by J. A. Jance
In other words, there were no purses in my professional life for a very long time. Now there are, and I was happy to see what Mel pulled out of hers-a tiny cassette recorder. She switched it on and set it down on the desk, on top of the stack of drawings.
“You have the right to remain silent. .” she began.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said. “Don’t bother.”
But Mel did bother. She recited the whole Miranda warning from beginning to end without having to resort to a cheat sheet. Josh was in the room, but he wasn’t paying attention. He was a kid who had no idea that his whole future was hanging in the balance.
He looked at her with complete contempt. “What do you want to know?”
In the world of homicide interviews the guy the suspect thinks is stupid is the one who should ask the questions, even if the “guy” in question isn’t a guy.
“Who’s the girl?” Mel asked.
“What girl?”
“The one on the video.”
“What video?”
“We’re not stupid,” Mel said. “The video on your cell phone. We saw it. So did your grandmother.”
“She’s not my-”
Mel cut short his objection. “So did the governor.”
“I don’t know what video you’re talking about.”
“Maybe this will remind you.” I had inventoried the cell phone and placed it in the Bankers Box along with the computer equipment. Mel extracted it now, turned it on, and scrolled through to the video until she found the file in question. She set the file playing and held it close enough for Josh to see the images on the tiny screen. Mel and I watched Josh while he watched the screen.
At first he acted nonchalant, as though the drama playing out in the video had nothing to do with him. Then his eyes got bigger. He took a step backward. His face went pale. This was the first time Josh Deeson was seeing those images, no question.
“So who is she?” Mel asked. “Who’s the dead girl?”
Shaking his head and covering his mouth with his hand, Josh staggered far enough back across the room until he sat down hard on the misplaced mattress.
“I don’t know who she is,” he said. “I’ve never seen that video before, I swear.”
Josh was a kid. His not-quite-changed voice cracked with emotion when he spoke.
Mel didn’t let up. She read off a phone number. “Whose number is that?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“So you expect us to believe that someone you don’t know sent this file to you and you have no idea who it is?”
“I’ve seen the number before, but I don’t know whose it is,” he said doggedly. “And I don’t know why someone would send this to me.”
Mel shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t recognize the number. We have a warrant. It’ll take time, but the phone company will be able to trace the call. We’ll find out who sent it.”
Josh swallowed hard. “Is she like, you know, really dead?”
Mel was deep in her role of bad cop. “What do you think?”
Josh didn’t answer.
Mel reached into the evidence box and pulled out the scarf. “Whose is this?” she asked.
Josh looked at it blankly without seeming to register what was in the bag. “I found it in my locker at school. I don’t know who put it there.”
“You don’t know who put it in your locker?” Mel asked.
Josh shook his head.
“Who do you suppose put it under your mattress?”
“I did,” he said. “But that’s not. .” He paused and took a shaky breath. “I mean, is that what killed her?” Again his voice cracked when he spoke.
“That’s what we think,” Mel said. “What do you think?”
She sounded like such a hard-nosed bitch that I couldn’t help but be grateful that I wasn’t her suspect. But I also understood her urgency. The animosity between Josh and Governor Longmire might well be enough to call Marsha’s consent to our search into question. It might even be enough to void the search warrants Ross Connors had obtained. If the First Husband had any idea what was really going on in this room, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had risen from his deathbed, Lazarus-style, and crawled up the stairs to put a stop to it. I’m sure Mel suspected, as did I, that an attorney would show up momentarily. When he or she did, this conversation would be over. If the warrants were thrown out, what we got from Josh now might be all we had. Period.
“Where were you last night?” Mel asked.
“Around,” he said.
That was a one-word weasel answer if I’ve ever heard one. It’s exactly the kind of answer suspects give when they know they don’t have an alibi that will hold up to any kind of careful scrutiny.
“Are you kidding me?” Mel replied. “You went to all the trouble of climbing down two rope ladders to get out of the house and that’s the best you can do-around? Who were you with?”
“Nobody,” Josh insisted. “I was by myself.”
I thought he had been telling the truth about not recognizing the girl and maybe even about not knowing how the scarf had magically appeared in his locker. All I had to do was look at his face to see he was lying about being by himself. He had definitely been with somebody, and once we went through his phone and scrutinized his text messages, we’d probably have a name and a phone number. I didn’t call him on it, though, and neither did Mel. Instead, she favored me with a meaningful look that said it was time for the good cop to come to Josh’s rescue.
“Leave him alone,” I said to Mel. “He’s had a shock, and I don’t blame him for being upset.” I turned to Josh, putting on the charm and doing my best to sound sympathetic.
“Come on, Josh,” I wheedled. “Let us help you. This is the time. If you had nothing to do with what happened to the girl, you don’t have anything to worry about. Just tell us who she is and who did it. That’s all we want to know-who and maybe where. Somebody killed that poor girl, and it’s our job to find out who those people are. We don’t really care what’s on your phone or on your computer. We need to find out who killed her. Help us do that. Tell us what you know.”
