J. Jance - Betrayal of Trust

Ross stood up and shook our hands in greeting. “Have you eaten?” he asked. “If you’re hungry, Mrs. O’Malley here whipped up her standard lemon-and-vanilla Irish curd cakes earlier this afternoon.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but Julie Hatcher made sure we didn’t go away hungry.”

He smiled and shook his head. “I’ll say one thing for that girl, she sure can cook. Something to drink then?”

Between the governor’s mansion and Todd Hatcher’s place, I’d had enough iced tea to float a battleship. Mel must have been in the same condition.

“No, thanks,” she said. “We’re good.”

“All right then, Mrs. O’Malley,” Ross said. “That’s all. Thank you, and good night.”

Mrs. O’Malley tottered off, and Ross gestured us into a pair of high-backed leather chairs. Unlike the desk, the derelict recliner from his old office hadn’t survived the move, so the interior designer had won at least one round.

“I’m assuming those are the evidence boxes?” he asked as I placed them on the desk.

“Yes,” I said. “We thought you’d want to see what we picked up.”

Once again we donned gloves. Once again we removed what was in the boxes and went through it item by item.

“Todd made copies of everything on his computer’s hard drive,” Mel explained when we got to the laptop. “There might have been other files on an external drive or online storage, but we didn’t find any evidence of an additional drive.”

“And he’s working on the phone records?” Ross asked.

“He’ll be working on extracting a photo from the video first,” I said. “The phone records will be second. The way Todd works, I expect we’ll have a photo in hand first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” Ross said. “That’s the first step-identifying the victim.”

There was no need for a comment from either Mel or me. We were both in full agreement. In a homicide investigation, once you have the name of the victim and/or a crime scene, everything else grows out of that.

“So what’s your read on the situation?” Ross asked. “With the governor’s grandson, that is.”

Ross hadn’t been around to hear all the spoken and unspoken commentary about Josh Deeson’s relationship to Washington’s first family, and it didn’t seem necessary to fill in all those details right then. Besides, the attorney general wasn’t asking for a solution that would hold up in court. He was asking for an opinion from two experienced homicide cops in the middle of an investigation.

“Whoever the victim is, she wasn’t killed last night,” Mel ventured. “From what Governor Longmire told us, she intercepted Josh when he came back in and didn’t let him out of her sight until he left for school. That means he would have had no time to conceal the scarf under the mattress if he brought it home last night because we were there before he arrived home this afternoon. So on the one hand, just because he had the video doesn’t mean he did it, but the scarf would suggest that he did-and that he kept the scarf as a trophy.”

Ross looked at me.

“I agree about the murder not happening last night,” I said. “But it didn’t happen very long ago, either, because the file was sent to Josh’s phone this morning at one twenty-three A.M. People don’t waste their time sitting up at night sending out old videos. They send out new videos.”

“Garvin McCarthy has quite a reputation as a defense attorney,” Ross said. “And he’s going to do everything in his power to get the search warrant thrown out. If that happens we also lose the scarf. We need to come up with a whole lot more. Did you search anywhere else in the house?”

“The warrant was specifically limited to his room.”

Ross nodded thoughtfully. “He may have had something else squirreled away in another part of the house.”

“That’s true,” I said. “It’s a big house.”

“Josh knows he’s under scrutiny,” Ross said. “I know how kids like that operate. If he’s got incriminating evidence hidden in the house, he’s going to try to ditch it without arousing further suspicion.”

Ross stopped talking, reached in his pocket, and pulled out a quarter. “I guess it’s time to flip a coin,” he said. “Call it.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Call it,” he said again.

“All right,” I said. “Heads.”

And heads it was.

“What’s this for?”

“Too bad, Beau. You’re the one on permanent trash duty.”

“For what?”

“To go through the governor’s garbage. Once the cans are hauled down to the street, what’s inside them is fair game. That’s true for everyone’s garbage, even the governor’s. No warrant is necessary.”

“What about Squad A?” I asked hopefully. “Couldn’t one of those guys-”

“I brought you and Mel in on this because I don’t want to involve the home team,” Ross interrupted. “The fewer people who are in the know, the better. And if anyone asks what you’re up to, we’re looking into allegations of bullying-school bullying. There’s to be no mention of a homicide investigation until we confirm it is a homicide investigation.”

“What about the crime lab?” Mel questioned. “Our evidence boxes have Josh Deeson’s name and address right on them. Once the guys at the crime lab in Seattle see the address on the labels, what are the chances one of them will recognize it and know we’re talking about the governor’s mansion?”

“The guys down here or the ones in Seattle might recognize it, but they won’t be seeing the evidence boxes.” Ross had been idly shuffling through the stack of Josh Deeson’s drawings. Now he returned the pictures to the boxes, along with the other items we had collected. Then he picked up the lids, patted them into place, and secured them with clear packing tape.

“Once you sign and date these, I’ll be taking charge of them,” Ross said. “It so happens that I have a meeting with Squad C first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll drop your boxes off at the satellite crime lab in Spokane while I’m there. I think it’s unlikely that someone working in the Spokane lab will put two and two together. Josh Deeson’s name isn’t the governor’s name, and the address here is a simple street address that most likely won’t raise any red flags east of the mountains.”

It crossed my mind that Ross was playing a dangerous game. Once Josh Deeson turned into a real suspect, all hell was bound to break loose. In the old days the media had refrained from printing the names of juveniles who were part of a criminal investigation. Some journalists still pay lip service to that quaint tradition, but when the juvenile happens to be a relative of a politician, all bets are off.

That’s the problem with politics and politicians. If, like Marsha Longmire, you’re lucky enough to scramble to the top of the electoral heap, you can bet there are all kinds of people on both sides of the aisle hoping to knock you off your perch. And if they have an opportunity to use said politician’s kids, grandkids, and other assorted relatives as weapons in that process, they do so, without a moment’s hesitation.

That was my opinion, but it’s never a good idea to tell your boss that you think he’s off in the weeds somewhere, not if you’re interested in continuing to work for the man. It’s just not done.

“Okay,” I said. “You take charge of the evidence boxes, but what do you expect of us? If you want me to sort garbage, where am I supposed to do it? Right this minute, Mel and I are checked into the local Red Lion. I can’t drag the governor’s garbage cans into the lobby or the parking lot so I can go through them. What days does the garbage get picked up? And what’s Mel supposed to be doing in the meantime while I’m sorting through crap?”