J. Jance - Betrayal of Trust

“I noticed,” I said. “So what say we go have a nice little chat with Gizzy before her mother has a chance to shut us down?”

“We were right not to mention the interview possibility to Marsha,” Mel said. “Better to beg forgiveness later than to be told no in advance.”

I got out my wallet and handed Mel the address Ross Connors had given me for Sid Longmire, the governor’s ex. While I started the engine and fastened my seat belt, Mel fed the address information into the GPS. Eventually the GPS told us that our route was being calculated.

“What kind of a name is Gizzy?” I asked.

“It’s probably what her little sister called her, or a babysitter. On the face of it, Giselle isn’t such a bad name, and neither is Melissa. But the whole time I was growing up, kids called me Melly instead of Mel or Melissa. That’s what the girls called me. The boys generally called me Smelly Melly.”

“Jerks,” I said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Most of them were. I’d be willing to bet that Giselle hates the name Gizzy as much as I hated Melly.”

The address was off Hawk’s Prairie Road, north of Olympia. We drifted into a GPS-punctuated silence.

“I think Zoe knew more than she was willing to say about the texting,” Mel said thoughtfully.

“I agree. The comments show too much knowledge about Josh’s history for a passing acquaintance. The kid was a loner. There’s no way he’d go around school talking up the fact that his mother died of an overdose or that he ended up in foster care. And who else besides Zoe or Gizzy would have a vested interest in telling him to go back where he came from?”

“My money’s on Gizzy, with Zoe knowing exactly what was going on,” Mel said grimly. “What a nice bunch of kids!”

“Did you find out anything about security cameras at Janie’s House?” I asked.

“Yes, I did,” Mel said. “According to Meribeth Duncan, there aren’t any. On purpose-so they wouldn’t ‘infringe’ on client privacy. That computer log system was evidently installed under the radar and without official sanction from the board of directors.”

“Now that they know some of those kids might be engaging in criminal behavior, maybe they’ll wise up,” I suggested.

Mel shook her head in exasperation. “How do you spell ‘Hear no evil; see no evil’? But Meribeth told me she’ll try to reconstruct a list of the people who had keys-houseparents, tutors, and so forth-who could come and go as they pleased.”

“Without any records that might be hard to do.”

“Not as hard as you think,” Mel said. “Don’t forget Todd copied all those hard drives yesterday. I think he’ll be able to dredge a whole lot of useful information out of those.”

There had been a multiple-vehicle rush-hour accident in the northbound lanes of I-5, and traffic was at a standstill just north of Olympia. Originally the GPS said we would arrive in twenty-two minutes. It ended up taking twice that.

“Did Todd manage to turn up any close friends on Josh’s computer?” I asked.

Mel shook her head. “Not so far. He evidently played Internet chess with several people, but that’s about it. I asked Katie Dunn to check last year’s yearbook. ‘Chess Club’ was Josh’s only listed activity. He’s old enough to have a learner’s permit, but there’s no record that he ever applied for one. Most kids race to the nearest licensing office the moment they’re eligible.”

“Josh Deeson was a long way from being a ‘most kids’ kind of teenager,” I said. “Maybe not bothering to get a driver’s license was one way to thumb his nose at all the other kids by ignoring their usual rites of passage. He didn’t care about them, and he didn’t care who knew it. He was odd man out and he intended to stay that way.”

“But why would Giselle be involved in this texting thing?” Mel asked. “What’s her motivation?”

“Marsha Gray Longmire and I went to high school together,” I said.

“Yes,” Mel agreed with a laugh. “I gathered as much.”

“Of all the girls in our class she was probably the coolest-she wore the best clothes; she drove the best car; she got the best grades. Did I mention she was valedictorian?”

“No,” Mel said, “but it figures.”

“She was cool; I was not cool.”

“Maybe you weren’t cool then and you aren’t cool now,” Mel said with a smile. “At least Marsha must have thought you were cool the day before yesterday. Why else did she ask for you?”

“Maybe because she thought she could call on old times’ sake to help control the narrative.”

“Which is?”

“As I said, Marsha was cool to the nth degree. Maybe Gizzy is just like her mother. DNA is like that. If she’s one of the cool kids, the last thing she wants is to be irrevocably linked to someone who is not cool-someone who is the antithesis of coolness.”

“Josh Deeson,” Mel supplied. “But I still don’t understand the point.”

“Whoever sent the texts probably did so in the hope they’d succeed in sending Josh packing. That’s what bullies do. They think that if they make things uncomfortable enough, the target will just fold and disappear. When Josh didn’t bail, they upped the ante with the film clip. But Josh fooled them again. Instead of disappearing without a whimper, he committed suicide. Now cops are involved in what should have been a relatively harmless teenage prank. There’s a real investigation. By now the kids involved have probably figured out that someone is going to come around asking uncomfortable questions. Maybe that meant the film star needed to disappear, too.”

“Speaking of which, I wonder if the King County M.E. has done Rachel’s autopsy yet?”

“Call ’em up and find out,” I told her.

Mel pulled out her cell phone. After jumping through a few voice mail prompts, I heard her ask for Dr. Mellon.

I was relieved to hear that we had lucked out and drawn Rosemary Mellon. She’s a new addition to the King County M.E.’s office. She hasn’t been around long enough to develop as many jurisdictional prejudices as some of the old guard. She’s easy to work with-thorough but not terribly concerned with going through channels and across desks. I had an idea Ross Connors had handpicked her for the job.

Mel listened for several minutes, jotting down notes. When she got off the phone, she gave me a briefing.

“According to Rosemary, Rachel had been dead about eight to ten hours before being dumped in the water. There are clear signs of strangulation. She found some defensive wounds as well as tissue under her nails. She expects to be able to get a DNA profile, but there’s no sign of sexual assault.”

“I wonder if our enterprising filmmakers were looking for an encore performance-a real one this time.”

Mel sighed. “Maybe,” she said.

Sid Longmire’s home was in what’s called a “gated community,” but on this summer evening no one was minding the gate. The guard shack was unoccupied, and we drove right up to the house.

I had given Mel a hard time about her objections to the age difference between Greg Alexander and his girlfriend, but that’s what happens when you look askance at other people’s foibles without taking your own into consideration. I had automatically expected Sid Longmire’s wife to be of the trophy, arm-candy variety and hardly older than his daughters. When Monica Longmire answered the door, I knew at once that assumption was wrong. What the second Mrs. Longmire had going for her wasn’t necessarily her looks or her age. Maybe Sid had tired of Marsha’s power politics and excessive coolosity and had gone looking for stability instead. In contrast to Marsha’s well-tailored good looks, Monica’s face was plain and more than a little round. She had the ruddy complexion of someone who spends too much time in the sun, more likely gardening than golfing. And the smile lines on her face were exactly that-smile lines.