Lying to suspects in interviews is standard operating procedure. I don’t like doing it, but sometimes telling a few little white lies is the only way to make any progress in the investigation.
“I already told you. I don’t know who she is. I don’t know who killed her.”
“Where’s your watch?” Mel asked.
“What watch?”
“The Seiko your grandfather gave you for eighth-grade graduation.”
“I don’t know where it is,” Josh said. “I lost it.”
“When?” Mel asked. “Where?”
“If I knew where I was when I lost it, then it wouldn’t be lost, now would it?”
Josh tried to reassume his devil-may-care attitude, but it didn’t quite work. Once again his cracking voice gave him away.
“How long ago did you lose it?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. It was a while ago. Maybe a couple of weeks.”
“Who else comes in this room?”
“Nobody,” Josh said. “I’m the only one.”
“No maids?” I asked. “No housekeepers?”
“I already told you,” Josh said. “Nobody comes here but me. I’m up here all by myself, like the Prisoner of Zenda or something.”
I was more than a little surprised that he even knew the words “Prisoner of Zenda.” I wondered if he’d actually read the book.
Mel didn’t allow herself to be deflected.
“Tell me about the scarf,” she said.
Josh crossed his arms. “I already told you. I don’t know anything about the scarf,” he insisted. “I found it in my locker.”
“Why’d you hide it under your mattress? If the scarf turns out to be our murder weapon, that’s going to put you at the top of our suspect list.”
“Maybe it’s not the same scarf,” Josh said.
&n
bsp; Mel shook her head. “Guess again, Charm Boy. We found the scarf concealed here in this room where you, by your own admission, are the only person coming and going. A video file showing what appears to be the same scarf being used to strangle someone shows up on your phone, and you expect us to believe that you don’t know anything about it? Give me a break. This isn’t my first day, you know.”
Josh said nothing.
Far below us I heard the sound of a ringing doorbell. Whatever reinforcements Governor Longmire had summoned-probably one of her fat-cat major contributors-was riding to Josh’s rescue. That meant our chance to interview Josh Deeson was almost over.
“Look,” I said quickly. “We know you didn’t kill her. I get that; Ms. Soames here gets that, but I’m guessing you do know who’s responsible. You need to tell us who she was and who did this to her. You need to name names. Let us help you put this terrible mess behind you. This is your last chance to make that deal work, Josh. We’ll go to the prosecutor. We’ll tell him you helped us. That’ll be a big mark in your favor with everybody, including that poor girl’s parents. Their daughter is dead. They need to know what happened to her.”
Josh’s facade cracked a little right along with his voice. “Sure,” he said, “like being a snitch is going to make my life better? But I already told you. I don’t know who did this. I’ve never seen that girl before just now. I don’t know who she is or what happened to her.”
“You do know what happened to her,” Mel shot back. “You saw it on that video. Someone strangled her before your very eyes.”
Switching topics, Mel tapped a scarlet-tipped fingernail on the stack of drawings. “You are a kid who likes thinking about dead people, aren’t you,” she said. “You must think torturing people is cool somehow. Who are the people in these pictures, Josh? Are they people you know from school, maybe people you don’t like very much?”
“It’s art,” Josh said. “It’s what I do in my spare time. It doesn’t mean anything. Art isn’t against the law. Isn’t there something called freedom of speech in this country?”
“These drawings speak to the type of person you are,” Mel said. “They tell us the kinds of hobbies and interests you have as well as the kinds of things you’d like to do to other people if you ever have the chance.”
We were running out of time. Mel and I knew it; so did Josh. All three of us heard the sound of heavy footsteps pounding up the second flight of stairs. Josh crossed his arms, shook his head, and said nothing.
The bedroom door slammed open hard enough that it bounced off the wall behind us.
A burly man in a well-cut suit charged into the room.
“I’m Mr. Deeson’s attorney,” he said. “I demand to know what’s going on here! Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Mel stepped forward to meet him, holding up her badge in one hand and the search warrant in another.
“My name is Melissa Soames,” she said. “This is my partner, J. P. Beaumont. We’re with the attorney general’s Special Homicide Investigation Team. We’re executing a properly issued search warrant of this young man’s room. I don’t believe I caught your name.”
“Garvin McCarthy,” he growled, snatching the search warrant from Mel’s hands. “Let me see that.”
The gesture would have been more effective if McCarthy hadn’t had to dig a pair of reading glasses out of the jacket of his designer suit in order to read what was written on the documents. Before he began reading, however, he shot a venomous look in Josh’s direction.
“Not another word from you, young man. Understand?”
I half expected Josh to balk at this unmistakable order from someone he didn’t know, but I think our questions had scared the crap out of him. He knew he was in trouble. He knew he needed help even if that help was unappreciated and coming from his “not” grandmother. He nodded and kept quiet.
While McCarthy read the warrant through, line by line, Mel quietly switched off the recorder and stowed it in her purse. Finished reading, he handed the warrant back to Mel.
“What’s this all about?” he demanded. “Why Special Homicide?”
“Ask your client,” she said.
“Who’s dead?”
“Ask your client.”
“What are you, a one-trick pony?”
