J. Jance - Until Proven Guilty

“How can you be sure?” I asked. “I don’t think it sounds like him at all.”

Just then Anne asked permission to return to the living room. She was wearing the same blue suit she had worn the day before, only now her hair was pulled back and fastened in an elaborate knot at the base of her neck. She looked like a ballerina. The similarity wasn’t just in looks. I knew that her external beauty concealed the finely tuned, well-conditioned body of a professional dancer.

“Beau, I’m going to take off now,” she said, moving toward the door. She nodded to Peters. “Nice to see you again, Ron.”

Peters stood up apologetically. “I hope you’re not leaving on my account.”

She smiled. “No. I have lots to do.”

I followed her to the door. “Can you come back tonight? I don’t know what time I’ll be back, but I can give you a key so you can let yourself in.”

“Do you think you can trust me?” She was laughing as she asked the question. I rummaged through the kitchen junk drawer to locate my spare keys.

I handed them to Anne, and she dropped them into her jacket pocket. “Thanks,” she said, giving me a quick peck on the cheek.

I walked with her to the elevator lobby, where she turned and kissed me, a full-blown invitational kiss that sent my senses reeling. The elevator door opened. There stood three of my neighbors.

“That wasn’t fair,” I protested.

“It wasn’t, was it?” she agreed. The elevator door closed, and she was gone.

Peters, still intent on the tape, was playing it again as I came back into the room. “So much of what Brodie says sounds like he’s quoting directly from the Bible.”

“Probably was. Taken out of context and given a forty-degree twist, you can use the Bible to justify almost anything.”

Peters’ tea was gone. I brought him another cup. We listened to the tape, not once but several times. “There’s a clue in here somewhere, if we could just put our fingers on it,” Peters said as he switched off the recorder for the last time. He stood up. “I guess we’d better get back over to Faith Tabernacle. The place is probably still crawling with people. Watty will be climbing the walls.”

“What about Carstogi?” I asked.

“What about him? I’m sure the trail leads back to him one way or the other.”

I remained unconvinced. I said, “Let’s get a description of the hooker and put vice on it. Or maybe we could track down that cab.”

“You’re determined he didn’t do it, aren’t you? But you’re right; we should check it out.” Peters glanced down at the tiny machine in his hand. “What about this? Erase it?”

“No, don’t. We’ll want to listen to it again. If there’s something in there that we’re missing, maybe we’ll catch it next time. Leave it here.” I took the recorder from him and placed it in the top drawer of the occasional table beside my leather chair. “That way it won’t leak into Cole’s hands.”

Back at Faith Tabernacle Sergeant Watkins was running the show, directing a small army of officers who scrutinized every inch of the church and took statements from anyone who looked remotely related to the case. At the moment we drove up, Watty was standing next to the front door, supervising a kneeling lab technician who was making a plaster cast of something behind a row of decorative bushes.

“What’s up?” Peters asked him.

Watkins glowered at us. “Where the hell have you been?” He went on without waiting for an answer. “We found some tracks here. The footprints have been obliterated, but we should get good casts of the bicycle tires. Someone parked a bike here during the night.”

“You think the killer used a bike for his getaway?” I asked, shaking my head.

“You have a better suggestion?” Watty snapped.

I had to admit I didn’t have one. “Where’s the father?” the sergeant asked.

“He’s back at the Warwick. We’ve got a guard on him.”

“A guard!” Watkins exploded. “What I want on him are cuffs and orange coveralls. We’ve got three people dead so far. We’d better arrest someone pretty goddamned soon.”

“Carstogi didn’t do it,” I said.

“What? Are you his goddamned character witness? I understand he was out all night. Where was he?”

“He doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know!”

“He went to the Palace for a sleazy, X-rated movie and got himself picked up by a hooker. He doesn’t know where they went. He’s from out of town.”

Watkins examined my face as though he thought I was a raving lunatic. “That’s the shakiest goddamned alibi I’ve heard this week!” He turned to Peters. “You agree with him, Detective Peters?”

Peters shifted uneasily under his gaze. “No,” he said at last. “Beau and I differ on that score. I think Carstogi is our prime suspect.”

Watty turned back to me, a look of smug satisfaction spreading over his face. “I’m glad somebody around here has some sense. Majority rules. Now I suggest you get off your ass and nail it down.” He walked away.

Peters looked at me for a reaction. “He asked my opinion, Beau.” It was part apology and part justification.

“That’s why they have two detectives on this case, remember?” We went inside.

The bodies were gone and the crime lab folks were pretty much finished. One of them tossed Peters a bulging manila envelope. “You can cross robbery off the list of motives,” he said. “There’s seventeen thousand dollars in cash in that baby. It was in a bottom drawer in the study. We’re taking it down to the department for safekeeping.”

I went into the study. A well-thumbed and much-marked Bible lay open on the desk. I turned some of the pages. The marked passages were all of a vein similar to what we had heard on the tape. Nothing in Brodie’s selections spoke of forgiveness or loving one’s neighbor, to say nothing of one’s enemies. Faith Tabernacle’s leader had demanded retribution from his followers, had turned a blind eye on adultery. Someone had learned the lessons well and had given Brodie a taste of his own medicine. “Vengeance is mine” was the message. The Lord was excluded from the equation.

A halfhearted prayer service was continuing in the fellowship hall. The few True Believers who held jobs had not gone to work. Like bewildered sheep they huddled together for warmth, locked in a cell of interminable prayer, waiting for direction. Brodie had told them what to do and when to do it for a long time. Without him they had no idea how to function. I felt sorry for them. At the same time I felt repulsed. They had turned their lives and minds over to a monster masquerading as a messiah.

I saw Jeremiah. I tried to catch his eye in hopes I could get him to come talk to me. I think he saw me, but he studiously ignored me. Already someone had taken up Brodie’s mantle and was pulling the strings.

Peters and I hit the street. We went back to Gay Avenue. Like the evidence techs before us, we found nothing. It looked as though no one had been in the house since we had come with Carstogi the day before. As we stepped off the porch to leave, Sophie Czirski hailed us from the concealed gate in her fence.

“Is it true?” she demanded as we approached. “They’re both dead?”

“Yes,” Peters responded.

“Serves ‘em right,” she muttered, “both of ’em.” Her loose dentures clicked in satisfaction.

“You didn’t do it, did you, Sophie?” Peters’ question was a joke more than anything, but Sophie’s face brightened.

“I didn’t,” she said. “Wish I had, though. I was right there in the house from ”Little House on the Prairie‘ to the eleven o’clock news. Then I went to bed. No way to prove it, though. Nobody saw me. You want to take me in?“