all because of you.”
“But. .” Gizzy began.
“No buts!” Marsha mowed over her daughter’s attempted protest and stormed on. “You need to figure this out for yourself, Gizzy. You can cooperate with the cops in the feeble hope that your cooperation will buy you mercy from a judge or jury somewhere down the line. Or you can deny everything and trust that Ron Miller won’t sell you down the river. If I were you, though, I don’t think I’d count on that. We’re all prepared to stick by you, but only if you do the right thing. If not? We’re done.”
Stunned with disbelief, Gizzy Longmire stared at her mother as Marsha stood up. Then Marsha reached down and helped her husband to his feet.
“Let’s go,” she said to him, pocketing her cigarettes. “We need to get back to our guests. We’ve left them alone long enough.”
“But wait,” Gizzy wailed as Marsha and Gerry started toward the house. “What’s going to happen to me?”
Marsha stopped long enough to look at her.
“I have no idea,” Governor Longmire said, shaking her head. “It’s in your hands now. It seems to me you should have thought about that a long time ago.”
On Gerry’s way past his stepdaughter he paused long enough to lay a consoling hand on her shoulder. “Your mother’s right, you know,” he said softly. “If you want us to stick by you, we will, but you’ve crossed over the line, betrayed our trust. It’s time for you to do the right thing.”
With that, Governor Longmire and Gerry Willis disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Gizzy standing there dumbstruck watching them go.
Chapter 27
Once the kitchen door closed behind Gerry and Marsha, what followed was something my mother would have called “a pregnant pause.” In all my years as a cop, I had never seen a suspect’s parents step up the way Marsha and Gerry just had. And the fact that the other set of parental units was evidently on board and in total agreement with this unflinching bit of tough love was even more astonishing. In my experience, a crisis of this kind in divorced families usually devolves into a circular firing squad of finger-pointing.
As for Gizzy? I didn’t know if she would go ahead and demand an attorney, as she had every right to do with or without parental approval, or if she would run for the hills.
“Is it true?” she asked finally. “Is Ron really under arrest?”
Mel nodded. “Yes, he’s really under arrest. Usually, in these situations, the suspect who talks first is the one who gets the best deal. Not that Mr. Beaumont and I can make deals,” Mel added, “because we can’t.”
“How bad will it be for me?” Gizzy asked.
Mel shrugged. “I have no idea,” she answered. “That depends on what you’ve done, how much you know, and how much you can help us.”
“Are you placing me under arrest?”
“Not right now. We’re only taking you in for questioning.”
“Will I have to walk through the house in handcuffs?”
Mel’s handcuffs had disappeared much earlier in the afternoon when Ron Miller was locked in that capitol cop’s squad car. I still had mine. We could have used those.
“We’ll go around the outside of the house instead of through it so as not to disturb your parents’ guests,” Mel said. “But I don’t think handcuffs are necessary at this time, do you?”
“No,” Gizzy said. “They’re not.”
Mel took Gizzy’s arm and started to lead her around the side of the house, back to the driveway. I was going to follow, but then thought better of it.
“I need to do one more thing,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
I ducked back into the house through the kitchen.
When I stepped inside, the cook stopped what she was doing, placed both hands on her hips, glared at me, and shook her head.
“It’s beginning to feel like Grand Central Station around here,” she said.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I need a word with Mr. Willis.”
I found him by the bar in the living room, pouring himself a generous Scotch. With his recent surgery I wondered if that was wise, but that was his business, not mine.
“There’s one more thing I need to tell you,” I said. “I didn’t want to bring it up in front of Marsha.”
“What?” Gerry sounded bleak, as though he could hardly stand one more smidgeon of bad news.
“Sam Dysart is dead,” I said.
Gerry’s face brightened. “Hallelujah,” he murmured. “How?”
“He had a stroke. The first one evidently happened several days ago. He had been lying alone on the floor in a cottage out behind his house ever since. Mel and I found him there when we went to his house to talk to him this afternoon. We called 911. He was in the ambulance and being transported when he suffered another stroke and died. We have reason to believe he purchased the watch Josh was wearing when he died.
“Mel and I have been ordered off the case. Joan Hoyt of the Washington State Patrol says the Olympia PD Sex Crimes unit will be taking over that aspect of the investigation. Once the DNA evidence is processed, we’ll try to let you know the findings, but it won’t be our responsibility to take it any further.”
“If Dysart really did molest Josh, I hope he rots in hell,” Gerry Willis said fervently. “But we’re out of it, Mr. Beaumont. Yes, I want to know for sure, but beyond that, whatever he did or didn’t do to Josh is over. I don’t want to know anything more about it, and it’s no one else’s business.”
“But the school district may be liable for bringing him on board,” I objected.
“That’s none of my concern. If there are other kids and other parents who want to make an issue of this, fine, but we’re not bringing up his relationship with Josh with anyone. The poor boy is dead. Surely we can allow him that much privacy-that much respect.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’ll see to it.”
I let myself out the front door and joined Mel and Gizzy in the S-550. Gizzy was sitting in the backseat crying quietly when I got in behind the wheel. It didn’t matter to me if her tears were due to fear or remorse. The fact that she was shaken enough to be crying seemed like a good sign.
I drove them to the Special Homicide Squad A office and stayed long enough to escort them into a tiny interview room. I turned on the room’s video recording system and made sure it was up and running. I gave Mel an earpiece that allowed two-way communication from inside the interview room to anyone outside in the hallway. When I waved good-bye, Mel’s parting words to me were simple.
“Bring back pizza and sodas.”
Fair enough. We were conducting an updated version of the carrot-and-stick routine. In this case, Gizzy’s parents were the stick and Mel-sweet-talking Mel-was going to be wielding the good cop’s most effective carrot and the interview room’s official secret weapon-pepperoni pizza. As I walked away, I heard Mel launch into the obligatory process of reading Giselle Longmire her rights.
There had been some necessary adjustments in our original plan, but we were also still on track with our general strategy. Mel would interview Gizzy while I tackled Ron Miller.
To that end, I drove straight to Olympia PD. When the guy at Olympia’s lockup facility told me Ron Miller had lawyered up and wasn’t speaking to anyone, I can’t say I was surprised. Ron was accustomed to having his parents haul out their checkbooks and fix whatever mess he had gotten himself into. They had done it at least once before by paying for that burned-out boathouse. I was sure Ronald Darrington Miller was sitting in his cell right then, convinced that by tomorrow morning one or the other of his parents would come bail him out and everything would be fine. I, for one, was pretty sure that on this particular occasion, for the first time in Ron’s highly privileged life, that strategy wasn’t going to work. For one thing, I had firsthand knowledge of something Ron Miller and his
