“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
“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
