Until Proven Guilty (12 page)

T
hrough a sleepy haze, I sensed someone touching me. It was soft and teasing. I thought I was having one of my famous Beaumont dreams. Then I smelled her hair and felt warm lips on mine.

“What are you doing?” I mumbled.

“I’m getting you up,” she whispered softly, her lips nibbling my ear.

“I think I am up.”

“Ooh. So you are,” she smiled.

I pulled her onto my chest, settled her on me, our bodies blending comfortably. My hands closed on her slender waist. I watched her face, her lips parting as her body caught fire. Her hunger was almost frightening in its intensity. We each made love as we had never made love before. In the quiet that followed, she wept. This time I didn’t question her tears. I was grateful for them. This time I thought I knew what they meant.

She was resting on my chest, our heartbeats just then slowing, when the phone rang. It was Captain Powell. He was frantic. “Get your ass down here.”

I struggled to see the clock. It was a little before five. “What’s up?” I asked. The phone cord tangled in Anne’s hair, and I struggled to untangle it and listen at the same time.

“They’re dead. Brodie and the woman are dead! Somebody found them both at the church.”

I eased away from Anne. “Both of them? Have you called Peters?”

“Yeah. He’s on his way.”

“Tell him to meet me at the Warwick. I’ll go there to check on Carstogi.”

“You’d better have him under wraps, Beaumont.”

I looked out the bedroom window and could see the silhouette of the Warwick against a gradually graying sky. “Snug as a bug,” I said lightly.

“I hope to God you’re right,” Powell muttered, “for your sake and mine.”

Anne Corley was wide awake by the time I hung up the telephone. Wrapped in the voluminous robe, she looked wonderful, with that special glow a woman’s skin has after lovemaking. “Good morning,” she said, smiling.

I kissed her on the forehead, barely pausing in my headlong rush to the shower. “I’ve got to hurry.”

“Trouble?” she asked.

I nodded. “Emergency call. I need to be out of here in about ten minutes.” I left her standing in the bedroom and hurried into the bathroom. By the time I finished showering and shaving I could smell coffee. A steaming cup was waiting for me on the dresser. Anne Corley was back in bed, propped on a pillow, coffee mug in hand. She watched me thoughtfully as I dressed.

“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked.

“No.” I planted a quick kiss on her forehead as I sat on the bed to pull on my shoes. “Thanks for the coffee,” I added.

“Consider it payment in kind for services rendered.” I looked at her, gray eyes alive with laughter over the top of her cup. She had evidently taken no offense at my not telling her what was going on. I appreciated that. “Do you mind if I stay for a while, or do you want me to leave when you do?” she asked.

“Make yourself at home,” I said. “Stay as long as you like.”

She lay back on the pillows, luxuriating. “Thanks. Any idea when you’ll be done?”

“None whatsoever.” I shrugged my way into the shoulder holster and pulled on a jacket. I bent over her. She pulled me down on the bed beside her and gave me a lingering kiss. I wanted to crawl back into bed with her and forget the world, the department, everything.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“You’re more than welcome.” Reluctantly I pulled myself away. There was no mistaking that what had passed between us had been good for both of us. “You’re a very special lady,” I said as I straightened up to leave.

Euphoria lasted for a little over three minutes. I rode down the elevator in my building, walked the half block to the Warwick, and rode that elevator up to the seventh floor. I knocked on Carstogi’s door to no avail. When he didn’t answer the third barrage of hammering, I went looking for a night clerk, who used his passkey to let me into the room. Carstogi wasn’t there. The bedspread was rumpled, as though someone had lain on top of it to watch TV for a while, but the bed had not been slept in.

I left the room as I found it and returned to the hall, where the night clerk hovered nervously, wringing his hands. He was anxious about adverse publicity. I assured him that whatever had happened was no reflection on the Warwick. Asking him to keep me informed of any developments, I went downstairs to wait for Peters. I had the sickening feeling that we’d been suckered, that Carstogi had played us for a couple of fools. Peters’ Datsun screeched to a stop about the time I hit the plate glass door. He hadn’t taken time to go by the department for another car. I gave him a couple of points for that.

“Carstogi’s not here,” I said, folding my legs into the cramped front seat. “We’d better go straight to Faith Tabernacle.”

Two uniformed cops were standing guard when we got there, holding off a horde of media ambulance chasers, to say nothing of neighborhood curiosity seekers. We hadn’t discussed it during the drive to Ballard, but I knew that getting the recorder out of Faith Tabernacle undetected was imperative. Whatever was on it would be totally inadmissible as evidence, but it might provide vital information. Information that would lead us to the killer.

We found Suzanne Barstogi near the pulpit at the front of the church. She lay on her left side with one leg half curled beneath her, as though she had been rising and turning toward her assailant when the bullet felled her. She was still wearing the same dowdy dress she had been wearing earlier in the day. It had been ripped from neck to waist. Her bra had been torn in two, exposing overripe breasts. In addition to the bullet hole that punctured her left breast, her upper torso was covered with bloody welts. Before she died, Suzanne Barstogi had been the victim of a brutal beating.

There was little visible impact damage. The bullet had entered cleanly enough, but behind her, where the emerging slug had crashed out of her body, Suzanne Barstogi’s lifeblood was splattered and pooled on the pulpit and altar of the Faith Tabernacle.

