by J. A. Jance
Ross and I had also had our difficulties with booze before those tragedies struck, and we both had to get a lot worse before we got better. Ralph Ames, who was once Anne Corley’s attorney and who is now my friend, helped get me into treatment. When Ross finally came to me for help, I did the same thing for him by personally escorting him into his first AA meeting.
People who venture into AA are given a sponsor-someone you can call in the middle of the night when the temptation to drink is too great and you need a human voice to talk you down out of the trees. My longtime AA sponsor is Lars Jenssen, a retired ninety-something halibut fisherman who became my stepgrandfather by virtue of marrying my widowed grandmother, Beverly Piedmont. He was my sponsor before he married my grandmother and he remains my sponsor to this day, even though, in the aftermath of my grandmother’s death, he took up with another widow, Iris Rasmussen, from Queen Anne Gardens, a Seattle-area retirement home, where the two of them are evidently scandalizing all concerned by openly living in sin.
But I digress. Ross wanted me to be his sponsor. I know from personal experience that having a sponsor who’s more than an hour away is a bad idea, so I found him a group and a sponsor in Olympia. That was the part Harry knew nothing about. Mel knew because she had been privy to some of the phone conversations when Ross called me looking for help, and I know for a fact that Mel can be trusted to keep her mouth shut.
Ross must have understood that, too, I theorized, or he wouldn’t have asked Harry to send both of us, but I couldn’t imagine why. What was going on that Ross couldn’t afford to hand the case off to his Squad A home team?
It had to have something to do with politics. Ross is a political animal. He’s won reelection to the position of attorney general over and over, usually by wide margins. The last election, after the scandal with Francine, he won again, but that one was a squeaker. He had hinted to me that after this four-year term, he most likely wouldn’t run again. Those weren’t words that made me feel all warm and fuzzy. S.H.I.T. has Ross’s own particular stamp on it, and I couldn’t really see myself-or any of us-working for someone else with the same kind of personal loyalty that we all give willingly to Ross Connors.
Whatever this case was, it was also big enough to bring people down.
Harry called while I was still stuck in the traffic jam waiting for the wreckage of the semi to be towed off the freeway.
“Ross says to meet him in the coffee shop of the hotel,” Harry said. “What’s the matter? Doesn’t that ‘dreaded Red’ have a bar? Or maybe their coffee shop serves booze.”
I knew that Ross and Harry had done some drinking together in the old days, but in this instance I played dumb.
“I’m sure you can get anything you want in the coffee shop,” I assured him. “Maybe he missed lunch.”
“Right,” Harry said sarcastically. “Whatever.” He hung up.
If you’ve been in any Red Lion Hotel in the continental United States, you know the drill. There used to be huge wooden carvings on the walls of the lobby and the restaurant. Whenever I saw them, I imagined some crazed woodcarver living off in the woods somewhere, cutting out those gigantic pieces and then warehousing them so there would be a ready supply waiting when it came time to open a new hotel. But things change, and time has taken its toll. Now the Olympia Red Lion lobby is cream and butter-yellow and stone. The crazed carver has probably hung up his chain saw and moved to Palm Springs, where he plays golf every day.
Mel had beaten me to the registration desk. When I walked up to ask for my room key, the desk clerk couldn’t help but give me a knowing leer.
“Ms. Soames has already arrived, Mr. Beaumont,” he said. “Your room charge is already paid, and she left a credit card to cover incidentals. Would you care to leave a card to cover your own?”
I was wearing my wedding ring, and I’m sure Mel was wearing hers. Her credit card charges and mine were all one account, but I didn’t bother explaining that or the last-name situation to the clerk. He was a young guy, somewhere in his late twenties, who seemed astonished by the idea that someone of my advanced age-older than dirt in the clerk’s eyes-could possibly be about to get lucky. I wanted to tell him, “Listen up, turkey. I already am lucky,” but I didn’t. Leaving him to arrive at his own erroneous and dirty-minded conclusions, I took my room key and left.
