Until Proven Guilty jpb-1

by J. A. Jance

  “I think doing bodily harm to Pastor Michael Brodie is a wonderful idea. What say we miss the plane?”

  “Orders are orders,” Peters replied.

  We rode the automated underground people mover to the United Airlines terminal. We didn’t have to wonder who Andrew Carstogi was. An angry young man stumbled through the gate, shedding flight attendants like a wet dog shakes off excess water. He was drunk and spoiling for a fight. I’m sure Carstogi didn’t enjoy walking into the welcoming arms of two waiting homicide detectives. The feeling was mutual. It’s never fun to be put on the baby-sitting detail, especially when you’re dealing with a grieving parent.

  Peters and I fell into step on either side of Carstogi. Peters flashed his badge. I thought Carstogi was going to coldcock Peters on the spot.

  “What’re you guys after me for?” he demanded sluggishly. “My kid is dead. I just got to town.”

  I thought I’d deflect a little of the anger, calm the troubled waters. “Take it easy. We’re here to help.”

  “You can help me, all right. Just tell me where that asshole Brodie is, that’s what you can do.” He turned to me with a swaying leer and shook a clenched fist under my nose. “You know where he is? I’ll take care of that son-of-a-bitch myself.”

  Carstogi allowed himself to be guided onto the subway. The security guard eyed us suspiciously as we led him, ranting and raving, through the gate. He hadn’t brought any luggage. “Don‘ need any luggage,” he mumbled. “Only came to town to smash his fucking face.”

  Carstogi balked at the car. “Hey, where’re you takin‘ me? I got my rights. I wanna lawyer.”

  Peters was losing patience. “Shut up,” he said. “You’re not under arrest. We’re going to try to sober you up.”

  “Oh,” Carstogi replied.

  We went to the Doghouse. They have a sign in there that shows all roads leading to the Doghouse the same as signs all over the world tell the distance to that godforsaken end of nowhere called Wall Drug in South Dakota. Connie put us in a corner of the back dining room even though it was closed. She brought me coffee and Peters tea, then asked what Carstogi wanted. He wanted beer. He didn’t get it. Peters ordered him bacon and eggs and whole wheat toast served up with a full complement of questions. I thought it commendable that Peters put aside his own personal prejudices and ordered some decent food for Carstogi.

  It took a while for food and exhaustion to do their work. When we finally dug under the bluster and bullshit, what we found was a twenty-eight-year-old guy in a world of hurt, a man who lost his wife once and his child twice, all to the same man, he figured, Pastor Michael Brodie.

  The story came out slowly. First there had been a series of tent meetings to save souls, of miracles performed before wondering sinners who were prepared to follow the miracle worker to the ends of the earth. Except the miracle worker turned out to have feet of clay. He was into weird stuff like multiple wives and physical punishment for redemption of sins. Anyone who tried to stop him was liable to find himself smitten by the right hand of God. God’s right hand turned out to have a mean right hook.

  Andrew Carstogi had come to his senses one morning with the crap beaten out of him. It had made a big impression. He had crossed Brodie on the righteousness of physical punishment, on Brodie’s requirement that all wives belonged to God’s Chosen Prophet first and their husbands second. Brodie hadn’t quit until Carstogi was unconscious. If Carstogi had left it at that, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but Andrew Carstogi didn’t take kindly to being beaten up or losing his wife. He called in the cops and the press.

  Chicago is a pretty tolerant place, but once the charges had been made, even though Carstogi had been unable to substantiate them, Faith Tabernacle was held up to ridicule. Experience tells me that the Pastor Michael Brodies of the world can handle almost anything but ridicule.

  Carstogi was Disavowed. It’s worse than it sounds. In the world of Faith Tabernacle, he ceased to exist. Not only was he no longer a member, he was no longer a husband or father either. He tried to get a court order for custody of Angela. Unfortunately, Suzanne was neither a prostitute nor a drug addict. Later, when Brodie made a killing in a real estate deal on some property the church owned, the whole congregation folded their tents and stole away in the middle of the night. Once they left Chicago the group had as good as fallen off the edge of the earth until a cousin of Carstogi’s, a guy in the navy in Bremerton, put two and two together and came up with the connection.

