J. Jance - Until Proven Guilty

The day after the divorce was final she married him, and I hired an interior decorator. That’s almost five years ago now. He moved Karen, Kelly, and Scott to Cucamonga, California. I guess he’s an all-right guy. The kids have never complained to me, and Kelly told me last Christmas that he (his name is Dave) has them put the child support money I send in a special savings account for college. He may be all right, but I hate him, and I eat on real plates with real napkins because I want Karen to know my world didn’t end just because she left. At least, it didn’t end completely.

I ate, cleared the table, and put the dishes in the dishwasher. I run the dishwasher once a week on Sunday morning whether I need to or not. I made a fresh drink and went to stand on the balcony. It was a chill spring evening, tending more toward winter than summer. Across the street at the Cinerama the ticket holders’ line for the nine o’clock show disappeared behind the Fourth and Blanchard Building, a tall, pointed, black glass monstrosity called the Darth Vader Building by locals. For a while I stood there watching and listening, hearing little snatches of conversation and laughter that wafted up to my eleventh-floor perch. Periodically a juggler appeared to entertain those waiting in line. Some people will do anything for money.

I was tempted to mix another drink and stay home to lick my wounds, to bring up all that old family stuff and beat myself over the head with it. It occurred to me, however, that it wouldn’t be healthy. At eight fifty-five I put my glass in the sink and rode the elevator downstairs. The ride down was longer than the walk across the street. The last of the line had entered the theater by the time I bought my ticket. I didn’t bother to ask what was showing.

It wasn’t a good decision. The wife in the movie was getting it on with every Tom, Dick, and Harry in town. Instead of cheering me up, the story rekindled my anger over losing my family.

When I came home, I took myself and a bottle of MacNaughton’s to the recliner in my darkened living room, and I didn’t quit until we were both gone.

Sunday morning dawned clear and cold. I woke up, still sitting in my chair, nursing a terrific hangover.

Friday and Saturday’s storm had blown itself out. The cloud cover that usually keeps Seattle temperatures moderate was missing. The sun had barely come up when banks of fog rolled in. Once the fog burned off, the sun’s rays offered no warmth.

Hindsight is so simple. I should have had some premonition my life would change that day. If I had called old Dave, Karen’s new husband, and asked him to spare me a few chicken entrails, maybe I could have gotten a seer to give me some advance warning. I wouldn’t have been caught quite so off guard. Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — Dave and I don’t have that kind of relationship. As it was, the morning appeared routine, ordinary, once I’d swallowed enough aspirin to quiet the pounding in my head.

I made breakfast, hoping that food would help. I have mastered the art of microwave bacon and soft-boiled eggs. Then I ran my weekly load of dishes and washed my weekly load of clothes. Anything that has to be ironed goes across the street to the cleaners and laundry. By then I was feeling half human.

After I finished my chores, the week’s collection of crossword puzzles was waiting in the hall outside my door. Ida, my next-door neighbor, knows I hate newspapers and love crossword puzzles. She saves them for me all week. On Sunday morning she leaves a little stack outside my door after she finishes with her own paper. I’ve come to regard the weekly stack of puzzles as a variation on the Easter Bunny theme. It’s almost as magical.

Peters has season tickets to the Mariners’ games. That particular Sunday, the Yankees were in town. We had decided the day before that I would pull the funeral duty. It’s a part of the job that I don’t relish, but season tickets are season tickets.

I suppose I should explain why cops go to murder victims’ funerals. They go to see who shows up and who doesn’t. Statistically most people are murdered by someone they know. Oftentimes a murderer will attend the funeral for fear his not being there will throw suspicion in his direction. Sometimes it works the other way too. The killer is a complete stranger who goes to the funeral because it gives him a feeling of power to be there without anyone knowing who he is, so homicide detectives go to funerals. It comes with the territory.

Brodie had told me that Angela’s Thanksgiving Service would be held at Mount Pleasant Cemetery on top of Queen Anne Hill. It struck me as being a little odd. I would have expected them to have a hellfire-and-brimstone sermon in Faith Tabernacle itself. It seemed self-effacing, as though they didn’t want to draw attention to the church itself.

I decided to walk to the cemetery. I suppose I could have gone down to the department and checked out a car, but I didn’t feel like going anywhere near the department, not even as close as the motor pool.

I got over being a suburban type all at once. I sold my car when I moved to the city. I got my apartment cheap because it didn’t come with a parking place. Later I found out why it was cheap. Parking in downtown Seattle costs a fortune. I did the only sensible thing — I learned to love the bus.

Gone were the days of the fifty-five-minute commute. All commuting ever got me was an ulcer, hemorrhoids, and a divorce. Walking isn’t all that bad except that having dates without a car has proved to be something of a challenge. The upshot is that I’ve virtually given up dating except for those rare cliff-dwelling creatures like myself who aren’t insulted by an offer of dinner or a movie contingent upon walking to and from. There aren’t too many women like that, so my sex life has dwindled. I chum around with some of the lavender-haired ladies from the Royal Crest who are glad to have my friendship but don’t make demands on my body or my schedule. Like me, they mostly don’t have cars. It’s a lifestyle that suits me.

The two-and-a-half-mile trek to Mount Pleasant Cemetery, much of it almost perpendicular, felt good. It finished the job of clearing my head. A chill wind was blowing off Puget Sound, and a few clouds scudded across the sky ahead of the wind. Seattle wouldn’t be the Emerald City if it didn’t rain on a fairly regular basis.

It wasn’t necessary to stop and ask directions at the cemetery office. I could see a little knot of people gathering just over the crest of the bluff. I stationed myself a little apart with my back to a suddenly gray Lake Union. I checked off the arriving players against Brodie’s roster.

The True Believers arrived first. It was clear they had been instructed to speak to no one. They came as a group, huddled together near the coffin as a group, and knelt to pray as a group. Suzanne Barstogi, kneeling stoically in the middle of the second row, was accorded no special recognition or position of honor as the mother of the slain child. This was a group Thanksgiving Service, I reminded myself, and Pastor Michael Brodie would not tolerate any individual outpourings of grief that might crack the shell of his little facade.

I had called Brodie earlier and jotted down the names of those he expected to be in attendance. Looking at his flock now, I was able to put some names with faces. Jeremiah, of course, Benjamin Mason/Jason, Ezra, Thomas. There was one more man, but I couldn’t recall his name. Other than Suzanne, the women eluded me. They were so drab and so alike, it was impossible to sort them out.

Sophie Czirski was there, her ramrod thinness totally at odds with the pudgy Faith Tabernacle women. She planted herself firmly at the foot of the coffin and glared at the kneeling pastor with open defiance, daring him to question her right to be there. The wind, blowing at her back, periodically made her red hair stand on end. It gave her a wild appearance. If I had been Brodie, I would have thought twice about picking a fight with her.