Mel was upstairs in our room and totally unpacked by the time I got there. I told you she drives fast. Like her speedy showers, the unpacking part came from growing up as a military dependent. Every time her family was shipped to a new base, suitcases were unpacked immediately. With clothing in the drawers and closets, it was easier to feel settled faster. She had appropriated the room’s only decent chair and was working on her laptop.
“You took long enough,” she said.
“Harry called,” I told her. “We’re supposed to meet up with Ross in the coffee shop right about now.”
“I know,” Mel said. “I got a call, too, but there’s still no hint about what this is all about?”
“None,” I said.
“Most likely politics as usual,” she said.
“That would be my guess.”
Even though I would have been happy to leave my crap in my roll-aboard, I allowed myself to be influenced by peer pressure. I unpacked and put my underwear and socks in an unoccupied dresser drawer. I hung up my extra slacks and clean shirts, still covered with the dry cleaner’s plastic wrapping. I’m waiting for the day when someone decides that there has to be an extra charge for putting plastic around your freshly laundered shirts. It hasn’t happened so far, probably only because no one has noticed.
“You should check your e-mail,” Mel said, peering at her computer screen.
“Why? Something new from Barbara Galvin? Or is that nice Nigerian widow wanting to send me money again?”
My kids, Scott and Kelly, had been pretty much out of my life for years. When their mother died of cancer, we started trying to reconnect, an effort that was helped immeasurably by Dave Livingston, Karen’s widowed second husband and my kids’ caring stepfather. Kelly, her husband, Jeff Cartwright, and my two grandkids live in Ashland, Oregon. Scott and his wife, Cherisse, live in the Bay Area. For a long time we communicated back and forth by e-mail. Now my generation-X progeny mostly send me text messages or e-mail. Other than work-related messages, most of the other new mail in my e-mail account turns out to be spam.
Mel grinned at me and shook her head. “I was scanning down the junk mail in your spam folder. There’s something in there with a subject line that says ‘Beaumont, Texas.’ ”
The room phone rang just then. Mel picked it up. “Okay,” she said after a moment’s pause. “We’ll be right down.”
“Ross?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Just move that message to my new-mail folder,” I told her. “I’ll read it later. Right now we’d better go see what the boss has in mind.”
“And why he’d rather meet with us here instead of having us stop by his office, which, in my opinion, is a hell of a lot nicer than any hotel coffee shop, and a lot more private, too.”
I was glad to know I wasn’t the only one who had been wondering about that.
We found Ross in the coffee shop downstairs. It was still early enough that the room was mostly empty. The attorney general, with a cup and saucer in front of him, was seated in a booth in the far corner of the room under a huge oil painting that depicted a salmon heading upstream to a most likely unhappy end. From the morose look on Ross’s usually cheerful countenance, the painting seemed like an apt reflection of the AG’s current mood.
As a general rule, when I’m in public places I don’t like sitting with my back to the door. Neither does Mel. We both want to be able to see who is coming in and going out, just in case. In this instance, Ross had already appropriated the door-facing seat in the booth. Mel solved the problem by slipping into the booth next to our boss and letting me have the other side of the booth to myself.
“Your room is all right?” he asked.
“The room’s fine,” Mel assured him.
A waitress showed up, order pad at the ready. “They’ll have coffee,” Ross said, without bothering to ask our opinion. “Bring us one of those big pots. When we’re ready to order lunch, I’ll let you know.”
Nodding, the waitress went away. She was back a minute or so later with an insulated carafe of coffee.
“Cream and sugar?” she asked, pouring into the cups in front of us.
“Black,” Mel and I answered together.
“Okay,” she said, and went away, leaving us alone.
The moment she was gone, Ross reached into his pocket. He pulled out an iPhone, tinkered with it for a moment, and then set it in front of Mel. “I need you to watch this video before anyone else comes into the dining room,” he said.
