by J. A. Jance
“What about you?” I asked. “What did you think about Rachel?”
“I didn’t grow up the way Ardy did,” he said. “It seemed to me that Rachel was just a regular kid. I kept trying to tell Ardy that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
“That’s why you let her go on that overnight on Sunday?” I asked.
He nodded bleakly. “It was just supposed to be that one night.” He fell silent, too, and spent the next twenty minutes weeping silently. I gave the guy credit for doing his crying when his wife was asleep. I also understood the real reason for his tears. Yes, Rachel was dead, but that was only part of it. Ardith may have been blaming herself for her daughter’s fate, but Kenny Broward was doing the same thing-drowning in blame.
I understood exactly how it had all come about. He and Ardith had been playing good cop/bad cop with Rachel Camber. Unfortunately for all concerned, in this case both cops had lost.
Kenny finally managed to get it together and decided to tell me the rest of the story. “Ardy found money hidden in Rachel’s drawer along with that business card, and it wasn’t the first time, either. That first time she left it there so Rachel wouldn’t know we were snooping.
“How much money?” I asked.
“Eight hundred dollars,” Kenny said.
“That’s a lot of money for a kid to have stowed away.” Especially for a kid without a regular job, I thought.
Ken nodded miserably in agreement.
“Rachel wanted to go to cheerleader camp next month. One week costs a thousand bucks. We told her we didn’t have that kind of money lying around. We’re making ends meet, but just barely. I think she was saving up for that.”
That meant that Rachel had amassed an additional four hundred bucks to go with the four hundred Ardith had already mentioned. “But a total of eight hundred dollars?” I asked. “Where do you suppose she would get that kind of money?”
Kenny shrugged. “Ardy seemed to think Rachel was putting out, like a prostitute or something.”
“What about you?”
He shrugged hopelessly. “Drug dealing, maybe? That would make sense, but if she was really running away, why didn’t she take the money with her?”
“Probably a lack of trust,” I suggested. “I’d say Rachel knew the people she was going to be with on Sunday afternoon, and she was worried they might steal whatever she brought along with her.”
There was a long period of silence after that while ten miles or so of blacktop unwound itself between opposing banks of towering evergreens.
“Will we get her stuff back?” Kenny asked finally.
“What stuff?” I asked.
“Nothing valuable,” he said. “I was hoping we’d be able to give her a class ring next year. That’s not going to happen, but she did have a bracelet.”
When he first said it, what popped into my head was a charm-bracelet kind of thing-gold or silver with lots of little dangly thingies on it. My daughter, Kelly, had one of those once, but Kenny Broward soon disabused me of that notion.
“It’s an elephant-hair bracelet,” he said. “It looks a lot like the wire we used to hang my dad’s dropped ceiling. It has a little sliding fastener on it so you can make it bigger or smaller.”
“Elephant hair?” I repeated.
“An exchange student from South Africa came to school here last year,” Kenny explained. “Her name was Estelle. She and Rachel became good friends. At the end of the year, when it was time for Estelle to go back home, she gave Rachel a bracelet made out of elephant hair and made her promise to wear it every day. She did, too.”
I had an idea that the elephant-hair bracelet in question was now lying somewhere on the muddy bottom of the retention pond, but I didn’t say as much to Kenny.
“Anything that was found with the body will be inventoried and returned to the family unless it’s considered to be evidence of some kind.”
“All right,” he said. Then he shook his head again. “I guess I need to try to let Estelle know.”
“She probably has e-mail,” I said. “Try asking Conrad Philips. He’ll know how to get in touch with her.”
Ardith was awake again by the time we got to their house in Packwood. The yard was still parked full with people waiting to hear the bad news and to help the Browards cope with it. I knew Mel was right behind me. She’d execute the search warrant, then interview all these folks to see if anyone knew anything. In the meantime, I dropped off my passengers and headed right back out.
I pulled off the freeway in Centralia because I needed to buy gas. By the time I finished filling the tank, it was lunchtime and the call of that Country Cousin fried chicken was more than I could resist. I went inside and drew the same waitress who had served Mel’s and my breakfasts.
