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  “I was. As I told you earlier, as far as I knew, the watch had been missing for weeks. At least that’s what Josh told me. He must have had it all along and just stopped wearing it.”

  “And he was wearing it when he came down to dinner?”

  Gerry nodded. “Yes,” he declared, “he was.”

  “Did Josh have any visitors last night, either before dinner or after?”

  “Not that we know of,” Gerry said. “I mean, no one came to the front door and rang the bell, if that’s what you mean, but how would we know for sure? We didn’t know he was getting out overnight, which he had probably been doing for months before Marsha finally caught him at it. If he’s been going in and out without our knowing it, then there’s a good chance other people have been coming in without our knowledge, too.

  “But in view of what happened the previous night, he shouldn’t have been able to sneak someone in. Marsha asked the security detail to make sure that the guards that patrol the capitol campus would stop by here overnight as well. I don’t know how often they came by, but no one reported seeing any rope ladders going up or down the side of the building. If they had been there, I think someone would have noticed.”

  “How did Josh get along with the governor’s girls?” Mel asked.

  “With Gizzy and Zoe?” Gerry asked.

  I nodded.

  “Okay, I guess,” Gerry said. “I’d say it wasn’t like a real blended family-more like a blended family once removed. Even though Josh and the two girls are fairly close in age, he was my grandson, not my son. When he first got here, there was some jockeying for position and so forth, but that’s just kids. I think we made the right decision when we sent him to public school rather than Olympia Prep. With the other girls ahead of him in school, there would have been undue expectations from some of the faculty members. Josh had holes in his academic background that meant he never would have measured up. Regular high school was tough enough. Olympia Prep would have been impossible.”

  “Someone mentioned that he’d been getting in fights,” I said.

  “I’m not sure how it happened, but some of the kids evidently learned about what happened to his mother. They teased him about it. He was a good-looking kid, but not as good-looking as he could have been. He should have had braces to straighten his teeth, but his mother never had the money or the inclination to do that. By the time I offered to take him to an orthodontist, he didn’t want to go. He said he was too old for braces. As I understand it, the fights came out of teasing at school. One boy asked him if his teeth were crooked because he had meth mouth like his mother.”

  “Kids can be such mean bastards,” Mel said.

  Gerry looked at her, smiled, and nodded sadly. “That’s the only instance I know about for sure,” he said. “There were probably plenty of others. I should have protected him from all that, but I didn’t.”

  Gerry Willis was back to blaming himself, not for the first time and doubtless not for the last. As far as I was concerned, he was right to do so. Josh had lived in the Willis/Longmire household for more than three years. Somebody should have stood up for him.

  “You couldn’t protect him,” Mel said kindly. “No matter how much parents want to, they can’t save their kids from all the little creeps in the world. Kids have to go out there and sink or swim on their own.”

  Gerry swallowed hard. “And Josh sank,” he said bleakly.

  I had barely touched the food on my plate, but I no longer wanted it. Ross Connors had decreed that our cover story had to do with Mel and me investigating a phony case of school bullying. Now, with the meth-mouth comment, it seemed our cover story had turned all too real and at least two kids were dead.

  “Can you give us the names of any of Josh’s friends?” Mel asked after a pause.

  “Not really.”

  “Outside interests? Extracurricular activities?”

  “He wasn’t an athlete, if that’s what you mean. That was why the jogging surprised me. He was interested in chess, though. There’s a chess club at the high school. I met the adviser, a Mr. Dysart, briefly at an end-of-school pizza party, but I didn’t know any of the other kids. I know it sounds strange that we can’t tell you more about him, but he was a pretty self-contained kid.”

  “Given his background, maybe he had to be,” I said.

  “Thank you for saying that,” Gerry said.

  Just then the doorbell rang. A group of people came into the house. They stopped briefly in the entryway. The door to the governor’s study opened. The people who had been closeted in there with Marsha Longmire filed out and milled around with the newcomers, talking and shaking hands. When they all started toward the living room, Mel and I decided it was time to take our leave.

