Free Until Proven Guilty by J. A. Jance

attention to the church itself.
    I decided to walk to the cemetery. I suppose I could have gone down to the department and checked out a car, but I didn’t feel like going anywhere near the department, not even as close as the motor pool.
    I got over being a suburban type all at once. I sold my car when I moved to the city. I got my apartment cheap because it didn’t come with a parking place. Later I found out why it was cheap. Parking in downtown Seattle costs a fortune. I did the only sensible thing—I learned to love the bus.
    Gone were the days of the fifty-five-minute commute. All commuting ever got me was an ulcer, hemorrhoids, and a divorce. Walking isn’t all that bad except that having dates without a car has proved to be something of a challenge. The upshot is that I’ve virtually given up dating except for those rare cliff-dwelling creatures like myself who aren’t insulted by an offer of dinner or a movie contingent upon walking to and from. There aren’t too many women like that, so my sex life has dwindled. I chum around with some of the lavender-haired ladies from the Royal Crest who are glad to have my friendship but don’t make demands on my body or my schedule. Like me, they mostly don’t have cars. It’s a lifestyle that suits me.
    The two-and-a-half-mile trek to Mount Pleasant Cemetery, much of it almost perpendicular, felt good. It finished the job of clearing my head. A chill wind was blowing off Puget Sound, and a few clouds scudded across the sky ahead of the wind. Seattle wouldn’t be the Emerald City if it didn’t rain on a fairly regular basis.
    It wasn’t necessary to stop and ask directions at the cemetery office. I could see a little knot of people gathering just over the crest of the bluff. I stationed myself a little apart with my back to a suddenly gray Lake Union. I checked off the arriving players against Brodie’s roster.
    The True Believers arrived first. It was clear they had been instructed to speak to no one. They came as a group, huddled together near the coffin as a group, and knelt to pray as a group. Suzanne Barstogi, kneeling stoically in the middle of the second row, was accorded no special recognition or position of honor as the mother of the slain child. This was a group Thanksgiving Service, I reminded myself, and Pastor Michael Brodie would not tolerate any individual outpourings of grief that might crack the shell of his little facade.
    I had called Brodie earlier and jotted down the names of those he expected to be in attendance. Looking at his flock now, I was able to put some names with faces. Jeremiah, of course, Benjamin Mason/Jason, Ezra, Thomas. There was one more man, but I couldn’t recall his name. Other than Suzanne, the women eluded me. They were so drab and so alike, it was impossible to sort them out.
    Sophie Czirski was there, her ramrod thinness totally at odds with the pudgy Faith Tabernacle women. She planted herself firmly at the foot of the coffin and glared at the kneeling pastor with open defiance, daring him to question her right to be there. The wind, blowing at her back, periodically made her red hair stand on end. It gave her a wild appearance. If I had been Brodie, I would have thought twice about picking a fight with her.
    Maxwell Cole turned up with a long-haired photographer in tow. At Cole’s insistence, pictures of the kneeling congregation were taken from every possible angle. His taste is all in his mouth. Sophie watched the proceedings with a malevolent glare. When Cole unwisely asked her to move over so they could get one more picture, she told him in no uncertain words and with considerable volume what he could do with both the photographer and his camera. She didn’t budge an inch.
    Scattered here and there were a few hangers-on, people who make a habit out of going to funerals, ones who get a kick out of watching as other people’s emotions go through a wringer. I looked at them closely, wondering if any of them were