by J. A. Jance
“A phony autopsy as opposed to phony etchings,” I muttered. “Classy.”
Mel’s phone rang. Because she would have had to put down the ice pack to answer it, I plucked it out of her pocket and answered it for her.
“Mel Soames’s line,” I said.
“She punched him?” Ross Connors roared into my ear. “She flat-out punched him?”
“No,” I said. “I think it was more of a balled-fist situation than something flat-out.”
“Don’t be cute, Beau,” Ross said. “Mowat just called my office and raised all kinds of hell with Katie Dunn. I’m pretty sure he didn’t get a whole lot of sympathy from that quarter. Katie doesn’t like him any more than I do. How’s Mel?”
“She’d talk on the phone herself, but she’s holding an ice pack on her knuckles,” I told him. “She can’t do both at the same time.”
“Put me on speaker, then,” he said. “I need to talk to both of you.”
With some difficulty I managed to punch the appropriate numbers to activate the speaker function. It seems to me that there should be some standard operations that go from one kind of cell phone to another. That’s not the case, though. The controls on Mel’s phone differ enough from mine that I’m always baffled when I have to do anything with her phone.
“Are you there, Mel?” Ross asked.
“I’m here,” she answered.
“Good. Are you okay?”
“My knuckles are a little swollen, but I’m fine. Why?”
“I’ve had people monitoring new missing persons cases from all over the state in hopes of identifying the Jane Doe on Josh Deeson’s phone. A promising lead just turned up with the Lewis County Sheriff’s Department. The girl’s name is Rachel Camber. She’s fifteen years old, Anglo, and she’s been missing since Sunday. Her folks, who probably won’t qualify for any Parents of the Year Award, woke up this morning and figured out that their teenage daughter wasn’t home and hadn’t been home for several days.”
“Any other info on the girl?” Mel asked.
“Only that this isn’t the first time she’s run away. More like number three or four.”
“Where did she go the other times?”
“If the deputy found out during his initial contact with the parents, I don’t have that information at this time.”
“What about a photo?” I asked. “Does Lewis County have one and can they send us a copy?”
“As I understand it, the deputy who took the report picked up a copy of last year’s school photo while he was there at the house. He’s bringing it with him, and he’s on his way from Packwood to Chehalis right now. It’s about an hour and a half from Packwood to Chehalis. He’s probably another hour out at least. Between Olympia and there it’s right around half an hour. If Mel is up to it, I’d like you to be waiting for him at the sheriff’s department in Chehalis when he gets there.”
“I’m up to it,” Mel said determinedly.
“Keep ice on that hand and let Beau do the driving,” Ross advised her. “You know where the Lewis County Sheriff’s Department is located?”
That question was evidently directed at me. I knew how to get there all too well. Once, years ago, I’d been hauled into the Lewis County Jail by an overly enthusiastic deputy. It wasn’t one of my best moments, and it wasn’t something I had ever mentioned to Mel, or to Ross Connors, either. Some things are better left unsaid.
“Don’t worry,” I told them both. “I can find it.”
“As for Larry Mowat,” Ross continued, “don’t you worry about him for a moment, Mel. If he tries to make any kind of fuss about what happened between you, I’ll squash him flat like the bug he is.”
“Thank you,” Mel said.
I was all for squashing Dr. Larry Mowat. I would have told Ross Connors thank you, too, but it was Mel’s deal, not mine, and it wasn’t my place.
“I’m at the airport getting ready to fly out of Spokane,” Ross continued. “I have a few minutes before the plane is due to board. You probably don’t need to leave for Chehalis for another half hour, so how about bringing me up to date on what went on at the governor’s mansion. I’ve been out of the loop.”
Before Mel left for Larry Mowat’s faux autopsy, she had sent Ross a fairly detailed report about what had gone on at the Josh Deeson crime scene. Ross hadn’t seen it because he refuses to use his damned computer.
I had half a mind to pull Mel’s report up on the computer and simply read it to him word for word, but I didn’t. Instead we told him about our time at the governor’s mansion. We touched on everything we could remember off the top of our heads, including the part about Josh having been bullied by the kids at school as well as Mel’s and my reading of his supposed suicide note.
“It sounds like you don’t think he killed the girl,” Ross said.
“I think it’s possible he didn’t kill her,” Mel corrected, “but we’re going to have to prove it one way or the other.”
Mel has a way of saying things that allows for cover later on if that should prove necessary. She’d make an excellent politician, if she didn’t occasionally feel obliged to punch someone in the mouth.
“The watch sounds important,” Ross continued. “I’ll contact the crime lab and get them working on collecting DNA from the watchband. I told the guys in Spokane to do the same thing on the scarf. Once we have DNA profiles, all we’ll need is a couple of suspects so we can match them up. Case solved.”
That was my idea, too.
“What about the garbage detail?” he asked. “Did you find anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Too bad,” Ross said. “I was hoping you’d find something that would help us.”
“So was I,” I said.
I could hear a public address system talking in the background.
“Oops,” Ross said. “They just called my flight. I need to go.”
He hung up. I stripped off my shorts, T-shirt, and flip-flops in favor of something a little more official-looking. If Mel and I were going to drive to Packwood that night to tell some poor unsuspecting parents that their precious daughter had most likely been murdered, then I wanted to look the part. That difficult assignment requires a certain amount of gravitas. In my book, it also requires a sports jacket and a tie, no exceptions. For those kinds of occasions, Mel favors a tailored suit and low heels. It’s what we do.
Once we were both properly put together, we refreshed Mel’s ice pack and rode down to the car. Mel insisted on bringing along our computers and our air cards in case we had any waiting time on our hands later.
