Until Proven Guilty - J. A. Jance [9]
Thinking about the people involved, assessing them, trying to sort out the relationship—that’s how I get on track with a case. And in my mind that’s exactly what this was. The beginning of a case, just like any other. What I couldn’t have known that morning as the sun began to color the cloud cover outside my living room window was how much Angel Barstogi’s murder would change my life.
I thought that after I found her killer, everything would continue as it had before. That was not to be. After poor little Angela Barstogi, nothing would ever be the same.
Chapter 3
I dragged myself out of the house at seven-twenty and walked to work, propping my eyes open with a cup of muscle-bound coffee from the McDonald’s at Third and Pine. The restaurant mirrors the flavor of the street, and Third Avenue in downtown Seattle is an absolute cross section of life in this country. I love it and hate it.
I feel the same way about the fifth floor of the Seattle Police Department. That’s the homicide squad. I’ve worked homicide for almost fifteen years. I came to the fifth floor with all my illusions intact. I was convinced that murderers were the worst of the bad guys and that capturing killers was the highest calling a police officer could have. It took me a long time to lose that illusion, to figure out that murder isn’t the worst crime one human can inflict on another. Maybe part of my disillusionment was just getting older and wiser. I don’t know when I stopped viewing it as a sacred charge and started seeing it as a job. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it happened about the time Karen left me. Most of my life went sour about then.
But it also had something to do with the ambitious new cops showing up on the squad, the ones who see homicide as a ticket to bigger and better things, who are more concerned with how their exploits will read in the morning paper than they are about doing the job right. They are plugged full of university credits in law enforcement theory taught by professors who have never dirtied their hands with real blood. I don’t like the finished product that shows up on the force or the ones that filter up to the fifth floor, either. I think the feeling is mutual.
All this goes to say that I don’t care for too many of the guys there these days. Ray and I had been a breed apart from the others, and it was only after he left that I looked around the floor and found out what was there. Peters is young, but from my observation, he’s probably the best of the lot. That is not to be taken as high praise, however, and even now we still hadn’t settled into a solid working relationship. Peters arrived a few minutes after I did that morning and dropped a file folder on my desk. It was a preliminary report from the medical examiner’s office.
He said nothing when he tossed it in front of me. He stalked away, hands stuffed in his pockets. I didn’t have to look at the report to know what was coming. I didn’t need a coroner’s textbook terms to tell me that Angel Barstogi’s last few minutes on this earth were brutal testimony to man’s inhumanity to man. If anything, the technical phraseology only made it worse, more dehumanizing.
It said that cause of death was strangulation and that the murder weapon had indeed been the twisted nightgown around her neck. Analysis of stomach contents revealed that she had eaten a hamburger within an hour of time of death. It detailed other injuries—broken bones, bruises, cuts. The medical examiner had removed bits of human tissue and other substances from beneath her fingernails. Surprisingly, she had not been raped. At least she had been spared that indignity. It was a blessing, a very small blessing.