J. Jance - Betrayal of Trust

Tyler shook his head. “No one. Both Richey and Kim were alone in their rooms when it happened.”

“Is there a chance all these kids-Kim Hope, Richey Kincaid, and now Rachel Camber-knew one another?” Mel asked.

Sheriff Tyler shrugged. “With the Internet, I suppose anything is possible, with all that Facebook junk that’s going around, and Tweetie.”

Clearly Sheriff Tyler didn’t have a whole lot of familiarity with what Mel and I sometimes laughingly refer to as the iPhone generation.

“You mean Twitter,” Mel corrected.

“Whatever you want to call it,” Tyler replied. “It doesn’t make a lick of sense to me, but back to your question. Toledo’s a little burg just off I-5 about twenty miles from here on Highway 12. Packwood is about an hour and a half east of there, also on Highway 12. Pe Ell is on Highway 6, about twenty-five miles west of here in the opposite direction from Packwood. Physically that puts Rachel and Kim Hope a good two and a half hours apart. All three of them are small-town kids. Richey and Kim come from what I’d call solid families. Not so with Rachel. They’re all too young to drive, so if they’re connected it is probably through the Internet.”

“How big is Lewis County?” Mel asked.

Mel Soames is a relative newcomer to Washington State. She lived in Texas briefly when she was growing up, but as an adult she spent several years living, working, and driving back east. I think the distances out here surprise her occasionally. For instance, it still confounds her that you can drive for six hours to get from Seattle to Spokane and still be in Washington. Try explaining that to someone who hails from, say, Delaware or New Hampshire.

There was a light tap on Sheriff Tyler’s closed door.

“Come in,” he called.

The door opened to reveal a young uniformed officer standing outside. He was all spit-and-polish. I didn’t know if it was the beginning of his shift or the end of it, but his uniform looked like it was fresh from the laundry. The creases in his pants were still sharp.

“Sorry to disturb you, sir,” he apologized. “But Dispatch told me you wanted to see me right away.”

“Have a seat, Deputy Timmons,” Sheriff Tyler said. “These two officers, Mel Soames and J. P. Beaumont, are agents from the attorney general’s Special Homicide unit. They’re here to speak to you about Rachel Camber.”

I appreciated his avoiding the term S.H.I.T., and clearly Deputy Timmons was duly impressed.

“Yes, sir,” Timmons said. He edged his way into the room and took a seat on the only remaining chair. Not a seat so much as a perch. He sat fully upright, as though he were still standing at attention.

Ex military, I told myself, maybe the Marines.

“Did you bring that photo with you?” Sheriff Tyler asked.

“Yes, sir,” Deputy Timmons said.

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a notebook. Opening that, he removed a piece of paper that had been folded to the exact dimensions of the notebook. He unfolded the paper and handed it to Sheriff Tyler. The sheriff studied it silently for a moment and then passed it to Mel, who eventually handed it to me. It was a school photo with the same shy, tentative smile we had seen at the beginning of the video.

Looking at the photo made my heart hurt. If the two girls weren’t one and the same, then they would have to be identical twins.

Deputy Timmons seemed to find the silence in the room unnerving. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but did I understand you to say homicide? Does that mean Rachel Camber has been murdered?”

“It’s possible,” Sheriff Tyler said noncommittally. “How about if you bring us up to speed with what you learned in Packwood.”

Timmons’s notebook, which had been properly stowed in his shirt pocket, came back out. He opened it and began reading through his notes.

“According to Kenny-”

“Kenny?” Sheriff Tyler repeated. “You mean Kenneth Broward, Ardith’s most recent husband?”

“And Rachel’s stepfather then,” Mel supplied.

Deputy Timmons nodded and returned to his notes. “Kenny said that the last time he saw Rachel was Sunday afternoon. She told him she was going to see a friend and that she planned to spend the night.”

“Does this friend have a name?” Mel asked.

“Janie,” Kenny said. “Ken assumed Janie was someone from school, but Conrad Philips, the high school principal, is an old personal friend of mine. I gave him a call when I was on my way back from Packwood. He knows every kid in his school on a first-name basis. He says there isn’t a Jane or Janie in the bunch.”

“Is there a chance that Mr. Broward was mistaken about the name?” Mel asked.

“I suppose,” Timmons said with a frown, “but I doubt it.”

“So according to Mr. Broward, the last he saw of Rachel was Sunday, when she left on her own.”

“Yes,” Deputy Timmons said. “That’s correct.”

I knew where Mel was going. There’s a lot to support the idea that stepfather/stepdaughter relationships can be fraught with peril, so when she asked her next question, I wasn’t at all surprised.

“Have you considered the possibility that Mr. Broward might have something to do with Rachel’s disappearance?”

The genuinely shocked expression on Deputy Timmons’s young face made his verbal answer unnecessary.

“So you don’t think there was something inappropriate going on between Mr. Broward and his stepdaughter. .”

“No, ma’am!” Timmons said decisively. “I never gave that possibility any thought at all. I’ve known Kenny Broward all my life. If there was ever a truly upright guy, he’s it, although how he could get mixed up with someone like Ardith Haskell is more than I can understand.”

I glanced back at Ardith’s mug shot. Haskell was the first name listed there, a maiden name, as it were. People from your hometown are usually the only ones who stick to those first names, so it occurred to me that Deputy Timmons had known Ardith all his life as well.

“I’ve heard what Ardith’s place was like before,” Timmons went on. “Before Kenny was in the picture. You’d be amazed, Sheriff Tyler. Now the place is clean as a whistle. He cut down all the weeds in the backyard and put together one of those wooden swing things out there so the kids would have something to play on. When I got there, they were outside having fun like normal kids. If you ask me, Kenny’s more of a father to that bunch than all those other guys put together.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let me understand this. Rachel went off with this supposed friend named Janie on Sunday.”

“Yes,” Timmons said. “She left Sunday afternoon about four, just after her mother left for work.”

“How did she leave?” I asked. “Did she walk? Did she ride?”

“She rode. Somebody picked her up, somebody driving an older-model pickup truck. Green. Chevrolet, Silverado. Kenny didn’t see the license, so that doesn’t help us much. There are lots of old Chevys in Packwood.”

“Okay,” Mel said. “She left on Sunday. Why did she leave after her mother went to work?”

“According to Kenny, Ardith and Rachel fight a lot. If Rachel had asked for permission, there probably would have been a big argument.”

“When was she reported missing?”

“This afternoon,” Deputy Timmons said. “Kenny called it in after Ardith left for work, for the same reason. He didn’t want to start another argument. I think I may have mentioned that Ardith isn’t exactly a nice person, a reasonable person.”

“Don’t you think it’s odd that Rachel’s stepfather is the one who turned in the report and not Rachel’s own mother?”

Deputy Timmons sighed. “He told me what she said.”