“It’s a pork roast, homemade applesauce, and early corn fresh from the garden, picked just this afternoon. We’ve got plenty. She said to tell you she’s already put extra plates on the table and you are not allowed to say no.”
I got the feeling from being around Julie Hatcher that she didn’t believe in anyone telling her no, which probably also explained why she and Todd were married. Besides, my single half of one of Governor Longmire’s tuna sandwiches was long gone. I have to admit that the idea of eating a real home-cooked meal had a lot of appeal.
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“What have you got?” he asked.
Mel stepped out of the car, opened the door, and showed him the evidence box with the computer in it. “Here it is,” she said. “Help yourself.”
He picked up the box, hefted it, rattling, onto his shoulder, and led the way into the house.
I have been in farmhouses occasionally in my life, and some of those occasions have been during summer months-hot summer months. So make that miserably hot farmhouses. As I walked across the front porch, I was happy to note that on a concrete pad beside the porch sat a huge Trane AC unit quietly humming away. Julie and Todd’s house was not going to be miserable. In fact, once we got inside, compared to the summer heat outside, it was practically chilly.
Todd led us through both the living room and dining room and into a spacious country kitchen, where a round oak table held four place settings. Julie, smiling in greeting, was carrying a platter full of corn on the cob to the table. The pork roast was already there.
“Everything you see here is homegrown,” Todd said proudly. “The corn is from our garden. Even the peaches in the cobbler for dessert come from our own fruit trees-last year’s crop. Not the pork, though. That comes from a guy who raises pigs down in Lewis County.”
“A friend of my dad’s,” Julie explained. “And we buy sides of beef from a guy in Toledo.”
I know enough about Washington geography to understand she didn’t mean Toledo, Ohio. Mel was smart enough not to ask.
The pitcher of iced tea on the table was fruit-flavored and presweetened, which was fine with me. Mel drank hers without complaint, and we both dug into the food, which was utterly delicious. All during dinner we chatted about this and that, making sure we made no reference to the purpose of our visit in front of Julie. If Todd saw fit to confide in her after we left, that was his business, but Mel and I didn’t mention it.
Finally, when Julie got up to clear away plates and serve the peach cobbler, she looked at Todd and said, “Well, are you going to tell them or am I?”
“We’re expecting,” Todd announced with a proud but sheepish grin. “We confirmed it just this week. She’s almost two months along.”
Mel and I both offered enthusiastic congratulations, although mine were tempered by thinking about Gerard Willis’s rocky venture into fatherhood, not to mention my own. That’s the thing with having kids. You can never tell what’s going to happen or how they’ll turn out.
The peach cobbler arrived still warm from the oven and topped with a generous dollop of store-bought vanilla ice cream. I did my best not to clean my dessert plate, but I didn’t succeed. Once dessert was over, Julie shooed all of us out of the kitchen so we could work while she cleaned up.
“Okay,” Todd said. “What have we got?”
He led us to a room that, in another era, had probably once been the farmhouse’s master bedroom. Now it was a fully functional office space, complete with multiple computers, copiers, printers, and scanners. On the way to the office I picked up the Bankers Box containing Josh Deeson’s electronics equipment. Once in the office, I set the box down on Todd’s desk. Without a word of consultation, we donned latex gloves. We all knew that the less the computer and phone were handled, the better. We also understood that we needed to access the information from the devices as soon as possible. I was worried that Garvin McCarthy would make some effort to erase the contents of both the phone and the computer remotely before anyone else had a chance to see what was there.
Todd directed Mel and me to chairs. Then, whistling under his breath, he set about examining everything we had brought along. “Great,” he said. “I’ve got a power supply for this right here.” Moments later he busied himself copying the laptop’s hard drive as well as the information on Josh Deeson’s phone.
“Once I have the information off the computer, I’ll be able to analyze it,” Todd said as he waited for the hard drive to finish copying. “Before I can do that, though, I need to know what I’m looking for and what you’re hoping I’ll be able to find.”
“One of the last files sent to this phone is the video of what appears to be a snuff film, the murder of a juvenile female,” Mel told him. “Are you okay with that?”
Todd gave her a bemused look, but then he nodded. “I guess,” he said. “I’ve never seen a snuff film, but I’ve butchered cattle, if that’s what you mean.”
“All right then,” Mel said. “We need to know who sent that video and when. We also need to try to isolate the girl’s face in a benign enough manner that we can use the image in an attempt to locate her next of kin. We may also be able to match the photo with an unsolved missing persons case.”
“Of course,” Todd said. “You can’t very well go around showing copies of the original video to the victim’s possible relatives.”
“When you look at the film,” Mel continued, “you’ll see that the murder weapon is most likely a scarf, a blue silk scarf. We believe we now have the scarf in our possession, and we’ll be taking that to the crime lab in hopes of finding DNA evidence.”
Looking at the cell phone, Todd frowned. “You do understand that, for any of this to be legal, I need a search warrant.”
Without a word, Mel reached into her purse, pulled out the search warrant, and handed it over. “And now you have one,” she said. “Ross expects you to follow up on all of Josh Deeson’s text and e-mail messages-who they came from and where and when they went. Working with phone company records and cell phone towers, we’re hoping you’ll be able to triangulate and tell us where Josh Deeson was physically when he sent and received those text messages.”
“Josh Deeson being the suspect,” Todd confirmed.
“Yes.”
“But why us?” Todd asked. “Why bring all of this stuff to an outside consultant and not to the Washington State Crime Lab? They’ve got plenty of computer-savvy folks there.”
“Yes, they do,” I told him. “And plenty of potential media leaks, too. Ross wants to be as far ahead of the game as possible before any of this hits the media.”
“How come?” Todd asked.
“Because Josh’s grandfather and guardian is a man named Gerard Willis-Gerry Willis-who happens to be married to Marsha Longmire, who is Josh’s other guardian.”
Todd’s eyes widened. “You mean Governor Longmire?”
“One and the same,” I told him.
“Okay,” Todd said. “I get it, and I’ll get right on it. I’ll work on extracting the photo first. I’ll let you know first thing in the morning if I’ve made any progress.”
“Great,” I said. “Ross says to bill it at your usual rate.”
We sat and watched for some time while Todd made his copies. By the time I glanced surreptitiously at my watch, it was almost seven-thirty. From here it would take us a good half hour to get back to Ross Connors’s place in Olympia. If we didn’t get under way soon, we were going to be late for our meeting with him.
“Sorry to eat and run,” I said. “But we need to go.”
Todd nodded. “And from the sound of things, I need to go to work.”
We gathered up the computer and the iPhone and returned them to the Bankers Box. In the interim Julie had finished cleaning the kitchen. We found her sitting in the living room, curled into a comfortable ball on a big easy chair, thumbing through a glossy magazine called
“Stay in touch,” Mel called as we headed out.