Mel smiled at him and handed him a business card. That was her only answer. Then she picked up one of the Bankers Boxes and turned to me.
“We’re done here,” she said casually. “Let’s go. We can stop by and see Mr. Willis on our way out.”
That comment got a rise out of Garvin McCarthy and out of Josh Deeson as well.
“No,” they said, speaking in inadvertent unison.
The lawyer turned his ire on Josh. “I told you to be quiet and I meant it,” he said, shaking an admonishing finger in the kid’s direction. “Not another word.” He turned to Mel. “Receipts,” he said. “I want receipts for everything in those two boxes.”
“Talk to my partner,” Mel said sweetly. “He’s the one in charge of paperwork.”
I gave him a lowly carbon copy of the receipt form. I knew in advance that it wasn’t especially legible. McCarthy looked at the paper, then at me.
“You expect me to read this?” he demanded.
“Sorry about that,” I said with a shrug. “Old technology and all that. I can copy the originals and fax them to you later if you like.”
McCarthy didn’t say yes or no to that. “Is my client under arrest?” he asked.
“Not so far,” I told him cheerfully. “Right now he’s merely a person of interest. With any kind of luck on our part, however, he’ll be a full-fledged suspect under suspicion and under arrest in no time at all.”
Scowling, McCarthy gave me a business card with his name and a whole collection of phone numbers embossed on what looked and felt like expensive paper. I dropped the card in my jacket pocket. I offered him my hand. He ignored it. I love it when attorneys can’t bring themselves to be collegial, to say nothing of polite. In my book, that was strike one against Garvin McCarthy.
I took my box and followed Mel out into the hall. On the second floor I made my way to the balcony and picked up the coil of rope ladder that was still lying in the far corner of the balcony where Josh had left it. Once that was in my Bankers Box, I finally stripped off my latex gloves and dropped them into my pocket.
Back in the hallway I heard raised voices coming from the landing at the bottom of the stairs. I recognized the governor’s voice. Hers was followed by a man’s voice, an angry man’s voice. The First Husband had evidently emerged unexpectedly from his hospital bed in the maid’s quarters. It sounded as though he wasn’t happy to discover that any number of things had transpired behind his back.
“What the hell is going on up there?” he demanded. “Who are all these people coming and going?”
“Some police officers stopped by,” Marsha responded pleadingly. “Please, Gerry. It’s just a little problem with Josh. I’m taking care of it. It’s handled.”
“It’s not a little problem,” Mel said, stepping briskly into the argument as well as into the lion’s den. “My name is Agent Melissa Soames. I’m with the attorney general’s Special Homicide Investigation Team, Mr. Willis. My partner, J. P. Beaumont, and I are here executing a search warrant of your grandson’s room.”
“A search warrant?” Gerry Willis repeated. “What kind of search warrant? Why? What’s going on? Is Josh in some kind of trouble? And what team again?”
I came down the last flight of stairs in time to answer that one.
“Special Homicide,” I told him. “We found some troubling images on your grandson’s cell phone.”
“What do you mean, ‘troubling’?”
At the bottom of the stairs Mel and Marsha Longmire stood on either side of an angry older gentleman in a wheelchair. Since the man was seated, it was difficult to tell how big he was, but he struck me as a large man, with a fringe of iron-gray hair around a balding pate. Knowin
g Gerry Willis had recently undergone bypass surgery, I expected him to look wan and sickly. He did not. His coloring was great, and from the fit he was pitching, there was nothing at all the matter with his vital signs or mental faculties.
“Snuff film,” Mel said in answer to his question.
“Snuff film,” Gerry repeated. “As in somebody died?”
Mel nodded. “Apparently,” she said.
Gerry Willis’s hardened eyes flashed in his wife’s direction. “You knew about all of this and didn’t tell me?”
“The doctor says you need to take it easy. I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Screw the doctor! My grandson is under suspicion in a homicide and you didn’t want to worry me?” he demanded. “What’s the matter with you, woman? Are you nuts?”
In that moment, Governor Marsha Longmire crashed to earth. She was an ordinary human being caught in the everyday turmoil of living in a blended family, loving her husband and wanting to protect him from his progeny’s folly. It was the old blood-and-water routine all over again, only this time Marsha was on the wrong side of the equation, the water side.
“Ms. Soames and Mr. Beaumont are just leaving,” Marsha said. “Once they’ve gone, I’ll be glad to tell you everything.”
“No,” the First Husband responded. “If this has something to do with Josh, you’ll tell me everything about it right now, all three of you.”
Governor Longmire shook her head in frustration. She’d had every intention of smuggling Mel and me into the house and out of it again without raising any alarms as far as her ailing husband was concerned. That was why she had hustled us first into the study across from the front door and why she had then unceremoniously herded us on upstairs. We were unwelcome but necessary visitors, and she had wanted to steer us clear of the first floor as much as possible.
Unfortunately for her, that plan had just come to grief.
“As you wish,” she said to her husband.
She watched as Gerry Willis rolled his wheelchair away from the landing and through an arched doorway into what was evidently the mansion’s formal living room.
