by J. A. Jance
“Funny,” she said. “You don’t look like a Melissa.” She held up the card so I could see my mistake.
“So sorry,” I apologized. “Let me have those back. They belong to my partner. I’d much rather you called me directly. Ms. Soames is a bit of a control freak, you see. She won’t like it if she thinks I’ve been passing her cards out indiscriminately.”
Shaking my head at my own stupidity, I quickly retrieved the two cards, dropped them into my right-hand jacket pocket, and pulled two of my own business cards out of the left. I handed those to Ron and Gizzy. Another boy approached us just then. I handed him one of my cards as well and gave him the same pep talk about calling me if he happened to hear anything about the origin of the Janie’s House fire.
With that, and trying to conceal a smirk on my own face, I hurried back to Mel. She was sitting in the front seat of the car with her laptop open and the air card tuned up and running.
“What the hell was that all about?” she demanded. “Why did you need my business cards? Did you run out of yours?”
“DNA,” I told her with a grin. “My DNA will be on the two business cards in my pocket, but with any kind of luck, we’ll have DNA from Ron Miller and from Gizzy Longmire, too.”
“You think she’s involved in all this?” Mel asked.
“I’d bet money on it.”
“In that case,” Mel said, “good work. In fact, good for both of us. While you were playing sleight of hand with the business cards, I’ve had two phone calls. The first one was about Rachel Camber’s autopsy. The second one was about the two watches. A friend who works at Macy’s was able to give me the phone number for the company that serves as the national sales rep for Seiko. Maybe we can get one of Joan Hoyt’s investigators to track that. With any kind of luck, they should be able to tell us which retailer sold each of our two watches and when. From that information, we may even be able to track back to the individual customer.”
“Right,” I said. “Good for both of us. In the meantime let’s go see about collecting Josh’s dirty clothes.”
We pulled into the driveway to the governor’s mansion and stopped just behind a bright red Audi. I was already dreading this encounter, and so was Mel. Having any kind of audience in attendance would make it that much worse.
The guard outside the front door nodded in recognition when we walked up to ring the doorbell. Before we could do so, however, Monica Longmire came striding out of the house. She stopped short in front of us.
“Are you here because she’s missing?” Monica demanded.
There it was again—another case of faulty pronoun reference.
“Who’s missing?” I asked. “What are we talking about?”
“Giselle,” she said impatiently. “Gizzy. I came over here to have a word with Gerry and Marsha about it. Gizzy told her mother she was staying with us last night and she told us she was staying with her mother when in reality she didn’t stay at either place. Now she isn’t answering her phone. With everything that’s going on around here, playing those kinds of games is utterly inexcusable, to say nothing of disrespectful. As if her parents weren’t worried enough already, the idea that Gizzy could be dead in a ditch someplace . . .”
“She’s not dead in a ditch,” I replied reassuringly. “In fact, I spoke to Giselle just a few minutes ago. I can’t imagine why she isn’t answering her phone.”
Monica’s jaw dropped. “You saw her? You spoke to her? Where is she?”
“At the scene of the fire. Maybe the circuits are busy and that’s why she isn’t answering.”
“What fire?” Monica demanded.
“There was a fire at Janie’s House early this morning,” I said. “A lot of kids who hang out there must have heard about it through the grapevine. A whole crowd of them showed up to survey the damage. That’s where I saw Giselle last. She was there with a young man—”
“Ron Miller?” Monica frowned. “Was that little worm there, too?”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s not what I’d call little, but when she introduced us, that’s the name she mentioned.”
“All right then,” Monica said. Spinning on her heel, she set out for the Audi. “I’m going to find that girl and give her a piece of my mind.”
Chapter 24
Monica Longmire piled into the Audi, slammed it into gear, and took off. “That was a smooth way to get rid of her,” Mel said. “I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”
We rang the bell. I was surprised when it opened and Zoe was once again standing there. I hadn’t seen her among the kids gathered at the scene of the fire, but she, too, looked as if she’d been crying.
