J. Jance - Until Proven Guilty

“He almost killed me,” he replied. He had sobered up enough that his words no longer slurred together.

“That’s two men going at it. It’s a long way from killing a defenseless child.”

“You been in the church?” he asked.

“We’ve been there,” Peters replied.

“But during a service?” Carstogi continued doggedly. “Have you been there during a service? If I just coulda gotten that judge to go to a service he woulda given me custody.”

“Tell us about the service,” Peters suggested.

“You probably won’t believe it. Nobody else does.”

“Try us,” I offered.

He looked at us doubtfully. The sobering process made him more reluctant to talk. “It’s like he owns them body and soul. Like it’s a contest to see how far they’ll jump if he tells them.”

“For instance,” Peters said.

“If he told them to eat dog shit they’d do it.” He said it quickly, with a ring of falsehood.

“That’s not really what you’re talking about, is it?” Peters’ face was a mask that I had a hard time reading myself. Carstogi gave him an appraising look, then shook his head.

Peters followed up on the opening he had made. “You’re afraid to tell us for fear you’ll end up being prosecuted too, aren’t you?”

“It’s scary,” Carstogi admitted. “I didn’t realize until after I got out. You just do what he tells you, what everyone else is doing. It doesn’t seem so bad at the time. You don’t think that you’re hurting someone. The whole time Brodie is there telling you that suffering is the only way those sinners are going to heaven, that you are the chosen instrument of God.”

“Shit.” Peters got up and left the table. He went into the bar and came back a few minutes later. A distinct odor of gin came with him. Maybe the juniper berries in gin had been promoted to health food status. Because I knew about Broken Springs, Oregon, and Peters’ own situation, I could feel for him, but to leave in the middle of an interrogation was inexcusable, to say nothing of drinking on duty.

I made a mental note to climb his frame about it later. I don’t like personal considerations to get in the way of doing the job. If you’re a professional, that kind of thing doesn’t happen. Objectivity is the name of the game. While I was making that little set of mental notes, I should have remembered something they used to say in Sunday School about taking the beam out of your own eye before you start worrying about the mote in somebody else’s. But then, I was still very much the professional. J. P. Beaumont hadn’t reached his own breaking point yet. It was coming.

Carstogi was exhausted. We put him up in the Warwick, which happens to be at Fourth and Lenora, a half block cornerwise from where I live. It made dropping him off and tucking him in a simple matter. He seemed more than happy for us to stick him in a hotel room and tell him we’d come get him in the morning.

Peters came with me to my apartment. I got out my MacNaughton’s and located a dusty gin bottle with enough dregs for a reasonable drink or two. We tried to plan for morning, which by now was already upon us.

“You think he’s telling the truth?” I asked Peters.

He nodded. “Sounds like it to me, as far as it goes. He’s scared some of the shit is going to roll downhill and he’ll end up with charges lodged against him. I’m afraid he’ll rabbit on us before we can get him into court.”

I had to agree with Peters’ assessment. If we went strictly with Carstogi, we would be leaning on a bent reed. “Do you suppose we can use him to bring Suzanne around?”

Peters considered for a moment. “It would be worth a try, although I doubt it’ll work. Even considering what she’s been through, she won’t squeal on that Brodie bastard. That’s the mystifying part about brainwashing. She may know he’s a killer, but she’ll stick to him like glue.”

“You could be right,” I allowed, “but we have the element of surprise on our side. She has no way of knowing that Andrew Carstogi is in town. Maybe if we brought him over and dumped him on her, it would jar her into slipping. After all, they were together almost ten years. She probably still has some feelings for him.”

“It’s worth a try,” Peters agreed.

We made arrangements to meet at the Warwick at eight. We’d take Carstogi with us to breakfast and then head for Gay Avenue. We’d try to get there before Suzanne had a backup group from Faith Tabernacle. Our best bet was to catch her alone.

Peters left. In the quiet of my apartment, Anne Corley returned to tantalize me. I had managed to keep thoughts of her at a distance while Peters was there, while I was doing my job, but now her presence — or rather the lack of it — filled the place. Considering she had never set foot in my apartment, it seemed odd that it should feel empty without her. Considering I had never laid a glove on her, it was even odder that I should want her so much.

I leaned back in the leather chair and closed my eyes. I must have dozed off. In a dream I opened my door, and she was standing in the hall. She was wearing a filmy red gown, one of those Frederick’s of Hollywood jobs with a split up the side. I reached out to draw her into the room. She came close enough to kiss me on the cheek, then slipped out of my grasp and disappeared around the corner of the hall. The hall became a maze. I followed her, turning one corner after another. Every once in a while I caught a fleeting glimpse of the red gown. She stayed elusively out of reach, but all the while I could hear her laughing.

I woke up in a cold sweat. It was just after three. I stumbled off to bed telling myself that there’s no fool like an old fool — an old fool with delusions of adequacy.

We were at 4543 Gay Avenue by nine-thirty the next morning. During breakfast we had attempted to explain to Carstogi the importance of bringing Suzanne around. He wasn’t wild about seeing her. He still wanted us to take him to Brodie, but sober, he wasn’t quite as anxious for a confrontation as he had been the night before.

No one answered our knock, although the doorknob turned in my hand when I tried it. The house was empty. No dirty dishes filled the sink. The beds were made. Someone had gone to a good deal of trouble to clean the place up. We got back in the car and drove to Faith Tabernacle.

Carstogi’s reluctance surfaced as we climbed the steps to go inside. Pastor Michael Brodie wielded some residual power that made the younger man, if not downright scared, at least more than a little wary. It’s the old talk-is-cheap routine.

The church proper was open but empty. We found Suzanne in the Penitent’s Room, kneeling on the stand before the open Bible. Peters and I dropped back while Carstogi approached her.

“Sue?” he asked tentatively. “I’m sorry about Angel. I just heard.”

Suzanne didn’t so much as look up. There was no sign of recognition or acknowledgment. He stood over her, clenching and unclenching his fists in a combination of nervousness and frustration. A range of emotions played over his face — grief, anger, rejection. He knelt beside her and touched her arm. Her body tensed at the touch but still she didn’t look up. “Please, Sue,” he pleaded gently. “Come back with me. Let’s start over again, away from here, away from all this.”

The door to the study swung open and Pastor Michael Brodie charged into the room. He grabbed Carstogi by the collar and hauled him to his feet, shoving him off-balance and away in the same powerful motion.

“Satan is speaking to you through the voice of a devil, Sister! Pray on. Your immortal soul is hanging in the balance.”

Carstogi recovered and came back swinging, his face a mask of fury. He was pretty well built in his own right, with the broad shoulders and thick forearms of a construction hand, but Brodie outclassed him all the way around. With the ease of a trained fighter, Brodie fended off first one blow and then another before sending Carstogi crashing against the opposite wall. By then Peters and I moved between them. Peters helped Carstogi to his feet and bodily restrained him. The younger man’s nose and lip were bleeding. Brodie may have looked like he had gone to seed, but looks can be deceiving. Carstogi was no match for him.