Until Proven Guilty

by J. A. Jance

  I wrapped a towel around me and went into the bedroom. Anne stood before the dresser in her slip and bra, piling her hair on top of her head. The result was a gentle framing of her face that reminded me of the late 1890s. It was old-fashioned and attractive.

  “You look lovely,” I said, running my finger along the soft curve at the top of her lacy slip.

  She caught my finger and held it to her lips. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  I lifted her chin and looked at her. Her eyes were quiet, subdued. “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I’m fine. Just a little nervous.”

  “I’m a lot more than a little,” I told her. That brought a trace of a smile.

  Ralph Ames came by the Royal Crest and drove the Datsun. Anne and I took the Porsche. She drove. The minister arrived in a pea green Volkswagen bus. Those were the only three cars in the parking lot at Myrtle Edwards Park when we got there about ten to six. The sun was just putting in an appearance over the hills behind us, while a fresh breeze blew off the water. I worried that Anne might not be warm enough in the shimmering blue suit with its flimsy blouse.

  Anne introduced me to the minister. I don’t know where she found him. He didn’t push any creed, and it may well be that marrying people was his whole ministry. That was okay by me. When the minister asked, “Who giveth this woman?” Ralph stepped forward and said he did. I thought he had a hell of a lot of nerve, but since he was giving her to me, I didn’t complain. The ceremony took exactly six minutes. We were in the Four Seasons for breakfast by six-fifteen.

  Anne was radiant. I could have slit my throat for not having a camera along, but once more Ralph rode to the rescue. He took pictures of both of us together, and each of us separately. He had even made last-minute arrangements with the hotel for them to produce a tiny three-tiered wedding cake with all the trimmings. It was a nice gesture. It pissed me off. I would have preferred him to be not quite so thoughtful or indispensable.

  It was time for Ralph’s plane before we finished breakfast. I told Anne I’d take him to the airport in the Datsun. She could take the Porsche back to the apartment, and I’d meet her there later. We rode down the escalator together. The parking attendant brought the Porsche first. I could hardly blame him for that. I opened the door and gave her a hand inside. I leaned down so our heads were even. “I love you, Anne Corley Beaumont,” I said.

  She smiled. “I love you too.” With that, she drove away.

  Ralph Ames was standing beside me when I straightened up. “Ready?” he asked. We said little as we drove to the airport. We had nothing in common but Anne. “Did she give you the last chapter to her manuscript?” I asked as we pulled under the airport awning.

  He patted his briefcase. “Last chapter? I’ve got the whole book right here. She’s been working on it for so long I can’t believe I’m finally going to get a look at it.”

  “You mean you’ve never read any of it before? I thought she had already given you everything but the revised last chapter.”

  “Not before today. I’m planning to take a peek at it on the plane.” He dragged his luggage out of the backseat and hustled off toward a waiting skycap with a brief salute to me from beside the car. “Best of luck to you,” he said.

  I drove back out to the freeway, a little edge of worry gnawing at me. I could have sworn Anne had said the manuscript was already in Phoenix, that was why she couldn’t show it to me. Had I somehow misunderstood?

  I was halfway back to Seattle when a state patrolman pulled me over. I got out of the car in a huff, ready to show him my I.D. and give him a piece of my mind. I knew damned good and well I hadn’t been speeding.

  “You J. P. Beaumont?” he asked as he reached the car.

  “What of it?”

  “We’ve got an APB out for you. Captain Powell has been trying to get you at home since seven o’clock this morning. Get in. I’ll patch you through to Seattle P.D.”

  I got in, and the patrolman made a connection to the Seattle dispatcher. “Get down here right away. Powell is waiting. He’s hot!”

  “What the hell do you mean, get down there? I just got married. I’m supposed to be off duty.”

  “He said to tell you your leave is canceled. He needs you now.”

  I got out of the patrol car and slammed the door. “Sorry I pulled you over,” the patrolman said. “If I’da known the circumstances, I never would have seen you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “For nothing,” I added under my breath.

  I drove to the Public Safety Building. Powell was in the fishbowl on the phone as I came in. “What the fuck is going on?” I growled as he hung up.

  “We’ve got another homocide. This one’s down in Auburn. It was in the paper this morning.”

  “I hate to mention this, but I don’t work in Auburn. I work for the city of Seattle.”

  Powell went on as though he hadn’t heard me. “A guy came tearing in here at seven o’clock looking for you. He says it’s about the Auburn case. He refuses to talk to anyone but you.”

  “Where is he?”

  Powell nodded in the direction of one of the interview rooms. “He’s in there. His name is Tom Stahl.”