  “It would probably be better if we weren’t here when your guests arrive,” I said. “Is there a way we could leave without causing a disruption of some kind?”

  “Sure,” he said, pointing. “You could go out through the kitchen.”

  And that’s exactly what we did. The cook may have been a little surprised when we came through and asked to be let out the back way, but she was evidently used to off-the-wall requests. When we came around from the back of the building we were relieved to see that most of the media presence was gone. Captain Hoyt had done an admirable job of getting rid of them.

  There were new cars scattered around the driveway, but Mel was able to squeeze the Cayman out between a bright blue Jaguar and a red Volvo station wagon without denting any of them.

  We didn’t speak until we were back on the street and headed for the hotel. “So what’s the truth about Josh Deeson?” Mel demanded. “Is he a killer or a victim?”

  “Maybe a little of both,” I suggested.

  “Maybe the girl was one of his tormentors,” Mel said after a pause. “Maybe the killing was all about revenge, and he just couldn’t deal with the consequences.”

  That seemed plausible enough. We drove the rest of the way back to the hotel in silence while I considered what Mel had just said. Unfortunately, it was all too true. When Josh Deeson came to live at the governor’s mansion, he had been dirt poor and years behind his peers in terms of academic achievement. Those separate ingredients had combined into a fateful mix that had made him ripe to become a target for mindless bullies. As a friendless loner he had most likely been the butt of countless ugly jokes. Now he was also dead.

  All of that left me wondering about just one thing: Whatever happened to Josh Deeson’s civil rights and the civil rights of the unidentified girl who had been strangled with the blue scarf?

  I knew that both Governor Longmire and Gerard Willis cared about what had happened to the poor kid, but Mel Soames and I were the ones who were actually charged with finding out the whys and wherefores behind Josh Deeson’s death, and the unknown girl’s death, too.

  I was determined that we would do just that, come hell or high water.

  Chapter 12

  Once back at the Red Lion, we stopped by the front desk long enough to pick up the envelope of photos of the video clip’s dead Jane Doe. Riding up in the elevator, we pulled one out of the envelope. Todd Hatcher had done an excellent job of extracting a usable head-shot photo from the video. His enhanced image showed an average-looking brown-haired girl with a tentative smile-the smile Marsha Longmire had said would haunt her for the rest of her life.

  “You know what?” I said. “From that photo, I’d say she was a willing participant, at least initially.”

  “Yes,” Mel muttered, sliding the offending photo back into the envelope. “The old ‘choking game.’ Some game!”

  Up in our room, while Mel sat down at the desk and booted up her computer, I studied the clothing I had brought along in my suitcase.

  “What’s wrong?” Mel asked.

  “I seem to have brought along nothing but work clothes. When I packed I had no idea that garbage was going to be part of the work agenda.”

  “Try Goodwill,” Mel said. “You should be able
to buy stuff you can throw away after you use it.”

  “Good thinking,” I said. “Where’s the nearest Goodwill?”

  I was fully capable of looking it up on my own, but Mel already had her computer open and at the ready. She gave me the address.

  “What are you going to do while I’m off on garbage detail?” I asked.

  “See if Todd can enhance the images of the arms pulling the scarf.”

  I knew what she meant. She wanted to know if the watch in the picture was Josh Deeson’s watch. So did I. I left her to it and set off on my own. With help from the GPS, I pulled into the Goodwill parking lot in a matter of minutes.

  The irony wasn’t lost on me. I arrived at the thrift store to buy cheapo clothing while driving a very expensive Mercedes. Since I had no idea of how many days of garbage duty I was in for, I went wild and stocked up. I came out of the place fifteen minutes later feeling like I had scored and carrying a plastic bag that contained three pairs of shorts, three T-shirts, and a pair of flip-flops-all for under fifteen bucks. I loaded my bag of purchases into the trunk of the Mercedes and sped off.

  The storage unit was a multilevel affair. To my amazement and relief, it was also air-conditioned. Who knew? I found the front desk, asked for Rebekah, and gave her my name.

