Until Proven Guilty jpb-1

by J. A. Jance

“You’re more than welcome.” Reluctantly I pulled myself away. There was no mistaking that what had passed between us had been good for both of us. “You’re a very special lady,” I said as I straightened up to leave.

  Euphoria lasted for a little over three minutes. I rode down the elevator in my building, walked the half block to the Warwick, and rode that elevator up to the seventh floor. I knocked on Carstogi’s door to no avail. When he didn’t answer the third barrage of hammering, I went looking for a night clerk, who used his passkey to let me into the room. Carstogi wasn’t there. The bedspread was rumpled, as though someone had lain on top of it to watch TV for a while, but the bed had not been slept in.

  I left the room as I found it and returned to the hall, where the night clerk hovered nervously, wringing his hands. He was anxious about adverse publicity. I assured him that whatever had happened was no reflection on the Warwick. Asking him to keep me informed of any developments, I went downstairs to wait for Peters. I had the sickening feeling that we’d been suckered, that Carstogi had played us for a couple of fools. Peters’ Datsun screeched to a stop about the time I hit the plate glass door. He hadn’t taken time to go by the department for another car. I gave him a couple of points for that.

  “Carstogi’s not here,” I said, folding my legs into the cramped front seat. “We’d better go straight to Faith Tabernacle.”

  Two uniformed cops were standing guard when we got there, holding off a horde of media ambulance chasers, to say nothing of neighborhood curiosity seekers. We hadn’t discussed it during the drive to Ballard, but I knew that getting the recorder out of Faith Tabernacle undetected was imperative. Whatever was on it would be totally inadmissible as evidence, but it might provide vital information. Information that would lead us to the killer.

  We found Suzanne Barstogi near the pulpit at the front of the church. She lay on her left side with one leg half curled beneath her, as though she had been rising and turning toward her assailant when the bullet felled her. She was still wearing the same dowdy dress she had been wearing earlier in the day. It had been ripped from neck to waist. Her bra had been torn in two, exposing overripe breasts. In addition to the bullet hole that punctured her left breast, her upper torso was covered with bloody welts. Before she died, Suzanne Barstogi had been the victim of a brutal beating.

  There was little visible impact damage. The bullet had entered cleanly enough, but behind her, where the emerging slug had crashed out of her body, Suzanne Barstogi’s lifeblood was splattered and pooled on the pulpit and altar of the Faith Tabernacle.

  Peters looked at her for a long time. “He didn’t nickel-dime-around, did he?”

  No one was in the church with us right then, but they would be soon. Peters quickly retrieved the recorder and put it in his pocket. We found Pastor Michael Brodie in the middle of his study. He was sprawled facedown and naked on the blood-soaked carpet. Peters and I theorized that he had heard noises in the church and come to investigate. Again there was only one bullet hole.

  Shooting at such close range doesn’t require a tremendous amount of marksmanship, but you’ve got to be tough. Tough and ruthless. A hand shaking out of control can cause a missed target at even the shortest distance. Then there’s always the chance that the victim will make a desperate lunge for the gun and turn it on his attacker. And then there’s the mess.

  “I would have bet even money that Carstogi wouldn’t pull something like this,” I said.

  “I hate to be the one to break this to you, Beau, but you did bet money. We both did. Our asses are on the line on this one. Your friend Max will see to it. You just hide and watch.”

  There’s an almost religious ceremony in approaching a crime scene. First is the establishment of the scene parameters. In this case, to be on the safe side, we included the entire church. Then come the evidence technicians with their cameras and measurements. They ascertain distances, angles, trajectories. They look for trace evidence that may be helpful later. The secret, of course, is approaching the scene with a slow deliberation that disturbs nothing. This is one place where peons take precedence over rank. Sergeant Watkins paced in the background, observing the technicians’ careful, unhurried efforts.

  The medical examiner himself, the white-haired Dr. Baker, arrived before the technicians were finished. He made the official pronouncement of death. A double homicide was worthy of his visible, personal touch. Considering the accumulation of people, I was grateful Peters had gotten the chance to stash the recorder when he did.