I happen to know that Packwood is in the far reaches of Lewis County, within ten miles or so of Mount Rainier and right up against the edge of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. I thought the likelihood of our having an Internet connection from way out there was slim to none, but I packed up the computers without a word of complaint and carted them down to the car.
Mel is one of those women who are capable of and usually prefer to open and close doors all by themselves. This time she kept the ice on her hand and made no remark about my dashing around the car and playing the role of gentleman. And once we were belted in and headed toward the freeway, she did absolutely zero backseat driving. None.
It occurred to me, somewhere along the way between Olympia and Chehalis, that her taking a swing that had connected with Dr. Larry Mowat’s front tooth might turn out to be an excellent thing in terms of our own personal domestic tranquillity.
Chapter 13
Ross Connors, the Washington State Attorney general, weighs in as a statewide elected official. That makes those of us who have the privilege of working for him employees of a statewide elected official. Over the years I’ve learned that some places are a lot more welcoming to people who work for Special Homicide than others.
It turned out that, as far as the Lewis County Sheriff’s Department was concerned, Ross Connors was golden. Since Mel and I worked for him, so were we. We arrived in Chehalis well after f
ive, but Sheriff Louis Tyler was waiting for us with the light on and the welcome mat out. He asked for the nurse practitioner from the Lewis County Jail to come over and take a look at Mel’s injured hand. Then we all settled in to wait for Deputy David Timmons to arrive from Packwood.
But there was more to Sheriff Tyler’s hospitality than just good manners. “You’re Special Homicide,” he said. “So what’s your interest in a fifteen-year-old runaway from my jurisdiction?”
It was a reasonable question that merited a straight answer.
“We think there’s a good possibility that Rachel is dead,” I said. “And we have reason to believe that her death might be related to the possible suicide of a boy in Olympia, a kid named Josh Deeson, one of whose guardians happens to be Governor Marsha Longmire.”
Sheriff Tyler thought about that for a long moment before he nodded. “Hold on,” he said, “I’ll be right back.”
He returned a few minutes later carrying a stack of paper folders.
“This is the third time Rachel Camber has run away. If you look at these, they may give you some idea of why.”
He shoved the file folders across his desk. Mel took one off the stack. I took another. I ended up with the mother’s file-Ardith Louise Haskell Camber Mills Stapleton. Unfortunately there was a mug shot. Think of any frowsy blonde you’ve ever seen in one of the domestic-violence clips on Cops-several missing teeth, stringy hair, and a nose that showed evidence of having been broken numerous times. Not an American beauty. The birth date listed made her thirty-two, although she looked decades older than that. And if she had a whole series of ex-husbands and a fifteen-year-old runaway daughter in the background, it was simple to do the math. Babies having babies is seldom a good idea, although Kelly and Jeremy, my daughter and son-in-law, seem to be exceptions to that rule.
I thumbed through the file. Ardith had arrests and convictions for DUI, domestic violence, drunk and disorderly, and disturbing the peace. She had been charged with child neglect, but there was no conviction on that one.
“And the men are?” Mel asked.
“Husbands and ex-husbands,” Tyler said. “She marries them, they beat her up, they leave her with a kid or two, and then she gets a divorce and moves on.”
“How many kids?” Mel asked.
“Six, I believe, but don’t quote me,” Tyler said.
“How does she support them all?” Mel asked.
“Let’s say she doesn’t get much child support from her exes,” Tyler said. “She works as a bartender in a low-life bar in Randle. She also may get some government help. The current man in her life is Ken Broward, who signed on after her last arrest. Kenny used to make a decent living driving log trucks. He’s been off work for months. They called him and wanted him to come back today. He couldn’t on account of not being able to locate Rachel. He needed her to look after the younger kids. He’s the one who turned in the missing persons report.”
“Not the mother,” Mel said.
“No,” Sheriff Tyler said. “Not the mother.”
Mel and I traded glances and folders. I gave her the thick one on Ardith, and she gave me the ones that dealt with the parade of lowlifes in Ardith’s life. I thumbed through them.
“Nothing on Ken Broward?” I asked.
“Not so far as I know,” Sheriff Tyler said. “From what I’ve been able to learn about him, Ken’s a straight arrow. Ardith’s lucky to have him, and Ardith’s kids are even luckier.”
“Except for Rachel,” Mel said. “Rachel’s definitely not better off. Maybe we should show Sheriff Tyler that video. He should know what we’re up against. He’ll know if there have been any other cases of that around here.”
Mel had loaded the clip onto her iPhone. She started it playing and then handed the phone to Sheriff Tyler. He watched it through with no comment other than a tightening of the muscles along his jawline. When the clip finished, he handed the phone back to Mel.
“Choking game,” he said quietly. “We’ve had a few instances of that around here, mostly with junior high school kids. By the time kids are Rachel’s age, they find other ways to get high, like stealing their parents’ prescription drugs or raiding their parents’ liquor cabinets.”
“Any deaths?” I asked.
He grimaced. “What do you call landing in a vegetative state at age twelve? Close but no cigar? Her name is Kim Hope from Pe Ell. Hope-that’s a hell of a name for a kid like that because, as near as I can tell, she doesn’t have any. She’s on a ventilator and a feeding tube and stuck in a nursing home for the rest of her life because her parents don’t believe in pulling the plug no matter what. But I’m guessing there are times in the middle of the night when her parents find themselves wishing she had been found and cut down a few minutes later, when it was all over. The other choking game victim, Richey Kincaid from Toledo, was lucky. He came away with nothing but rope burns around his neck. His mother heard him making a strange noise and came to check on him. Kim’s mother heard a noise, too, but she was doing something else and didn’t pay attention until it was too late.”
“No one else was implicated in either case?” I asked.
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 in
to 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.”