Until Proven Guilty

by J. A. Jance

  “Would you like to leave a message? I’ll be glad to give it to her.”

  “No. No, thank you. I’ll catch her later.”

  I put down the phone. Either she wouldn’t show or she was expecting me. It was one or the other. The hostess had said the reservation was for two, not one. I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I buried my face in a towel, a soft new towel Anne Corley herself had chosen. I flung it away from me, sending it sailing down the hall. How dare she buy me towels!

  I went to the hall closet for my shoulder hoister and .38. The holster was there. The gun wasn’t.

  There was no point in searching the apartment. I knew I had put it away. I always put it away. Anne had taken it. Anne Corley Beaumont, armed, beautiful, and exceedingly dangerous.

  I’m qualified to carry a .357 magnum. You get qualified by being an excellent shot. It’s a macho symbol I don’t need to pack around the department. I keep one, though, in the same bottom drawer where I had kept my mother’s engagement ring all those years. I got it out and checked it to make sure it was loaded. I put it in my jacket pocket. A .357 is only good for one thing—killing. I prayed I wouldn’t have to use it.

  My body ran on automatic pilot. I don’t remember getting into the car or driving up Interstate 90 to Fall City. I was doing what I had to do, what was inevitable. It was too painful to do it consciously, so I did it like a sleepwalker. It was like that last night with my mother, wanting her to die and not wanting her to die, wishing her suffering over yet not wanting to lose her. I didn’t know whether I should hope for the red Porsche to be there or not. It would hurt either way.

  I was trying to readjust my thinking, to turn Anne Corley Beaumont my love into Anne Corley Beaumont my enemy. She would have to be that if I was going to confront her and win. Afterward I could try to salvage what could be salvaged, once she was safe. Locked up and safe.

  As it turned out, the Porsche was there, parked directly in front of the restaurant. There was no attempt to conceal her presence. She wanted me to know where she was. I was expected.

  I grappled with the realization that Anne had called every shot since I met her. This was no exception. My hand dropped unconsciously to my pocket, checking the .357, making sure it was available. She had outwitted me at every turn. I would have to be wary. She was Mrs. J. P. Beaumont in name only. She was also a ruthless, savvy killer.

  The vestibule was crowded. Of course it would be. This was Sunday afternoon. For the first time I realized how foolhardy I had been to attempt this without calling for help, without having a backup. The restaurant was full of innocent bystanders, any one of whom could suffer dire consequences for my going off half-cocked. I eased my way through the crowd to the hostess desk and peered through the dining room.

  Anne was there, at a corner table. Our eyes met and held above the heads of the other diners. She motioned for me to come to her.

  The hostess appeared then. “Oh,” she said, “are you Mr. Beaumont? Mrs. Corley has been expecting you.”

  “I see her,” I said stiffly. “I can find my way.”

  There was a glass of wine on the table in front of her, and a MacNaughton’s and water at the place on the other side of the table. She was still wearing the blue suit. The Adidas bag lay in her lap. A lump rose in my throat. It was all I could do to speak. “Hello,” I managed.

  “Hello, Beau. I’m glad you came.”

  A thousand questions should have tumbled out one after another. Instead I looked around the room, J. P. Beaumont, the cop, looking over the lay of the land, looking for cover, for trajectories, for who would be hurt in a hail of bullets. “Let me help you, Anne,” I pleaded.

  “You already have.”

  My anger blazed to the surface. “I’ve helped you, all right, led you to three more victims.”

  She had held my gaze steadily. For the first time she looked down. My hand sought the safety of the .357 in case she reached into the bag. She raised her eyes. “I made a mistake with Brodie and the woman. Even so, they deserved to die.”

  “Annie! You had no right to judge them. You’re not a jury. They were innocent of a capital crime. Child abuse is a felony but it’s not premeditated murder.”

  “I was evening the score, an eye for an eye.” She looked at me defiantly, daring me to take exception to what she said. “I listened to the tape,” she continued. “I found it in the table drawer after you and Peters left. It was strange hearing it. Athletes must feel that way when they see an instant replay. I thought there would be something in it that would point to me.”

  “We’d have been better off if there had been,” I said.

  It was all coming together now, all the missing pieces. “And the phone call I overheard was from Tom Stahl at the phone company? That’s when you discovered your mistake?”

  “Yes, but I’m not sorry I killed them, if that’s what you mean.” There was no hint of remorse about her.

  “What did you put in the last chapter, Anne? You told me I couldn’t read the book because you had given it to Ralph, but he didn’t get the manuscript until this morning. He was planning to read it on the plane.”

  “I wasn’t sure how it would end. I wasn’t sure until I saw you walk through the door. I didn’t know if you’d come.”

  “And now you know?”

  “Yes, don’t you?”

  It was like we were playing a game, some private guessing game that had nothing to do with life and death. The people sitting around us had no idea that the attractive couple chatting earnestly in the corner near the window had enough firepower between them to lay waste a roomful of people.

