J. Jance - Until Proven Guilty

He stopped. For a space there was no sound in the car but the rain slapping the windshield and the roof. I had worked with Peters for the better part of two months without a hint that something like that was in his background. Now he had dropped the whole load at once.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Me too,” he responded bleakly. “I can’t understand how it happens, how people put themselves totally under someone else’s control. That’s the way it is with Suzanne Barstogi. She probably stood right there and watched, maybe even helped.” It was a chilling, sobering possibility.

Once more the sound of the rain filled the car. Peters sat hunched over the steering wheel saying nothing, gripping it with such force that his knuckles turned white. The hurt and pain were so thick in the front seat you could almost touch them. “I’ll ask Powell to pull you off the case. I think your objectivity is shot to shit.”

That jarred him out of his introspection. He sat up and glared at me. “If you so much as try to get me pulled, I’ll kick your ass till Sunday, J. P. Beaumont.”

“That’s fair enough.” I could handle him pissed a whole lot better than I could handle him grieving. “Now let’s get the hell out of here. I want to go take a look at Faith Tabernacle.”

Peters straightened his shoulders and started the car. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s not about the time we started being real partners. At least we had taken the gloves off. It was about time.

It was still raining Saturday morning, so I grabbed a bus to the Public Safety Building. The lady Metro driver winked at me. I don’t think getting hit on by a lady bus driver is exactly dignified. Besides, I spent too many years with a ring around my finger to know how to handle a pass when I meet one. I consider myself a relatively cool customer. That’s why I got off the bus by the back door.

There was a whole stack of messages on my desk. I returned what calls I could. One was from a Tom Stahl. When I tried his number, I discovered it was the telephone company business office. It was closed until Monday. I’ve had calls from Ma Bell before. It usually means I’ve neglected to pay my phone bill. I looked in my checkbook. Sure enough, no check showed in April for the March bill. It was nice of Mr. Stahl to remind me! Karen used to handle that. I wadded up the message and pitched it, making a mental note to pay all my bills.

I went over the Sophie material. Who was Uncle Charlie? I pored over the list of Faith Tabernacle members. No Charles or Charlie there, only those quaint biblical names that sounded like they’d just stepped out of the Old Testament. I fed the names into the computer, looking for driver’s licenses, vehicle registrations, unpaid traffic fines. There was nothing on any of the names in the state of Washington, except for Brodie. He was the registered owner of a total of five vehicles. Not finding any information is enough to arouse any good detective’s suspicions. Who the hell were these people? I fired off another inquiry, this one to Illinois.

Afterward I waited, drumming my fingers on the desk, wondering about Uncle Charlie. No one in Faith Tabernacle had mentioned him. Whoever he was, in or out of the group, he had been important to Angela Barstogi. She had mentioned him to Sophie Czirski when she hadn’t mentioned her own father.

I looked up to find Captain Powell perched on the corner of my desk. “How’s it going?” he asked.

I guess Powell’s all right. He’s probably thirty-seven or thirty-eight. He’s what I call a young Turk, one of those guys who’s on a fast track and plans to make it all the way to the top in a hurry. The best way to handle people like that is to stay out of their way. Their ambition has a way of clobbering anyone who isn’t pushing and shoving in the same direction.

“We’re plugging,” I replied noncommittally.

“What are you finding?”

“We spent a good part of yesterday afternoon around Faith Tabernacle over in Ballard. We didn’t get inside. No one was there. The doors were locked, but we spent lots of time with the neighbors.”

“And?”

“Pastor Michael Brodie is not well thought of in that neck of the woods. People say odd things go on in Faith Tabernacle, that they sometimes hear children crying.”

“Have there been complaints?”

“Peters is checking that out right now. No one has ever been able to get close enough to the kids to talk to them.”

Powell rubbed his chin. I’m always about half-suspicious of chin rubbers. It’s the same way with deliberate tappers and cleaners of expensive, hand-carved pipes. The gestures are calculated distractions, serving to divert attention from the current topic of discussion.

“Speaking of Peters, how’s he working out?”

“He’s okay.”

“You knew there was some difficulty downstairs. We had to shift him out of property. It was either send him to homicide or bounce him back to walking a beat.”

“No, I didn’t know that.” I might have added that I was outside the departmental gossip mills, but I let it go.

“Captain Howard down there specifically asked for you to be his partner.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And you think he can handle this case without a problem?”

“Absolutely,” I replied. I wasn’t about to let on that Peters had told me anything about Broken Springs, Oregon, and losing his family to a cult. I didn’t want to risk giving Powell any ammunition about Peters’ impartiality. Powell is the kind who might use it. He ambled away from my desk then, no wiser, I hoped, than when he had arrived. I was a little wiser, though. Peters was on our squad without Powell’s wanting him there. If the captain was looking for an excuse to bump the newcomer, he wouldn’t get any help from me.

Peters showed up a few minutes later. He had checked through 911 records for any complaints from the Ballard area around Faith Tabernacle and come up empty-handed. He looked a little worse for wear, as though he hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours.

“You tie one on last night?” I asked.

“No.”

“Maybe you should have,” I told him.

He didn’t take kindly to my remark. “What’s the program today?” he asked.

“Let’s go downstairs and talk to the crime lab folks. They might have something for us.”

The Washington State crime lab is on the second floor of the Public Safety Building. They work for all the law enforcement agencies in Washington, with a number of labs scattered throughout the state. There’s a backlog of work, but murder gets priority treatment. Angela Barstogi deserved at least that much. Janice Morraine offered us some acrid coffee that Peters had the good sense to refuse. I didn’t. I’m a dog for punishment.

Janice lit a cigarette, and Peters grimaced. I was surprised he didn’t launch into an antismoking lecture on the spot. Jan took a long drag on her cigarette, ignoring Peters’ pointed disapproval. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

“Have you come up with anything on Angela Barstogi?”

“She had a Big Mac for breakfast, if that’s any help.”

“As in McDonald’s?” Peters asked.

Janice nodded. “She had mustard with whatever she ate. There were traces of mustard under her thumbnails like you’d get from opening one of those little individual packages. You can collect samples, but it’ll probably only separate Burger King from McDonald’s.”

She flicked an ash into an ashtray. Her tone was matter-of-fact. Evidence is evidence. People in this business can’t afford to look beyond the evidence to the human suffering involved. If they do, they crack up.

“Did you find anything in her room or in the house?”