  A uniformed officer told Watkins that the church members were gathering outside and wanted to come in. What should he tell them? The sergeant directed him to assemble them in the fellowship hall, where we could once more begin the interviewing process.

  I was a little puzzled when I saw the whole Faith Tabernacle group, as much as I remembered them, file into the room. After all, it was Tuesday morning and presumably some of them should have gone to work. It turned out that they had been scheduled to be there at five o’clock for a celebration breakfast. It was the traditional ending to a successful Purification Ceremony, and would have marked the end of Suzanne Barstogi’s ordeal of silence, fasting, and prayer.

  Without Brodie’s looming presence in the background to enforce silence, it was easier to get people to talk. It was plain that they were shocked by what had happened, and talking seemed to help. They were getting better at it.

  The cook, a True Believer named Sarah Morris, had come to church at four to start preparing breakfast, which was due after a prayer session at five. Before early-morning services, she had been in the habit of taking a cup of coffee to Brodie in his study. It was when she took him his coffee that she had found first his body and then Suzanne’s.

  We were about finished with Sarah when the front-door cop came hurrying into the room. “You’d better come quick. Powell said to call him on a telephone, not the radio, and to make it snappy.”

  The only phone available at the church was in the study. If Powell didn’t want us to use the radio for privacy reasons, the study was no better. We got in Peters’ car and drove to the first available pay phone.

  “What’s up?” I asked as soon as Powell came on the line.

  “The night clerk from the Warwick, that’s what. He says Carstogi came back and tried to go to his room. He’s got him down in the restaurant eating breakfast and wonders what he should do.”

  “Get a couple of uniformed officers over there to keep him there for as long as it takes us to drive from Ballard.”

  “They’re on their way, but why do I have this sneaking suspicion that you’ve screwed up, Beaumont?”

  “Experience,” I told him, and slammed the phone receiver down in his ear. I turned back to the car to see Maxwell Cole’s rust-colored Volvo idling behind Peters’ Datsun. “Shit.”

  I climbed into the car. “Sorry,” Peters said. “He must have tailed us when we left the church. I didn’t see him.”

  “It’s too late now. Drive like hell to the Warwick. Carstogi’s in the restaurant having breakfast.”

  Peters’ jaw dropped in surprise. “No shit! Why would he go back there?”

  “Beats me, but he did, and we’d better nab him before he gets away. Thank God the night clerk had brains enough to call and let us know.” I glanced at Peters, who was looking in the rearview mirror. “Max still on our butt?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll just have to lump it. We don’t have time to try to throw him off the trail. I don’t want Carstogi to slip through our fingers.”

  “The gun has a way of equalizing things, doesn’t it? Yesterday Carstogi was no match for Brodie when they were dealing with fists.”

  “You’ve already decided he’s our man?”

  “Haven’t you?” Peters asked.

  “No, I haven’t. I like to think I’m a better judge of character than that. Carstogi wanted to kill Brodie, but he would have taken Suzanne back in a minute. You heard him yesterday.”


  “Well, who did it then?” Peters asked. It was a good question. We didn’t have an answer by the time we stopped in front of the Warwick. Two patrol cars with flashing lights were outside the hotel, one parked in front of the garage on Fourth and the other at the front door on Lenora. We stopped by the front door.

  The clerk met us at the car, the story bubbling out before Peters turned off the engine. “He came up to the desk, said he needed a wake-up call at ten. I didn’t want him to go up to his room, so I told him we had a problem with the plumbing and that we’d buy his breakfast in the restaurant while we cleaned up the mess. I didn’t know what else to do. I called right away, because you said it was important.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That was good thinking.”

  “Where is he now?” Peters asked.

  The Volvo stopped across the street. I went back to an officer who was standing near the front door. “Don’t let that yahoo in here,” I said, pointing at Cole, who was just climbing out of the car.

