Betrayal of Trust Read Online Free PDF Page B

governor seemed to get a grip. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders, pulled away from me, and turned to Mel.
    â€œPlease forgive that outburst,” she said, managing to put her public mask on over her private hurt. “You must be Agent Soames. Ross told me about you. Do come in, but if you don’t mind, I’ll visit with you in my study rather than taking you into the living room. It’s more private in there.”
    I understood what the word “private” meant in that instance. There was a convalescing patient somewhere in the house, and Marsha Longmire didn’t want her husband to overhear a word of what we’d be discussing.
    After the heat outside, the interior of the house was comfortably cool. Marsha took us into a small office that was just to the left of the front door. Two walls were full of tall bookshelves, loaded with what appeared to be leather-bound volumes—a decorator statement, most likely, rather than books that had ever been read. There was a magnificent but apparently little-used desk at the base of one wall of shelves. There was a seating area in front of the desk made up of four worn leather chairs around a coffee table. Depending on the season, the focus of the seating area could be either a gracious window that overlooked the front of the manicured grounds or a gas-log fireplace on the opposite wall. Currently the window was in vogue.
    Marsha directed us to the seating area. Before taking a seat herself, she plucked a box of tissues from the corner of the desk and placed it on the coffee table in front of her.
    â€œHave you seen it?” she asked.
    Mel and I didn’t have to ask what “it” meant. We both knew.
    â€œYes,” I said. “We’ve both watched the clip several times.”
    Marsha Longmire’s eyes looked haunted. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “At first I thought it was just a game, but it’s not. It wasn’t.”
    â€œNo, ma’am,” Mel agreed. “It wasn’t a game.”
    â€œAnd the girl is really dead?”
    â€œSo it would appear,” Mel replied. “We can’t be certain, of course.”
    Tears welled up again. Marsha took a ragged breath. “She had such a nice smile. I’m going to be seeing that smile in nightmares for the rest of my life. You have to find out who did this, even if . . .” She stopped cold because she was thinking the unthinkable—that somehow one of the hands pulling the deadly scarf tight around an unsuspecting little girl’s neck belonged to her husband’s beloved grandson.
    Marsha seemed to focus on Mel now rather than on me. “How do you do it?” Marsha asked. “How can you stand to deal with all those dead people?”
    â€œSomeone has to,” Mel answered. “Someone has to look out for the victims. Sometimes we’re all they have.”
    Marsha nodded. “That’s what Ross said, too, but I can’t believe that Josh would be involved in something like this. The idea that he’d even have the image—” She broke off and then shivered. “It’s chilling. I can’t take it in. But if he wasn’t involved somehow, why would someone send it to him?”
    There’s a time for brusque questions, and there’s a time for gentle conversation. This was the latter, and Mel is better at doing that than anyone I know.
    â€œFirst off, Madam Governor—” she began.
    â€œPlease, call me Marsha,” the governor interrupted. “I’m not feeling very much like a governor today.”
    â€œFirst off, Marsha,” Mel began again, “there’s no way to tell how old the film is. We may discover that it’s something that has been out there on the Internet for a long time.”
    â€œYou mean like on YouTube or something? Do they have sites like that?”
    â€œUnfortunately, yes,” Mel answered.