Betrayal of Trust

Chapter 8

Ross Alan Connors may have gone on a two-and-a-half-year-long bender after his wife committed suicide in their backyard, but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid. Drunks can be smart about a lot of things, even when they’re terminally dim about booze.

Once Francine was dead, Ross no longer took any pleasure in his palatial brick home with its slate roof and oddball turret. Yes, he still had a view of Capitol Lake, but he couldn’t bring himself to face being in the yard. So he did two things. First he redesigned the yard and put in an in-ground pool and spa. Then he sold the place for top dollar just before the real estate bubble burst. And when that happened, he was ready, too. With prices suddenly lowered, he went shopping in a newly completed condo high-rise, purchased two two-bedroom units high up in the building for almost pennies on the dollar and converted them into a single enormous unit with three bedrooms and an office.

This was, as Ross had confided to me, his “toes-up” house. He planned to stay there, with someone else doing the yard work and maintenance, until he was ready to be hauled out, toes up, on a stretcher. His unit came with a visitor-parking place. It was five to eight when Mel tucked her Cayman into that and we headed upstairs. He hadn’t specifically asked us to bring the evidence boxes in with us, but we did anyway, just in case.

Upstairs, the door was opened by Ross’s longtime live-in retainer, Iris O’Malley. As far as I knew, Iris had worked for the Connors family for a very long time. It appeared to me that Iris was your basic toes-up employee as well. She would stay on until Ross croaked out or else until she did, depending on who gave up the ghost first.

Apparently Iris O’Malley carries a lot more weight in the Connors household than simply serving as chief cook and bottle washer. She was the one who called me and alerted me to the fact that Ross had been in bed drunk for the better part of three days. I’m not sure how she knew I was in AA, but she did. She ran up the flag, and I came straight to Olympia to see what, if anything, could be done. On that occasion Ross’s reaction to my showing up beside his bed of pain had been to tell me to get the hell out in no uncertain terms. It was another three months before he finally picked up the phone himself and called to ask for help.

Note to people with loved ones on that thorny path: You can’t make them be ready to ask for help, and there are no high bottoms. Low bottoms are what it takes for people to decide they want to get better.

“Top of the evening to you, Mr. and Mrs. Beaumont,” Iris said.

I wasn’t sure about Iris’s age, but she was evidently from a generation that didn’t hold with women hanging on to either their maiden or their previously married names. Mel raised an eyebrow at that but let it pass.

“Right this way,” Iris added. “Himself is in his office.”

Lars Jenssen, my grandmother’s widower, a retired Alaskan halibut fisherman, speaks with a Norwegian accent that is thicker on the phone than it is anywhere else, except when he’s in the company of other retired Norwegian halibut fishermen. Then he’s barely understandable.

As Iris led us to Ross’s home office, I couldn’t help wondering about her Irish brogue. Was it real or was it something she cultivated and put on occasionally, when it suited her, along with the gray uniform and dainty white apron?

She motioned us into the room. I was glad to see that the old teacher’s desk that had once graced Ross’s turret office in the Water Street house had made the transition from one place to another, most likely with an interior designer dying a thousand deaths in the process.

Ross stood up and shook our hands in greeting. “Have you eaten?” he asked. “If you’re hungry, Mrs. O’Malley here whipped up her standard lemon-and-vanilla Irish curd cakes earlier this afternoon.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but Julie Hatcher made sure we didn’t go away hungry.”

He smiled and shook his head. “I’ll say one thing for that girl, she sure can cook. Something to drink then?”

Between the governor’s mansion and Todd Hatcher’s place, I’d had enough iced tea to float a battleship. Mel must have been in the same condition.

“No, thanks,” she said. “We’re good.”

“All right then, Mrs. O’Malley,” Ross said. “That’s all. Thank you, and good night.”

Mrs. O’Malley tottered off, and Ross gestured us into a pair of high-backed leather chairs. Unlike the desk, the derelict recliner from his old office hadn’t survived the move, so the interior designer had won at least one round.

“I’m assuming those are the evidence boxes?” he asked as I placed them on the desk.

“Yes,” I said. “We thought you’d want to see what we picked up.”

Once again we donned gloves. Once again we removed what was in the boxes and went through it item by item.

“Todd made copies of everything on his computer’s hard drive,” Mel explained when we got to the laptop. “There might have been other files on an external drive or online storage, but we didn’t find any evidence of an additional drive.”

“And he’s working on the phone records?” Ross asked.

“He’ll be working on extracting a photo from the video first,” I said. “The phone records will be second. The way Todd works, I expect we’ll have a photo in hand first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” Ross said. “That’s the first step-identifying the victim.”

There was no need for a comment from either Mel or me. We were both in full agreement. In a homicide investigation, once you have the name of the victim and/or a crime scene, everything else grows out of that.

“So what’s your read on the situation?” Ross asked. “With the governor’s grandson, that is.”