  Carstogi finished his story and looked from Peters to me as if we should understand. I still felt there were big chunks missing. “Why do you say he killed her?” I asked.

  “He almost killed me,” he replied. He had sobered up enough that his words no longer slurred together.

  “That’s two men going at it. It’s a long way from killing a defenseless child.”

  “You been in the church?” he asked.

  “We’ve been there,” Peters replied.

  “But during a service?” Carstogi continued doggedly. “Have you been there during a service? If I just coulda gotten that judge to go to a service he woulda given me custody.”

  “Tell us about the service,” Peters suggested.

  “You probably won’t believe it. Nobody else does.”

  “Try us,” I offered.

  He looked at us doubtfully. The sobering process made him more reluctant to talk. “It’s like he owns them body and soul. Like it’s a contest to see how far they’ll jump if he tells them.”

  “For instance,” Peters said.

  “If he told them to eat dog shit they’d do it.” He said it quickly, with a ring of falsehood.

  “That’s not really what you’re talking about, is it?” Peters’ face was a mask that I had a hard time reading myself. Carstogi gave him an appraising look, then shook his head.

  Peters followed up on the opening he had made. “You’re afraid to tell us for fear you’ll end up being prosecuted too, aren’t you?”

  “It’s scary,” Carstogi admitted. “I didn’t realize until after I got out. You just do what he tells you, what everyone else is doing. It doesn’t seem so bad at the time. You don’t think that you’re hurting someone. The whole time Brodie is there telling you that suffering is the only way those sinners are going to heaven, that you are the chosen instrument of God.”

  “Shit.” Peters got up and left the table. He went into the bar and came back a few minutes later. A distinct odor of gin came with him. Maybe the juniper berries in gin had been promoted to health food status. Because I knew about Broken Springs, Oregon, and Peters’ own situation, I could feel for him, but to leave in the middle of an interrogation was inexcusable, to say nothing of drinking on duty.

  I made a mental note to climb his frame about it later. I don’t like personal considerations to get in the way of doing the job. If you’re a professional, that kind of thing doesn’t happen. Objectivity is the name of the game. While I was making that little set of mental notes, I should have remembered something they used to say in Sunday School about taking the beam out of your own eye before you start worrying about the mote in somebody else’s. But then, I was still very much the professional. J. P. Beaumont hadn’t reached his own breaking point yet. It was coming.

  Carstogi was exhausted. We put him up in the Warwick, which happens to be at Fourth and Lenora, a half block cornerwise from where I live. It made dropping him off and tucking him in a simple matter. He seemed more than happy for us to stick him in a hotel room and tell him we’d come get him in the morning.

  Peters came with me to my apartment. I got out my MacNaughton’s and located a dusty gin bottle with enough dregs for a reasonable drink or two. We tried to plan for morning, which by now was already upon us.

  “You think he’s telling the truth?” I asked Peters.

  He nodded. “Sounds like it to me, as far as it goes. He’s scared some of the shit is going to roll downhill and he’ll end up with charges lodged against him. I’m afr
aid he’ll rabbit on us before we can get him into court.”

  I had to agree with Peters’ assessment. If we went strictly with Carstogi, we would be leaning on a bent reed. “Do you suppose we can use him to bring Suzanne around?”

  Peters considered for a moment. “It would be worth a try, although I doubt it’ll work. Even considering what she’s been through, she won’t squeal on that Brodie bastard. That’s the mystifying part about brainwashing. She may know he’s a killer, but she’ll stick to him like glue.”

  “You could be right,” I allowed, “but we have the element of surprise on our side. She has no way of knowing that Andrew Carstogi is in town. Maybe if we brought him over and dumped him on her, it would jar her into slipping. After all, they were together almost ten years. She probably still has some feelings for him.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Peters agreed.

