Betrayal of Trust (23 page)

“Mel told me about the e-mail,” Ralph was saying. “She thought I should try to find out what I could in advance of your making contact with Sally Mathers in case she was somehow trying to scam you. As near as I can tell, she's not. She seems to be on the level.”

I tried to pay attention to his words, but I couldn't. All I could do right then was stare in stunned silence at the face of someone who had been absent from my life for more than six decades, from before my birth. My mother and I never discussed my father when I was growing up. It was almost as though he was a ghost who hadn't ever existed in real life. And now the ghost was here, smiling back at me with a crooked grin and straight teeth. Those could have been my own, too.

For a moment, my eyes blurred with tears. How different all our lives would have been if my father hadn't died in that motorcycle wreck or if he and my mother had married before I was born. What if he had lived long enough to take us back to Texas with him, back to Beaumont? Would my mother and father have lived happily ever after? Would my mother have been able to make the transition from being a Seattle girl to living in the wilds of East Texas? Would there have been other kids besides me in the family, a sister or a brother, perhaps, or maybe even both?

And what would my life have been like if I had been raised as Jonas Piedmont Mencken, with part of my name coming from my mother's father and part of it from my father's father? What would it have been like to grow up as the son of a loving father, as opposed to being a cast-off grandson, disowned twice over by two hard-bitten, hidebound old men who had no truck with a “no-good” woman who had borne a child out of wedlock? How had they justified turning away from that mother and child? After all, I was the
result
of an “unholy” union, not the
cause
of it. Why had they chosen to punish me right along with her?

All the while I was growing up, every holiday had served as a bleak reminder of how different our lives were from everyone else's. Other kids came back to school after Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter with stories of joyous holiday dinners and family celebrations complete with grandparents and cousins, aunts and uncles. For our little family it was always just the two of us—my mother and me and no one else.

I guess that's part of what was going through my mind right then as I looked at the photos—that whole catalog of what-ifs and might-have-beens as opposed to what was.

When I could talk again, I looked at Ralph. “Tell me about him,” I said.

“Hank was a kid from a well-respected family. They had quite a lot of money—oil money, it turns out—but Hank wasn't especially studious and he wasn't drawn to the family business, either. He was a kid who liked to have fun, a little too much fun on occasion. Liked to walk on the wild side and all that. As Ms. Mathers told you in that e-mail, he got in some kind of hot water back home and was given a choice of joining the service or going to jail. He joined the navy. That's how he ended up in Washington State, where he met your mother.

“I believe that after he died and before you were born, your mother made an effort to contact the family. They thought she was some kind of gold digger who was after the family money, and refused all contact.”

“Which explains why she made up a last name for me rather than using hers or his.”

Ralph nodded. “When your father's parents, your grandparents, subsequently died, your aunt, your father's sister, became your grandparents' sole heir.”

“Sally Mathers's mother.”

“Yes, Hannah. From what your cousin said in that e-mail, I wouldn't be surprised if your aunt might want to name you as a beneficiary in her will.”

“That seems unlikely to me, doesn't it to you?” I asked.

Ralph shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

“I sent Sally an e-mail when we got back to the hotel last night,” I said. “I told her I was involved in a case and that, as soon as it was resolved, I'd get back to her. But I don't think I ever believed any of this was real. I thought it was some kind of pipe dream.”

“It's not a pipe dream,” Ralph said. “I've checked newspaper records both here in Washington and in Texas. Hank Mencken's military records show that he died in a motorcycle crash outside Bremerton in the last year of World War II. His body was transported back to Texas, where he was accorded a full military funeral and burial. Because of the family's status in the community, his death received a good deal of coverage in the local newspaper. The
Beaumont Daily Ledger
no longer exists, but its archives have been digitized and turned over to the Texas State Historical Association. That's where I found these two photos.”

The waitress showed up with menus and a carafe of coffee. I picked up the photos and held them out of harm's way so no inadvertent drips from the pot would mar them.

Mel reached over and touched the back of my hand. “Are you all right?” she asked.

I shook my head. On the one hand, I wasn't all right. On the other hand, I was. For the first time in my entire life I was a whole person—one with both a mother and a father.

“It's a little much to take in all at once,” I said.

Ralph nodded. “I've made some discreet inquiries,” he said. “If you want to see your father's sister before she passes, you should probably go to Texas as soon as possible. She's a cancer patient who has decided to accept no additional treatment.”

“You mean like hospice?” I asked.

Ralph nodded. “Pain meds only. If you use your jet card, you can be there in a matter of hours.”

