mental note to remember crisp bacon and pancakes. Anne walked me as far as the department, then struck off on her own up Third Avenue, while I headed for my desk on the fifth floor. There was a note on my desk saying that Peters was in the interview room with Andrew Carstogi, that I should follow suit.

I guess his fellow inmates convinced Carstogi of the error of his ways and had him run up the flag to the public defender’s office. By the time I got into the interview room on the fifth floor, Peters and Watkins were there along with a tough-looking female defense attorney. She nodded or shook her head whenever we asked Carstogi a question. Usually I look at this process as a game where we try to get at the truth and the lawyers try to hide it.

Sitting in jail overnight, Carstogi had come up with one additional detail that he had forgotten before. He said he thought the cab company had something to do with the Civil War. After we sent Carstogi back to his cell, we returned to our desks, and I hauled out the yellow pages.

“What’s with you today?” Peters asked, thumping into his own chair. “You were late.”

I decided to put all my cards on the table at once and get it over with. There’s something to be said for shock value. I tossed him the envelope with the marriage license in it. He removed the license, read it, then looked at me incredulously. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

“Why?”

“Beau, for Chrissakes, what do you know about her? You only met last Sunday.”

“She wants me; I want her. What’s to know?”

“This is crazy.”

“We’re getting married Sunday.”

“In one week? What’s the big hurry? Is she pregnant or something?”

“Look, if you want to come, you’re invited. Otherwise, lay off.”

Peters was still shaking his head when I turned back to the yellow pages. Halfway through the taxi listings, I found it — the General Grant Cab Company.

We checked out a car from the motor pool and went looking. We found the faded blue cab in a lineup waiting for passengers at Sea-Tac Airport. The driver was chewing a wad of gum when we showed him our badges. His hair looked like he still used Brylcreem. He rolled down the window. “What’s up?” he asked.

He didn’t want to lose his place in line, so we sat in the cab to ask him our questions. He knew nothing about some hooker named Gloria. He’d never seen Carstogi. We showed him Carstogi’s mug shot. Well, maybe he had seen someone like him, but he couldn’t remember where or when. We made a note to check out his trip sheets later, but I had an idea that if the driver had been the one who gave Carstogi a ride, it was as a sideline the cab company knew nothing about.

Carstogi’s flimsy alibi had just gotten a whole lot flimsier. Peters and I headed back into town. “Where do you want to go? The office?” Peters asked.

“No. Let’s go back to my place. I want to listen to that tape.”

“Why? Because you still don’t think Carstogi did it?”

“Why do you think he did?” I answered Peters’ question with a question of my own.

Peters looked thoughtful. “Maybe because I think I would have in his place,” he said solemnly. From his tone of voice, it was readily apparent that he wasn’t making a joke.

“So you’re layering in your own motivations and convicting him? He’s innocent until proven guilty, you asshole. That’s the way the law works, remember?”

“Who did it, then?” Peters asked. “If Carstogi didn’t, who did? The tape shows that whoever the guy was, he’d been around the True Believers long enough to know the rules.”

“The guy we heard on the tape knew the ropes, but we don’t know for sure he was the one who killed them.” We drove silently for a time while I retraced the conversation.

“Maybe we need to go back to Angela Barstogi,” I mused aloud. “What I just said about Carstogi is true about Brodie and Suzanne as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“We never convicted them, either. Just because they’re dead doesn’t automatically make them guilty. We never proved anything other than the fact that they had some pretty weird ideas.”

Peters clicked his tongue thoughtfully. “I see where you’re going. You think the same person may have killed all three of them.”

“Having Carstogi here makes it too simple, too easy.”

“Maybe so,” Peters agreed.

We hurried to my place. I wondered if Anne would be there, but she wasn’t. Peters dragged the recorder out of the drawer and turned it on. Personal considerations were forgotten in the charged tension between us. We were ready to listen to the tape from a different point of view.

It was the third time through when it hit me. “Stop,” I said. “Run it back just a few turns.”

Peters did. For a few moments we heard Suzanne Barstogi’s voice raised in solitary prayer, then her abrupt “What do you want?”

“That’s it! It can’t be Carstogi. She spoke to him.”

Peters looked at me, puzzled.

“Remember Monday?” I asked. “She didn’t speak to Carstogi, not since he was Disavowed. I don’t think she would have broken that rule even if he was holding a gun to her head. She’d be a lot more likely to speak to Benjamin.”

“I’ll be damned. You could be right, Beau. We’d better take this thing downtown and show it to Watty.”

“He’s not going to like it. Illegal listening devices are frowned on by the brass.”

“We’d better tell him just the same.”

A key turned in the lock. Anne Corley hurried into the apartment just as we were getting up to leave. Peters guiltily shoved the recorder into his pocket like a kid caught stealing candy.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I left my watch in the bedroom. I forgot to put it on this morning.”

She went into the bedroom and came out fastening the watch. “What about lunch later?” she asked. “We’ve got lots to talk over.”

“We’re on our way back to the department right now. Maybe about one-thirty or two.”

“Great,” she said enthusiastically. “I’ll stop by about then.”

Anne walked out the lobby door with us. The red Porsche was parked on the street. “Do you need a ride?” she asked, opening the door.

I waved her away. “No thanks.”

Peters whistled as the Porsche rounded the corner onto Blanchard. “That’s her car?”

“Nice, isn’t it.”

“Beau, who the hell is she?” I gave him a warning look, just one, and he let it drop.

