Until Proven Guilty

by J. A. Jance

  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.<
br />
  “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.”

  “There aren’t that many now,” I said.

  “No. Most of the men get lopped off one way or another. One of them wound up dead in an alley in Hammond, Indiana. I always thought Brodie did that too, but nobody ever proved it. At first I was really gung ho, especially when Sue turned up pregnant. I thought it was a miracle. Now I’m not so sure, but I loved Angel just the same. I wanted her out of this.”

  “So who are the five or so who are left?”

  “Kiss-asses. The ones who get the same kind of kicks Brodie does.”

  “We did some checking with the state of Illinois. None of the names check out except for the one named Benjamin.” Peters was studying Carstogi closely.

  “I never knew their real names, only the Tabernacle ones. I imagine Brodie changed them all by a letter or two, just like he did Suzanne’s. Some of the True Believers have records. I know that much.”

  “You said kicks a minute ago,” I put in. “What kind of kicks?”

  Carstogi looked from Peters to me. He shrugged. “Go to the ceremony,” he said. “That’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

  “You know they don’t let outsiders in. What happens?” I asked.

  “Last night she probably made a public confession of sin. Talking to the cops is probably the major one. They took her to that room afterward for her to pray for forgiveness. Tonight they’ll decide on her punishment. She could be Disavowed, but I doubt that. They’ll think of something else.”

  “What else?” Peters was pressing him.

  “Anything that sadistic motherfucker thinks up. Maybe she’ll have to stand naked in a freezing room or get whipped in front of the group. He’s got a whole bag of tricks.” Carstogi’s hands were clenched, his eyes sparking with fury. I wanted to puke. It’s a cop’s job to keep people safe, but how do you protect them from themselves?

  Eventually he continued. “Tonight they’ll leave her to pray in the church itself rather than in the Penitent’s Room. In the morning they’ll have a celebration.”

  Peters got up. He paused by where Carstogi was sitting on the bed. “Do you think Brodie killed Angela? You said that last night, and we thought you were just drunk. What about now that you’re sober?”

  “If she wouldn’t do what he said…” Carstogi’s voice trailed off.

  Peters walked to the door with a new sense of purpose. “We need to go down to the department for a while. Will you be all right if we leave you here?”

  Carstogi nodded. “I’ll be okay.”

  I followed Peters out. I was a little disturbed by the way he was giving Carstogi the brushoff. “I thought we were supposed to stick with him like glue until we got him back on a plane for Chicago.”

  Peters ignored the comment. “You ever done any bugging?” he asked.

  I stopped. “You’re not my type.”

  “Bugging, you jerk, not buggering. As in wiretapping, eavesdropping, Watergate.”

  “Oh,” I replied. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t done any of that either.”

  Peters favored me with the first genuine grin I could remember, the ear-to-ear variety. We got in the car and he turned up Fourth Avenue, the opposite direction from the Public Safety Building.

  “Just where in the hell are we going?” I asked.

  “Kirkland. I’ve got some equipment at the house we’ll need to use.”

  “I take it this is going to be an illegal wiretap as opposed to the court-ordered variety?”

  “You catch on fast, Beaumont.”

  “And you know how to work this illegal equipment?” I asked.

  Peters’ response was prefaced by a wry face. “How do you think I got the goods on my own wife’s missionary?”

  “And where do you propose to install this device?”

  “I think I can make it fit right under the pulpit itself.”

  “How long is the tape?”

  “Long enough. It’s sound activated, so if nothing’s going on, it shuts off. It’ll get us just what we want.” Peters’ face was a picture of self-satisfaction.

  It sounded like Peters knew what he was doing, but I decided to do a reality exercise, play devil’s advocate. “Of course you realize that nothing we get will be admissible in a court of law?”

  “Absolutely,” he responded, “but it may tell us where to go looking for solid information.”

  “As in where the bodies are buried.” That’s what I said aloud. I was thinking about Angel Barstogi and a man left dead in a Hammond, Indiana, alley. It seemed to me that God wouldn’t frown on our using a little ingenuity to even the score. God helps those who help themselves. Besides, there was a certain perverse justice in the idea of dredging the truth out of Pastor Michael Brodie’s very own sermon. Somehow that seemed fair.

  Chapter 10

  In the final analysis, we weren’t able to get it under the pulpit, but we got close enough. Suzanne Barstogi was still in the Penitent’s Room when we returned from Kirkland with Peter’s tiny sound-activated tape recorder. By this time her knees must have worn out. She was lying prostrate on the floor, sound asleep.

  We were alone in the sanctuary. Peters sat down casually on a front bench and attached the recorder under the seat. He handled the equipment with well-practiced competency. As soon as it was concealed, I went past the sleeping Suzanne and knocked on the door to Brodie’s study. We had agreed to beard the lion in his den. We wanted to turn up the heat on Pastor Michael Brodie. We could at least give his self-confidence a good shake.

  “What are you doing back here?” he demanded in a voice that caused Suzanne to stir and struggle once more to her knees. He looked around, presumably for Carstogi. “What do you want?”

  “We want to ask you a few questions about your whereabouts on Thursday morning.”

  Brodie’s florid face twisted. “Are you accusing me…” He broke off abruptly. “I was here, at the church, in my study. Are you listening to that heathen’s accusations?”

  “You mean Carstogi? No, we’re just doing our job. Did anyone see you?” I prodded.

  “I told you I was here by myself. Nobody saw me. Almighty God is my witness.”

  “Have you ever been in Hammond, Indiana?” The tone of Peters’ question was deceptively mild. He leaned casually, almost insolently, against the entrance to the Penitent’s Room.

  Brodie’s red face went suddenly slack and ashen. He recovered quickly. “What does that have to do with this?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Peters said. “I was just wondering.”

  “I know what you’re trying to do. Andrew is making trouble. He is a man with a burden of vengeance in his heart. He blames me for his fall from grace. You tell him from me that Jehovah sees into his vile soul. He will rot in hell for his unjust accusations.”

  “So you claim you were here all Thursday morning, or at least until Suzanne Barstogi called you? Is that right?” I continued.

  “That’s what I said. Twice.” His fists were tight and so was his voice. He was losing control.

  “Why did you change her name? Are the others using different names too?”

  I could tell that Peters’ roundabout questions were having the desired effect. Brodie’s eyes shifted uneasily back and forth between Peters and me as if he were watching an invisible tennis ball. We were developing into a team. I liked Peters’ way of approaching issues in an off-the-wall manner.

  “We’re starting new lives with ne
w names,” Brodie explained.

  “And new wives,” Peters added. “What about your name? Did you change yours too, or only the names of your followers?”

  “I want you out of here,” Brodie ordered. His voice dropped to an ominous whisper. “I want you out of here now!”

  Peters uncrossed his legs and stretched. There was no sense of urgency in his movements. He stepped around Suzanne and approached the open Bible, running his finger down the page. “It might be worth your while to go looking for someone who can remember your being here on Thursday morning. Maybe there was a cleaning woman around or a neighbor who saw you.”