Ross hadn’t been around to hear all the spoken and unspoken commentary about Josh Deeson’s relationship to Washington’s first family, and it didn’t seem necessary to fill in all those details right then. Besides, the attorney general wasn’t asking for a solution that would hold up in court. He was asking for an opinion from two experienced homicide cops in the middle of an investigation.

“Whoever the victim is, she wasn’t killed last night,” Mel ventured. “From what Governor Longmire told us, she intercepted Josh when he came back in and didn’t let him out of her sight until he left for school. That means he would have had no time to conceal the scarf under the mattress if he brought it home last night because we were there before he arrived home this afternoon. So on the one hand, just because he had the video doesn’t mean he did it, but the scarf would suggest that he did-and that he kept the scarf as a trophy.”

Ross looked at me.

“I agree about the murder not happening last night,” I said. “But it didn’t happen very long ago, either, because the file was sent to Josh’s phone this morning at one twenty-three A.M. People don’t waste their time sitting up at night sending out old videos. They send out new videos.”

“Garvin McCarthy has quite a reputation as a defense attorney,” Ross said. “And he’s going to do everything in his power to get the search warrant thrown out. If that happens we also lose the scarf. We need to come up with a whole lot more. Did you search anywhere else in the house?”

“The warrant was specifically limited to his room.”

Ross nodded thoughtfully. “He may have had something else squirreled away in another part of the house.”

“That’s true,” I said. “It’s a big house.”

“Josh knows he’s under scrutiny,” Ross said. “I know how kids like that operate. If he’s got incriminating evidence hidden in the house, he’s going to try to ditch it without arousing further suspicion.”

Ross stopped talking, reached in his pocket, and pulled out a quarter. “I guess it’s time to flip a coin,” he said. “Call it.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Call it,” he said again.

“All right,” I said. “Heads.”

And heads it was.

“What’s this for?”

“Too bad, Beau. You’re the one on permanent trash duty.”

“For what?”

“To go through the governor’s garbage. Once the cans are hauled down to the street, what’s inside them is fair game. That’s true for everyone’s garbage, even the governor’s. No warrant is necessary.”

“What about Squad A?” I asked hopefully. “Couldn’t one of those guys-”

“I brought you and Mel in on this because I don’t want to involve the home team,” Ross interrupted. “The fewer people who are in the know, the better. And if anyone asks what you’re up to, we’re looking into allegations of bullying-school bullying. There’s to be no mention of a homicide investigation until we confirm it is a homicide investigation.”

“What about the crime lab?” Mel questioned. “Our evidence boxes have Josh Deeson’s name and address right on them. Once the guys at the crime lab in Seattle see the address on the labels, what are the chances one of them will recognize it and know we’re talking about the governor’s mansion?”

“The guys down here or the ones in Seattle might recognize it, but they won’t be seeing the evidence boxes.” Ross had been idly shuffling through the stack of Josh Deeson’s drawings. Now he returned the pictures to the boxes, along with the other items we had collected. Then he picked up the lids, patted them into place, and secured them with clear packing tape.

“Once you sign and date these, I’ll be taking charge of them,” Ross said. “It so happens that I have a meeting with Squad C first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll drop your boxes off at the satellite crime lab in Spokane while I’m there. I think it’s unlikely that someone working in the Spokane lab will put two and two together. Josh Deeson’s name isn’t the governor’s name, and the address here is a simple street address that most likely won’t raise any red flags east of the mountains.”

It crossed my mind that Ross was playing a dangerous game. Once Josh Deeson turned into a real suspect, all hell was bound to break loose. In the old days the media had refrained from printing the names of juveniles who were part of a criminal investigation. Some journalists still pay lip service to that quaint tradition, but when the juvenile happens to be a relative of a politician, all bets are off.

That’s the problem with politics and politicians. If, like Marsha Longmire, you’re lucky enough to scramble to the top of the electoral heap, you can bet there are all kinds of people on both sides of the aisle hoping to knock you off your perch. And if they have an opportunity to use said politician’s kids, grandkids, and other assorted relatives as weapons in that process, they do so, without a moment’s hesitation.

That was my opinion, but it’s never a good idea to tell your boss that you think he’s off in the weeds somewhere, not if you’re interested in continuing to work for the man. It’s just not done.

“Okay,” I said. “You take charge of the evidence boxes, but what do you expect of us? If you want me to sort garbage, where am I supposed to do it? Right this minute, Mel and I are checked into the local Red Lion. I can’t drag the governor’s garbage cans into the lobby or the parking lot so I can go through them. What days does the garbage get picked up? And what’s Mel supposed to be doing in the meantime while I’m sorting through crap?”

“Trash, not crap,” Ross corrected with a smile. “You mustn’t take all this S.H.I.T. stuff so personally.”

The three of us had a good laugh about that, but Ross Connors stopped laughing before anyone else did.

“Excuse me while I make a phone call.”

He picked up a desk phone and dialed a number. “I need to know what days trash is picked up at the governor’s mansion,” he said.