  I knew how I was afraid it would end. She was absolutely without fear or compunction. I couldn’t let that happen, not at such close quarters, not in a crowd of defenseless Sunday afternoon diners. “Come with me, Anne. Let me take you in. No jury in the country would convict you.”

  “An insanity plea?” Her voice was full of bitter derision. “You know where they’d send me, don’t you? Have you ever been in one of those places? Do you know what goes on?”

  “Anne, I’ll stick by you. I’ll see that you get the help you need. In sickness and in health, remember? That’s what we said. This is sickness.” I was pleading for my life as well as hers.

  “You wouldn’t be there at night when the orderlies came. Even Milton couldn’t stop that. I had to have an abortion, you know. He paid for it. He didn’t cause it, but he couldn’t prevent it either.”

  “What about Milton, Anne? Did he commit suicide?”

  “He was scared of what the cancer was doing to him.”

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “No,” she said softly. “He didn’t commit suicide.”

  I heard the words and knew they were the truth. “My God, Anne, you told me you loved him.”

  “I did.”

  The toll kept rising. I didn’t want to know any more, but I was unable to stop the questions. They are too much a part of me, waking and sleeping. “Why your father?”

  “The things he did to Patty were terrible, not once, but over and over. I tried to stop him, but my mother wouldn’t let me. I should have killed her too, but I never got a chance. I think she knew it. That’s why she never let me out. It was only after she died that Milton was able to get me released.”

  “What about the book?”

  “It’s a collection. Until now, I was the only one who knew the rest of the story, things that happened after the fact.”

  “All over the country?”

  She nodded. “It happens everywhere,” she said.

  “How long have you been doing this, Anne? How long have you been a one-woman avenger? How many J. P. Beaumont suckers are there in this world?”

  “I’ve been a widow for ten years,” she said.

  “And no one’s ever caught you?”

  “I never wanted to be caught.”

  The waitress came to take our order. “The gentleman isn’t feeling
well. We won’t be eating after all. If I could just have the bill.” She laid a twenty on the table as a tip.

  Until she saw the size of the tip, I think the waitress was prepared to be upset. She pocketed the twenty. “Thank you very much,” she said, smiling.

  The interruption allowed a new train of thought. “Where’d you get the bike? The owner left town in March.”

  “St. Vincent de Paul’s over on Fairview.”

  “Where’d you keep it?”

  “In the parking garage of the building right behind the Royal Crest. It was just one night.”

  “And you got it out after I fell asleep?”

  She nodded.

  “What about Kincaid?”

  “After the man from the phone company called, I went to Auburn and found his house. He had a black van.”

  “It could have been the wrong man.”

  “He wasn’t. He confessed. I didn’t want to make the same mistake twice.” She paused. “Is that all you wanted to know?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. There was nothing else. I knew far more than I wanted to.

  “Let’s finish this outside, Beau. It’s too crowded in here.”

  With catlike grace, she picked up the Adidas bag and walked outside.

  Chapter 25

  I know how Pharoah felt trying to catch Moses as he disappeared into the Red Sea. Anne Corley Beaumont melted through the vestibule crowd the same way, leaving me pushing and shoving, trying to catch up. When I finally hit the outside door, I made a dash for the Porsche, expecting to see her speeding away. The Porsche sat empty, untouched.

  The roar of the falls filled my head. I kept my hand on the gun without drawing it. This could be a trap, I reminded myself. I was dealing with Anne Corley the enemy. She had enough of a head start that she could easily have hidden herself away and be lying in wait. Even then I could have gone back inside and called for help, for a backup, but I didn’t. Stubborn, stupid, I thought I could talk to her, persuade her to turn herself in.

  Cautiously I made my way around the restaurant. In a heap near one corner of the building I found the blouse, suit, shoes, and discarded Adidas bag. Up the path, heading toward the observation area, I caught a glimpse of red. She had changed into the jogging suit. Any advantage I had because of dress was instantly nullified. With me in my suit and slick-bottomed shoes, she now had an edge. I started running too.

  I didn’t try for speed. I don’t do wind sprints, but I can keep a steady pace for a fair distance. She was running up the path, away from the lodge, toward the hordes of tourists filling the viewpoint and picnic area. I kept my hand on the concealed .357 as I passed a group of picnickers. I didn’t want them to raise an alarm, to cause a panic.

  I saw her turn down a trail, one that veers steeply down the basalt canyon wall to the pool at the bottom of the falls. I had never been on it. I was sure it was the only way back up. Three different times I pushed my way around huffing sets of climbers. Two of them were large groups. The last was a couple, a retired couple, walking by themselves.

  “Did you see a woman?” I gasped. “A woman in a red jogging suit?”

  “She almost knocked Mabel here down,” he said.

  I stopped, trying to catch my breath. “Are there any other people down there?”

  The man shook his head. “There weren’t when we left.”