“I can't walk away from this case,” I said. “Ross Connors is counting on us.”

And so is Josh Deeson,
I thought.

Like me, Josh had been a fatherless kid until Marsha Longmire and Gerry Willis had tried to take him under their wing. Unfortunately, Josh had turned away from everything they'd offered him—a new family, a place in their universe, life itself. He had rejected it all. I didn't want to make the same mistake.

But on the other hand . . .

“Let me pull together a few more documents,” Ralph continued, “so that when you go you'll have the benefit of the full story insofar as we know it. But don't go by yourself,” he cautioned. “Take Mel with you.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “She's my partner. When it comes to family matters, she's got my back.”

I looked at Mel. I expected her to be smiling; she wasn't.

“I was worried that I had overstepped by turning Ralph loose on this,” she said. “I wasn't sure how you would react.”

“I'm still not sure how I'm going to react,” I said. “But I think I needed something to get me off dead center and help me overcome decades of inertia.”

“So it's all right then?”

I nodded.

The waitress stalked up to our table. “What'll you have this morning?” she said. “And do you want separate checks?”

“No,” I said. “One check only. This one's on me.”

We ordered breakfast. I don't remember what I ate. I don't remember what was said. I sat there the whole time continuing to stare down at the pair of photographs of the man who had been my father.

It was an odd sensation. Seeing him made me happy and sad. Glad to see who he was and to know he had once existed. Sad to realize that I had never known him; would never know him. And sad, too, to realize that he never knew me or my kids, especially his grandson, Scott, whose face was stamped with the same indelible family features—the Mencken family's in Hank's world; the Beaumont family's in mine.

Hello and good-bye at the same time. It made me happy; it broke my heart.

Then Mel's phone rang. She answered. “No!” she said. “When?” And then, “Okay. We'll be right there.”

She picked up her purse. “Sorry,” she told Ralph. “Time to go to work.”

“What?” I asked.

“That was Ross,” she said. “There's been a fire at Janie's House overnight. He says the office building is a total loss.”

Chapter 23

R
alph's cell phone rang just then, too. Answering, he waved at us while I gathered up the photos and took them along as we left the restaurant.

“Are you okay?” Mel asked as we got into the car.

“Okay,” I said, “and more than a little amazed. Thanks for putting Ralph on the case.”

“You're welcome,” she said.

It took only a few minutes to drive from the Red Lion to what was left of Janie's House. Contrast is everything. The restaurant had been quiet and verging on sedate. At Janie's House, chaos reigned for several blocks in either direction on Seventeenth Avenue Southeast. As Ross had told Mel, the middle building in the three-house complex had burned to the ground. Sparks from that had ignited the roof on one of the other two buildings and had burned through the shingles and into the attic space. No doubt that one would have suffered both smoke and water damage. Only the charred back wall of the middle building was still standing when we arrived. Firemen swarmed around it, extinguishing hot spots.

Our Special Homicide badges were enough to get us through the police barricades. Officers there told us that the fire chief in charge of the incident was Alan Mulholland. Dressed in full firefighting gear, he stood at the center of the action waving his arms and shouting out orders, while a frantic Meribeth Duncan, wearing sweats and with her orange-and-purple hair in sleep-tossed disarray, dogged his every step.

“How is it possible that there's this much damage when the fire department is just down the street?” she demanded. “Couldn't you have done something sooner?”

“Look, lady,” he said impatiently, “we were here less than four minutes after the call came in. You should have had hardwired smoke detectors in all the buildings. The one in the second building went off just fine when the roof caught fire,” he said, pointing toward the house next door.

“All three buildings had the same kind of equipment,” Meribeth insisted. “We had to install smoke detectors in order to bring them up to code. We have state-of-the-art intrusion detectors as well.”

“Then maybe you should have a chat with the installer,” Mulholland said. “This one didn't work at all.”

Mel took Meribeth by the arm and led her away, giving me a clear shot at Mulholland.

“Is there a chance someone disabled the alarm?” I asked.

“That's a possibility, I suppose,” Mulholland began, then he stopped answering my questions, glared at me, and fired back one of his own. “Who the hell are you?”

When I showed him my badge, he gave me an appraising look. “Special Homicide,” he mused. “That's Ross Connors's outfit, isn't it?”

I nodded.

“What are you doing here? I haven't released any information about finding a body.”

“Is there one?” I asked.

My question was met with a sharp “No comment.”

Which told me that there was a body, but I didn't press him about it.

“We're here working another case,” I told him.

“A case connected to what happened here?” he asked.

“Could be,” I said.

When someone starts a game of noncooperation, it's always pleasant to return the favor.

