Betrayal of Trust by J. A. Jance

“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