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“Or at least not many. That’s one of his problems.”
    In my book, that constituted strike two for the governor. When you’re a friendless, parentless kid, you’re stuck in a cruel universe that is not of your own making. I had never met Josh Deeson, but I was already in his corner.
    “Does Josh wear any jewelry, like a watch or a ring?” Mel asked.
    “Josh has the Seiko watch Gerry gave him for eighth-grade graduation. At least I think he still has it. Although, now that you mention it, I don’t think he’s been wearing it much lately.”
    Strike three. Governor Longmire was clearly far too important to notice what the kid she’s supposed to be looking after might be wearing. Believe me, I know teenagers can be annoying as hell. And I have some experience with being a less than exemplary parent, but I had also read about some of Marsha Longmire’s stump speeches where she waxed eloquent on a return to “traditional family values” and talked about how loving parenting was needed to bring at-risk kids back from the brink, as long as said at-risk kids weren’t part of her own extended family. How do you spell hypocrite?
    Mel glanced at her watch and closed her notebook. “Since you’d like us to complete the search of Josh’s room before he gets home from school, we should probably get started. We won’t be disturbing your husband, will we?”
    “No. Gerry is in a hospital bed in what used to be the maid’s quarters on this floor. Before the surgery, going up and down the stairs was just too much for him. Josh’s room is on the third floor.”
    “I understand he was using ropes to get in and out?”
    Marsha nodded. “Rope ladders, really,” she said. “This is an old building with old wiring and lots of wood. For safety’s sake we keep a rope ladder in each upstairs room to serve as emergency exits in case of fire. Josh used two of them—one to lower himself out his window and onto the balcony over the front portico. He used a second ladder to go from the balcony to the ground.
    “One of the guys on my security detail called to report seeing someone exiting the building. Whoever it was managed to get away, but they were pretty sure it was Josh. I went to his room to check. He was gone, but his window was open and the upstairs ladder was tied to the headboard of his bed. I told the security guys that I’d handle things from there, and I did. I left the ropes where they were. When Josh came scrambling back into his room a little after sunrise, guess who was lying in wait? He was quite surprised to see me.”
    “I’ll bet he was,” I said. “Is that where Josh’s computer is, on his desk?”
    She nodded. “I tried accessing it, but it’s password-protected now with his password instead of mine.”
    Somehow I doubted a fifteen-year-old’s idea of an unbreakable password would be much of a barrier to a computer-savvy guy like Todd Hatcher.
    “What about your husband?” Mel asked. “Might he know the password?”
    “He might, but please don’t ask him. As I said, Gerry is ill. If I can be trusted to handle the governing of Washington State, I can certainly handle a recalcitrant fifteen-year-old. I told Josh that, because he broke curfew, he was losing all his privileges, including his cell phone and his computer. He knew I wasn’t bluffing, and he handed over the cell phone. The computer is up in his room. I made sure he didn’t delete anything before he left for school.”
    “I’m assuming you didn’t mention anything to Mr. Willis about what you found on the phone.”
    “Absolutely not,” she declared. “I saw no reason to upset him. It was bad enough that I was upset.”
    Mel stood up and collected her purse. “Let’s go upstairs and execute that search warrant,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”

Chapter 4
    M arsha Longmire led us through the house and up two sets of stairways, all the while giving us a running commentary about who the mansion’s builders were, how