She ended by relating her discovery of the appalling video and making the fateful call to Ross Connors.
“I had to do that,” she said. “I couldn’t just ignore it.”
“No,” he said. “You couldn’t. Show me the film. I need to see it.”
“Gerry, it’s really rough. Are you sure?”
“Show me,” he insisted.
Glancing in Mel’s direction, Marsha nodded. Without a word, Mel donned a pair of gloves. Then she opened the box, retrieved the phone, turned it on, and held it up for Gerry Willis’s viewing pleasure while she played the vile video in question.
I was more than a little surprised by Gerry’s response or, rather, by the lack thereof. He watched the film from beginning to end without comment and without blanching. It made me wonder what Mr. Gerard Willis had done before he became “First Spouse.”
The video ended. Mel switched off Josh’s iPhone and returned it to the box.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Willis said. “Just because that video turned up on his phone doesn’t mean Josh is involved in what happened.”
Parental denial is pretty much standard the world over. “Whatever it was, my kid (or grandkid) didn’t do it. Couldn’t
Next Mel retrieved the bag containing the scarf and handed it over.
“We found the scarf in his bedroom,” Mel said quietly. “It was concealed between Josh’s mattress and the box spring. Josh claims it was placed inside his locker at school without his knowledge.”
“That isn’t necessarily the same scarf,” Gerry argued, handing it back.
Mel smiled at him before returning the scarf to the box. “Believe me, Mr. Willis,” she said. “We’re going to make every effort to determine if this is the same scarf.”
“Where’s Josh now?” Gerry asked.
“He’s upstairs with his attorney, Mr. McCarthy,” Mel said. “Your wife saw fit to-”
Gerry turned a disbelieving eye on Marsha. “Does that mean you’ve hired Garvin to be Josh’s defense attorney?”
“He’s good,” Marsha said quickly. “He’s very good.”
“He’s also very expensive.”
Marsha nodded. “He is that, but you need to go back to bed now, Gerry. It’s four o’clock. It’s time for your medication-the one you’re supposed to take with food.”
“I’m not going back to bed,” Gerry said determinedly. “I need to think. If you’ll bring the meds, I’ll take them here.”
Looking depleted, Marsha Longmire stood up. Right that minute she was a long way from being Governor Longmire.
“I’ll go make some sandwiches for everyone, then,” she said. She turned to Mel and me. “Is tuna on whole wheat okay?”
I remembered then that we hadn’t had lunch.
“Sure,” I said. “Tuna would be great.”
I should have thought that the governor would have a cook at her beck and call. There’s a good reason I don’t play poker. Most of the time the expressions on my face are a dead giveaway. That’s what happened this time, too.
“Today is the chef’s day off, and we’ve had to cut back on her helper’s hours. So on Mondays Gerry usually cooks. Not at the moment, however, so you’ll have to settle for what he likes to call my burnt offerings.”
For the first time I saw a look of genuine affection pass between the governor and the First Husband.
“You’re not such a terrible cook,” Gerry said. “I don’t think anyone is going to starve.”
Marsha smiled gamely. Since we had been turned into inadvertent guests who were evidently going to be there for a while, she must have decided that a bit of hospitality was in order.
“What would you like to drink?”
“It’s summer,” I said. “Iced tea if you’ve got it.”
Marsha turned to Mel. “And for you?”
“Iced tea would be great.”
As Marsha walked past her husband’s wheelchair, she gave Gerry a breezy buss on the top of his balding head. Once she disappeared through an open doorway that led into an immense dining room, Gerry Willis immediately turned to us.
“How much do you know about my grandson?” he asked.
Whenever possible, it’s always a good idea to let the subjects of interviews ask and answer their own questions. A lot of times they’ll blurt out exactly what you need to know. Or, by carefully avoiding a topic, they’ll still give themselves away.
“Not much,” I admitted with a shrug.
“This is a second marriage for Marsha and me,” Gerry explained. “We met at a party for lobbyists while Marsha was still in the state legislature. My wife died years ago in a car accident in eastern Washington. Marsha was divorced, amicably so. Sid, her ex, works as a lobbyist for the Master Builders Association. He and Marsha have a joint custody agreement that has gone surprisingly smoothly. It turns out their relationship was a lot better after they were divorced than while they were married.
“Marsha and I got married within a matter of months before she started campaigning for governor the first time. Lucy, my first wife, and I married young. Marsha married much later. Her two daughters, Giselle and Zoe, are only a couple of years older than my grandson.”
As Gerry related the story, some of the details were beginning to come back to me, although I have to admit the idea of lobbyists marrying politicians doesn’t exactly leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy. Gerry looked to be somewhere in his early seventies. Since Marsha was my age, if she had kids who were still that young, she probably hadn’t gotten around to doing the parenting thing until very late in the game, when her biological clock was ticking in overtime.
“When my first wife died,” Gerry continued, “my daughter, Desiree, was still in high school. We were both grieving. She needed more from me than I was able to give her. Long story short, I blew it. I let her down. She ended up falling in with the wrong crowd and went completely haywire. She dropped out of school and made a complete mess of her life. I tried to help her over the years, but there was really nothing I could do. She ended up getting involved in drugs. She married a jerk, a guy who went to prison and is still in prison for drug dealing. Desiree died of an overdose in a meth lab out in the woods down by Long Beach a little over three years ago.”
The regret in his voice over his fatherly shortcomings was heartbreaking, especially when I knew firsthand how fatherly failures stick with you and your kids pretty much forever.
Gerry paused for a moment and then went on.
“Since you’re cops, I suppose you’ve seen meth labs?”
Mel and I both nodded.
“By the time Marsha and I married, I had completely lost track of my daughter,” Gerry continued. “It was just too painful to see what she was doing to herself. I didn’t even know Josh existed until he was nine. That was six years ago, right after Marsha and I got married. When I found out about the squalor he was living in, I tried to get him out of it. Marsha was willing to adopt him, and for a time Desiree was willing, but then, when the father refused to sign away his parental rights, she backed out, too.
“A year later, when Josh ended up in foster care, I tried suing for custody. Desiree found herself a lawyer who managed to make it sound like her Big Bad Powerbroker Daddy and his wife, the Governor, were trying to run all over poor little her. I’ll say that much for Desiree. She was a very capable liar. The social workers at CPS seem to have or at least had a real bias toward keeping families intact.”
“They gave him back to her,” Mel said.
Gerry nodded. “We finally got custody three years later when Desiree died, but I’m afraid it was too late. Josh was twelve by then, and the damage was done. He came straight from foster care. He had the clothes on his back. Everything else was in a single grocery bag.”
I’ve seen kids come out of homes where the parents abuse drugs-crack, cocaine, meth, it doesn’t matter which one. The parents care far more about their next high than they do about their offspring. The kids are lucky to have clothes to wear or food to eat. As for going to school? That doesn’t happen, and once they get into “the