Mel watched. The sound was turned off. There was no way to tell what was happening on the tiny screen, but from watching the subtle shifts in Mel’s features-the tightening of the muscles on her jawbone, the sudden iciness in her eyes, the paleness of her cheeks-I knew whatever it was wasn’t good.
When the video ended, she turned on Ross. “Is this real?” she demanded.
He nodded. “I think so.”
Without another word, Mel punched what must have been the replay button and pushed the phone over to me. There was a girl on the screen. She looked to be fourteen or fifteen, maybe, straight teeth, dark wavy hair, a blue scarf tied around her neck. She smiled for the camera-a nice smile; a shy smile-as though she was a little nervous about being there. Then two disembodied hands appeared on the screen. Each hand grasped one end of the scarf, and they began to pull. For a moment the girl was docile, as though this was something she expected and might even have welcomed. I had heard of the choking game before. I realized this wasn’t a game about the same time the girl did. She began to claw at the scarf and try to loosen its hold on her neck. She surged to her feet, struggling. The camera’s focus moved with her, staying on her face, keeping the bodies and faces that belonged to the hands pulling on the scarf safely out of the camera’s view.
I watched it all the way to the end. When it was over, I knew the girl was dead. I also understood why Ross hadn’t ordered any food. I felt as sick to my stomach as Mel Soames looked.
“Snuff film,” I said unnecessarily. “Who is she?”
Ross shook his head. “No idea who she is or where she’s from.”
“But there are three people involved in the homicide,” Mel said. “Two guys pulling the scarf and one guy running the camera.”
“Right,” Ross said. “Three.”
“So if you don’t know who she is or where she’s from, how come this is our case?” I asked.
Ross looked uncomfortable as he collected the iPhone and stuffed it back into his pocket.
“Governor Longmire brought it over to my office and dropped it off earlier this morning,” he said. “It’s the governor’s husband’s grandson’s phone. He’s fifteen.”
“Do you think he’s involved?” Mel asked.
Ross shook his head. “No way of knowing. His name is Josh Deeson. The kid could be one of the hands pulling the ends of the scarf or he could be the guy with the camera. It’s also possible that he’s entirely innocent. His mother, the governor’s stepdaughter, is deceased. From what I can tell, she was pretty much of a loser who overdosed on meth two years ago. The father was declared unfit, and the courts awarded custody to the boy’s maternal grandfather, Gerard Willis, who happens to be married to Governor Longmire and who also happens to have undergone quadruple bypass surgery just last week.”
“I remember reading something about the governor’s husband going in for surgery, but I don’t recall anything about his daughter’s death being drug-related.”
“There are still a few things that aren’t fit to print-if you have enough pull, that is,” Ross said. “The version of the daughter’s death that went out to the media was that she died of an accidental overdose. The custody hearing was conducted behind closed doors, and those documents are sealed. From what I’ve been able to learn so far, Josh has been living in the governor’s mansion since before the custody arrangement was finalized. Sounds like he’s got ‘issues.’
“Governor Longmire and her husband are giving the kid a roof over his head-a very nice roof, by the way; food to eat; clothing to wear; a cell phone; a computer. In return, he’s been giving them fits by ditching school, getting into fights, and sneaking out at night. That’s how the phone ended up in Governor Longmire’s possession this morning. The governor’s security detail saw him letting himself out, using the old rope-ladder trick to climb down from the upper stories. He managed to give them the slip, but they called in a report. Governor Longmire confiscated the rope ladder and was waiting for Josh when he came back to the house early this morning. As punishment, she confiscated his iPhone. Once she turned it on and saw the film, she called me.”
With noon approaching, several groups of people had come into the restaurant. For a time the hostess managed to keep our booth separated from other diners. As the place filled, however, that was no longer possible. Two people in the latest group of four nodded in Ross’s direction. He was an official with a statewide office and a reputation to go with it. Naturally people recognized him.