“My mom’s not here,” she said, sniffling. “Our relatives are all flying in for the funeral. She had to go to the airport to pick someone up.”
“Who is it?” Gerry called from somewhere inside the house, somewhere out of sight.
“Agents Beaumont and Soames,” I called back. “We need to talk to you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Gerry Willis grumbled. “What now? Marsha isn’t here. Gizzy has gone AWOL. Everything’s falling apart. Let them in, Zoe.”
A subdued Zoe led us into the living room. Gerry was seated on a sofa with a breakfast tray on the table in front of him. Good china. Good cups and saucers. Evidently the cook was still on duty.
“Can we get you something?” he offered.
I didn’t want to have this awkward conversation with Zoe standing there hanging on my every word.
“I’d love some coffee,” I said, nodding toward the pot. “Is that regular or decaf?”
“I’m only allowed decaf these days.”
“I’d like some coffee, too,” Mel chirped agreeably.
“Zoe,” Gerry said, “would you please go ask the cook . . .”
Zoe set off. In one fluid motion, Mel fell into step beside her.
“I’ll be glad to help carry,” Mel said. It was a neat maneuver on Mel’s part. It conveniently took Zoe out of the picture, but it also left me holding the bag.
“Well?” Gerry urged after a moment. “What’s this about?”
“You don’t need to worry about Gizzy,” I said hurriedly. “We saw her just a few minutes ago.”
“Where?”
“There was a fire at Janie’s House last night. She was at the scene along with a bunch of other kids.”
Gerry nodded. “Good,” he said, reaching for his cell phone. “That’s a relief. I need to call Monica and let her know—”
“Actually, we already did that,” I said. “Mrs. Longmire was just leaving when we drove up. The last thing she said to us was that she was going to find Gizzy and give her a piece of her mind.”
Gerry favored me with a rueful smile. “If anyone can pull that off, Monica can. She’s the best disciplinarian in the group.”
In the annals of divorce-induced group-grope parenting, this struck me as being pretty civilized all the way around. It was good to see four grown-ups acting like grown-ups, putting aside their differences and doing what they could to care for the kids involved.
Gerry picked up his coffee cup, took a sip, and eyed me speculatively. “I have a feeling this isn’t a social call,” he said. “Why are you here?”
Direct questions merit direct answers.
“I’m sorry to have to bring this up,” I said, “but the autopsy results have revealed that your grandson was sexually active.”
“Sexually active,” Gerry repeated. “Are you kidding? Josh was a kid—a shy, bumbling kid. I doubt he could even talk to a girl without falling all over himself.”
“Not a girl,” I said, meeting his eye. “I’m sorry to be the one giving you this difficult bit of news, but the evidence found by the medical examiner would be consistent with there being no female involvement.”
Stunned, Gerry sat there for a moment saying nothing at all, then he shook his head. “This is unbelievable. Are you trying to tell me that Josh was caught up in some kin
d of homosexual relationship?”
I nodded.
There was another long period of silence. “That can’t be,” he said finally. “It just can’t.”
“Were there any boys he was especially close to?”
“No,” Gerry said. “Not that I know of.”
“Look,” I said. “Josh was a minor. At his age, any kind of sexual encounter, consensual or not, would be regarded as sexual assault and as a criminal offense. That’s why we’re here today, sir, to see if we can find some justice for Josh.”
“How?”
“I seem to remember there were dirty clothes in the hamper in Josh’s room the other day. We’re hoping we might be able to find DNA evidence that would point us in the direction of whoever did this.”
“You want Josh’s dirty clothes?”
“Yes.”
“Then by all means go get them.”
