Until Proven Guilty Read online

  “It’s my fault,” she whispered. “It’s because I called you. Pastor Michael is right. I’m being punished for my lack of faith.”

  We were at a stoplight. Peters turned and looked at her. “She was dead long before you called us,” he said bluntly. “Your lack of faith had nothing to do with it.” The light changed, and we went on.

  Suzanne gave no indication that she had heard what Peters said. “I disobeyed, too,” she continued. “I snuck upstairs to use the phone so no one would know.” She lapsed into silence. We left her to her own thoughts. It seemed the decent thing to do.

  By the time we led her up to the slab in the morgue, Suzanne Barstogi was a study in absolute composure. When the attendant pulled back the sheet, she nodded. “I killed her, didn’t I?” she said softly to no one in particular. She turned to me. “I’m ready to go home now.”

  Chapter 2

  When we brought Suzanne back to Gay Avenue, the place was crawling with people. It seemed to me there were even more Faith Tabernacle people than earlier in the day. Evidence technicians had gone over the house thoroughly, searching for trace evidence, dusting for fingerprints, looking for signs of forced entry or struggle. Everything pointed to the conclusion that Angel Barstogi had left the house willingly, wandering off maybe with someone she knew.

  So who did she know? I looked around the room. All these folks, certainly, including Pastor Michael Brodie himself, who was holding court in the living room. He was very angry. His parishioners were walking on eggs for fear of annoying him further, abjectly catering to his every need.

  Sergeant Watkins brought us up to speed on the situation. Police procedures notwithstanding, Brodie was accustomed to being in charge. He didn’t want anyone talking to his people outside his presence. It was only after Watkins threatened to jail him for obstruction of justice that he finally knuckled under. He sat by the door, still silently intimidating those who filed past him. One by one our detectives took people to separate rooms to record their statements. They were not eager to talk. It was like pulling teeth. We could have used some laughing gas.

  Peters and I took our turn in the barrel. The other officers had pretty well finished up with the adults and were going to work on the grungy kids. I took one of the boys, the one who had pressed his nose against the car as Peters and I drove up the first time. We had to walk past Pastor Michael. He shot a withering glance at the kid. The boy seemed to cower under its intensity.

  “What’s your name?” I asked as we went up the stairs.

  “Jeremiah.”

  “You scared of him?”

  He nodded. We went into a bedroom and closed the door. The bed was unmade. I straightened a place for us to sit on the bed, then took a small tape recorder from my pocket.

  “Do you know what we’re going to do?” He shook his head. “I’m going to ask you some questions and record both the questions and the answers.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay? I mean, we’re not supposed to talk to people.”

  “Why?”

  “Pastor Michael says that people on the outside are tools of the devil and that we can catch it from them. It’s like chicken pox.”

  “You won’t catch anything from me, Jeremiah. I promise.” I switched on the recorder. “My name is Detective J. P. Beaumont. It’s five twenty-five p.m. on Thursday, April twenty-eighth. This statement is being taken in reference to Angel Barstogi, deceased. What is your name, please?”

  “Jeremiah Mason.”

  “And are you giving this statement willingly?”

  He nodded his head. “You’ll have to give your answers aloud,” I told him.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Did you know Angel, Angela Barstogi?”

  “Yes.” His answer was so muted that I didn’t know whether or not my recorder would pick it up.

  “You’ll have to speak a little louder, Jeremiah.”

  “Yes,” he said again.

  “When is the last time you saw her?”

  “Last night at church. We were playing tag.”

  “Was there anything unusual about her last night?”

  He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he said, remembering the recorder.

  “How long have you known Angel?”

  “Long time,” he replied.

  “Were you friends?”

  He made a face. “Angel’s a girl,” he said. Obviously being a girl precluded her being a friend. “Besides,” he added, “she’s just a little kid.”

  “Do you know why we’re here asking questions?”

  “Somebody said it’s because Angel’s dead.”

  “That’s true. And we’re trying to find out who did it. That’s my job.”

  “Pastor Michael says God did it because Angel wouldn’t obey the rules.”

  “What rules?”

  “She was all the time talking to people. Even when Pastor Michael got after her, she still did it.”

  “He got after her?”

  “He gave her a licking in church. That’s what he always does, but Angel never cried no matter what he did. The other kids knew that if they’d cry he’d stop. Angel wouldn’t cry. That made him real mad.”

  “I’ll just bet it did,” I said. “And what about you? Did you ever get a licking in church?”

  He nodded. “Once for stealing some food from the kitchen after dinner and once for running away.”

  “Are you afraid you’ll get in trouble?”

  He nodded again. “Pastor’s mad that we’re all talking to you.”

  “How old are you, Jeremiah?”

  “Eight.” As we spoke, I had noticed a bruise on top of his wrist. A small part of it was visible at the bottom of his sleeve. I pushed the shirt sleeve up, revealing five distinct marks on his arm, a thumb and four fingers.

  “How did that happen?”

  He shrugged and looked sheepish. “I fell down,” he said.