The chicken comes with a fresh salad, a dollop of mashed potatoes, and a stack of green beans. The salad includes a layer of tiny cubes of steamed beets. Back when I was growing up, my mother had to threaten me with bodily harm to get me to eat steamed beets. She’d be astonished if she knew I now eat them voluntarily.
The drawback on Country Cousin fried chicken is that it takes time to cook-a full half hour. I occupied my time by opening my computer, logging on, and checking my e-mail. The first e-mail on the list was the one from Beaumont, Texas-the one from my presumed cousin, the one I hadn’t replied to yet. I scrolled past that one. At the bottom of a long string of Viagra ads was one from Dr. Mowat, or, rather, LWMowatME, according to his e-mail address. The message itself was short if not sweet.
Deeson autopsy completed. As per the attorney general’s instructions, I gave the autopsy results and a certified copy of the death certificate to Captain Hoyt of the Washington State Patrol. Let me say for the record, Ross Connors is a jackass.
It did my heart good to know that Ross Connors’s dislike of Larry Mowat wasn’t the least bit unrequited. It’s sort of a waste when one person hates another one’s guts and the first guy doesn’t get it.
As far as I was concerned, I had my own opinions about good old Larry. In fact, I was so happy to avoid talking to him about the Deeson autopsy that I spent twenty minutes of my chicken-waiting half hour tracking down Captain Hoyt’s telephone number. I wondered what kind of approach I’d need to make in order to glean any usable information. Those concerns turned out to be unfounded.
“I’ve been expecting your call,” she said. “Ross Connors told me you’d be in touch. What do you need?”
“To know everything you know about Josh Deeson’s autopsy.”
“I don’t have the official report,” she said. “All I have right now is what Mowat told me. Cause of death is plain old asphyxiation,” she said. “Definitely suicide. No initial sign of drug use of any kind, which is fairly unusual in these cases. Kids who decide to end it all often turn out to be the ones who’ve already screwed up their bodies and their futures with some pretty obvious substance abuse.”
“What about personal effects?” I asked.
“Nothing much. The M.E. found only one item on the body-a gold chain with some kind of skeleton key on it. The crime scene team inventoried a Seiko watch. That’s already been sent along to the lab.”
I knew about the watch. The key was a surprise.
“A key?” I asked. “What’s it to?”
“Beats me. His room, maybe?” Joan replied. “It seems to me that the rooms on that top floor of the governor’s mansion all have old-fashioned keyhole door locks, but as far as I know the door wasn’t locked.”
“You’re right,” I said definitively. “And since the door wasn’t locked, that means the key is to something other than the door to his room.”
“How do you know that?”
“Think about it. Josh was about to commit suicide. That’s a hell of a lot worse than, say, thumbing through back issues of Playboy or Penthouse. If he’d had a key to the door of his room, he would have used it.”
“Yes,” Captain Hoyt said. “I see what you mean. I’ll have my people do some checking
and see if we can figure out where the key is from.”
My chicken showed up. It smelled wonderful, but I could tell from the steam that it was still too hot to eat.
“All right then,” I said, poking a hole in the crispy skin to allow some of the heat to dissipate. “I’ll let you go.”
“One more thing,” she said. “I spent some time with Gerard Willis. You can’t help but feel sorry for the man. He’s really broken up about Josh.”
“I know.”
“So even though it’s not my case, I have to ask. Yes, I know Josh killed himself. I saw the room. There was no one else in there with him who could have been responsible, but do you really think he killed that girl, too?”
“No,” I told her, “he didn’t, but the two cases are connected somehow, and I’m going to do my damnedest to figure out whatever that connection might be.”
Chapter 18
I had ended the call with Captain Hoyt and taken one very hot taste of chicken when the phone rang again.
“Hey,” Ross Connors said. “Where are you?”
“Centralia,” I said. “On my way back to Olympia.” I didn’t mention that I had stopped off for lunch. That was on a need-to-know basis only.
