separate Burger King from McDonald’s.”
She flicked an ash into an ashtray. Her tone was matter-of-fact. Evidence is evidence. People in this business can’t afford to look beyond the evidence to the human suffering involved. If they do, they crack up.
“Did you find anything in her room or in the house?”
“Nothing that appears to be important at the moment. Fingerprints from the room are mostly the girl’s and the mother’s. There are a few that belong to other children, but no adult prints.”
“What makes you say McDonald’s?” Peters asked.
“It may not be McDonald’s, but it was one of those fast-food joints. Hamburger aside, Baker’s office says she was generally malnourished, had been for some time.”
Janice reached across me to the end of the table and picked up a folded newspaper. She opened it to the editorial section. “I read this coming in on the bus this morning.” She handed me the paper, open to Maxwell Cole’s “City Beat” column.
I skimmed through an emotional portrayal of Suzanne Barstogi as a woman of unshakable faith and courage, one who was walking through a time of personal trial supported by her beliefs and the willing help of fellow church members. It spoke eloquently of the group’s communal sharing of food and heartbreak. It told in heartrending prose how the congregation as a whole had spent the previous afternoon on its knees praying for the murderer’s immortal soul.
Murderers are always the first victims in Maxwell Cole’s book, unless the person pulling the trigger happens to be a cop.
I finished reading the column and handed the paper to Peters.
“They sound like wonderful people, don’t they?” Janice said with just a hint of sarcasm tinging her voice. “Just the kind of people you’d expect to systematically abuse a child for years. The broken bones she had would be consistent with a highly abusive environment. Kids that age don’t break bones. They have too much cartilage. Are there other kids stuck in that mess?”
I thought about Jeremiah and how afraid he had been. His fear was not unfounded. I was convinced the bruise on his forearm was not an unusual occurrence. Janice finished her cigarette and rose, dismissing us. “I don’t have anything else right now, but I’ll call if anything turns up.”
“So what now, coach?” Peters asked as we waited in the elevator lobby.
“I vote we go back to Ballard. This time we’ll get inside Faith Tabernacle if we have to have a search warrant to do it.”
Ballard is a predominantly Scandinavian enclave about five miles from downtown Seattle. It sits across Salmon Bay from Magnolia. You get there by crossing the Ballard Bridge, a drawbridge used to let through sleek sailing vessels as well as stodgy, loaded barges on their way to Alaska. If Magnolia is highbrow, Ballard is lowbrow. If Magnolia is known for its upwardly mobile professionals, Ballard is known for its sturdy blue-collar folks who march along, never quite getting ahead but never falling very far behind either. Ballard is pretty much middle America at its best or worst, depending on your point of view.
Faith Tabernacle was a respectable-enough-looking place situated on the corner of Twenty-fourth and Eightieth N.W. in the Loyal Heights area. It was an older church that gave evidence of some recent renovations, the most jarring of which was a neon sign. New gray shingles sparkled, and surrounding trees had been pruned back with a vengeance. Double doors, new but cheap, stood wide open.
The day before, neighbors had told us that it had originally been a Lutheran church. A steady decline in enrollment and a consolidation of congregations had left it vacant for a number of years until purchase by Michael Brodie’s group some six or seven months earlier. Two similarly shaped, parallel buildings had been connected at either end. Half the building was used as a church and half as
She flicked an ash into an ashtray. Her tone was matter-of-fact. Evidence is evidence. People in this business can’t afford to look beyond the evidence to the human suffering involved. If they do, they crack up.
“Did you find anything in her room or in the house?”
“Nothing that appears to be important at the moment. Fingerprints from the room are mostly the girl’s and the mother’s. There are a few that belong to other children, but no adult prints.”
“What makes you say McDonald’s?” Peters asked.
“It may not be McDonald’s, but it was one of those fast-food joints. Hamburger aside, Baker’s office says she was generally malnourished, had been for some time.”
Janice reached across me to the end of the table and picked up a folded newspaper. She opened it to the editorial section. “I read this coming in on the bus this morning.” She handed me the paper, open to Maxwell Cole’s “City Beat” column.
I skimmed through an emotional portrayal of Suzanne Barstogi as a woman of unshakable faith and courage, one who was walking through a time of personal trial supported by her beliefs and the willing help of fellow church members. It spoke eloquently of the group’s communal sharing of food and heartbreak. It told in heartrending prose how the congregation as a whole had spent the previous afternoon on its knees praying for the murderer’s immortal soul.
Murderers are always the first victims in Maxwell Cole’s book, unless the person pulling the trigger happens to be a cop.
I finished reading the column and handed the paper to Peters.
“They sound like wonderful people, don’t they?” Janice said with just a hint of sarcasm tinging her voice. “Just the kind of people you’d expect to systematically abuse a child for years. The broken bones she had would be consistent with a highly abusive environment. Kids that age don’t break bones. They have too much cartilage. Are there other kids stuck in that mess?”
I thought about Jeremiah and how afraid he had been. His fear was not unfounded. I was convinced the bruise on his forearm was not an unusual occurrence. Janice finished her cigarette and rose, dismissing us. “I don’t have anything else right now, but I’ll call if anything turns up.”
“So what now, coach?” Peters asked as we waited in the elevator lobby.
“I vote we go back to Ballard. This time we’ll get inside Faith Tabernacle if we have to have a search warrant to do it.”
Ballard is a predominantly Scandinavian enclave about five miles from downtown Seattle. It sits across Salmon Bay from Magnolia. You get there by crossing the Ballard Bridge, a drawbridge used to let through sleek sailing vessels as well as stodgy, loaded barges on their way to Alaska. If Magnolia is highbrow, Ballard is lowbrow. If Magnolia is known for its upwardly mobile professionals, Ballard is known for its sturdy blue-collar folks who march along, never quite getting ahead but never falling very far behind either. Ballard is pretty much middle America at its best or worst, depending on your point of view.
Faith Tabernacle was a respectable-enough-looking place situated on the corner of Twenty-fourth and Eightieth N.W. in the Loyal Heights area. It was an older church that gave evidence of some recent renovations, the most jarring of which was a neon sign. New gray shingles sparkled, and surrounding trees had been pruned back with a vengeance. Double doors, new but cheap, stood wide open.
The day before, neighbors had told us that it had originally been a Lutheran church. A steady decline in enrollment and a consolidation of congregations had left it vacant for a number of years until purchase by Michael Brodie’s group some six or seven months earlier. Two similarly shaped, parallel buildings had been connected at either end. Half the building was used as a church and half as
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