J. Jance - Until Proven Guilty

After breakfast we caught a cab down to the courthouse. I guess I should have been nervous or had some sense of being railroaded, but I didn’t. Anne’s hand found mine and squeezed it. The radiant happiness on her face was directed at me alone, and it made my heart swell with pride.

We were first in line when the licensing bureau doors opened. I had no idea King County wouldn’t take a check for the twenty-six-dollar marriage license fee. Luckily, Ralph had enough cash on him, and he came up with the money. That, combined with his picking up the check for breakfast, made me more than a little testy. As far as I was concerned, he was being far too accommodating.

Ames took a cab to the airport from the courthouse. “Will you be here for the wedding?” Anne asked, as he climbed into the cab.

“That depends on how much work I get done tomorrow,” he replied.

Once again the little snippet of private conversation between them made me feel like an interloper. When the cab pulled away, Anne turned back to me. “What are you frowning about?”

“Who, me?” I asked stupidly.

“Yes, you. Who else would I mean?”

“How long have you known him?”

“A long time,” she answered. “You’re not jealous of him, are you?”

“Maybe a little.”

She laughed aloud. “Don’t be silly. Ralph is the last person you should be jealous of. He’s a good friend, that’s all. I wanted him to meet you.”

“To check me out? Did I pass inspection?” Even I could hear the annoyance in my voice.

“You wouldn’t have a marriage license in your pocket if you hadn’t passed. What’s the matter with you?”

I shrugged, unwilling to invite further teasing about my jealousy, but making a mental note to remember crisp bacon and pancakes. Anne walked me as far as the department, then struck off on her own up Third Avenue, while I headed for my desk on the fifth floor. There was a note on my desk saying that Peters was in the interview room with Andrew Carstogi, that I should follow suit.

I guess his fellow inmates convinced Carstogi of the error of his ways and had him run up the flag to the public defender’s office. By the time I got into the interview room on the fifth floor, Peters and Watkins were there along with a tough-looking female defense attorney. She nodded or shook her head whenever we asked Carstogi a question. Usually I look at this process as a game where we try to get at the truth and the lawyers try to hide it.

Sitting in jail overnight, Carstogi had come up with one additional detail that he had forgotten before. He said he thought the cab company had something to do with the Civil War. After we sent Carstogi back to his cell, we returned to our desks, and I hauled out the yellow pages.

“What’s with you today?” Peters asked, thumping into his own chair. “You were late.”

I decided to put all my cards on the table at once and get it over with. There’s something to be said for shock value. I tossed him the envelope with the marriage license in it. He removed the license, read it, then looked at me incredulously. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

“Why?”

“Beau, for Chrissakes, what do you know about her? You only met last Sunday.”

“She wants me; I want her. What’s to know?”

“This is crazy.”

“We’re getting married Sunday.”

“In one week? What’s the big hurry? Is she pregnant or something?”

“Look, if you want to come, you’re invited. Otherwise, lay off.”

Peters was still shaking his head when I turned back to the yellow pages. Halfway through the taxi listings, I found it — the General Grant Cab Company.

We checked out a car from the motor pool and went looking. We found the faded blue cab in a lineup waiting for passengers at Sea-Tac Airport. The driver was chewing a wad of gum when we showed him our badges. His hair looked like he still used Brylcreem. He rolled down the window. “What’s up?” he asked.

He didn’t want to lose his place in line, so we sat in the cab to ask him our questions. He knew nothing about some hooker named Gloria. He’d never seen Carstogi. We showed him Carstogi’s mug shot. Well, maybe he had seen someone like him, but he couldn’t remember where or when. We made a note to check out his trip sheets later, but I had an idea that if the driver had been the one who gave Carstogi a ride, it was as a sideline the cab company knew nothing about.

Carstogi’s flimsy alibi had just gotten a whole lot flimsier. Peters and I headed back into town. “Where do you want to go? The office?” Peters asked.

“No. Let’s go back to my place. I want to listen to that tape.”

“Why? Because you still don’t think Carstogi did it?”

“Why do you think he did?” I answered Peters’ question with a question of my own.

Peters looked thoughtful. “Maybe because I think I would have in his place,” he said solemnly. From his tone of voice, it was readily apparent that he wasn’t making a joke.

“So you’re layering in your own motivations and convicting him? He’s innocent until proven guilty, you asshole. That’s the way the law works, remember?”

“Who did it, then?” Peters asked. “If Carstogi didn’t, who did? The tape shows that whoever the guy was, he’d been around the True Believers long enough to know the rules.”

“The guy we heard on the tape knew the ropes, but we don’t know for sure he was the one who killed them.” We drove silently for a time while I retraced the conversation.

“Maybe we need to go back to Angela Barstogi,” I mused aloud. “What I just said about Carstogi is true about Brodie and Suzanne as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“We never convicted them, either. Just because they’re dead doesn’t automatically make them guilty. We never proved anything other than the fact that they had some pretty weird ideas.”

Peters clicked his tongue thoughtfully. “I see where you’re going. You think the same person may have killed all three of them.”

“Having Carstogi here makes it too simple, too easy.”

“Maybe so,” Peters agreed.

We hurried to my place. I wondered if Anne would be there, but she wasn’t. Peters dragged the recorder out of the drawer and turned it on. Personal considerations were forgotten in the charged tension between us. We were ready to listen to the tape from a different point of view.

It was the third time through when it hit me. “Stop,” I said. “Run it back just a few turns.”

Peters did. For a few moments we heard Suzanne Barstogi’s voice raised in solitary prayer, then her abrupt “What do you want?”

“That’s it! It can’t be Carstogi. She spoke to him.”

Peters looked at me, puzzled.

“Remember Monday?” I asked. “She didn’t speak to Carstogi, not since he was Disavowed. I don’t think she would have broken that rule even if he was holding a gun to her head. She’d be a lot more likely to speak to Benjamin.”

“I’ll be damned. You could be right, Beau. We’d better take this thing downtown and show it to Watty.”

“He’s not going to like it. Illegal listening devices are frowned on by the brass.”

“We’d better tell him just the same.”

A key turned in the lock. Anne Corley hurried into the apartment just as we were getting up to leave. Peters guiltily shoved the recorder into his pocket like a kid caught stealing candy.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I left my watch in the bedroom. I forgot to put it on this morning.”

She went into the bedroom and came out fastening the watch. “What about lunch later?” she asked. “We’ve got lots to talk over.”

“We’re on our way back to the department right now. Maybe about one-thirty or two.”