“Tell me about the computer lab in the administrative building,” Mel said. “Do you use it much?”
“Sure,” Greg said, between shoveling forkfuls of hash browns and scrambled eggs into his mouth. “I use the computer lab almost every day. I don’t have a computer at home, and even if I had one, I couldn’t get on the Internet with it because we don’t have landline phone service. My parents can’t afford it.”
“What about a cell phone?” I asked.
Greg shook his head. “We don’t have one of those either. I use the ones from Janie’s House occasionally, and Nadia’s, too, when she isn’t low on minutes.”
“Tell us about yesterday,” Mel said.
“What’s there to tell? I worked eleven to seven-a full eight-hour shift. After work, I went to Nadia’s.”
“Nadia?” I asked.
“Nadia Patel,” he said. “My girlfriend. She lives with her kids here in Olympia. She has a computer. She let me log on and check my e-mail last night.”
“What if I told you that your user name, Hammer, was logged on to the Janie’s House computer network for four hours on Sunday evening?” Mel asked. “Some of that time was spent uploading the video that was sent to Josh Deeson. The remainder of the time was spent visiting porn sites.”
“It wasn’t me,” Greg insisted, sounding peeved. “I already told you I wasn’t there Sunday night. I was at work. My manager’s name is Mr. Newton, James Newton, and here’s his number.” Greg reeled off a 360 number. “Go ahead. Call him. Ask Mr. Newton to check my time cards. He’ll be able to tell you exactly what time I came on duty and what time I got off, all week long-Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. I think I used the Janie’s House computers for a while on Monday, but that’s the only time I’ve been on them this week.”
“Should I call him right now?” Mel asked.
“Sure,” Greg said. “Go ahead. Why not? I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Mel made the call, spoke to Mr. Newton, and got an immediate verification of Greg’s work schedule for all three days.
“Now tell us about what you did after work last night,” Mel said.
“I already told you that, too,” Greg said. “I was at Nadia’s. We went there after we both got off work. Her kids are with their dad this week. She made us some curry for dinner.”
“And what time did you leave?”
“Sometime after midnight.” Greg paused and gave Mel a shrewd look. “I suppose you need to check that, too.”
Mel nodded. “Yes, we do.”
With an exasperated sigh Greg gave Mel another phone number. “You won’t be able to call her until after six. That’s when she gets off tonight.”
He was quiet for a minute, then asked, “So this is all because someone was using Janie’s House computers to surf the net and visit porn sites?”
“That’s part of it,” I said, stepping into the fray. “We believe the person doing the surfing is also the person who sent the video you saw to Josh Deeson. We need to know who that person is.”
“Why don’t you ask Josh, then?” Greg asked.
“We can’t,” I said, “because he’s dead, just like Amber Wilson.”
Greg paled and put down his fork. “You mean someone did the same thing to him?”
“Not exactly,” Mel said. “Amber was murdered. Josh committed suicide. We believe the two cases are related, but so far we haven’t found any connection between Josh and Amber.”
“Do you think this Josh guy killed her?” Greg asked.
Mel didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no. She let her shoulders rise and fall and left Greg to draw his own conclusions.
“Is Josh from here?” Greg asked. “From Olympia?”
“Yes,” Mel said.
“What school?”
“Olympia High,” Mel answered.
Greg shook his head. “I thought maybe he might be one of the tutors, but I don’t recognize that name.”
We had already asked Meribeth Duncan if Josh had been involved in Janie’s House. According to her, there was no record of Josh Deeson visiting Janie’s House for any reason, not years earlier as a client when he was living in the care of his troubled mother and not as a volunteer since moving in with the First Family in the governor’s mansion.
“Tell us about the tutors,” I said.
Greg shrugged. “They come from several different schools. Olympia Prep requires that every student perform so many hours of community service. They also have an official ‘mentoring’ connection with Janie’s house. Sort of like that city in Japan-I forget the name-that’s Olympia’s sister city.”
“You’re saying that a lot of the kids from OP serve as tutors?”
Greg nodded. “Lots of them. They even have a school bus, a van really, that drops them off at Janie’s House.”
Now I was starting to see what had happened. Somewhere out in the adult PC world, a brainiac had decided that, in the name of diversity, it would be a great idea to mix things up between the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful-the kids at Olympia Prep-and the offspring of the local poverty-stricken church mice-the denizens of Janie’s House.
Talk about a culture clash. Maybe it sounded good on paper, but the road to hell really is paved with good intentions. Two kids were dead, one demonstrably rich and the other poor. If that supposedly good idea had somehow gone tragically awry, what were the chances that the death toll would continue to rise?
“So are the tutors okay?” Mel asked.
Greg shrugged. “Some of them are great; some of them are jerks. You know, since they’re ‘volunteering. .’ ” He used his hands to draw quotation marks around the word. “A few of them are really stuck on themselves and seem to think we’re supposed to kiss their asses or something. Others are nice. Like Zoe, for example. She’s just this really neat girl. She’s not stuck up; she’s not mean. You’d never know from talking to her that she’s the governor’s daughter.”
Greg’s offhand mention of Zoe Longmire’s name was the first hint of a connection between the governor’s mansion and the other people involved. The realization arced between Mel and me like an electrical spark. I’m surprised Greg didn’t notice. Or maybe he did.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Wait, wait, wait. You’re telling us that Zoe Longmire volunteers at Janie’s House?”
“Sure,” Greg answered. “So did her older sister, Giselle.”
Mel went on asking questions about the other kids at Janie’s House-kids on both sides of the poverty line, while I went wandering off on a tangent of my own. I tried to square what Greg had said about that good-as-gold Zoe Longmire with what I knew about Zoe’s mother.
In Ballard High School, Marsha Gray had been an unmitigated snob. Her parents had money. The Grays were part of the top strata of Seattle society. Marsha had loved rubbing it in and lording it over all the less fortunate, all those negligible “little people,” of which yours truly was definitely one.
The bullying text messages that had been sent to Josh had been not only mean-spirited but entirely personal-like mother, like daughter, maybe?
When I focused on Greg once more, he was definitely slowing down in terms of eating. The only things left on his plate were the half-eaten remains of two pancakes. I suspected he was a kid who had actually suffered from being hungry due to parental neglect. That made him too poor not to clean his plate. That could be part of why he wanted to go into the service, the prospect of having three squares a day for the duration.
When I came back to the conversation, Mel was trying to determine if Greg had given his user name to anyone else.
“I don’t ever remember doing that,” Greg said. “But I suppose it’s possible.”
I changed the subject. “Did Zoe Longmire ever complain to you about quarreling with anyone in her family?” I asked.