  “Where do you live?”

  “In Ballard, not far from the church.”

  “With your parents?”

  “With my mom and my stepfather.”

  “And how does he treat you, your stepfather?”

  “All right, I guess.”

  I could see I had gone beyond what he would tell me. It was one thing to talk about Angela Barstogi. It was quite another to talk about Jeremiah Mason. He could still feel pain. Angel couldn’t. “Is there anything you’d like to add?”

  He considered. “I’m going to miss Angel,” he said, “even if she was a girl.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a business card with my name and telephone number on it. “If anyone gets after you about today, I want you to call me, understand?” He nodded.

  I started toward the door but Jeremiah stopped me. He reached behind a broken-down dresser and pulled out a cup, a child’s cup with the ABC’s around the top and bottom. The name Angela was written in bright red letters on one side. Gingerly he handed it to me.

  “It was hers,” he said. “Pastor Michael told her to get rid of it, but she didn’t. We hid it.” He stopped and stood looking at the cup, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. “Do you think I could keep it?”

  Nodding, I returned it to his grubby hand. “I think Angel would like that.”

  As soon as he had once more concealed the cup, I walked Jeremiah back downstairs. Brodie glared at him as we came past, but he refrained from comment. I guess Sergeant Watkins’ threat of jail had carried some weight with Brodie. He had all the earmarks of a bully and a coward, someone who would lord it over those who were weaker than he. I wondered about his frustration at being faced with a tough little kid who refused to cry. I wondered if, by not crying, Angel Barstogi had signed her own death warrant. It was a possibility.

  As a homicide detective, however, I’m not allowed to act on mere hunches. I can move only when I have solid evidence that points me in a certain direction. I had a feeling about Michael Brodie, but nothing substantial. Jeremiah’s revelatio
ns about the “lickings” in Faith Tabernacle gave us a basis for making inquiries, but nothing more.

  Slowly the crowd in the house diminished as people filtered out. At last there were only Peters and Brodie and Suzanne and me. We took them into separate rooms.

  Suzanne’s original numbness was beginning to wear off, but she had a hard time following my questions, to say nothing of answering them. Some things, like the date of her divorce, escaped her completely. She claimed she simply could not remember.

  That bothered me. Cops learn to listen to what’s said as well as to what isn’t; then they combine the two in order to get at the truth. Suzanne was under a lot of stress, but nonetheless there was a lot she wasn’t saying. I didn’t know why. She was hiding something, that much was certain, but I didn’t know what or who she might be protecting. Did Pastor Michael Brodie exert such influence that he could coerce a mother into concealing her own child’s murderer? It was a chilling thought, even for someone who has been in this business as long as I have.

  We left Gay Avenue around ten o’clock that night. I was starved. It had been a long time since breakfast. We went to the Doghouse, a lowbrow place in my neighborhood that stays open all hours and has fed me more meals than I care to count.

  Peters and I don’t exactly see eye to eye on food. Peters is an enzyme nut. He eats sprouts and seeds, which may be okay for rabbits, but in my opinion that stuff is hardly fit for human consumption. He avoids sugar and salt. He consumes little red meat and can declaim for hours on the evils of caffeine. In other words, there are times when he can be a real pain in the butt. I don’t mind eating with him, but I’ve thought of carrying earplugs for when he gets on his soapbox.

  I, on the other hand, thrive on ordinary, garden-variety, all-American junk food. Karen got the barbecue in the divorce settlement. It went with the house. Since that was the only piece of cooking equipment I had mastered and since barbecuing was unavailable in my downtown high-rise, I converted to restaurants. Other than the department, the Doghouse is my home away from home.

  It’s at Seventh and Bell, a few blocks from where I live. It’s one of those twenty-four-hour places frequented by cops, cabbies, reporters, and other folks who live their lives while most people are asleep. The waitresses wouldn’t win beauty pageants but the service is exceptional. The food is plain and plentiful, without an enzyme in sight. Connie, a grandmotherly type with boundless energy, tapped her pencil impatiently as Peters groused about the available selections. She finally pacified him with an order of unbuttered whole wheat toast and some herb tea.

  I wolfed down a chili burger with lots of onions and cheese while Peters morosely stirred his tea. “What do you think?” I asked eventually.

  “It’s got to be some kind of brainwashing,” he said. “He’s got her hiding something. The question is, what?”

  “Beats me.” On the way across town we had exchanged information as much as possible. Afterward Peters had become strangely quiet and withdrawn. That’s the tough part about breaking in a new partner. There’s so much to learn before you can function as a team. Ray Johnson and I had worked together for almost eleven years before he bailed out to become chief of police in Pasco. I had become accustomed to his habits, his way of thinking. It was hard to tell where Ray’s ideas left off and mine began.

  With Peters it was different. He had a guarded way about him. I was still very much outside the perimeter. After two months of working together I knew almost nothing about his personal life other than the fact that he was divorced. For that matter, he didn’t know much about my personal life, either. It’s a two-way street.