  We made arrangements to meet at the Warwick at eight. We’d take Carstogi with us to breakfast and then head for Gay Avenue. We’d try to get there before Suzanne had a backup group from Faith Tabernacle. Our best bet was to catch her alone.

  Peters left. In the quiet of my apartment, Anne Corley returned to tantalize me. I had managed to keep thoughts of her at a distance while Peters was there, while I was doing my job, but now her presence — or rather the lack of it — filled the place. Considering she had never set foot in my apartment, it seemed odd that it should feel empty without her. Considering I had never laid a glove on her, it was even odder that I should want her so much.

  I leaned back in the leather chair and closed my eyes. I must have dozed off. In a dream I opened my door, and she was standing in the hall. She was wearing a filmy red gown, one of those Frederick’s of Hollywood jobs with a split up the side. I reached out to draw her into the room. She came close enough to kiss me on the cheek, then slipped out of my grasp and disappeared around the corner of the hall. The hall became a maze. I followed her, turning one corner after another. Every once in a while I caught a fleeting glimpse of the red gown. She stayed elusively out of reach, but all the while I could hear her laughing.

  I woke up in a cold sweat. It was just after three. I stumbled off to bed telling myself that there’s no fool like an old fool — an old fool with delusions of adequacy.

  Chapter 9

  We were at 4543 Gay Avenue by nine-thirty the next morning. During breakfast we had attempted to explain to Carstogi the importance of bringing Suzanne around. He wasn’t wild about seeing her. He still wanted us to take him to Brodie, but sober, he wasn’t quite as anxious for a confrontation as he had been the night before.

  No one answered our knock, although the doorknob turned in my hand when I tried it. The house was empty. No dirty dishes filled the sink. The beds were made. Someone had gone to a good deal of trouble to clean the place up. We got back in the car and drove to Faith Tabernacle.

  Carstogi’s reluctance surfaced as we climbed the steps to go inside. Pastor Michael Brodie wielded some residual power that made the younger man, if not downright scared, at least more than a little wary. It’s the old talk-is-cheap routine.

  The church proper was open but empty. We found Suzanne in the Penitent’s Room, kneeling on the stand before the open Bible. Peters and I dropped back while Carstogi approached her.

  “Sue?” he asked tentatively. “I’m sorry about Angel. I just heard.”

  Suzanne didn’t so much as look up. There was no sign of recognition or acknowledgment. He stood over her, clenching and unclenching his fists in a combination of nervousness and frustration. A range of emotions played over his face — grief, anger, rejection. He knelt beside her and touched her arm. Her body tensed at the touch but still she didn’t look up. “Please, Sue,” he pleaded gently. “Come back with me. Let’s start over again, away from here, away from all this.”

  The door to the study swung open and Pastor Michael Brodie charged into the room. He grabbed Carstogi by the collar and hauled him to his feet, shoving him off-balance and away in the same powerful motion.

  “Satan is speaking to you through the voice of a devil, Sister! Pray on. Your immortal soul is hanging in the balance.”

  Carstogi recovered and came back swinging, his face a mask of fury. He was pretty well built in his own right, with the broad shoulders and thick forearms of a construction hand, but Brodie outclassed him all the way around. With the ease of a trained fighter, Brodie fended off first one blow and then another before sending Carstogi crashing against the opposite wall. By then Peters and I moved between them. Peters helped Carstogi to his feet and bodily restrained him. The younger man’s nose and lip were bleeding. Brodie may have looked like he had gone to seed, but looks can be deceiving. Carstogi was no match for him.

  Brodie turned on me. “Get out,” he snarled. “You’ve no right to bring an infidel into a place of worship.”

  “She’s his wife,” I said.

  “She’s his widow!” he shot back. Brodie lunged toward Suzanne. For a moment I thought he was going to hit her. Instead he knelt in front of her, his face inches from hers. “Do not be tempted to leave off your cleansing. These apparitions are Satan’s own instruments, sent to tempt you from the True Way. Shut them out, Sister! Pray without ceasing.” He rose, turned on his heel, and returned to the study, locking the door behind him.