“I just got a call from the crime lab in Spokane. It took a while for them to figure out Josh’s computer password so they could access his files. I passed that along to Todd.”
I would have been surprised if Todd Hatcher hadn’t already found his own access to the data he had lifted from Josh’s hard drive, but I let that pass without comment.
“The kid played chess,” Ross continued. “He had a half-dozen Internet chess games going at any one time, but what’s more interesting is that this really is a case of bullying-cyber bullying. Josh kept a file called My Life on his computer that contained copies of all his text messages, even after he deleted them from his cell phone. Spokane sent a copy of the file to Todd and one to me. Katie just printed it out. Some of the messages call Josh MM for Meth Mouth. Let’s see, here’s a brief sample: ‘You’re too stupid to live.’ ‘Go back to where you came from.’ ‘How does it feel to be brain damaged?’ ‘Protect the gene pool-always wear a condom,’ along with the usual teenage crap saying he’s a queer. All told, there must be hundreds of derogatory comments.”
It was clear that the text messages mirrored the kind of taunting that had provoked the fights Josh had been cited for at school.
Call waiting buzzed. A glance at caller ID told me that Todd Hatcher was on the line. “Gotta go,” I told Ross Connors. “It’s Todd.”
Ross hung up before I had a chance to do so first.
“Hey, Todd,” I said. “What have you got?”
“Some information on the source of that video. It was sent to Josh Deeson from a computer located in Olympia. I’ve got a physical address for you,” he added. “Ready?”
I’m not one of those people who can talk on the cell phone and get it to take messages at the same time. The waitress had dropped off my check, so I grabbed that and wrote on the back of it.
“Shoot,” I said.
He read off an address on Seventeenth Avenue Southeast in Olympia. “It seems to be a kind of rec center or a shelter or something, sort of like a boys’ and girls’ club, only different.”
“It wouldn’t happen to be called Janie’s House, would it?” I asked.
“Just a minute.”
I heard him typing and then waiting. “Yup,” he said at last. “You got it. That’s what it’s called-Janie’s House. How did you know that?”
“I’m a detective, remember? What about the text messages sent to Josh Deeson?” I asked.
“Ross sent me a copy of those a little while ago. I didn’t tell him that I was already working on them. They’re certainly ugly enough. They all come from phones on the same cell phone account, one that leads back to Janie’s House. I ran a preliminary analysis on the texts. Based on language-usage profiles I’d say they were written by several different people-four or five at least-all of them ganging up on the same kid.”
“Do we have any record of him responding?”
“Josh saved copies of the texts that were sent to him. If he made responses, he didn’t save those. However, we may be able to get those from the receiving cell phone accounts. That’ll require another set of search warrants.”
“Let Ross know, so he can go to work on getting what we need.”
“What are you doing in the meantime?” Todd asked.
“I believe I’m going to pay a visit to Janie’s House. Before I go, I need two things.”
“What?”
“Send a copy of the video from Josh’s phone to my cell. Mel has a copy of it on her cell phone, but I need one, too. The other thing I need is a photo of Josh Deeson, preferably a jpeg. I know there was one on the Olympia Daily News Web site today, but I want to have one available that doesn’t show any connection to the news story. When I show up at Janie’s House, I want to be prepared with my own version of shock and awe.”
“It might take a while,” Todd cautioned.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m going to sit right here and do my homework on Janie’s House.”
I Googled Janie’s House and ended up reading the same information Mel had recounted to me earlier when I wasn’t paying attention. Now I was.
Felina Jane Goodson was fifteen years old when she went to war with her parents, who refused to let her apply for a learner’s permit until her grades improved. Janie Goodson had responded by running away from home. Two weeks later, while staying in a homeless camp near Tenino, she had been raped and bludgeoned to death in a crime that remained unsolved until 2007, when a Washington State Patrol cold-case squad got around to retesting old DNA evidence found at the scene, evidence that in 1985 had meant nothing. The new test linked the resulting DNA profile to a fifty-seven-year-old man serving life without parole in Walla Walla after being convicted in three other cases in which victims had been raped and killed.