  Peters gave me a long, searching look. “You ever have anything to do with a cult before?” he asked. The question was evidently the tip of an iceberg. There was a lot more lurking beneath the surface than was apparent in his words.

  “No,” I replied. “First time.”

  “Lucky for you,” he said, returning to his studious examination of the bottom of his teacup. I waited a moment to see if he would continue. He didn’t. At last I gave up and changed the subject.

  “What’s the agenda for tomorrow?”

  Before he could answer, a noisy group meandered out of the bar in a flurry of activity. I caught sight of Maxwell Cole at the same time he saw me. He extricated himself from the group and came to our booth. Max is a hulking brute of a man whose handlebar mustache and ponderous girth give him the appearance of an overfed walrus. “Damned if it isn’t old J. P.” he said, holding out his hand. “Fancy meeting a brother in a dive like this.”

  I ignored his hand, knowing it would go away. Max’s reference was to our fraternity days at the University of Washington. There was no love lost then and even less now. Then we had been rivals for Karen Moffit’s affections. I won that round. Karen Moffit became Karen Beaumont, and Maxwell Cole got his nose out of joint. It’s ironic that five years after Karen divorced me, I’m still stuck with Maxwell Cole. I’m a bad habit he can’t seem to break.

  These days he’s a columnist for Seattle’s morning daily, the Post-Intelligencer. His column, “City Beat,” serves as a pulpit for Maxwell Cole, self-professed righter of wrongs. He doesn’t pretend to be unbiased. He’s one of those liberals who always roots for the under-dog whether or not it has rabies.

  I could handle this self-righteous, pontificating son-of-a-bitch a little better if I hadn’t spotted old Maxey Baby down on First Avenue a couple of times, hanging around the porno flicks. I don’t think he was down there doing movie reviews. He looked at home there, a regular customer, like me in the McDonald’s at Third and Pine.

  Cole likes to take on the Seattle Police Department, casting all cops in the role of heavies. I’ve lost more than one case after he has tried it in the press, noisily waving the flag of the First Amendment all the while. One of his success stories, Harvey Cahill, killed somebody else within a month after Max got him acquitted. By then nobody remembered Cole’s bleeding heart. They went gunning for someone to blame. Yours truly took a little gas.

  “Still packing a grudge, I see,” Max said, carelessly reaching across our table to flick a drooping ash into an unused ashtray. He was oblivious to the fact that he was intruding. I’m sure the idea never crossed his mind.

  “I’d say it’s a little more serious than a grudge,” I allowed slowly. “Antipathy would be closer to the mark.”

  He turned from me to give Peters a nearsighted once-over, blinking through thick horn-rimmed glasses. “This your new partner? What happened to Ray?”

  “Ask the public information officer,” I said. “He gets paid for answering your questions. I don’t.”

  Max looked pained. “You know, it doesn’t pay to deliberately offend the press. You might need our help someday.”

  “It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

  Connie brought the coffeepot and shouldered Max out of the way. She glared meaningfully at his cigarette and removed the offending ashtray. There didn’t seem to be any love lost between Connie and Maxwell Cole, either.

  “Come on, Max,” someone called from the door. “We’re waiting on you.”

  Max paused as if reluctant to abandon the confrontation. He finally sauntered away. Once the door closed behind him, Connie turned back to me. “He writes mean stuff about you,” she said, “and he don’t tip too good, either.”

  That made me laugh. “Maybe I’ll get even by doing some writing of my own one day,” I told her. I had no idea the opportunity would present itself so soon.

  Once she left the table, I turned back to Peters. “What the hell does J. P. stand for?” Peters asked.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “That bad?”

  I nodded. He had the good sense to drop it. Jonas Piedmont Beaumont was my mother’s little joke on the world and me too, naming me after her two grandfathers. I first shortened it to initials and then settled for Beau. The initials had stuck with people who’d met me during my university days. I wanted to punch Max in the nose for bringin
g it up. He once had a nickname too. Maybe I could return the favor.

  “Now, what’s the next move?” I asked, returning our focus to the business at hand.

  Peters looked at his watch. “It’s only eleven. What say we go back to the office and sift through whatever statements have been transcribed. That’ll tell us who we should hit up tomorrow.”

  “Maybe we’ll have a preliminary medical examiner’s report by then too, with any kind of luck.”

  We went back to the office. For another four hours we pored over the Gay Avenue transcripts. Sergeant Watkins must have moved heaven and earth to have them typed that fast. The pattern was fairly obvious. The adults were noticeably vague about details prior to five or six months ago, although two of them indicated they had previously lived in Chicago. They all gave similar accounts of the last few days leading up to Angel’s death. I paid particular attention to the statement from Jeremiah’s stepfather, Benjamin Mason. The handprint bruise on that kid’s arm hadn’t come from a fall. No way. Like Jeremiah, all the children gave every evidence of being scared silly. In his own way, Jeremiah was just as plucky as Angel Barstogi. I hoped he wouldn’t have to pay the same kind of price.