  Carstogi struggled free from Peters’ grasp and rushed toward the door just as it slammed shut in his face. He leaned against it, his shoulders heaving with impotent sobs. Carstogi was no lightweight in the physical department, yet Brodie had disposed of the younger man so easily, he might have been a child. A lot of the power Brodie wielded over the True Believers had to do with sheer brute strength and fear. Fear so strong that he could walk away from a kneeling Suzanne and know she would refuse to speak to us even with her spiritual master out of earshot.

  Carstogi swung away from the door and went back to Suzanne. He too knelt before her, cradling her face in his hands. “How could you let him do it? How can you let him get away with it?”

  Suzanne Barstogi’s eyes were blank. She might have been struck blind. When he let her go, she dropped to the floor like a limp rag doll.

  “Come on,” Peters said, placing his hand on Carstogi’s shoulder. “Let’s go. This isn’t doing any good.”

  Carstogi rose to his feet like a sleepwalker. Peters led him outside. A thin mist was falling, and I welcomed it. There was a sense of reality in the rain’s touch that was lacking inside the barren waste of Faith Tabernacle.

  “You did what you could,” Peters was saying to Carstogi.

  “I shoulda brought a gun,” Carstogi mumbled. “I shoulda brought a goddamned gun.”

  “It’s a good thing you didn’t,” Peters replied. “Airport security would never have let you out of O’Hare. We need your help. Are you in?”

  Carstogi nodded grimly. “What do I do?”

  “For one thing, tell us everything you know about what goes on in Faith Tabernacle.”

  We spirited him back to the Warwick. No way were we going to take him down to the department. The last thing we needed was to give the press a shot at him.

  Peters picked up a paper on our way through the lobby. Maxwell Cole’s article and picture were the lead items of the local section. The headlines read, SLAIN CHILD BURIED. There was a close-up of Suzanne Barstogi kneeling stoically during Angela’s service. According to Max’s story, Pastor Michael Brodie was a man of God with enough courage and faith to say hallelujah when one of his flock made off for the Promised Land. Suzanne Barstogi’s face reflected total agreement with Brodie’s words.

  Peters read the article first, then handed it to me. Our charge went into the bathroom. “According to that, Brodie’s some kind of latter-day prophet,” Peters said.

  “I picked up on that too. I can hear our case getting picked apart on page one, can’t you?”

  Carstogi returned to the room and read the article without comment.

  “What was Suzanne doing at church this morning
?” I asked.

  “It’s the start of a Purification Ceremony,” he said as he studied the picture. “Did she talk to the cops when it happened?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s why, then,” he continued. “True Believers are never supposed to talk to outsiders, especially cops. That’s why he threw me out.”

  “Why doesn’t he throw her out?”

  Carstogi looked at me incredulously. “Are you kidding? If he kicks a woman out, he loses food stamps, welfare, and medicaid, to say nothing of part of the harem.”

  “Welfare fraud and sex?” Peters asked. “Is that what all this is about?”

  Carstogi flashed with anger. “Of course, you asshole. Did you think this was all salvation and jubilee? I couldn’t make that judge back home see it either.”

  I took the newspaper from Carstogi’s hand. “With the likes of Maxwell Cole working for the opposition, we’ll be lucky to get anyone to believe it here, either,” I said. “What do you know about the good pastor?”

  “Brodie’s a fighter.”

  “We picked up on that,” Peters observed dryly.

  “No, I mean he really was a fighter. Middle heavyweight in Chicago. Local stuff. Never made a national name for himself, but he never lost the moves. The only time I think I can whip him is when I’m juiced.” He rubbed his bruised chin ruefully. It occurred to me then that maybe Carstogi was growing on me.

  He continued. “When Sue and I started going to Faith Tabernacle, we were having troubles. Too much drinking and not enough money. Not only that, we wanted kids and couldn’t seem to have any. Sue went first and then she dragged me along. There were probably fifteen to twenty couples then.”