Betrayal of Trust

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?” Again his voice cracked when he spoke.

“That’s what we think,” Mel said. “What do you think?”

She sounded like such a hard-nosed bitch that I couldn’t help but be grateful that I wasn’t her suspect. But I also understood her urgency. The animosity between Josh and Governor Longmire might well be enough to call Marsha’s consent to our search into question. It might even be enough to void the search warrants Ross Connors had obtained. If the First Husband had any idea what was really going on in this room, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had risen from his deathbed, Lazarus-style, and crawled up the stairs to put a stop to it. I’m sure Mel suspected, as did I, that an attorney would show up momentarily. When he or she did, this conversation would be over. If the warrants were thrown out, what we got from Josh now might be all we had. Period.

“Where were you last night?” Mel asked.

“Around,” he said.

That was a one-word weasel answer if I’ve ever heard one. It’s exactly the kind of answer suspects give when they know they don’t have an alibi that will hold up to any kind of careful scrutiny.

“Are you kidding me?” Mel replied. “You went to all the trouble of climbing down two rope ladders to get out of the house and that’s the best you can do—around? Who were you with?”

“Nobody,” Josh insisted. “I was by myself.”

I thought he had been telling the truth about not recognizing the girl and maybe even about not knowing how the scarf had magically appeared in his locker. All I had to do was look at his face to see he was lying about being by himself. He had definitely been with somebody, and once we went through his phone and scrutinized his text messages, we’d probably have a name and a phone number. I didn’t call him on it, though, and neither did Mel. Instead, she favored me with a meaningful look that said it was time for the good cop to come to Josh’s rescue.

“Leave him alone,” I said to Mel. “He’s had a shock, and I don’t blame him for being upset.” I turned to Josh, putting on the charm and doing my best to sound sympathetic.

“Come on, Josh,” I wheedled. “Let us help you. This is the time. If you had nothing to do with what happened to the girl, you don’t have anything to worry about. Just tell us who she is and who did it. That’s all we want to know—who and maybe where. Somebody killed that poor girl, and it’s our job to find out who those people are. We don’t really care what’s on your phone or on your computer. We need to find out who killed her. Help us do that. Tell us what you know.”

Lying to suspects in interviews is standard operating procedure. I don’t like doing it, but sometimes telling a few little white lies is the only way to make any progress in the investigation.

“I already told you. I don’t know who she is. I don’t know who killed her.”