  The dining room at the Warwick is small and intimate. At that hour of the morning it was just filling up with tables of visiting businessmen and conventioneers. Andrew Carstogi had been placed at a small corner table. The hostess watched him nervously from her desk. Peters pulled his gun and put it in his jacket pocket. We approached the table warily.

  Carstogi looked up and saw us coming toward him. He grinned and waved at us with an empty fork. “Hi, guys,” he said.

  “Where have you been?” Peters asked.

  Carstogi’s grin faded. “Out. Just got back. They told me there’s a problem with the room and they’re buying me breakfast while they fix it. Good deal.”

  “Out to where?” Peters continued.

  “What is this?” Carstogi asked. “I went to a movie, and I met a girl. There’s nothing the matter with that.”

  “What’s her name?” I put in. “Where did you take her?”

  “We went to her place. Jesus, how am I supposed to know where it is? What’s going on? Why all the questions?”

  “How did you get back here?”

  “I caught a cab.”

  “Which one?”

  Carstogi stood up. “Okay, I’m not saying another word until you tell me what’s going on.”

  People around us were staring. We were creating a disturbance. “Sit,” Peters hissed. We sat.

  “We have two brand-new murders,” Peters said. “Two homicides at Faith Tabernacle.”

  The color drained from Andrew Carstogi’s face. “Not Suzanne,” he whispered.

  I nodded. “Suzanne and Brodie both. Sometime during the night. Now tell us, how’d you get back here from wherever you were.”

  Carstogi opened his mouth to say something and then shut it. Two gigantic tears rolled down his face. He brushed them away with his sleeve. “I caught a cab,” he said.

  “What kind? Yellow? Graytop?”

  “I don’t know. Just a cab. It picked me up at her house. I think it was the same cab as last night, but I’m not sure.” He looked back and forth from one of us to the other. “It’s not true, is it? Tell me it’s not true.”

  “It’s true,” I said.

  “Do you mind if we go through your room?” Peters asked.

  Carstogi shook his head mutely. Peters signaled to an officer who had stationed himself next to the hostess’s desk. “Have the desk clerk let you into his room to check it out,” he instructed. “Let me know if you find anything.” The officer hurried away. Carstogi’s shoulders heaved with noisy sobs. Peters and I watched, saying nothing. Eventually, he regained control.

  “Am I under arrest?” he asked.

  “No, but as of now I’m afraid you’re the sole suspect.”

  “But I never went near the church after we left there yesterday. I wouldn’t know how to get there.”

  The officer returned to say that the room was clean. Carstogi looked from one of us to the other. “What’s going to happen?” he asked.

  I pushed back my chair. “Let’s go up to your room and get a statement from you. Do you want an attorney present?”

  “I don’t need one,” he said. “I didn’t do it.”

  I believed him. I just wished that things were always that simple. We led him upstairs and took his statement. Carstogi answered all our questions willingly enough. According to him he had gone to a porno house and had been picked up by a prostitute after the movie.

  I don’t think Carstogi really grasped that the only thing between him and a first-degree murder charge was a prostitute whose name was Gloria, most assuredly not the name her mommy gave her. He couldn’t remember her address, and the description he gave us would have fit half the females in the U.S. Average height, kind of light brown hair, lightish eyes, slim. Carstogi’s life was hanging by a slender thread.

  We turned off the recorder and stood up to leave. “Are you arresting me?” he asked.

  “No, not now, but don’t leave here. Stay in the room and don’t talk to anyone.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I just can’t believe she’s dead.”

  “Believe it,” Peters said.

  We left the room. “We should book him, Beau,” Peters said to me in the hall. “Motive, opportunity. It all adds up. What if he splits?”

  “Come on, Peters. We don’t have a shred of solid evidence. Nothing more than the fact that he doesn’t have an alibi for last night. The girl was probably some hooker off Aurora. You know how easy finding her will be.”

  “But you intend to look?” Peters regarded me wearily, shaking his head.

  “That’s right,” I answered. We rode down in the elevator without saying anything more.

  Maxwell Cole was in the lobby, arguing with the officer stationed at the registration desk, his walruslike face twitching with exasperation. “What’s going on, J. P.? This asshole wouldn’t spring with any information.”