I went right then, while the getting was good. As soon as I started up the stairs, my knees went nuts. By the time I got to the top floor, I was sweating bullets and the pain was killing me. I stopped at the top of the stairs long enough to catch my breath and get my bearings. That’s when I noticed the doors to a linen closet right there in the hallway. I opened them, and voilà! There were stacks of washed and ironed sheets and pillowcases. A clean pillowcase was exactly what I needed.
Grabbing one, I ducked under the crime scene tape and let myself into the room. The place was as we’d left it, with fingerprint powder marring every surface. The hamper, however, still full of dirty clothes, was untouched. I emptied the soiled clothing into the pillowcase and turned to make my escape in time to find a furious Governor Marsha Longmire blocking the doorway.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded
I closed the pillowcase and tied it in a knot. “Collecting evidence,” I said.
“What kind of evidence?” she wanted to know. “Josh is dead. His death has been ruled a suicide. What’s the point of torturing my husband any further? Can’t you just let it go?”
“No,” I said. “I can’t let it go. We’ve found evidence that Josh Deeson may have been the victim of a sexual assault.”
“You mean you think he was raped?”
“Maybe,” I said. “We also know that Josh was the target in a case of coordinated cyber bullying, with any number of kids sending him harassing text messages. The messages appear to have come primarily from cell phone accounts billed to Janie’s House, although they seem to have been written by several different people.”
“What kind of messages?” Marsha asked. “What are we talking about here?”
“Insulting, snide comments. In the old days when we were kids, the insults that were in fashion probably wouldn’t have been much more damaging than ‘Your mother wears G.I. boots.’ The messages sent to Josh were far more destructive than that, and far more personal.”
“But . . .” she began.
I dodged around her and started down the stairs.
“How did you find out about these supposed messages?” Marsha asked.
“They’re not supposed messages or alleged messages or any other kind of weasel words. We know about them because Josh saved them,” I said. “He downloaded them from his phone to a file on his computer.”
“What does any of that have to do with Josh’s dirty clothes?” Marsha demanded. “Besides, this is our home. Even if his room is still designated as a crime scene, you can’t just come waltzing in here without a warrant.”
“Your husband gave me permission,” I said.
As I clambered down the long flights of stairs, I ached enough that I could barely walk and talk at the same time. As I neared the ground floor, I heard the sound of assembled voices coming from the living room and could see a collection of suitcases that had been hastily deposited in the entryway.
Gerry must have heard Marsha and me arguing as we descended. He was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m the one who gave Mr. Beaumont permission to collect Josh’s clothes,” Gerry said. “If you have a problem with that, Marsha, you need to discuss it with me.” After telling his wife to back off, Gerry turned to me. “If you’ll forgive me, Mr. Beaumont, I’m going to have to renege on that offer of coffee. We have people here now—out-of-town guests.”
I nodded. “Of course,” I said.
Zoe came past, headed for the stairs. Gerry stopped her. “Please go tell Ms. Soames that Mr. Beaumont is just leaving.”
Nodding, Zoe went to do his bidding while Gerry walked me out to the car. When Mel emerged from the house, Marsha was still standing at the foot of the stairs.
“Do you think Josh was involved with another boy?” Gerry asked in an undertone as I put the clothing-laden pillowcase in the trunk and pushed the button to close it. “With someone his own age?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Willis,” I said. “I really have no idea. It could be another kid. It could be an adult.”
“Why don’t you go see Mr. Dysart?” Gerry suggested quietly, speaking in what was almost a whisper.
“The guy who ran the chess club?”
Gerry nodded. “That’s the one. I met him last May at the end-of-year dinner for the chess club. Josh thought the world of him, but I tell you true—the man gave me the willies.”
“Gives him the willies?” Mel repeated as we drove away. “That’s an expression I haven’t heard in a long time.”
Mel is younger than I am. There are times when we run head-on into a generation gap. It happens with jokes and music, and occasionally, as in this case, with vocabulary.