Ross never bothered introducing himself, so whoever was on the other end of the line knew his voice well enough to recognize it. The attorney general waited for a several minutes, ignoring us and idly tapping the top of his desk with a fountain pen, a distinctive Mont Blanc Thomas Mann model. Finally, the person he was waiting for came back on the phone. He listened for a time, nodding.

“All right,” he said finally. “To the winners go the spoils.” He put down the phone and then looked at me.

“Bad news,” he said. “The governor’s trash is picked up every day, recycling and garbage both. So I’ll need to work on how to manage the pickup as well as where you’ll do the sorting. I’ll have it handled before I leave town in the morning. As for you, Mel, once you have that photo in hand, I want you to go to work on the missing persons end of this.”

Mel nodded.

“How old do you think the victim is?”

“Maybe junior high,” Mel said. “More likely a high school freshman would be my guess.”

That was my assessment, too. Ross nodded in agreement.

“I thought so, too,” he said. “As soon as Governor Longmire showed me the video, I did some preliminary checking. In the past four months, we’ve had four teenage deaths in western Washington that are in line with that demographic. A drive-by shooting in Kent, a single-vehicle rollover car wreck in Kelso, a drug overdose in Raymond, and an alcohol-related head-on accident on I-90 near North Bend. In each of those incidents, the victim was a high-school-age Caucasian female with brown hair. But those cases also had full autopsies. None of them shows any sign of strangulation.”

“Which means the body of our victim is still out there somewhere,” Mel said. “Hence the missing persons files.”

“And not just from Washington, either,” Ross said. “The girl who was shot in Kent was from Portland and was visiting her grandmother over the summer. The girl in the head-on collision was from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. These days kids have driver’s licenses and cars. The girl in the video could be from Canada for all we know. Mel, I know you’ve worked with agencies in other states in the U.S. as well as in Canada. I want you to do it again.”

“Yes, sir,” Mel said. “Will do.”

“You showed the video to Josh?” Ross asked.

“We did.”

“What kind of reaction?”

“Shock,” Mel said. “He claimed he hadn’t seen it before, and I think he was telling the truth about that, but I’m not so sure he was being truthful when he said he didn’t know her.”

Ross nodded. “Right,” he said. “So where do kids meet other kids?”

“School, the mall, the movies,” I suggested.

“Okay,” Ross said. “So here’s the deal. Todd is a hard worker. I’m assuming that by the time you finish sorting your first batch of trash, he’ll have come up with the photo. Then I want you to hit the bricks. We’ll start with secondary schools within a fifty-mile radius or so. I’ll have Katie put together a list of school principals along with their contact information. Someone out there knows who this girl is.

“Again, when you talk to the principals, your cover story is that we’re investigating a possible case of bullying. School bullying is a big deal these days, the media flavor of the month. People will be a lot more likely to help if they think that’s all it is. They’ll turn skittish if they know it’s a homicide.

“And speaking of skittish. You’re going to need to talk to the governor’s daughters. They may not be best pals with Josh, but kids always know what other kids in the family are up to. When we were kids, my older sisters all thought I was a regular pain in the butt, but they would have died first before ratting me out to our parents. And I felt the same way about them. Someone needs to interview the girls.”

I was already shaking my head in objection. “Ross, I already know that isn’t going to happen. Marsha Longmire isn’t going to let us within arm’s reach of Zoe and Giselle Longmire. Neither is Garvin McCarthy.”

“You’re right,” Ross said. “I’m sure Garvin has seen to it that you’ve been declared persona non grata as far as the governor’s mansion is concerned, but this may help.”

He slid a piece of paper across the desk. On it was a Lacey address I didn’t recognize. Lacey is a suburb just north of Olympia.

“What’s this?” I asked, picking it up.

Ross smiled. “That would be the address of Sid Longmire, the governor’s ex, and the ex’s new wife, Monica. They live in a gated community on a golf course in Lacey, and they share custody of the two daughters, Zoe and Giselle. Actually, now that Giselle is eighteen, officially they share custody of the younger daughter only. Considering the way ex-wives and new wives usually interact, I have a feeling you’ll have a lot more luck interviewing Zoe at her father’s house than you will at the governor’s mansion.”

I folded up the address and put it in my wallet. Ross Connors is a wily old bastard. He’s a good guy to have in your corner, but I think it would be a bad idea to piss him off.

“Is that all?” I asked.

He nodded. “For right now.”

“Okay, then,” I said, standing up and offering my hand. “If you’ve got an early-morning plane to catch, we’d better be going.”

Mel followed suit.

“You’ll keep me apprised of any and all progress?” Ross asked.

“Absolutely,” Mel said.

We left the office and started for the front door, expecting to make it there on our own. Ross had told Mrs. O’Malley good night sometime earlier, but she was nonetheless hovering somewhere in the background.

“Right this way,” she said, appearing out of nowhere. She was still in her uniform; still in her apron.

She led us to the door, opened it, and shooed us into the hall.

“May the saints preserve you,” she said.

Since I was riding back to the hotel with Mel at the wheel, that wasn’t such a strange wish.

“Thank you,” I said. “And the same to you.”