Until Proven Guilty

by J. A. Jance

  When we got in the car, Peters asked, “Where to?”

  “I guess we go pick up Carstogi.”

  Peters started the motor. “You think Benjamin’s voice is the one we heard, not Carstogi’s?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I replied.

  Carstogi wasn’t surprised to see us. I think he knew it was inevitable. When we came into the room he was sitting on the side of the bed, shoulders hunched, face buried in his hands.

  “You’ll have to come with us,” I said.

  Peters brought out the cuffs. Carstogi stood up and pulled away. It was reflex. I caught him by the shoulder and swung him around. “Don’t do anything stupid,” I warned him. “Things are bad enough for you already.”

  Carstogi came with us quietly. Peters read him his rights. I didn’t have the stomach for it. The public wanted a fall guy, and it was Peters’ and my job to provide them with one. We herded him through the booking process. He reminded me of a steer being driven to slaughter, numb with fear and unable or unwilling to help himself. He didn’t ask for an attorney.

  Once he was dressed in the bright orange jail coveralls, we began to question him. First Peters would grill him and then I would. He sat at the table in the tiny interview room, gazing at the floor while we asked him our questions. His story never varied, but it didn’t improve, either. He stuck to it like glue. The questioning process went on for hours. We finally sent him to his cell about nine o’clock. I left right after he did, without saying good night to anyone, including Peters. There was nothing good about it.

  I walked my usual path down Fourth. I needed to think, to separate myself from the stifling closeness of the interview room. I didn’t like the feeling that I was part of a railroading gang. What we had on Carstogi was totally circumstantial, but I was afraid it might stick. After all, any port in a storm, and Carstogi didn’t have much of a cheering section in this part of the world.

  What about Brother Benjamin? According to Jeremiah, he wasn’t the mysterious Uncle Charlie, but he was certainly a likely suspect with Brodie and Suzanne. The questions circled in my head, but I was too tired to draw any conclusions.

  I opened the door to my apartment hoping Anne would be there. I more than half expected that she would be, but she wasn’t. I tried calling the Four Seasons and was told Mrs. Corley wasn’t taking any calls. That pissed me off. I poured myself a MacNaughton’s and settled down to wait. And sulk.

  It must have been three drinks later before she called me back. By then I was pretty crabby. “I just now got your message,” she said. “Would you like me to come over?”

  I felt like saying, Suit yourself. What actually came out of my mouth was, “Sure.”

  She was there within minutes, greeting me with a quick kiss. I had drunk enough that I resented her lighthearted manner. “What are you so chipper about?” I groused.

  “I got a lot done today, that’s all. How about you?”

  “Same old grind.”

  We were standing in the entryway. She took the glass from my hand, reached around the corner, and set it on the kitchen counter. Then she took both my hands in hers and placed them behind her back. “Kiss me,” she demanded.

  I did, reluctantly at first, still trying to hang on to being mad at her. It didn’t work. My hunger for her reawakened. I crushed her to my chest as the touch of her lips sent me reeling.

  “Marry me,” she whispered.

  “What?” I asked, thinking I couldn’t possibly have heard her right. I pushed her away and held her at arm’s length.

  “Marry me,” she repeated. “Now. We can get the license tomorrow and get married on Sunday.”

  I examined her face, trying to tell if she was kidding. No hint of merriment twinkled in her gray eyes.

  “You mean it, don’t you!”

  She nodded.

  “So soon? We hardly know each other.”

  “I’ve just now gotten up my courage. If I give myself any time to think about it, I might back out. Besides, I know all I need to know.”

  I made the transition from being half drunk to being totally sober in the space of a few seconds. She moved away from me and settled on the couch. I stood for a long time in the doorway, thunderstruck. It was one thing to ask if someone believed in love at first sight, but proposing marriage was something else again.

  I come from the old school where men make the first move, do the asking. Not that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. Eventually. After a suitable interval.

  “I take it that means no?” she asked softly, misinterpreting my silence for refusal.

  Hurrying to her, I sat down next to her and put my arm around her shoulders. “It’s just that…”

  “Please, Beau.” She looked up at me, her eyes dark and pleading. “I’ve never wanted anything more.”

  We had known each other for barely three days, yet I couldn’t conceive of life without her, couldn’t imagine denying giving her anything she wanted, including me. I leaned down and kissed her. “Why not? What have I got to lose?”

  A smile of gratitude flashed across her face, followed by an impish grin. “Your tie, for starters,” she responded airily, kissing me back and fumbling with the knot on my tie. “Your tie and your virtue.”

  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 p
instripe. 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.”