“So what are we talking about here,” I asked, “arson?”

Mulholland gave me a long look. Then, because I seemed to have passed some kind of first-responder professional muster, he gave me a reasonable answer.

“Looks good for arson, but we don't know that for sure,” Mulholland said. “It'll have to cool off before we can do any real investigating. It's too soon to send in the accelerant-sniffing dogs, but I'd say, yes, my best guess is arson. And, yes, there's at least one body in the rubble and maybe more. If it turns out that alarms and sprinkler systems were disabled, that would boost the likelihood of it being an inside job.”

Mel came over and joined us at that point. “How tough is that to do?”

Mulholland looked at her and then at me. “We're together,” I said.

“It might be tough, but for someone with a reasonable amount of tech savvy, it wouldn't be impossible.”

“Who called in the fire?” I asked.

“Some guy out delivering newspapers on his morning route saw it first. The 911 call came in just after six
A.M.
, but the fire had been burning for some time before that. It looks like the fire was started in one of the back rooms, so it wasn't visible from the front until after it had a good burn going. My lieutenant over there has the delivery guy's contact information. Other than the fire, he didn't see anyone. At least that's what he told us.”

As Mel went to get the contact information, my phone rang. I hauled it out of my pocket. Caller ID said it was a restricted call. That usually means that the caller is a member of some political action committee bent on saving the whales or opposing abortion. How solicitors at both ends of the political spectrum ended up with my cell phone number on their lists is more than I can understand, and I didn't make it easy for them. There was an unmistakable hint of frost in my voice when I answered.

“Who's calling?”

“Captain Hoyt, with the Washington State Patrol,” Joan Hoyt said. “Dr. Mowat just sent over the official copy of his autopsy report on Josh Deeson. It turns out there was one item in particular he failed to mention to me earlier.”

“Anything we should know?” I asked.

“Apparently Josh was sexually active,” Joan said, “and not in the boy-girl sense of the word, either. There's no way to tell if it was consensual or not, but there's evidence of a recent sexual encounter that included sodomy.”

“What do you mean by ‘recent'?” I asked.

“Within ten to twelve hours of his death,” Joan answered.

“Is there enough for a DNA profile?”

“Mowat says not, but you and I know that's a load of crap. I know they can extract DNA profiles from tiny microscopic samples, but I also know DNA testing isn't cheap. I think that's the real reason Mowat is dragging his heels. For him it boils down to a budgetary issue. He doesn't want to squander his resources on something that's going to turn out to be a simple suicide. Don't worry, though,” Joan added. “I may have figured out a way to bypass him on this. To do that, however, I'll need your help.”

“What kind of help?” I asked.

“I seem to remember there were dirty clothes in the hamper in Josh Deeson's room.”

“Right,” I said. “I remember that, too.”

“I want those clothes,” Joan declared. “The room is still designated as a crime scene, so I'm hoping his family members have stayed out of it. I considered sending an officer over to the governor's mansion to collect any and all clothing from the hamper in his bedroom, but I'm not eager to have to explain why we're asking for it. You seem to have a good rapport with the governor and her husband. Do you think you and Ms. Soames could handle it?”

“Wait a minute. These people's kid committed suicide and now we're going to show up and drop the emotionally incendiary bomb that maybe he was gay, too?”

“Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't,” Joan said. “But one thing I know for sure is that Josh Deeson was a juvenile. According to Washington State law, that would make anyone having a sexual encounter with him guilty of statutory rape. That also makes Josh Deeson a victim.”

When I didn't respond immediately, Joan went right on making her case.

“Look,” she said. “We've got a bunch of kids here who have been involved in some pretty unsavory behavior. If you toss your ordinary sexual offender into the mix, who knows? We might get lucky and find some answers in the DNA database.”

Unfortunately, that premise made sense to me. A lot of sexual predators use volunteer work as a cover for searching out and stalking potential victims. It was possible that knowing Josh could have been the victim of a sexual predator might help overcome some if not all of his guardians' objections to handing over his soiled clothing.

“All right,” I said, allowing myself to be convinced. “We can give it a try.”

As I closed my phone I thought again about Josh's haunting suicide note: “I can't take it anymore.”

Our initial assumption had been that “it” had something to do with the texting harassment he'd been subjected to. Now I wondered if being involved in a same-sex relationship might have proved to be more than he could handle. I remembered that some of the harassing text messages had taunted him about having homosexual tendencies. I had thought that was just teenage meanness and spite. Maybe, however, those comments had some truth to them. If so, that, too, might have fueled Josh's self-loathing and despair.