The identification and subsequent conviction of Jane Goodson’s killer came twenty years too late for Deborah Magruder, Janie’s maternal grandmother. Deborah came from an old Washington family, one that had made a fortune in the timber industry. Deborah had spent the last years of her life and a good portion of her remaining wealth trying to help “troubled youth.” Her goal had been to create a “safe haven” where distressed young people could access a smorgasbord of needed services-counseling, food, and clothing, as well as educational help and direction.
The result was Janie’s House, a facility made up of three former residential homes that had been cobbled together to form a single unit. I was copying down the phone number when my phone buzzed, announcing an incoming message. The video was there along with a jpeg file of Josh Deeson’s most recent yearbook photo.
Then, with all my ducks very nearly in a row, I did something smart. I called Mel. That’s one of the first rules out of Police Academy 101-don’t go chasing bad guys all by your lonesome. That’s why God created partners-so you can have backup. But calling Mel made sense for more than one reason: I knew for sure she’d be royally ripped at me if I didn’t.
“How are things in Packwood?” I asked casually.
“One dead end after another,” she grumbled. “I executed the search warrant. Other than the eight hundred dollars, I found nothing of interest. So far I’ve talked to half a dozen of Rachel’s friends and none of them knows anything, either. Or, if they do, they’re not saying. Why?”
“We may have just caught a big break. Todd Hatcher tells me the snuff video was sent to Josh’s computer from one located at Janie’s House-that homeless shelter in Olympia.”
“The same shelter that was on that business card found in Rachel’s room?”
“The very one,” I said. “I’m planning on going there, but it occurred to me that if I want to go on living, I’d better give you a chance to go along.”
Mel laughed. “You’ve got that right.”
“Also,
the crime lab in Spokane broke into the files on Josh’s computer. Along with a group of ongoing chess games, they also found a collection of ugly text messages that were sent to Josh. It turns out those texts came from cell phones that are billed to Janie’s House as well.”
“Sounds like your basic full-service shelter,” Mel said. “I’m on my way now. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Do not speed,” I cautioned. “I promise, I won’t go anywhere near the place until you’re with me.”
Telling her not to speed was really wasting my breath. I had no doubt the blue bubble light was already firmly affixed to the Cayman’s roof and her lead foot was on the gas pedal.
“And don’t bother stopping for lunch,” I added. “I’ll bring the rest of my chicken to you in a doggy bag.”
“Do you mean to tell me that after that huge breakfast you went back to the Country Cousin for lunch?”
“Guilty as charged,” I said. “And I’m not apologizing for it, either. Wait until you try it.”
She laughed. “I’m glad you saved some for me,” she said. “Where should we meet?”
“At the hotel,” I suggested. “In the meantime, I’m going to drop by the high school and see if the principal there knows as much about his students as Conrad Philips knows about his.”
“If I were you,” Mel said, “I wouldn’t hold my breath on that score.”
Outside in the parking lot, I keyed the Olympia High School campus into my GPS. When I got there I soon found that Mel’s assessment was correct. The name of the principal was Annette Tompkins. She and Conrad Philips were both secondary-school principals. That meant they probably had similar schooling and credentials. Since Ms. Tompkins’s school was far larger than the one in Randle, I’m sure she brought home higher wages than he did. If I’d been writing their paychecks, that situation would have been reversed.
For one thing, once she knew I was there to discuss Josh Deeson, she was very reluctant to talk to me. She said she was sorry one of her students had died; she claimed no personal knowledge of Josh Deeson’s history or difficulties, to say nothing of his friends or enemies. It was only by taking Ross Connors’s name in vain that I finally got Ms. Tompkins to cough up the names and phone numbers of Josh’s summer-school teachers, both of whom were still in classes and currently unavailable for interviews. She also furnished the name and phone number for the chess club adviser, a guy named Samuel Dysart, who volunteered his services with the chess club, although he didn’t serve on the faculty in any other capacity. I tried his number, but when his phone went to voice mail, I hung up. This was something that required a live conversation, not a message left on someone’s answering machine.