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out my badge. “Stand at the head of the trail,” I said to him. “Don’t let anyone else come down.” He looked at me questioningly. I wanted to shock him, galvanize him to action. “She’s dangerous, armed and dangerous.” I took the .357 from my pocket then, for emphasis, to get his attention. It worked. He grabbed his wife’s arm and they hurried up the trail.

  I stood for a few moments after they left, slowing my breathing, steadying my nerves. It was more than I could have hoped. We were isolated from the crowd above. I had bought some time. Maybe I could lay hands on her, shake some sense into her, talk her into surrendering. Before reinforcements arrived. Before someone called in a SWAT team.

  I stood immobile, listening. Except for the roar of the water, the forest was silent. It was the eye of the hurricane. I was standing like that when the bullet hit me. It caught me full in the left shoulder and spun me into a tree.

  The tree kept me from plunging headlong down the side of the canyon. I clung to it for support, my left side numb from shock. The .357 had fallen from my hand. Desperately I looked for it, expecting the next bullet to hit before I could find it. I saw it finally, lying out of reach to one side of the trail.

  I looked up to see if I should make a grab for it. Anne was standing in the trail, my short-barreled .38 still pointing in my direction. We looked at one another, both lives hanging in the balance. It couldn’t have been more than a second or two in time, but I aged an eternity. Then, with agonizing slowness, she lowered the gun, turned, and disappeared around a curve in the trail.

  I let myself slip to the ground. I hoped shock would last a little longer, staving off the pain. I crawled to where the gun had fallen. Once my fingers closed over the butt, I dared breathe again. Slowly I pulled myself to my feet, the world spinning crazily as I did so. I took a tentative step. The movement jarred me, starting shocks of pain pulsing through my body. I gritted my teeth and took another step.

  Each movement was excruciating. The bullet, lodged against my broken collarbone, scraped along a nerve at every step. I walked. Slowly and painfully, but I walked. The descent was steep and slippery, the ground wet with slick green moss. Mist from the falls swirled around me like thickening fog. I strained to see. How much of the difficulty in vision was mist? How much was losing consciousness?

  My subconscious framed the questions. I answered them aloud. “No. If I pass out, she’ll kill me.” Pain of realization dulled the pain in my body. I struggled through the last of the trees. There in a clearing, a flat, perpetually wet clearing on the bank of the river, stood Anne Corley Beaumont, her back to the water. The gun was still in her hand, aimed straight at me. She was waiting.

  “Drop it,” I yelled.

  She didn’t move. I heard the explosion. A bullet smacked into a tree behind me. I don’t know if she thought she heard something off to her left or if some movement caught her eye. She turned slightly, pointing the .38 in that direction. I raised the .357, aimed it, and fired.

  I’m a crack shot. I aimed at the .38. I should have hit it, but just as I fired, she lost her footing on the slick moss and fell. I saw the look of surprise and hurt as the slug crashed into her body. The force of the bullet lifted her and spun her to the left, sending her sprawling into the turbulent water. I dropped the .357 and raced toward her, my own pain forgotten.

  I reached the bank and saw the torrent fling her against a rock, then pull her away, sending her toward the bank, toward me. I had one chance to catch her before the water dragged her under. I threw myself lengthwise on the bank and grabbed. I caught one leg of the jogging suit. Barely. The force of the current, the deadweight, should have swept her from my grasp. There should have been no strength in my injured shoulder, but fueled by adrenaline, I worked her toward the bank. Inch by inch. At last, shaking with exertion, I dragged her out of the water.

  She was coughing and gasping. Blood foamed in the water that erupted from her mouth. I cradled her head in my lap, willing her to live. The coppery smell of death was all around her. I tried to wipe the hair from her mouth, from her eyes. I was crying by then. “Anne, Anne, why?”

  She tried to say something. I could barely hear her; the roaring of the water was too loud, the roaring in my ears. I leaned toward her, her lips brushing my ear. “You said…” she whispered, “…said given the same…the same circumstances…” And that was all.

  I was still holding her when a Snoqualmie City officer charged into the clearing from the bottom of the path. He was young but his instincts were good. He came on strong, ready to haul me in single-handed. He held his .38 Colt on me and picked up my .357
with his other hand. I tossed him my I.D., letting it fall at his feet.

  “Call Captain Powell at homicide, Seattle P.D.,” I told him. “Tell him I got her. Don’t let anyone who isn’t a cop come down that trail.”

  He left without argument. I lay Anne Corley Beaumont down, closing her eyes, stroking the hair from her forehead one last time. I stood up, feeling the aching chill from my sodden clothes. It was nothing compared to the glacial chill inside. Sudden weakness robbed my legs of strength, forcing me to sit once more. I didn’t sit next to Anne. There was nothing more I could do for her.

  The officer returned with a couple of blankets. He wrapped one around my shoulders and covered Anne with the other. “Powell says to tell you he’s on his way.” He looked at me closely. “You need an ambulance.”