By then, Fire Chief Mulholland was busy with someone else. Without bothering to tell him good-bye, I went looking for Mel. I found her huddled with some homicide cops from Olympia PD who were making it blatantly clear that they weren't pleased to have us on the scene.

“So that's all you're going to tell us, that the attorney general asked you to stop by an arson fire here in Olympia?” the ranking detective asked. “That he just happened to know there might be a body here?”

“Pretty much,” Mel replied, giving them one of her winning smiles. That managed to defuse the situation, but it didn't make it go away entirely. Eventually the city cops would connect the dots and come nosing around the governor's mansion. Before that happened, however, Mel and I wanted to have all our own dots connected.

Not that I blamed the locals, Dr. Bonnie Epstein included, for being pissed. After all, when I was at Seattle PD, I hated having someone from another agency land in one of my own investigations. As I recalled those instances when someone else was the interloper, I couldn't remember a single time when the willing sharing of information in either direction had been part of the program. Same thing here. We weren't talking to them and they weren't talking to us.

“Come on,” I told Mel. “We've got to go.”

“Where?” she asked.

“To pick up some laundry.”

Which tweaked the locals that much more. “What laundry?”

“Just some dirty clothes,” I said.

We left the guys from Olympia PD staring at us in disgusted silence as we headed back to the car. On the way I explained the situation. Mel didn't like the idea of having to broach such a touchy subject with Josh's grieving family any more than I did.

“What are we going to do,” she asked, “draw straws to see who's stuck explaining this bad news to Gerry Willis and Governor Longmire?”

Why was it, whenever there was bad news to deliver, we had to resort to pulling straws?

We threaded our way back through the police barricades and found the Mercedes trapped in the middle of a crowd scene. There were kids everywhere, hanging on one another, weeping and wailing. At the closest intersection someone had set up a hand-lettered sign that said
WE
♥
JANIE'S HOUSE
. Around the base of it was a collection of flowers and a few teddy bears. I'm never sure why there have to be teddy bears at memorials like that, but there are. Always.

We were almost to the car when Mel's phone rang. I could tell from her part of the conversation that the call was from Rosemary Mellon in Seattle with a few more details from Rachel Camber's autopsy. Mel was still on the phone when I caught my first glimpses of someone who had to be Giselle Longmire.

DNA is funny that way. In the midst of that crowd of distraught teenagers, and sobbing hysterically like the rest of them, Gizzy was her mother's daughter through and through. Slender, tanned, fit, and lovely, she had come to the scene in a pair of exceedingly short shorts, but she seemed genuinely dismayed by the fire's devastation. While I watched, a tall young man wearing a tracksuit made his way through the crowd. When he reached Gizzy, she looked up at him gratefully and then fell against his chest, weeping uncontrollably and craving comfort, while the kid I assumed to be Ronald Darrington Miller gazed off over her head toward the firefighters still dealing with the aftermath of the blaze.

It was an unguarded moment. Ron was standing in a crowd of people, all of whom seemed to be mesmerized by the chaos around them. He had no idea he was being observed. If he had known I was studying him, he might have managed to conceal the look of smug self-satisfaction that washed across his face. Everyone else seemed to be caught up in the emotions of the moment while Ron appeared to glide effortlessly above the fray. Then Gizzy looked up at him and said something to him. In that moment, his face was transformed. Before he replied, he donned a convincing expression of concern.

Of all the people around, I'm pretty sure I was the only one who caught that sudden change. All the other kids gathered there really were shocked and dismayed. Ron Miller was playing at being shocked and dismayed. Big difference.

The cloud cover overhead broke up briefly, illuminating the two of them—Giselle and Ron—in a shaft of sunlight. And that's when I saw them for what they were: two of the beautiful people whose sense of perfection would have been offended by the very existence of someone less than perfect—namely an interloper like Josh.

I remembered what Monica Longmire had said about Giselle resenting his being added to her family. It seemed reasonable enough to assume that someone with her intimate knowledge of Josh's background could easily have provided fodder for all those taunting e-mails, while Ron's connections to the Janie's House computer and communications systems could have provided the delivery system. If that was the case, the two of them might not have been legally responsible for kicking the chair out from under Josh and his homemade noose, but they were morally responsible for putting him on that chair in the first place.

As for the video clip? That seemed to be part of the general harassment program. Was it possible then that Giselle and Ron, in all their native superiority, were also responsible for that? Had they pretended to murder Rachel Camber and then found it necessary to kill her once the investigation started to get too close? Or had they done it just for kicks? And did they really believe they could murder someone and get away with it?