  I didn’t recognize the name right off the bat, and the slightly built, crewcut young man who paced nervously back and forth in the tiny interview room didn’t ring any bells either. From the delicate sway of his hips, I guessed he was a little light in his loafers, one of Seattle’s more obvious gays. I let the door slam shut behind me. “I’m Detective Beaumont,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Everybody connected with this case is getting killed. I’m sure I’m next. When I read the newspaper this morning, I almost had a heart attack. I knew right away it was the same man; I mean, how many Charles Murray Kincaids can there be?” His words came in a breathless lisp.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Stahl had been clutching a newspaper in his hand. Now he dropped it on the table like a hot potato.

  “It happened right after I tried to call you, the night before last or yesterday morning, too late to make it into the paper until today. I always read the paper early, before I go to church.”

  “What happened? For God’s sake, make some sense, man.”

  Without meaning to, I was yelling at him. He pushed the paper in my direction and scurried to the far side of the room.

  “Read it yourself. I demand some protection.”

  I read the article. It was simple enough. An Auburn resident, Charles Murray Kincaid, had been found shot to death in an automobile outside his home early Saturday morning. Police were investigating. He had been shot once in the back of the head. There was nothing in the article to explain Tom Stahl’s extreme agitation. “So what?” I asked.

  “Look at the address.” I looked. “It’s the same address I gave your wife.”

  “Now wait a minute,” I said, trying to modify my tone. He was obviously frightened. “Let’s get this straight. I didn’t have a wife until six-fifteen this morning. Why don’t you tell me the whole story, from the beginning.”

  He took a deep breath. “It’s about Angela Barstogi,” he said. “She ran up a big long-distance bill talking to some guy down in Auburn. Her mother called to complain about the bill. Said she wouldn’t pay it because she didn’t make the calls. I did some checking. Kincaid had an easy telephone number, 234-5678. It’s long-distance from Seattle. Kids called him all the time. As soon as they learned their numbers on ‘Sesame Street,’ they’d string numbers together and call him: 1-234-5678. We tried to get him to change his number, vacate it so it would be a disconnect. But he wouldn’t. Claimed he loved talking to little kids.

  “Anyway, I called one morning to talk to the mother, Mrs. Barstogi. She was asleep, so I ended up talking to Angela. I told her she shouldn’t call him anymore, that her mother would have to pay the bill. She said she liked talking to Uncle Charlie on the phone, so when—”

  “Wait a minute,” I
interrupted. “Did you say Uncle Charlie?”

  He nodded. “So after I heard she was dead, I tried to call you and tell you, just in case it was important. I only wanted to give you his name and phone number. It’s illegal for me to do that, you know. I could be fined and lose my job, but I didn’t want to go through security when it was probably nothing. The guys in security don’t like me.”

  “You work for the phone company?” The name came back to me, the messages I had ignored and thrown away. He nodded again.

  “When I couldn’t reach you at the office, I finally got your unlisted number and called your house. I could be fired for that too.”

  “My house?”

  “Yeah. I called Friday morning. I went to a two-day training session out in Bellevue on Wednesday and Thursday, so I didn’t try calling again until I got back to the office on Friday. The woman I talked to said she was your wife, said she’d give you the message. I left Kincaid’s name and address with her.”

  My stomach turned to lead. Just then Powell tapped on the door. “A detective from Auburn is here with their preliminary report. I thought you’d like to talk to him. He says Kincaid drove a black van. You think maybe there’s a connection?”

  “I’d bet money on it,” I said grimly. “Where’s the detective?”

  “He’s taking some stuff down to the crime lab.”

  I picked up the phone in Powell’s office. Some numbers you know by heart. I dialed the crime lab. Janice Morraine answered. I recognized her voice. “Hi, Jan,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Beaumont here. Did they bring you a slug from that Auburn case?”

  “I think so,” she replied.

  “Run a comparison with the Faith Tabernacle slugs and call me back.” I put down the phone, fighting the urge to heave it across the room.

  Powell was looking at me, puzzled. “What have you got, Beaumont?”

  “Just a hunch, nothing more.”

  Tom Stahl came to the door of the interview room. “What next? Protective custody? Do I go, or stay, or what?”

  “First we’ll need to get a statement. Hang on a minute. You want a cup of coffee?” I couldn’t handle being locked up in a small room taking a statement, not when my mind was flying in a dozen different directions.

  “Coffee would be fine,” he said. “Black.”

  I walked past my desk on the way to the coffeepot. I stopped and dialed my home number. I got a busy signal. There was a stack of messages on the desk, too. The top one was from Peters, clocked in at seven-twenty that morning. The number was different from the hotel I had tried the previous day.

  I dialed and was connected to Peters’ room. “Thank God you caught me. I was just heading out to catch a plane. I’ve booked an earlier flight from Tucson. Where’d they find you?” he asked. “When the operator said your phone was out of order, I took a chance and called the department. They were looking for you. I told them you might be driving the Datsun.”

  “It worked,” I said. “They found me. What have you got?”

  There was a distinct pause. “It’s not pretty, Beau,” he began. “I hope it’s not too late. Has she told you about her father?”

