by J. A. Jance
Thanking him, I rang the doorbell. To my way of thinking, a uniformed maid would have answered the door. Instead, Zoe Longmire herself threw it open.
“Oh, hi,” she said, recognizing me. “Mom and Gerry went to the mortuary. You know, to make the arrangements.”
Finding her alone was a gift. Asking her questions while she was alone was probably going to cause a lot of trouble. Governor Longmire would not be amused, but it seemed likely that talking to her alone would be a lot more effective than talking to her with some watchdog like Garvin McCarthy hanging on our every word. Marsha had summoned him when she thought Josh was in some kind of legal jeopardy. She would certainly do the same if her own daughter was being questioned.
“They probably won’t be gone much longer,” Zoe told me. “Would you like to come in and wait for them?”
“If you wouldn’t mind. My partner’s on the phone right now. When she finishes, maybe we could ask you a few questions.”
“About Josh, right?” she asked. “That’s all anyone can talk about—Josh. I mean, I’m sorry he’s dead. And Gerry’s really sorry he’s dead, but it isn’t like Josh was a regular part of our family. He was part of Gerry’s family, but he wasn’t—” She stopped talking suddenly and blushed. “You think I’m terrible, don’t you.”
“There’s an old saying about how you can choose your friends but not your relatives,” I said. “Maybe you could tell us a little about Josh. It would help if we knew something about his interests and his friends. Who better to ask than you?”
“You mean like asking his stupid little not-sister?”
Then, in a surprising move, Zoe suddenly glued herself to my shoulder and burst into tears. That’s how things stood when Mel came in through the front door. I was holding Zoe Longmire close to my chest while the poor kid cried her heart out, with me realizing for the first time that Zoe had been younger than Josh. More sophisticated, perhaps, and certainly more polished, but younger.
Mel reached into her miracle purse and produced a packet of tissues. With each of us taking one of Zoe’s arms, we walked her into the living room and sat her down between us on the couch.
“I’ll never forget what he looked like, just hanging there. I never saw anyone dead before. It was awful. And why did he do it?” Zoe wailed through her sobs. “I mean, weren’t we good enough? Why couldn’t he just be happy living here with us? Are we so horrible that being dead was better than being with us?”
Those are always the essential questions after a suicide, when the survivors are left to deal with a lifetime of self-doubt. What’s wrong with me? Why wasn’t I good enough? For the people left behind, suicide is the ultimate rejection and an irrecoverable loss.
“You loved him, didn’t you,” Mel said.
Zoe nodded wordlessly, emphatically.
She was in the throes of so much pain that I couldn’t help but be a little pissed at Marsha Longmire and Gerry Willis. How was it they could be so caught up in their own processes and in “making arrangements” that they had gone off and left Zoe alone to deal with her part of this family tragedy?
“Tell us about Josh,” Mel urged. “Please.”
Zoe drew a long ragged breath and blinked back tears. “Gerry told us about Josh when he and Mom first tried to get custody. That was before Josh’s mother died. You know about that?”
Mel and I nodded in unison.
“When we found out he was going to come live with us, I was so excited. I mean, I’ve always had a big sister—I’ve always had Giselle—but I always wanted a brother, too. And that’s what I thought Josh would be—a big brother. Even though Gizzy treats me like a pest sometimes, we were willing to share a room so Josh could have a room on the second floor along with everyone else, but he wanted to live upstairs, like a hermit or something. And he told me he didn’t need a sister—any sister, but especially not a ‘little sister.’ Especially not me.”
Mel took Zoe’s hand and held it. “It’s tough when you offer to be someone’s friend and they just walk away.”
Zoe nodded her head and then blew her nose into one of the tissues Mel had given her.
“I think it’s possible that there were a lot of things going on with Josh that no one knew about,” Mel continued. “For instance, did he ever complain to you about people sending him text messages?”
Zoe shook her head. “He didn’t talk to me about anything. He treated me like I was invisible or something.”
“What about his friends?” Mel asked.
“What friends?” Zoe asked.
“He must have had friends of some kind,” I said. “After all, when he was sneaking in and out of the house overnight, he must have been going somewhere or visiting someone.”
