like Gizzy, is her mother’s daughter.
Once Zoe sat down, a pimply-faced kid who said his name was Chipper Lawson stood up and talked about how Josh Deeson had helped him learn to play chess and that he was grateful. It cheered me to know that Josh had had at least one friend at Olympia High, someone who wasn’t Sam Dysart. And I made a note to myself to pass Chipper’s name along to the Sex Crimes guys in Olympia. If Dysart had made a habit of targeting socially needy kids, Chipper would have been another likely target.
There were several kids present, some of whom I recognized as having been at the scene of the Janie’s House fire. The only one of those that I knew by name was Greg Alexander. Dressed in a white shirt and tie, he stood to one side after the graveside service, talking quietly with Zoe.
Of all the kids we had met in the past few days, Greg seemed the most upright. Considering his troubled family background, I knew he was coming from a long way behind go, but somehow I sensed that he was going to make something of himself no matter what.
Giselle had been arrested the night before, but because she had not yet been formally charged, her name had not made it into the papers. I would assume that people at the service were puzzled by her absence, but no one mentioned it in my hearing.
It was late in the afternoon when we finally trooped back to the governor’s mansion where, flanked by Gerry Willis, Ross Connors, and Lieutenant Governor Roger Sikes, Governor Marsha Longmire stood in the shade of the mansion’s front portico and faced an army of microphones and cameras.
The press release announcing the briefing had given no indication of what was about to happen and didn’t contain any advance notice of the governor’s remarks. All it said was that she would be making an important announcement and that she would take no questions.
I watched Marsha Gray Longmire take her place behind the microphones with her customary grace and with her head held high. She waited for silence, then cleared her throat and began to speak.
“As you know, our family has been beset by tragedies this week, not only by the death of our ward, my husband’s grandson, Josh Deeson, but also by learning that our daughter Giselle has been taken into custody here in Olympia due to her part in some illegal activities that went on without her parents’ knowledge or approval. We are deeply saddened by the harm that her actions may have inflicted on other people and other families.
“In view of that, I can no longer function in this office. I thereby resign the post of governor, effective immediately. I have presented my letter of resignation to Attorney General Ross Connors and have notified Lieutenant Governor Sikes of my intention. My family will be moving out of the governor’s mansion as soon as those details can be arranged. In the meantime, I hope you will respect our need for privacy as we deal with these appalling events. Thank you.”
With that, she turned away. Then both she and Gerry Willis disappeared through the mansion’s massive front doors, closing them firmly. By the time the group of stunned journalists rumbled to life, she was gone, and newly installed Governor Roger Sikes, with Ross Connors’s capable help, was left to deal with the media fallout.
“Come on,” Mel whispered in my ear. “Let’s check out of the hotel and go home.”
And we did.
“I asked Ross for next week off,” Mel said as we rode the elevator up at Belltown Terrace. “We need to go to Texas. We can fly commercial or we can bite the bullet and take the jet. Which is it?”
I thought about the money the jet would burn, flying cross-country like that. Then I thought about my limping through airport concourses, getting on and off car-rental shuttles, and sitting for hours with my knees jammed up against the seat in front of me, while the guy seated there flew in full-recline mode.
Based on that, it wasn’t a tough decision.
“We’ll take the jet,” I said.
We flew out of Boeing Field twenty-four hours later on a Citation X. On the flight Mel and I spent most of the time talking about what the rest of the state was just now learning-that a group of supposedly well-respected “good” kids, terminally bored “good” kids, had gone bad and transformed themselves into a bunch of hoodlums. Giselle Longmire and Ronald Darrington Miller weren’t the only ones who would be facing charges.
Owen Wetmore, one of the Janie’s House houseparents, had been a full partner in Ronald Miller’s filming venture, and they had used Owen’s keys and security code to come and go at will. According to Gizzy, as soon as Josh died, Ron realized that the subsequent investigation might lead back to him. He had decided on his own that Rachel had to go. And then, when Owen started freaking out afterward, Ron decided that both Owen and the Janie’s House computers had to go as well.
Gizzy hadn’t been present when Rachel died and she hadn’t lit the match that started the Janie’s House fire, but she had driven the getaway car. She had known about the planned fire in advance and had done nothing to stop it. I thought it was likely that she would face homicide charges of some kind in regard to Rachel Camber’s death as well as Owen Wetmore’s. She also had admitted stealing Josh’s original watch-the one from Gerry Willis-just to bug him, just because she could. That day after the Janie’s House fire, Ron had gone to the governor’s mansion intent on retrieving what they both thought of as their trophies. They had been shocked to find the watch missing. He’d had the bracelet in hand and was on his way to Gizzy’s father’s house to pick up the thumb drive when Mel and I took him into custody.
It seemed to me that Gizzy and Ron deserved each other in every sense of the word-a twisted match made in hell rather than heaven. So far the judge had denied requests for bail from both defense attorneys. That had to come as a huge surprise, to Ron especially. For the first time in his life his parents’ position in the community wasn’t working for him. A denial of bail was only the first step in the process. Mel and I both knew that legal proceedings against the pair would take months.
We had obtained Giselle Longmire’s confession without striking any kind of plea agreement. We had every reason to believe that her confession would withstand legal scrutiny and that they both would be going to prison for a very long time.
Between now and then, both families were living in an ongoing media nightmare. I wondered if Marsha and Gerry’s marriage would survive all the strife. Gizzy’s actions had torn holes in the fabric of their marriage that would probably never be mended.
As for Josh? The smoking gun had been found not in his cell phone records but in Sam Dysart’s. A call from his phone to the governor’s mansion landline had evidently summoned Josh on that out-of-character jog that had so puzzled his grandfather. Olympia police officers, executing a search warrant, had found the torn gift-wrapping paper and the box that had held the replacement watch we had found on Josh’s wrist. Dysart had gone to great lengths to track down that particular model. I like to think Josh went to his death expecting that his grandfather would believe the ruse that the watch on his arm was the one he had given him.
Was the watch a bribe on Dysart’s part in exchange for sex? Or was replacing Josh’s missing Seiko a thoughtful gift? So far there was no clear answer to those questions. Regardless, Dysart’s relationship with Josh had crossed the line. He had further victimized a kid who had already suffered far more than he should have. I was glad the man was dead. Dysart’s death spared Gerry Willis at least one painful legal proceeding. And it probably kept Chipper Lawson, the pimply-faced chess player at Josh’s funeral, from being Dysart’s next victim.
“All of this makes me incredibly thankful that I don’t have to be in high school anymore,” I told Mel.
She nodded. “And it makes me grateful I never had kids,” she said. “Kids today do stuff we never
“Not all of them,” I said, thinking about Greg Alexander, a kid who, despite a troubled home life, would one way or another make it where he was going.
A bell rang in the aircraft’s cabin. We were starting our descent into Beaumont. It was time to raise our seats to their full upright position and fasten our seat belts.
When I had called my cousin in Texas to let her know our plans, I originally told her that we would rent a car. She wouldn’t hear of it.
“Someone will be there to pick you up,” she had said firmly.
Three and a half hours after leaving Seattle, when we landed at Southeast Texas Regional Airport, a shiny black Suburban limo was waiting for us next to the Fixed Base Operation. The Suburban drove out onto the tarmac to meet our plane. When the driver stepped out of the car next to the plane, he was wearing a gray suit with a starched white shirt, a bright blue tie, a gray felt Stetson, and a pair of highly polished black cowboy boots.
The pilot opened the hatch, letting an ungodly combination of the heat and humidity roar into the cabin.
“Welcome to Texas,” he said.