  “Some,” I replied.

  “Coroner ruled it a suicide, but Anne swore she’d shot him for killing her sister. That’s when her mother had her committed.”

  My mind scrambled to make sense from what Peters was saying. “Shot him? Anne said she shot her father?” I felt like I was stumbling in the dark.

  Peters heard my disbelief. “I came down to Bisbee to check it out. According to records here, Anne’s father fell carrying Patty down some stairs. He felt so bad about it he put a bullet in his head two weeks later. Anne insisted she shot him, and she claimed that Patty’s death was no accident, that her father had murdered her. Her mother had Anne committed. That’s why she spent eleven years in the state hospital.”

  I could hear the sound of Peters’ breathing on the other end of the phone. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Beau, are you all right?”

  After being in the dark, sudden light blinded me. “I’ve gotta go, Peters,” I said. I slammed the phone down in his ear. Powell was coming toward me. I almost knocked him over. “Get somebody to take Stahl’s statement,” I said over my shoulder.

  “Hey, wait a minute. Janice Morraine from the lab tried to get you while you were on your phone,” he called after me. “Says to tell you it’s a match.”

  And the rest of my world tumbled down around my ears.

  Chapter 24

  My hands were shaking so badly I could hardly get the key in the ignition. Truths and half-truths chased each other in dizzying circles in my head. Milton Corley had been the first to believe her. That’s what she had said. So he was the first to understand that Anne had told the truth about killing her father. The realization sickened me, but I feared the past far less than I did the present.

  It was not yet ten o’clock on Sunday morning, and downtown Seattle was virtually deserted. I made short work of the trip to the Royal Crest. She wasn’t there. I knew she wouldn’t be. The telephone in the bedroom was slightly off the hook. When I hung it up properly, it started working again. How long had the phone been disabled? I wondered. Since last night?

  I looked in the closets, in the drawers. The clothes were there; nothing was missing. Then I checked the corner on the other side of the dresser. The Adidas bag was gone. I poured myself a shot of MacNaughton’s and sat down in my leather chair. I needed to think.

  I tried to remember Friday night. When had we gotten home? What had been said? I remembered going to bed, her saying she wanted to stay up and work on the last chapter so she could send it down to Phoenix with Ralph.

  The next thing I remembered was her crawling into bed with me Saturday morning, telling me she had been out for a jog. I had no way of knowing whether or not she had come to bed before that. It had seemed reasonable to assume she had. There had been no cause to question it, but there was no way to prove it, either. There would have been plenty of time for her to drive to Auburn and back between the time I went to sleep and the time I woke up. When had she moved the Porsche to a parking lot?

  I waited for the phone to ring, knowing it was unreasonable, knowing she wouldn’t call. Where could she be? What was she thinking? Didn’t she know I loved her, that I’d find help for her whatever the cost? I waited.

  I thought about Pastor Michael Brodie and Suzanne Barstogi blown away in Faith Tabernacle by the same weapon that had killed Charles Murray Kincaid. The same .38. Christ. She must have done that, too. What night was that? Monday? I tried to remember Monday night. She had been here; we had made love. We had made love Saturday morning, too. My stomach rebelled at the thought of her excitement, her need for satisfaction. Had she come to me on the crest of murderous heat that I had misread as passion? I battled to keep breakfast and the MacNaughton’s in place. The breakfast, the liquor, and the wedding cake. Jesus.

  Had she thought she could get away with it forever, that I would never find out? Or was I next on her list? How long was the list, for that matter? Her father, Brodie, Suzanne, Kincaid? How many more were there? What about Corley? Had Milton Corley really committed suicide, or had he been given a helping hand along the way?

  I waited. Peters would be home by four or so. At that point Powell would know and Watkins and the world. An all-points bulletin would go out for Anne Corley Beaumont, wanted for murder, beautiful and highly dangerous. I had to find her before then. I had to be the one to bring her in. The thought of Anne in handcuffs, tossed in the back of a patrol car, was anathema to me.

  I waited, watching the time slip by, watching the minute hand move inexorably. I sat for a long, long time, letting my mind wander through the last few days, searching for some hope, some consolation. There was none. I watched the clock without thinking about it, without internalizing the information it was trying to give me. It was two o’clock when I got the message, two o’clock when I
realized that at that time one week ago, Angela Barstogi’s funeral was just getting under way, and Anne Corley was about to walk into my life.

  I jumped to my feet, remembering. She had said she intended to have a standing reservation for Sunday dinner at Snoqualmie Lodge. My nerves were too shot to tackle the phone book myself. I placed a call to the lodge and a hostess answered. “Does Anne Corley have a reservation there for this afternoon?”

  There was a pause while she looked. “Yes she does, a reservation for two at three o’clock.” I had been holding my breath. I let it out in a long sigh.