“Maybe not,” I said, “but if he bothered Gerry that much, it’s reason enough to stop by once more to see him. We should also have a chat with some of the other kids in the chess club. But before we talk to anyone, I want to go see Joan Hoyt. We’ll give her what we have so she can get it to the crime lab.”
Headquarters for the Washington State Patrol is on Linderson in Olympia. Once there, Mel went to have a chat with Records while I tracked down Captain Hoyt.
“How did it go at the governor’s mansion?” Joan asked when I handed her the pillowcase filled with Josh Deeson’s dirty clothes.
“About how you’d expect,” I told her. “I don’t think they’ll be putting us on their Christmas card list.”
I gave her the two business cards that I had briefly handed over to Gizzy Longmire and Ron Miller.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“I’m hoping the crime lab will be able to lift prints and/or DNA off the cards.”
“Related to Rachel Camber’s murder?”
I nodded. Then I handed over Mel’s and my garbage-sifting prize—Josh Deeson’s extra Seiko watch.
“What’s this?”
“Something Mel and I dug out of the governor’s garbage. The watch looks a whole lot like a duplicate of the one Josh Deeson was wearing when he died, the one your crime scene team already took into evidence. Here’s the number for the Seiko distributor. We need to find out when both watches were purchased, and, if we’re lucky, find some trail to the individual purchasers.”
Joan nodded. “I’ll put someone on this right away.”
By the time I was finished documenting the transfer of evidence, Mel was waiting for me in the car. Since she had her own key, she had been able to turn on the GPS.
“Take a look at this,” she said. “I loaded in Sam Dysart’s address. I wasn’t paying that much attention to the relative distances last night when we stopped by there, but it’s only a little over a mile from there back to the governor’s mansion. That’s well within walking distance for someone letting himself in and out of his third-floor bedroom with a pair of strategically placed rope ladders. And if you remember, when we asked Josh about who he had been with that night, he claimed he had been alone.”
“It’s all starting to make sense,” I said. “If Josh was being sexually exploited by a coach-type adult from school, that would certainly explain his reluctance to discuss it
.”
“It might also explain where he went on that afternoon jog Gerry Willis thought was so unusual,” Mel said. “But listen to this. Here’s something interesting. Samuel D. Dysart, age fifty-seven, has no traffic citations, but he’s been cited twice for loitering in Fort Defiance Park in Tacoma, late on two different Saturday nights. One occurrence happened two years ago and the other the year before that.”
I allowed myself the luxury of an aha moment.
Loitering is a misdemeanor. Most civilians seem to place loitering citations on the same level of seriousness as littering violations. What loitering really means in the PC world of cop speak is that some unfortunate gay guy got caught wandering around in a public place in search of a casual sex hookup. Looking for love in all the wrong places constitutes risky behavior. In terms of potential danger, it’s several steps down from Internet dating services. When two men end up “loitering” together and what goes on is between consenting adults, it’s regarded as a relatively harmless, victimless crime. Giving someone a citation for loitering is the civilian cop’s version of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” and it’s a charge that doesn’t land the loiterer on the list of registered sex offenders.
In this case, however, maybe it should have. Now there was a victim involved—a juvenile victim, since Josh Deeson had died several years shy of the age of consent.
“Dysart sounds like a hell of a nice guy,” I muttered. “Just exactly the kind of person I’d want in charge of my son’s high school chess club.”
By that time, of course, Mel was already on the phone with the high school principal’s office, speaking to a secretary, and asking for the names of the kids who had signed up for the chess club to be e-mailed to her. After a question about how Samuel Dysart, a nonteacher, came to be in charge of the chess club, Mel listened for some time, typing on her computer the whole while.
“So here’s the deal,” Mel said once she was off the phone. “Twenty-some years ago, when Dysart was in his thirties, he was a nationally recognized championship chess player. Now he’s a retired software engineer. Two years ago, when the school couldn’t afford to pay one of its regular faculty members to be in charge of the chess club, they were delighted when Dysart showed up and volunteered his services.”