We took the recording to Sergeant Watkins. As predicted, he was not pleased. He listened to the tape in stolid silence and heard our analysis without comment. “Play it again,” he ordered. We went over Monday’s confrontation in great detail and heard the tape yet again.

“Taking everything into consideration, you might be right,” he allowed reluctantly. “But you’re drawing conclusions. None of this has any basis as evidence. It’s a damn shame this state can’t even spring for voiceprint equipment. So what are you going to do now?”

“Go looking for someone else.”

“So look,” he said. “Nobody’s stopping you. We’ve got Carstogi locked up until Monday afternoon with what we’ve got so far. What have you got to lose?”

Peters and I went back to the drawing board. We went over the previous Thursday in minute detail, listening to the initial recorded report of Angela’s disappearance, as well as the statements taken later. We learned nothing new.

We tried Sophie’s house. We wanted to know if she had seen a van, the one Jeremiah had told us about. Nobody was home but Henry Aldrich, the cat, and he wasn’t talking.

At one-twenty Anne showed up for lunch. We invited Peters, but he claimed to be busy. We left him at his desk and ate in a little Mexican dive at the foot of Cherry. Anne was brimming over with infectious happiness. She had found a minister to marry us and had made arrangements for the ceremony to be held at six a.m. in Myrtle Edwards Park.

“Why there?” I asked. “And why so early?”

She shrugged. “I like it there,” she replied, “especially in the morning when it’s quiet.”

Anne walked me back to the Public Safety Building and kissed me good-bye on the sidewalk, much to the enjoyment of a group of street people gathered around the hot bagel stand outside the front door. “I’ll see you when you get off work,” she said. “I’ll be at your place.”

I went up to the fifth floor to find Peters pacing impatiently beside my desk. “Come on,” he snapped. “We just hit the jackpot. A grit-truck driver from the Westside Treatment Center saw a black van parked near where Angela was found. He saw it about nine-thirty the morning she died.”

“No shit!” We were already on our way to the elevator. “So where has he been all this time?”

“He just got back in town from a fishing trip. He hadn’t seen anything about the murder on the news, but someone was talking about it when he went out to pick up a load this afternoon. He called about ten minutes after you left for lunch.”

As usual, we had to wait for an elevator, and as usual too, it would have been faster to take the stairs.

Dick Aubrey, the grit-truck driver, turned out to be a wiry, tough little man with a fiery temper and an ever-present cigarette. He had been fishing in Idaho since the previous Friday afternoon.

“I came down the hill around nine-thirty or so, and here’s this big black van parked almost in the middle of the friggin‘ road. I blew my horn at him a couple of times to get his attention.”

“Him?” Peters asked. “You could tell it was a him?”

“Oh, sure. He was just starting to climb out of the van. I almost took the door off.”

“What did he look like?”

“Big. Straight yellow hair, long. Overweight.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“Sure. I got a pretty good look at his face. He was an ugly son-of-a-bitch.”

I brought out some glossies of both Pastor Brodie and Brother Benjamin, taken at the funeral. We had purchased them from the P.I. We also showed him Carstogi’s mug shots. “Any of these?” I asked.

Aubrey stroked his chin. “Naw. None of these guys. I’m sure of that. This guy was built like a tank. About six-five. Neck like a bull.”

“What happened next?” Peters urged.

“Well, I went down to get loaded. You haul two things out of sewage plants, sludge and grit. I do grit. I figured if he was still there when I got ready to leave, I’d call and have him towed away, but by then he was gone. It’s a pain in the ass having cars parked on that road. It’s too narrow.”

We picked Dick Aubrey’s brain. He came down to the Public Safety Building and did a composite sketch. With the Identikit sketch in hand, Peters and I went over the names of everyone we had questioned in connection with the case. We were able to put names and faces with every person but one. Angela Barstogi’s Uncle Charlie had to be the wild card in the deck.

We took the sketch and went to see Sophie. This time she was home. We walked up to her front door and could hear the television set blaring through the wood. Peters knocked, twice.

“Oh,” she said, “are you coming to arrest me?”

Peters laughed. “No, we’re here for some help.”

We went inside. The cat, inside now, was already on the couch. He took a dim view of sharing it with company.

Peters brought out the sketch Aubrey had made and handed it to Sophie. She held it close to her face, examining it first with the pointed glasses in place and then with them lowered so she could peer over them. She handed it back to Peters.

“Maybe,” she said.

“What about a van? Do you remember seeing one of those in the neighborhood?”

She furrowed her brow. “I do, now that you mention it, a black one, but not the last few days. I thought it was part of the group. I saw it a few times, usually in the morning.”

“Will you call us if you see it again?” I asked. “Try to get the license number and call us right away.”

“I most certainly will, young man,” she said. I got the distinct impression Sophie Czirski still didn’t approve of me.

We escaped without having tea. We went back to the department and reported to Watkins. We felt like we were making progress. We sent for motor vehicle reports on a list of known sexual offenders in the state of Washington. It’s the grunt work, routine things, an expired vehicle license or an unpaid traffic ticket, that often break a case. We left the computer folks to pull together the information we needed.

“Ready to call it a day?” I asked Peters.

“How about stopping by for a drink on the way home. I’ll buy.”

I glanced surreptitiously at the clock, trying to remember exactly when I had told Anne I’d be home.

“Come on,” Peters insisted. “You’re not married yet.”

I took the bait. “All right,” I agreed. “I guess I can stop off for a while.”