Until Proven Guilty Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.
     
    Peters came back and threw a newspaper down in front of me. I don’t take a newspaper. It’s a personal protest against people like Maxwell Cole. Consequently I hadn’t seen the lurid headlines above Angel Barstogi’s baby-toothed smile. One thing about newspapers, they never disappoint me. I always expect the worst. I consistently get it.
     
    The preliminary report was still warm in my hand, yet I could have read the same information on the front page and not bothered to go to the office at all. My phone rang before I could say anything to Peters. It was Arlo Hamilton, the public information officer, wanting to know if I had anything for his nine a.m. press briefing.
     
    “Are you shitting me?” I asked him. “Those assholes know everything we do. Maybe they should be giving us the briefing.”
     
    “Don’t growl at me, Beau. I’m just trying to do my job.”
     
    “Me too,” I responded, and slammed the receiver down in his ear. “Let’s get the hell out of