“She’s not my grandmother!” Josh Deeson said. He spat out the words with enough venom that it was instantly clear there was no love lost between him and the governor, not in either direction.
Marsha seemed to have recovered her equilibrium. “These are police officers, Josh. They’re investigating a homicide. You need to let them continue searching your room. Come downstairs with me. I’ll call an attorney.”
“I’m not going downstairs,” Josh declared. “And I don’t need an attorney.”
“Yes, you do,” Marsha insisted. “You can’t stay in the same room with these people, Josh. You mustn’t talk to them.”
“Sure,” Josh said. “Like I can’t talk to them without an attorney present, the way they say on TV. Give me a break.”
I waited to see if he would crack and do as he was told. If he played to type, I knew for sure his teenage resentment and arrogance would work against him just as it would work in our favor. For the space of almost a minute no one moved in the room and no one spoke.
Marsha was the one who finally broke the long silence. “Are you coming or not?”
“Not,” he said.
“Very well,” she said. “I’m going to have to go tell your grandfather what’s going on.”
“Right,” Josh said. “Go ahead. Tell him. What’s he going to do about it? Come dragging his sorry ass all the way up here in his wheelchair? Like that’s gonna happen!”
“Josh,” Marsha said, “I order you-”
“You can’t give me orders. I don’t work for you.” He sneered. “I’m not one of your so-called civil servants. I don’t have to jump just because Governor Longmire tells me to.”
Ever since Josh entered the room, Marsha had been holding the evidence bag with the scarf in it. Tightening her lips and handing me the bag, she started to say something, then stopped. When she did speak it was with the forced calmness of someone who has carefully stifled a sharp remark.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “This is a homicide investigation. Whatever you say can be used against you.”
“I get it,” Josh replied, mocking her. “One of those Miranda warnings. Big deal.”
“All right,” Marsha said. “Suit yourself.”
Closing the door with what I considered to be remarkable restraint, she left the room.
“She’s right, you know,” I told Josh. “You probably shouldn’t talk to us.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “That witch doesn’t give a damn about me. I’ll talk to you if I want to.”
There are times in this business when teenage rebellion and bravado can be very good things. Apparently this was one of those times.
If Josh Deeson chose to be stupid rather than smart, it was his problem, not ours.
Chapter 5
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a movement from Mel’s part of the room. She put the stack of loose drawings down on Josh’s now-empty desk and then groped for something inside her purse.
There are lots of addictions in this world. Mel Soames is a self-admitted “purse slut.” She loves purses, all kinds of purses, but especially expensive purses. I had been with her, carrying the Amex card in my pocket, when she picked out this particular version for her last year’s Christmas present. I had learned by bitter experience that choosing a purse for her wasn’t something I should attempt on my own. For instance, left to my own devices, I never would have bought this huge alligator-skin monstrosity that cost more than I paid for my first VW Bug.
I never cease to be amazed by all the stuff she carries in it, some of which-like the digital camera-often turns out to be exceedingly useful, especially since I don’t have to carry it.
I’m sure some of the guys who knew me back in the day would spit their coffee or beer out through their noses to hear those words coming from me. When I first landed at Seattle PD, the departmental culture was pretty much this: Never hire a man whose wife works and never, ever hire a woman.
In other words, there were no purses in my professional life for a very long time. Now there are, and I was happy to see what Mel pulled out of hers-a tiny cassette recorder. She switched it on and set it down on the desk, on top of the stack of drawings.
“You have the right to remain silent. .” she began.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said. “Don’t bother.”
But Mel did bother. She recited the whole Miranda warning from beginning to end without having to resort to a cheat sheet. Josh was in the room, but he wasn’t paying attention. He was a kid who had no idea that his whole future was hanging in the balance.
He looked at her with complete contempt. “What do you want to know?”
In the world of homicide interviews the guy the suspect thinks is stupid is the one who should ask the questions, even if the “guy” in question isn’t a guy.
“Who’s the girl?” Mel asked.
“What girl?”
“The one on the video.”
“What video?”
“We’re not stupid,” Mel said. “The video on your cell phone. We saw it. So did your grandmother.”
“She’s not my-”
Mel cut short his objection. “So did the governor.”
“I don’t know what video you’re talking about.”
“Maybe this will remind you.” I had inventoried the cell phone and placed it in the Bankers Box along with the computer equipment. Mel extracted it now, turned it on, and scrolled through to the video until she found the file in question. She set the file playing and held it close enough for Josh to see the images on the tiny screen. Mel and I watched Josh while he watched the screen.
At first he acted nonchalant, as though the drama playing out in the video had nothing to do with him. Then his eyes got bigger. He took a step backward. His face went pale. This was the first time Josh Deeson was seeing those images, no question.
“So who is she?” Mel asked. “Who’s the dead girl?”
Shaking his head and covering his mouth with his hand, Josh staggered far enough back across the room until he sat down hard on the misplaced mattress.
“I don’t know who she is,” he said. “I’ve never seen that video before, I swear.”
Josh was a kid. His not-quite-changed voice cracked with emotion when he spoke.
Mel didn’t let up. She read off a phone number. “Whose number is that?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“So you expect us to believe that someone you don’t know sent this file to you and you have no idea who it is?”
“I’ve seen the number before, but I don’t know whose it is,” he said doggedly. “And I don’t know why someone would send this to me.”
Mel shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t recognize the number. We have a warrant. It’ll take time, but the phone company will be able to trace the call. We’ll find out who sent it.”
Josh swallowed hard. “Is she like, you know, really dead?”
Mel was deep in her role of bad cop. “What do you think?”
Josh didn’t answer.
Mel reached into the evidence box and pulled out the scarf. “Whose is this?” she asked.
Josh looked at it blankly without seeming to register what was in the bag. “I found it in my locker at school. I don’t know who put it there.”
“You don’t know who put it in your locker?” Mel asked.
Josh shook his head.
“Who do you suppose put it under your mattress?”
“I did,” he said. “But that’s not. .” He paused and took a shaky breath. “I mean, is that what killed her?”