  “Unit D-335,” she said. “Take the elevator to the third floor.”

  As she handed me the key, she gave me that singularly disapproving one-raised-eyebrow look all women seem to use on occasion. In the old days I wouldn’t have had a clue about what that look meant, but being married to Mel has made me almost fluent in nonverbal female-centric lingo.

  Rebekah thought I was overdressed for the job at hand. So did I.

  I held up my bag of thrift-store duds. “I’m planning on changing,” I said.

  Without a word Rebekah handed me a second key. This one was on a ring that also contained a large wooden paddle that was too big to slip into a pocket. Written on the paddle was the word RESTROOM.

  “Good,” she said. “The restrooms are just beyond the elevators on the right.”

  I changed clothes there. Then, carrying my good clothes in the bag, I located unit D-335. Even with the AC going, a pungent odor assailed my nostrils the moment I opened the rolling door. There were two separate and bulging tarps on the floor of the unit. The first one, the recycling bin, was easily disposed of. It consisted primarily of soda cans and clear plastic water bottles. There was also a whole bale of shredded paper, along with an impressive stack of print newspapers. Obviously Governor Longmire preferred to get her news in dead-tree fashion rather than over the Internet.

  Keeping the recycling safely contained, I tied that tarp shut and dragged it out into the hallway. The second tarp was a bit more problematic. In last-in-first-out fashion, the garbage heap was topped with yesterday morning’s coffee grounds. It was possible to trace the previous day’s events in chronological order, ending with a pizza box that no doubt dated from last night’s dinner. Somewhere in the middle I found the flurry of paper napkins that had accompanied our unadorned tuna sandwiches-several of which had been tossed into the garbage along with the napkins.

  Let me say right now that I was very grateful Washington’s First Family had no pets. That would have made a tough job even tougher. It was clear, however, that these folks were big on fresh fruit. There were apple cores, orange peels, and banana peels in abundance. What happens to dead apple cores and banana peels overnight in the heat of summer isn’t pretty, but it’s nothing compared to witnessing any given autopsy, so I soldiered on, trying to do so with a cheerful heart.

  I sifted through the garbage as best I could and found nothing that looked remotely related to what we were doing. I found a newspaper page with a completed Sudoku puzzle that had made it into the garbage instead of the recycling. Nowhere did I find any wadded-up sheets of notebook paper with cryptic phone numbers or coded messages. This was garbage-plain and simple garbage.

  I spent forty-five minutes on the thankless task, then I tied up the tarp of garbage and dragged both that and the recycling downstairs. I emptied the tarps, folded them as best I could, and then took them back up to the storage unit so they could be reused. Josh Deeson might be dead, but I had a feeling that Ross Connors’s interest in Governor Longmire’s garbage wasn’t going to end anytime soon.

  I locked up and returned the keys to Rebekah. I drove back to the Red Lion feeling conflicted. I felt virtuous because it was a dirty job and I had done it. I felt frustrated because I had found nothing.

  Mel wasn’t in the room when I got back. There was a piece of hotel notepaper sitting on top of her closed computer. There was only one word written on it: AUTOPSY.

  That surprised me. Mowat had picked up the body a relatively short time ago. Usually there was a little more wait time built into the system, but I chalked it up to Josh’s being related to Governor Longmire. That probably greased the skids and made things happen faster than they would otherwise.

  I headed for the shower with the slightest bit of guilt added to the mix. Sorting garbage wasn’t my first choice of afternoon activity, but it beat the hell out of spending the afternoon with Dr. Larry Mowat.

  I threw away the first set of Goodwill clothing and wore the second one. Yes, Ross Connors expects his agents to go out in public properly dressed in business attire. For men that means slacks, dress shirts, jackets and ties, even in the dead of summer. As long as I was working in the privacy of my hotel room, there was no reason not to be comfortable.

