J. Jance: Betrayal of Trust

Whenever I think about my mother, I can’t help but be ashamed by how I felt back then. And that’s the other reason I’ve never gone looking for my father’s relatives. My father wasn’t there for me. My father’s family wasn’t there for me, either. My mother was. I figure I owe her that much loyalty and respect.

I didn’t give Mel the benefit of any of that background information, at least not right then.

I said, “When we were in high school, as far as Marsha and her pals were concerned, I was a joke-a laughingstock.”

“So why did she ask for you now?”

“No idea,” I said. “None. In fact, if you get a chance, why don’t you ask her?”

While we spoke, Mel had booted up her computer. She sent a copy of the video clip to her iPhone and a second copy of the file to her laptop.

“Ready to watch it again?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “We’d better.”

It’s one thing to go to a crime scene after the fact. You view the body. You examine the surroundings. You look for clues. Although this wasn’t the first snuff film I had ever seen, this was certainly the youngest victim.

I’m not sure who first coined the expression “choking game” to apply to this monstrosity. Probably the same kind of language experts who invented the words “suicide by cop.” Right. That cleans it up. Makes what happens a little more presentable. But, as I said before, this was no game-a game would have ended before the girl was dead. This was straight-up strangulation and cold-blooded murder. The fact that the victim seemed to be a willing participant to begin with made it that much worse. And the fact that the killers had come prepared to film the event made it despicable.

But Mel and I needed to watch it, and we did so, several times, before leaving for the governor’s mansion forty-five minutes later. We watched the girl’s tentative last smile. We watched for anything about her clothing that might be distinctive. She seemed to be wearing a red sleeveless tank top of some kind. As she lurched to her feet, late in the assault, we caught a glimpse of what might have been lettering on the shirt-a logo of some kind-before the camera refocused on her face.

The scarf was blue and made of some kind of gauzy material-a scarf made for decoration rather than warmth. We studied the hands on the ends of the scarf. They were clearly not a pair. They were different skin tones, one whiter and one much darker, but not black. Hispanic, maybe? And one of them was definitely wearing a ring of some kind and the other one was wearing a watch. I knew that a careful computer-aided analysis of the frames containing the ring and the watch might provide important clues in identifying our suspects. First, though, we needed to identify our victim. In order to do that, we would need some pre-strangulation “still” photographs that we could send out to both the media and to other agencies.

I glanced at my own watch. “It’s time,” I said. “Let’s go see Old Mother Hubbard.”

Mel was right. The GPS knew exactly how to get to the governor’s mansion. Lush greenery and immaculately maintained lawns surrounded the stately three-story brick house. With dormers across the top and a spacious balcony opening off the second level, it might have been designed by some of the same people who built the mansions in the Highlands, an upscale development north of Seattle and home to some of the city’s most prosperous founding fathers.

As I recalled my Washington State history, the guy who should have been the first person to occupy the Olympia governor’s mansion ended up taking sick and dying elsewhere without ever living there. The mansion had fallen on hard times and had been renovated sometime back in the 1970s or ’80s. And I seemed to remember their having a recent problem with rats-the four-legged variety, although I imagine plenty of two-legged ones had prowled the premises on occasion, Josh Deeson being a current candidate for Chief Rat-in-Residence.

Mel is a relative newcomer to the Evergreen State. On our way to the governor’s mansion I filled in the empty airtime by giving Mel as much background as I could on both the building itself and some of the governors who had inhabited it. This recitation of trivia served two purposes. It kept Mel from asking me more questions about our current governor. It also kept me from jabbering about her, but I realized it was only a stopgap measure. I might have stifled Mel Soames’s questions for the time being, but they wouldn’t be stopped forever.

We parked out front and walked up to the porch together. We showed our IDs to the uniformed Washington State Patrol officer standing next to the door. He nodded us past, and Mel rang the bell. I expected a maid of some kind would answer the door. Instead, the governor herself stood there. She was dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a purple-and-gold U-Dub sweatshirt. She looked tired and careworn, not at all like her public persona.

Without acknowledging Mel’s presence, Marsha Gray Longmire focused all of her attention on me. “Beau?” the governor asked. “Is it really you?”

I nodded. “Yup,” I said. “At your service.”

She seemed to recognize me on sight, although I couldn’t imagine that I still resembled the callow youth I had been in high school. And I saw no sign of the scrawny girl formerly known as Marsha Gray in this formidable but clearly troubled woman.

With a small moan, Marsha Longmire muscled her way around Mel and fell weeping on my shoulder.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she said in a rush. “I’m so glad you’re here. I couldn’t bear to talk about this with a complete stranger.”

Mel gave me a searching look-one that said, “So what am I, chopped liver?”

Before Mel had a chance to say anything, however, the governor seemed to get a grip. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders, pulled away from me, and turned to Mel.

“Please forgive that outburst,” she said, managing to put her public mask on over her private hurt. “You must be Agent Soames. Ross told me about you. Do come in, but if you don’t mind, I’ll visit with you in my study rather than taking you into the living room. It’s more private in there.”

I understood what the word “private” meant in that instance. There was a convalescing patient somewhere in the house, and Marsha Longmire didn’t want her husband to overhear a word of what we’d be discussing.

After the heat outside, the interior of the house was comfortably cool. Marsha took us into a small office that was just to the left of the front door. Two walls were full of tall bookshelves, loaded with what appeared to be leather-bound volumes-a decorator statement, most likely, rather than books that had ever been read. There was a magnificent but apparently little-used desk at the base of one wall of shelves. There was a seating area in front of the desk made up of four worn leather chairs around a coffee table. Depending on the season, the focus of the seating area could be either a gracious window that overlooked the front of the manicured grounds or a gas-log fireplace on the opposite wall. Currently the window was in vogue.

Marsha directed us to the seating area. Before taking a seat herself, she plucked a box of tissues from the corner of the desk and placed it on the coffee table in front of her.

“Have you seen it?” she asked.

Mel and I didn’t have to ask what “it” meant. We both knew.

“Yes,” I said. “We’ve both watched the clip several times.”

Marsha Longmire’s eyes looked haunted. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “At first I thought it was just a game, but it’s not. It wasn’t.”

“No, ma’am,” Mel agreed. “It wasn’t a game.”

“And the girl is really dead?”