  “Good,” I said. “Neither will I. Pass the word.”

  Peters directed one of the uniformed officers to keep an eye on the seventh floor. He nodded and waved.

  Cole blustered out of the lobby after us. “I want to know what’s going on. Two innocent people have been slaughtered in cold blood. You owe the people of Seattle an explanation.”

  I turned on him. “I owe the people of Seattle a full day’s work for a full day’s pay. I don’t owe you a fucking thing.” The other cop heard this exchange with a poorly concealed grin. “If he gives you any trouble, lock him up,” I said as I stalked away.

  Peters moved his car to a parking meter and plugged it. We had decided to go up to my apartment and see what kind of fish our hidden recorder might have hooked.

  Chapter 13

  It was only as we rounded the corner of Lenora onto Third that I remembered Anne was in my apartment. My mind had switched tracks completely, and now I didn’t know what to do. I decided I’d better call her from the lobby and give her some warning of her impending company.

  She seemed pleased to hear my voice. “I’m downstairs,” I said. “I’m bringing Peters up with me.”

  “Who was that?” Peters asked with a conspiratorial grin as we got on the elevator. “Anybody I know?”

  “As a matter of fact, you do know her. It’s Anne, Anne Corley.”

  “Why you closemouthed son-of-a-bitch! I got the impression at lunch yesterday that you and she had just met. How long have you been holding out on me?”

  The elevator door opened on eight. “Can it!” I snapped as Wanda Jamison got on, coffee cup in hand. She was on her way for a morning coffee klatch with Ida, my next-door neighbor. Wanda and I exchanged idle pleasantries while Peters continued to leer at me over her head.

  If I thought Anne would have used the lead time to change out of my robe, I was sadly mistaken. She didn’t. I was glad I waited until Ida’s door was safely closed before I knocked on my own. Anne opened the door and gave Peters a gracious welcome, as though her being there in a state of relative undress were the most natural thing in the world. She was totally at ease
, and Peters was getting a real charge out of my discomfort.

  Peters made himself some tea while I paced the confines of my tiny kitchen. “What do you suggest we do with her while we listen to the tape?” he asked.

  “I give up.” I was long on embarrassment and short on ideas right then. I had told Anne she could stay as long as she liked, but I couldn’t have her in the room while Peters and I listened to our illicit tape.

  Peters carried his cup into the living room. He took my chair. I sat on the couch next to a cross-legged Anne. It disturbed me to be next to her. I wanted to touch her, but not in front of Peters. I didn’t want to soften my image — whatever was left of it.

  Peters looked at Anne. “Do you mind if we play a tape?”

  Anne contemplated Peters with her direct, gray gaze. “Do you want me to leave? I can go in the other room.”

  Peters glanced in my direction, then nodded. “I’d appreciate it.”

  Obligingly, Anne rose. “I’ll go get dressed then,” she said. Much to my dismay, she leaned over and gave me a familiar peck on the cheek as she went by. The robe fell open, allowing me a fleeting glimpse of flesh and curve.

  Once she was out of the room, Peters pointed an accusing finger at me. “You assole,” he said. “If you’d told me yesterday, I never would have tagged along with you to lunch.”

  I didn’t feel like explaining that, yesterday at lunch, I hadn’t known either. “Play the tape, Peters,” I said wearily. “Just play the tape.”

  He did.

  At first there were indistinguishable noises, openings and closings of doors that weren’t followed by sufficient noise to keep the recorder running. Eventually, however, there was a murmur of voices punctuated by coughs and clearings of throats, the sounds of a fitful crowd settling itself. Then Pastor Michael Brodie’s voice, stentorian and clear, filled my tiny living room.

  “Brethren, we come together this evening as Believers in the one True Faith, as Partakers of the one True Life. We are the chosen generation, a royal priesthood. Are there any here who doubt that we are the People of God?” There was a pause with no answer. Brodie’s voice was that of a born orator sounding a call to arms.