Free Betrayal of Trust by J. A. Jance Page B

going to school? That doesn’t happen, and once they get into “the system,” that often makes bad situations worse. A lot of foster parents do good work, but there are also some bad apples out there pretending to be do-gooders when they’re not.
    The story Gerry Willis related was sad and all too familiar. I found myself feeling sorry for the First Husband and for Josh Deeson, too. I was also feeling a tiny bit sorry for Governor Longmire. Yes, she was beyond exasperation with the kid now, but once upon a time she had been willing to adopt him. When you try to do a good deed, it’s not nice when it comes back years later and bites you in the butt.
    Gerry continued. “Josh can read. He taught himself. Used it as a mental escape hatch when he was living in terrible circumstances, but when it came to academics? Forget it. Giselle and Zoe were both in Olympia Prep when he came to live with us. Josh was so far behind his grade level, there was no way he could cut that, so we sent him to a public school. That’s why he’s taking classes this summer—trying to catch up. At least he was supposed to be catching up.”
    So Zoe and Giselle went to a private school while Josh was relegated to public. I love it when politicians put their kids in private schools. A little bit of the feeling-sorry stuff for Governor Longmire went away.
    â€œWe tried to make him feel like a member of the family,” Gerry went on. “We offered him a room on the second floor just like everybody else. At the time he came to live with us, the girls—Zoe and Giselle—were willing to share a bedroom so he could have one of his own, but Josh wasn’t having any of that. He’s the one who decided he wanted to live up in the damned attic.”
    Okay, so now I learned that Josh’s supposed Prisoner of Zenda plight was entirely self-imposed. Two points for Zoe and Giselle. Take one away from Josh. This was like an emotional tennis match, and I was having a hard time keeping score.
    â€œBut Josh didn’t want to have a family,” Gerry said. He paused and then asked, “Do you ever read Dean Koontz?”
    As far as I was concerned, this was a question from way out in left field. I shook my head. “Doesn’t he write horror stuff, sort of like Stephen King?”
    In high school, my son, Scott, was a huge Stephen King fan. Me, not so much. I was a homicide cop. I didn’t need to read about horror. I saw too much of it every day.
    â€œSimilar but different,” Gerry said. “One of Koontz’s books is called Watchers. It’s about a DNA experiment gone horribly awry. Two things come out of the experiment and they are the exact opposite. One is this incredibly intelligent golden retriever named Einstein. The other is a terrible monster. They turn out to be Good and Evil personified. And the scene that got to me in that book—”
    â€œI know,” Mel interrupted. “The scene in the cave—the monster’s carefully made bed and his treasured Disney toys.”
    â€œThat’s it exactly,” Gerry Willis said.
    Then he buried his face in his hands and sobbed. It took some time for him to get himself back under control and dry his eyes. In the meantime I was left thinking about how much more than a purse Mel Soames had brought with us to this interview.
    â€œWe noticed the book on the Spanish Inquisition,” I said when Gerry finally had regained his equanimity enough that he could once again answer questions. “Where did that come from?”
    â€œI ordered it for him from Powell’s down in Portland,” Gerry said.
    In terms of bookstores, Powell’s is a Pacific Northwest institution. They sell new books, of course, but they also have a huge reputation and a well-oiled system for tracking down old books, some of which are quite valuable.
    â€œIt’s an old college textbook,” Gerry continued. “As far as I know,