Peters looked at her for a long time. “He didn’t nickel-dime-around, did he?”

No one was in the church with us right then, but they would be soon. Peters quickly retrieved the recorder and put it in his pocket. We found Pastor Michael Brodie in the middle of his study. He was sprawled facedown and naked on the blood-soaked carpet. Peters and I theorized that he had heard noises in the church and come to investigate. Again there was only one bullet hole.

Shooting at such close range doesn’t require a tremendous amount of marksmanship, but you’ve got to be tough. Tough and ruthless. A hand shaking out of control can cause a missed target at even the shortest distance. Then there’s always the chance that the victim will make a desperate lunge for the gun and turn it on his attacker. And then there’s the mess.

“I would have bet even money that Carstogi wouldn’t pull something like this,” I said.

“I hate to be the one to break this to you, Beau, but you did bet money. We both did. Our asses are on the line on this one. Your friend Max will see to it. You just hide and watch.”

There’s an almost religious ceremony in approaching a crime scene. First is the establishment of the scene parameters. In this case, to be on the safe side, we included the entire church. Then come the evidence technicians with their cameras and measurements. They ascertain distances, angles, trajectories. They look for trace evidence that may be helpful later. The secret, of course, is approaching the scene with a slow deliberation that disturbs nothing. This is one place where peons take precedence over rank. Sergeant Watkins paced in the background, observing the technicians’ careful, unhurried efforts.

The medical examiner himself, the white-haired Dr. Baker, arrived before the technicians were finished. He made the official pronouncement of death. A double homicide was worthy of his visible, personal touch. Considering the accumulation of people, I was grateful Peters had gotten the chance to stash the recorder when he did.

A uniformed officer told Watkins that the church members were gathering outside and wanted to come in. What should he tell them? The sergeant directed him to assemble them in the fellowship hall, where we could once more begin the interviewing process.

I was a little puzzled when I saw the whole Faith Tabernacle group, as much as I remembered them, file into the room. After all, it was Tuesday morning and presumably some of them should have gone to work. It turned out that they had been scheduled to be there at five o’clock for a celebration breakfast. It was the traditional ending to a successful Purification Ceremony, and would have marked the end of Suzanne Barstogi’s ordeal of silence, fasting, and prayer.

Without Brodie’s looming presence in the background to enforce silence, it was easier to get people to talk. It was plain that they were shocked by what had happened, and talking seemed to help. They were getting better at it.

The cook, a True Believer named Sarah Morris, had come to church at four to start preparing breakfast, which was due after a prayer session at five. Before early-morning services, she had been in the habit of taking a cup of coffee to Brodie in his study. It was when she took him his coffee that she had found first his body and then Suzanne’s.

We were about finished with Sarah when the front-door cop came hurrying into the room. “You’d better come quick. Powell said to call him on a telephone, not the radio, and to make it snappy.”

The only phone available at the church was in the study. If Powell didn’t want us to use the radio for privacy reasons, the study was no better. We got in Peters’ car and drove to the first available pay phone.

“What’s up?” I asked as soon as Powell came on the line.

“The night clerk from the Warwick, that’s what. He says Carstogi came back and tried to go to his room. He’s got him down in the restaurant eating breakfast and wonders what he should do.”

“Get a couple of uniformed officers over there to keep him there for as long as it takes us to drive from Ballard.”

“They’re on their way, but why do I have this sneaking suspicion that you’ve screwed up, Beaumont?”

“Experience,” I told him, and slammed the phone receiver down in his ear. I turned back to the car to see Maxwell Cole’s rust-colored Volvo idling behind Peters’ Datsun. “Shit.”

I climbed into the car. “Sorry,” Peters said. “He must have tailed us when we left the church. I didn’t see him.”

“It’s too late now. Drive like hell to the Warwick. Carstogi’s in the restaurant having breakfast.”

Peters’ jaw dropped in surprise. “No shit! Why would he go back there?”

“Beats me, but he did, and we’d better nab him before he gets away. Thank God the night clerk had brains enough to call and let us know.” I glanced at Peters, who was looking in the rearview mirror. “Max still on our butt?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“We’ll just have to lump it. We don’t have time to try to throw him off the trail. I don’t want Carstogi to slip through our fingers.”

“The gun has a way of equalizing things, doesn’t it? Yesterday Carstogi was no match for Brodie when they were dealing with fists.”

“You’ve already decided he’s our man?”

“Haven’t you?” Peters asked.

“No, I haven’t. I like to think I’m a better judge of character than that. Carstogi wanted to kill Brodie, but he would have taken Suzanne back in a minute. You heard him yesterday.”

“Well, who did it then?” Peters asked. It was a good question. We didn’t have an answer by the time we stopped in front of the Warwick. Two patrol cars with flashing lights were outside the hotel, one parked in front of the garage on Fourth and the other at the front door on Lenora. We stopped by the front door.

The clerk met us at the car, the story bubbling out before Peters turned off the engine. “He came up to the desk, said he needed a wake-up call at ten. I didn’t want him to go up to his room, so I told him we had a problem with the plumbing and that we’d buy his breakfast in the restaurant while we cleaned up the mess. I didn’t know what else to do. I called right away, because you said it was important.”