“That’s another thing,” Zoe said. “That’s my fault, too. I’m the one who told Josh about the rope ladders and how to time it so the patrols wouldn’t catch you. Gizzy told me and I told him. And that’s what started this whole mess, when Mom caught him sneaking back into the house.”
That wasn’t exactly true. Regardless of who taught Josh to let himself in and out of the house at will, it had been the film clip found on Josh’s phone that had sent everything into a tailspin. There had already been enough wrong in Josh’s unfortunate life that, when Marsha Longmire found the offending video, it had been the capper on the jug or the straw that broke the camel’s back or any other cliché you care to use that means one thing too many. Josh had committed suicide because he couldn’t take the possibility of any more abuse. Rachel Camber was dead because she had been a participant—an initially willing participant—in an ugly game called “let’s all torment Josh Deeson.”
I suspected that might be the real reason Rachel was dead. She had known who was targeting Josh Deeson because she had been part of it. What I didn’t understand was why she was part of it.
“Tell us about Janie’s House,” Mel said.
“It’s a cool place,” Zoe said. “It’s a way of helping the less fortunate. Most of the kids who go there are, like, really poor, and we get to help them with schoolwork and stuff.”
“Did Josh ever go there?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Did he know any of the people there?”
“Besides Gizzy and me? He could have, I suppose,” Zoe said. “I mean, some of the kids that go there, as volunteers and as clients, come from the other high schools around town, his included. So I guess he might know some of them from school. But most of the tutors come from OPHS because Olympia Prep has more advanced placement classes than any other school in town. The smarter kids tend to go there, if their parents can afford it.”
Zoe’s parents certainly could afford it, and they could have sent Josh there, too, if everyone around him hadn’t deemed him too stupid. When Zoe made that comment, she was just offering what was probably the Olympia Prep party line—that the school was the home of the superachieving/superintelligent future leaders of America.
God save the world from superintelligent assholes! I’ve seen the kinds of trouble wrought by that breed of arrogant jerks. Plenty of them hang out in the upper echelons of Seattle PD, but my concern about the kids at Olympia Prep was far more immediate. Somewhere among the superstraight kids who were “giving back” by doing their required “volunteer” work at Janie’s House lurked a ruthless bastard—a smart and arrogant little weasel—whose sole mission in life was to destroy anything or anyone who dared to step too far away from the norm.
Josh Deeson had been different. Yes, he had taken his own life, but there were people in the background who had driven him to that level of desperation, and I wanted them held responsible. There were enough connections between the two cases that I felt certain that once we nailed Rachel Camber’s killer, we’d be bringing down Josh’s killer as well.
Up to that point I had been chasing for answers about Josh Deeson’s death because it was part of my job. Right then, though, it became personal—a quest more than a job. Why? Because I had been very much li
ke Josh Deeson once—the poor kid; the outsider. Later on, I was like that at Seattle PD, too. I was the guy who kept his head down and did his job while the “smart” guys, especially the two-faced smart guys, made their way up through the ranks and into management.
I went to work as a cop because I was young and idealistic and thought I could save the world. When I made it to Homicide, I felt like I had come home. I knew by then that I couldn’t save the whole world, but closing cases—one case at a time—was my personal contribution. Even after losing my family and while I was still drinking, closing cases consumed me, and far too often the victims turned out to be people who didn’t quite conform to the norm.
Sitting there in the living room at the governor’s mansion, I realized that was the case with Josh Deeson. He had been different, and the so-called normal people around him couldn’t or wouldn’t tolerate that. Their response to his being different had been to set out on a single-minded campaign to destroy him, and it had worked. He had finally given way under the pressure. The problem with suicide is that there’s never a possibility of bringing someone to “justice.” There is no justice.
Even though I didn’t know the identity of the people who had driven Josh to kill himself, I did know something about them. In their worldview, they’re the “nice” people—the “good” guys. There’s nothing those turkeys hate worse than having their phony good-guy masks ripped away, and that’s what I was determined to do—to unmask them and expose their culpability to the world.
I figured I owed one poor dead kid that much. So did the universe.
Chapter 21
We spent the next hour talking with Zoe Longmire, asking her for information about the kids from Olympia Prep who were connected to Janie’s House. I started the interview thinking that Zoe might have been responsible for the destructive texting campaign against Josh. In the end, I came away doubting Zoe had been an active participant, but still I couldn’t shake the suspicion that she knew more than she was saying about Josh’s situation.
