Until Proven Guilty (25 page)

W
atkins and Means left hours later. I don’t know when. Peters walked them down to their cars. He came back and poured a MacNaughton’s for me and a gin and tonic for himself. He handed me my drink and an envelope.

“I found it under the front seat of the Datsun.”

I held the envelope up and looked at it. My name was written in bold letters on the outside. A small piece of paper fluttered out of it. I caught it in midair. “You’ll have to write the last chapter yourself,” it said.

I crushed the paper in my fist. “Goddamn her! She knew! She forced my hand!” Peters sat on the couch. “Did you look at it?” I asked.

He nodded. “You probably shouldn’t have read it right now.” Peters had pulled the plug on both phones in the house, effectively shutting out all unwanted intruders.

I gazed at Seattle’s downtown skyline, the golden lights Anne Corley had loved. Or at least seemed to have loved—but then, she seemed to have loved me too. That showed how much I knew. Peters waited quietly, not prying, ready to listen when I was ready to talk. He had gotten a hell of a lot older and wiser in the last few days.

I tossed the wad of paper to Peters. He opened it and reread it.

“We talked about it once, you know,” I told him. “She asked me if, given the same circumstances, I’d do it again. When I got her out of the water, that was the last thing she said to me. She repeated what I said, that I’d do it again.”

“Do what?”

“Kill. Kill someone in self-defense. I told her I thought I would.” My voice broke, tears blurred my vision. Peters got up and took my empty glass to the kitchen. He returned with a full one.

“You were right,” he said. “Don’t you think Anne knew you would? Don’t you think she counted on it?”

“But why? And if she knew, knew it was coming, why the fuck did she marry me?”

Peters shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

For the first time I thought of Ralph Ames. I closed my eyes and shook my head. “What?” Peters asked.

“Ames, her attorney. He’ll be back in Phoenix by now. Someone should call him, I guess.”

Peters stood up. “What’s his number? I’ll call.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’d better do it myself.” The bandage on my chest made it difficult for me to move. Peters reattached the cord to the wall plug and handed me the phone. I got Ames’ home number from information. I dialed direct, hoping like hell he wouldn’t answer. He did, on the third ring.

“Ralph Ames speaking,” he said in his best three-piece-suit diction.

I cleared my throat. “It’s Beau, J. P. Beaumont, calling from Seattle. It’s about Anne.”

“Thank God, I’ve been trying to call—”

“She’s dead, Ralph, I…” I interrupted, but I couldn’t go on. There was stark silence on the other end of the line.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I could hear sympathy in his voice, sympathy and concern. “It wasn’t a car wreck, Ralph, nothing like that. I shot her. She was trying to kill me.”

“There’s a plane from Phoenix that gets into Sea-Tac tomorrow morning at ten. Have someone out there to meet me.”

“But…” I started to object. He didn’t hear me. The receiver clicked in my ear.

I put down the phone. “He’s coming up,” I told Peters. “He wants someone to meet him at the airport at ten in the morning.”

Peters took my glass and gave me a mock salute. “Aye aye, sir,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

The phone rang. I had forgotten to unplug the cord. It was Karen, calling from Cucamonga. “Katy Powell called me an hour ago. I’m sorry, Beau. Are you all right?”

Surprised to hear her voice, I mumbled something unintelligible. I was touched that she had bothered to call.

“The kids don’t know what to say. They’re sorry too. Do you have someone there with you?”

I looked at Peters. “Yes, I do. My partner. He’s staying over.”

The conversation fumbled along for another minute or two. When I hung up, Peters looked at me quizzically. “Your ex?”

I nodded.

“It was nice of her to call.”

We pulled the plug on the phone before it had a chance to ring again. Peters and I proceeded to get shit-faced drunk. We ran out of gin and MacNaughton’s about the same time. I passed out in the leather chair. When I woke up the next morning, there was nothing left in the liquor cabinet but a half jug of vermouth. I had a terrible hangover. Anne Corley Beaumont was still dead.

Peters went down to stuff some money in the Datsun’s parking meter. I told him I’d break his face if he brought up a newspaper.

I didn’t want to see what they’d print about Anne and me. Talk is cheap, though, and I don’t know if I would have been able to carry out my threat. I was in a good deal of pain. I was grateful the doctor had insisted on giving me a prescription of painkillers. I helped myself to a generous dosage, not only for my shoulder but also for my head. Nothing helped the ache in my heart.

Peters called in sick for the day. It wasn’t a lie. Neither of us is a very capable drinker. Without the haze of bourbon, I worried about Ames’ arrival. I was sure he meant trouble, that he was flying in to bird-dog the investigation. If the coroner called it justifiable homicide, Ames would still try to see to it that I lost my job. After all, Anne had been one of his prime clients. It was the least he could do.

Peters tried to talk me out of going to the airport, but I insisted. I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible, like a kid who’d rather have his licking sooner than later. We went down to the lobby. The Datsun was parked across the street. Behind it sat a rust-colored Volvo.

“Goddamn! What the hell is he doing here?”

“Come on, Peters, you didn’t expect Max to miss a sideshow like this, did you? I’m surprised he didn’t turn up in the emergency room yesterday.”

Max crawled out of the Volvo as we crossed the street. “Did you marry her so you wouldn’t have to testify against her?”

My fist caught him full in the mouth. A front tooth gave way under my knuckle. Cole fell like a stunned ox. He lay partially on the curb and partially in the street. Hitting him was pure gut reflex. I couldn’t help myself. Then I stepped on his glasses. That was deliberate malice. We left him lying there without a second glance.

“Drive like hell,” I told Peters. He did. My knuckles bled. I could feel a warm ooze under the bandage on my shoulder.

“You landed a pretty good punch for an invalid,” Peters commented. “Remind me not to make you mad when you’re not all shot up.”

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.

W
e 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.