He removed the phone from his pocket and handed it to Mel. “You might want to put that in your purse,” he told her. Then, to both of us, he said, “No more names, by the way-aliases only when in public. Little Jack Horner is at school today, with one of Old Mother Hubbard’s bodyguards along as an enforcer.”
“Why school?” Mel asked. “Isn’t it summer vacation?”
“Summer school,” Ross said. “Supposedly making up classes he flunked. She’d like to see you about two o’clock.”
“In her office?”
“At home,” Ross said. “You know how to find it?”
“My GPS knows how to find it,” Mel said confidently.
“What about the kid’s computer?” I asked. “That might have a lot more information than his phone.”
Ross nodded. “So I understand,” he said. “I told Old Mother that you’d pick it up when you stop by this afternoon. For starters, I’d like you to take it to Todd and let him make a copy of whatever’s there.”
Todd was Todd Hatcher. He is an electronics wunderkind who also has a Ph.D. in economics. He had come to Ross Connors’s attention when he did a study on the high cost of geriatric prison care. Todd’s interest in the subject had grown out of his own experience. His father, a convicted bank robber in Arizona, had been sentenced to life in prison. When the father began exhibiting symptoms of Alzheimer’s, he was paroled to the care of his wife, a waitress, who exhausted her life savings and her life trying to care for her ailing husband. Todd’s doctoral committee at the University of Washington had dismissed Todd’s study out of hand. When Ross Connors heard about it, not only had he stepped in to rescue Todd’s Ph.D. aspirations, he had also taken Todd on as an occasional consultant whose computer hacking skills went beyond his publicly recognized skills as a forensic economist.
But there was also a subtle warning here for Mel and me. There are some pretty savvy computer experts working for the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab. I couldn’t help but wonder why Connors was using a private consultant to examine Josh Deeson’s computer. Probably the same reason Mel and I were on the job.
“Search warrants?” Mel asked.
“Got ’em,” Ross said. He patted the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a packet of documents, which he handed over to Mel. “That covers Jack Horner’s computer, his iPhone, and his room. It’s Old Mother Hubbard’s house. She bought the computer with her credit card and she’s the one who pays for Little Jack Horner’s Internet connection. Legally, since she’s the one providing his room, she could voluntarily give us access to that and to his computer as well, but just in case the kid is actually involved in a homicide here, we’re better off wit
h properly drawn warrants.”
“Works for me,” I said. “Warrants are always better than no warrants.”
“Does Grandfather Time know about any of this?” Mel asked, inventing a suitable alias for Gerard Willis on the spot.
“Not so far,” Ross replied. “There’s some concern that being given upsetting news right now might interfere with his recovery.”
Ross’s answer to that question went a long way to explain all the secrecy.
“And why us?” Mel asked. “Why Beau and me?”
“That’s easy. Old Mother Hubbard asked for Beau in particular,” Ross said, nodding in my direction. “She says the two of you go back a long way.”
Mel gave me a quizzical look.
“We were in high school together,” I said.
“Oh,” Mel responded cheerfully. “That certainly explains it.”
There are probably a lot of married men out there who instantly understood that when Mel said that, she meant the exact opposite-that what I had said explained nothing. We would need to have a much more detailed conversation on the subject, but the lack of privacy in the Red Lion coffee shop precluded my providing a detailed explanation of my connections to Governor Old Mother Hubbard.
“Exactly,” Ross said, missing the sarcasm entirely. “When she asked for J.P., I told her the two of you were a matched set-that you work well together.” He stopped long enough to glance at his watch, a doorknob-size Rolex. I could see the hands from across the table. It was half past noon.
“Are you hungry?” Ross asked. “Your appointment at her house is scheduled for two. If you’d like, there’s plenty of time to grab a sandwich before you go. It’s on me.”
That wasn’t entirely true. It wasn’t on him nearly as much as it was on his expense account, which meant the taxpayers were the ones paying the freight.
Mel pushed aside her coffee cup, stood up, and then collected her purse. “No, thank you,” she said. “After seeing what we saw on that phone, I seem to have lost my appetite.”