All during the interview, we let her believe that we were there primarily because we were looking into the causes behind Josh’s suicide. For the time being we left Rachel Camber’s murder off the table, our strategy being that Zoe would be more forthcoming without the red flag of a related murder investigation. We had mentioned Rachel’s death to Meribeth Duncan and Greg Alexander, so word about what had happened was probably spreading through the Janie’s House community, but so far nothing had hit the media.
Generally speaking, stories about murdered runaways from small towns in western Washington aren’t thought to have “legs.” As a consequence they don’t get much media coverage. However, once some enterprising reporter made the connection between Josh’s suicide (which was being covered in a very respectful fashion) and Rachel’s death, it would take very little effort for Janie’s House to be embroiled in the ensuing scandal.
It was also possible that the whole Janie’s House enterprise might come to an end as a result. Their funding would dry up. Well-heeled contributors don’t like having their names linked to places with problems. And once it started looking like having local students volunteering to help needy kids wasn’t such a good idea, the schools around Olympia would withdraw their support as well.
As we conducted the interview with Zoe Longmire, it was clear that she was missing several other crucial pieces of the puzzle. Apparently Marsha Longmire and Gerry Willis hadn’t breathed a word to anyone, and most especially to their daughters, about the existence of that ugly video clip. We didn’t show it to her either. What we mostly did was give Zoe a chance to talk, to unburden herself to someone other than her grieving parents. Talking about her participation in Janie’s House gave her something to discuss that wasn’t Josh’s suicide. As she spoke, I remembered Greg Alexander’s remark about her blending in with the other kids and not lording it over anyone because she was the governor’s daughter.
“We should probably interview your sister, too,” Mel said when Zoe finally started to run out of things to say. “She’s not here now, is she?”
There was the slightest moment of hesitation before Zoe shook her head.
“Do you know when she’ll be home?”
“She’s staying at Dad’s place right now,” Zoe said. “Gerry’s sister is flying in from Michigan tonight, and she’ll be staying in Gizzy’s room. There are extra rooms on the third floor, but no one wants to stay there.”
We didn’t have to ask where Zoe’s father’s house might be because Ross Connors had already supplied us with a physical address for the governor’s former husband and his new wife.
Mel and I were preparing to leave when Marsha and Gerry showed up.
“We just came from the mortuary,” Marsha said. “The funeral will be Friday, the day after tomorrow.”
I was a little surprised to hear that the body had already been released to a funeral home. Usually in a case like this there are several days between the death and the time of release. I guess with the governor’s family involved, some effort had been made to streamline the process. Nevertheless, the strain of visiting the mortuary and making final arrangements had taken its toll on Josh’s grandfather. Gerry Willis looked like he needed to lie down in the worst way. Marsha asked Zoe to help him to his room. When they had left the room, Marsha turned on us.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded angrily. “They’ve done the autopsy. Josh’s death has been ruled a suicide. What more do you need to know?”
What a difference a day makes. Whatever welcome mat Marsha Longmire had put out for us a day earlier had evidently been rescinded.
My mother used to talk about the importance of telling the “unvarnished truth.” As a little kid that was something I wondered about. If you were going to paint the truth, how would you do it and what kind of brushes would you use? Now I know the best way to varnish truth is to cover whatever’s in question with a bright and shiny coat of pure BS.
“It has come to our attention that Josh was the target of numerous ugly text messages—harassing text messages. It’s possible those had something to do with Josh’s suicide, and we thought Zoe might have heard something about them.”
“Did she?” Marsha asked.
“No,” I answered. “Zoe had no idea about that.”
A part of me wondered if that was completely true. I had a feeling in my gut that Zoe knew more than she was saying, but right then we didn’t dare bring on the kind of tough questioning that would have given us a straight answer. That was the truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth, and it was most definitely varnished. It was smooth enough to explain our presence and our need to talk to Zoe. It was even smooth enough to get us out of the house.
As we were leaving, Zoe came back into the room. We thanked her for her help, with Marsha hanging on our every word.
“Whew,” Mel said, once we were back in the Mercedes. “There’s been a change in the weather as far as Marsha is concerned.”
“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 ha
tes 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.