J. Jance: Until Proven Guilty

The United flight got in early. We met Ames at the baggage carousel in the basement. He hurried up to me, hand outstretched. “Did you read the last chapter?” he asked without greeting.

“No,” I said. “There is no last chapter. She said I’d have to write it myself.”

Ames noticed Peters, realizing we weren’t alone. His manner changed abruptly, stiffened, withdrew. “I brought the rest of the manuscript back with me,” he said. “You’d better read it first. Then we’ll talk.”

Peters and I read it in the Royal Crest that afternoon. Ames sat to one side, watching us, saying nothing. I had given him the envelope with Anne’s note. He looked at it without comment.

We didn’t speak as we read. Words could not have lessened the horror. One city after another, one case after another, dates, times, weapons. Anne Corley had been a one-woman avenging angel, striking before the law could, the cases so far-flung, so widely scattered, that no one had ever put the pattern together. The manuscript ended with the death of Charles Murray “Uncle Charlie” Kincaid. There was a handwritten postscript. “I know Beau will keep his word. Love, Anne.”

Peters read the note, then got up, took out three glasses, and poured three slugs of vermouth, dividing it evenly three ways.

“Did you know?” I asked Ames, looking at him over my empty glass as the vermouth scorched my throat.

“My job was just to pay the bills as they came in. I never had a clue. Not until I was on the plane going home yesterday,” he said. “I tried to call as soon as I got home. There was no answer. I left messages for you at the department. I wanted to warn you, but, as her attorney, I couldn’t tell anyone else. I never thought this would happen. She seemed so happy that morning.” He ran his hand across his forehead. “It was too late when I left Seattle, Beau. It was too late when you met her.”

“Why did she let herself get caught? Why here? Why now?” They were haunting questions, ones I had asked myself over and over all day long.

“She must have wanted to be caught. That’s the only thing that makes sense. You were her first connection to the real world since Milton Corley. You made her realize what she’d become.”

The room was suddenly too small. I couldn’t breathe. I walked to the balcony door, opened it, and went outside. It was late afternoon. The roar of rush hour was just tuning up.

Ames continued, his voice carrying above the noise of the traffic. “Her mother was right to have her committed. She was right, but for the wrong reason. Anne Corley was two different people, Beau. The one is here, on these pages, cold-blooded and ruthless. The other Anne Corley loved you very much.” He reached down and pulled a legal-sized packet from his briefcase, the same briefcase from which he had removed the manuscript hours earlier.

“The other Anne Corley is here, in these pages. It’s her will, Beaumont. She left you everything. That’s why she had me come up on Wednesday. She wanted her will redrawn.”

I heard what he said. I drew only one conclusion. I strode back into the room and hauled him to his feet. “Then you did know, you sorry son-of-a-bitch. You knew she was planning something like this.”

“No, Beau. Honest to God I didn’t. Not until yesterday on the plane, and even then she seemed so happy I never dreamed—”

I shoved him back onto the couch. His head whacked the wall behind him. “Goddamn you,” I bellowed. I had to vent my rage on someone. Ralph Ames and Peters were the only ones there.

“If I just could have convinced her to turn herself in, she could have pleaded insanity.”

Ames’ voice came to me from a long way off. “She had already spent a third of her life in one of those hellholes,” he said gently. “She’s better off dead.”

I made it to the bedroom before the sob rocked me. I couldn’t argue the point. I knew he was right.

We buried Anne Corley Beaumont in her blue silk suit on the bluff of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, as close as we could to Angela Barstogi. She wore the gold wedding band. I put mine in the velvet box along with the engagement ring and put the box back in my bottom drawer.

Ames handled everything. He managed to track down the minister in the pea green Volkswagen to conduct the funeral service. Ralph is nothing if not thoughtful. He squelched the assault charge Maxwell Cole was getting ready to file and handled all the details of both the Snoqualmie investigation and the departmental review. He saw them through to completion, when all charges were dropped and my record at the department had been cleared. He contacted all other jurisdictions, closing the books on other cases involving Anne Corley.

Ralph took me down to the Four Seasons and showed me Anne’s suite. Those elegant rooms and I were kindred spirits. Once we had both been full of Anne Corley. Now we were empty. Vacant. There was a difference, though. The rooms were made up, awaiting someone else’s arrival. I wasn’t. I made Ames take me home.

Peters continued working on the Angela Barstogi case, tying up loose ends. When the final count came in, he discovered Angela had been Kincaid’s third victim, all of them picked up by his unusual telephone number. He had a notebook with the names and numbers of children all over the state of Washington. Speaking as a cop, it was lucky for those other kids that Anne killed Kincaid when she did.

I operated in a haze. I developed an infection. For the better part of two weeks, I wasn’t connected to what went on around me. It was probably better that way. By the time I rejoined the world, the worst of the difficulties seemed to be over except for figuring out how to go on living without Anne. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

The day I came out of the fog was the day Ames announced we needed to go pick out Anne’s headstone. “Where do we have to go?” I asked, thinking about bus schedules.

“I checked on the map,” he said. “It’s somewhere up Aurora.”

We got in the elevator. I pressed Lobby, and he pressed Garage. He led the way. The Porsche was parked in a space on the second level. “I rented it with an option to buy,” he explained.

“I can’t afford to buy a parking place,” I said.

He handed me the keys to the Porsche. “I think we need to have a little talk about your financial position.” The results dumbfounded me, the details were staggering. There was something called a marital deduction. The fact that we had been married at the time of Anne’s death meant that most of the money went to me without anything going to estate taxes. I had more money than I’d ever know what to do with.

The night before Ames was supposed to fly back to Phoenix, the three of us went to the Doghouse for dinner — Peters, Ames, and me. I was beginning to like the idea of having Ames around, to appreciate being able to ask his advice. A couple came in with two little girls, pretty little things with long brunette hair. I saw Peters’ heart go to his sleeve. That’s when the idea hit me.

“How are you at interstate custody cases?” I asked Ames.

“I don’t usually handle those personally,” he said, “but our firm has won more than we’ve lost.”

“And deprogramming?”

“We’ve handled a couple of those, too,” he said.

Peters looked at me then. He was beginning to get my drift. I winked at him. “You know, Ames, unless you’ve got something really pressing, I think I’d like you to stop by Broken Springs, Oregon, and see if you can pull Peters’ two kids out of there.”

Ames shrugged. “You’re the boss,” he said.

I think Anne Corley Beaumont — the Anne I loved — would have approved.