J. Jance - Until Proven Guilty

I almost fell off the bed. I turned and looked at her. “Maybe,” I said.

She smiled and planted a firm kiss on my shoulder. “I hoped you’d say that,” she murmured. I finished tying my shoe and bolted from the room. I was still trying to regain my equilibrium when the bus dropped me at Myrtle Edwards Park, eight blocks from my building.

In Seattle, if you want something named after you, you have to die first. Myrtle Edwards Park is no exception. Myrtle Edwards was a dynamo of a city councilwoman, and the park named in her honor, after she went to the great city council in the sky, trails along the waterfront from Pier Seventy to Pier Ninety-one. It consists of a narrow strip of grass, bicycle and jogging trails, some blackberry bushes, and a rocky shoreline. There is no sandy beach. The waves crash onto a seawall made up of chunks of concrete and rocks, carrying a deadly cargo of stray logs and timbers. Nobody swims in Myrtle Edwards Park, although it is a popular gathering place for noontime joggers and other fitness fanatics.

A squad car was there before me. A park maintenance worker had read a morning newspaper account of the Faith Tabernacle murders. When he saw the bike, a sturdy English three-speed, smashed beyond repair but still a relatively new and fairly expensive one, he called the department. Someone had put him through to Watkins. Not only did he talk to the right person, it even turned out to be the right bike. The tire treads matched the plaster casts taken at Faith Tabernacle.

So how do you find the owner of a bike? It’s not like an automobile where everyone has to register and license it. The few who do are mostly those unfortunates who have already been ripped off once and who know there’s no other way for them to identify and reclaim a bike if the department happens to get lucky and recover it. In other words, bicycle registration in Seattle is a long way from 100 percent.

Peters and I started at the other end of the question, going to the manufacturer and tracing the serial number to the retail outlet that sold it. The actual store was in my neighborhood, which isn’t that unlikely since my neighborhood is a big part of downtown Seattle. The store was a Schuck’s, right across the street from the Doghouse. It took Peters and me the better part of two hours of letting our fingers do the walking before we got that far. We ambled into the store about eleven-fifteen, feeling a little smug. A clerk searched through some files before he found what we needed, but twenty minutes later we walked away with a name and address on Queen Anne Hill.

It sounds simple, doesn’t it? You apply a little logic, a little common sense, and everything falls right into place. We should have known. Things were going far too smoothly. The house on Galer Street was vacant and had been long enough that weeds were pushing up through a once pristine lawn. There was a For Sale sign with a telephone number on it in the front yard. We took down the number and the address.

We called from a pay phone and were directed to a real estate office on the back side of Queen Anne. Our good fortune continued. The listing agent happened to be in. She remembered the owner well. He had been transferred to London with Western Electric. He had been in a hurry to pack and move. His company bought up the equity in his house, and he had held a gigantic moving sale early in March, unloading everything but the bare essentials. It had been a good sale. A bike might have been one of the items sold. Dead end.

This job is like that. You take a slender lead and do your best with it. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes not. You have to take the good with the bad. We called Watkins to let him know we had come up empty-handed. He told us the preliminary report had come in on the Faith Tabernacle murders. Ballistics tests showed the weapon to be a.38. It was hardly a quantum leap toward identifying the killer. Watkins also said Carstogi had called and wanted to see us.

We went to the Warwick. A detective sat at the end of the seventh-floor hallway. Powell and Watkins were making sure Carstogi didn’t go anywhere without an escort.

We knocked. Carstogi opened the door. He looked a little shaken. “Have you seen the paper?” he asked.

“I don’t read papers,” I said.

Peters shook his head. “I didn’t have time.”

“Look,” Carstogi said bleakly.

Peters read aloud. “”Police have sequestered the father of Friday’s slain child in connection with the subsequent double murder of the child’s mother and minister.

“”Andrew M. Carstogi, being detained in an undisclosed downtown location, arrived in town Sunday evening and was involved in a confrontation at Faith Tabernacle in Ballard during the day on Monday.

“”The church in the Loyal Heights area was the scene of two gangland-style murders that occurred later that night. Dead are Pastor Michael Brodie, age forty-nine, and his parishioner, Suzanne Barstogi, Carstogi’s estranged wife. The woman’s age has not been released.

“”Arlo Hamilton, Seattle Police public information officer, said that detectives are searching for a bicycle that may have been used by the killer in making his escape.

“”Barstogi and Carstogi, whose exact marital status is unclear, lost their only child, Angela, on Friday. She was the victim of a brutal homicide that occurred in Discovery Park. That incident is still under investigation. No arrests have been made in that slaying and police officials refuse to say whether or not Carstogi is a suspect in either the church murders or the death of the child.

“”Inquiries in Chicago, former location of Faith Tabernacle, revealed that the group, a fundamentalist sect, left Illinois under a cloud after accusations of physical violence and alleged child abuse. At least one of the violent incidents involved Carstogi, but none of the alleged charges against the group were subsequently proven.

“”Interviews with Suzanne Barstogi prior to her death gave no hint of any dissatisfaction or disagreement within the Faith Tabernacle organization. She expressed gratitude that the entire congregation had stood by her during the period of the loss of her child.

“”An unidentified airline revealed that Carstogi was a passenger on a flight that arrived at Seattle’s Sea-Tac International Airport Sunday night, where he was reported to have been inebriated. He was overheard making threatening statements regarding Brodie. Carstogi allegedly held the minister responsible for the loss of his wife and child.

“”He reportedly left the airport in the company of two homicide investigators, Detectives Ronald A. Peters and J. P. Beaumont, who are assigned to the murder investigation of Carstogi’s daughter.

“”Funeral arrangements for Brodie and Barstogi are pending with the Mount Pleasant Mortuary, where a spokesman indicated the bodies will probably be returned to Chicago for burial.“”

Peters folded the paper when he finished.

“There’s more,” said Carstogi. “Look on page seventeen.”

Obligingly Peters reopened the paper. “The top corner,” Carstogi said.

Peters glanced at me over the top of the paper. “It’s Cole’s column,” he said.

“Read it.”

“”Who is the Lady in Red? The mysterious lady, although that may be a title she doesn’t deserve, first appeared in a red dress, driving a red Porsche, and carrying a red rose at the funeral of Angela Barstogi, Seattle’s five-year-old murder victim. The lady has since been seen several times in the company of Detective J. P. Beaumont, the homicide investigator assigned to the case.

“”Seen last in a red sweatsuit in an area restaurant, she became verbally abusive when questioned about her connection to the case. She was accompanied by Detective Beaumont at the time.