  I turned on my computer and booted it up. There were several new e-mails listed. I cleared those out one at a time. Among them I found three from Todd Hatcher and one from Ross, which meant that one really came from Katie Dunn. There was also a copy of the e-mail Mel had sent to Ross giving him an overview of what had gone on earlier in the day. The next message after that, the one I’d saved as new, was the one from Sally Mathers-the one marked “Beaumont.” I owed her a response, but I wasn’t ready to deal with all of that, at least not yet.

  I avoided the issue by hiding out in work and opened Todd’s first message instead. That one contained two attachments-a copy of the snuff video and a copy of the Jane Doe jpeg. The second contained a short note and two jpeg attachments. I read the note first.

  Look at both jpegs. I’ll have to go somewhere else to do a more detailed enhancement to see if we can identify the watch. Back to you when I can.

  I opened the attachments. Each one contained a photo of an individual hand and arm, with the hand knotted into a tight fist around the end of the scarf. I squinted at the watch in the one photo. I wished I had a magnifying glass on me to help make out the details, but I didn’t. In the other photo, the top of the thumb was clearly visible. Todd was online, so I sent him an instant message.

  Is that nail polish on that thumb? Does that mean one of the assailants is a girl?

  He wrote back almost immediately.

  You’re out of the loop, J.P. These days boys wear nail polish, too.

  Not this boy, I thought.

  The door opened and Mel came in looking surprisingly grim. More than a little surprised, I glanced at my watch.

  “You’re done already?” I asked. “That has to be one of the fastest autopsies in history.”

  “As far as I know, the autopsy has yet to start.”

  She came over and sank down on the bed. That’s when I noticed she was holding a bag of ice against her right hand.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I punched him,” she said. “Right in the kisser. If I’d made better contact, I would have broken his nose, but he ducked back out of the way. With any kind of luck, though, I loosened his front tooth. I know for sure he’s got a split lip.”

  “Who ducked?” I asked. “Whose front tooth?”

  “Who do you think?” Mel asked irritably. “Dr. Mowat, that’s who. He listened in on your conversation with Ross earlier and figured out that you’d be tied up doing something else this afternoon. That�
�s why he claimed he had moved up the Deeson autopsy. He thought getting me alone was a good idea. Turns out it wasn’t.”

  “You punched him?”

  I admit there should have been a little more husbandly concern in the question and a lot less admiration, but I doubted Mel had been the only target of Larry Mowat’s inappropriate attentions. Most likely the creep had deserved having his lights punched out for a long time. Of course, if he ended up filing an official complaint against Mel, that might have all kinds of long-term repercussions.

  Right that minute, however, neither Mel nor I was thinking long-term.

  “I sure as hell did!” she declared.

  “Let me take a look at it.” I scrambled up out of the desk chair, hurried to the bed, and lifted the ice pack off her knuckle. There was a neat cut across one of them where one of Mowat’s front teeth had broken the skin. The whole back of her fist was already discolored and swollen. I could tell from looking at it that her hand probably hurt like hell. I also knew she’d bite her tongue off before she’d admit it. Without being asked, I went straight to my shaving kit and got her a couple of Aleves. I came back from the bathroom with the pills and a glass of water.

  “He’s probably filing a complaint even as we speak,” she said once she had swallowed the tablets.

  “Were there any witnesses?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding?” she scoffed. “Jerks like that always make sure there are no witnesses.”

  “Did you write up a report the last time he hassled you?”

  “I did,” Mel said. “It’s in the file. There’s evidently been some bad blood between Mowat and Ross. At the time Ross told me he’d appreciate it if I’d leave it at that. And I did. Now all bets are off. If he files a complaint, I’ll file a countercomplaint.”

  “Do you want me to go over to the morgue, finish witnessing the autopsy, and clean Mowat’s clock while I’m at it?”

  She gave me a sheepish grin. “Thanks for the offer of being my Sir Galahad, but don’t bother. I already did a reasonable job of cleaning his clock myself. As for that autopsy? It turns out that wasn’t really scheduled for today after all. That was just a ruse to get me over to the morgue.”