Justice Denied

by J. A. Jance

  Investigators continue in their efforts to locate the unidentified nun who was seen speaking to Escobar shortly before he disappeared. They’re also trying to locate the vehicle involved in the incident, reportedly a dark blue Buick Riviera with a broken front headlight and extensive front end damage.

  The mention of a nun’s possible involvement was an immediate red flag, but for right then I let it go because I finally had what I needed. Flipping open my phone, I set about finding Detective Donner. He had been investigating a homicide that involved a dead sexual predator, which, it so happened, was what SHIT was doing, too. More or less.

  It took a while. “Sorry to interrupt your Sunday,” I said when I finally reached the man at home and had introduced myself. I was worried he’d give me the third degree and want to know all about me—who I was and why was I horning in on his weekend, to say nothing of messing around in one of his cases.

  “No big deal,” he said. “I’m watching golf. Tiger’s cleaning everybody’s clock, as per usual. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking into one of your old cases,” I said. “Wondering whether or not you ever closed it.”

  “Which one?”

  “Juan Carlos Escobar.”

  Donner didn’t even hesitate. “That punk? No, we never closed it. Doubt we ever will. Near as we can figure, he pissed someone off while he was in juvie and they took care of him as soon as he got out. He was sent up because he raped and robbed some helpless little old lady,” Donner added. “The victim died eventually and probably because of what Escobar did to her, but he was never charged with murder like he shoulda been.”

  “And none of her relatives were involved in his subsequent death?” I asked.

  “We thought so at first, but they all came out squeaky clean. We ended up settling on the gangbanger theory. What can I tell you?”

  “Did you ever find the vehicle?”

  Donner hesitated. “Yes,” he said. “As a matter of fact, we did. Two weeks after the fact, this guy comes home from taking his wife to Europe for their fortieth wedding anniversary. He gets off the plane and his car is missing from the airport parking lot.”

  “Let me guess, a blue Buick Riviera.”

  “You got it. The parking lot attendant figures the guy just forgot where he parked, so he gets a security guard to drive him around. When they find it, it’s there in the lot all right, but the date and time stamp on the ticket is a whole twenty-four hours after the guy and his wife landed in Paris. When the crime lab went over it, the interior had been wiped down pretty thoroughly, but they did find pieces of Juan Carlos still stuck to the front end and undercarriage.”

  “What about the nun?” I asked. “Did you ever find her?”

  “Look,” he said, hedging, “this is a small town. I’m not sure I should go into all this.”

  After blithely spilling his guts about Escobar, I found Donner’s sudden reticence mystifying.

  “Come on, Detective Donner,” I urged. “Did you find her or not?”

  “We never found her,” he said. “But nobody ever reported her missing, either,” he hurried on. “We never found a body. Never found any remains or any blood evidence. So we didn’t have any way of knowing if we even had a second victim. The chief made the call. Said we were keeping it under wraps until we had an actual ID or a missing persons report to go on.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What are you saying?”

  Donner sighed. “When the crime lab went over the Buick, they found a single thread—a long black thread. The guy who owned the car didn’t own anything black like that and neither did his wife.”

  “So the nun was in the car.”

  “That’s what we think, but we have no idea what happened to her afterward.”

  “The thread’s still there?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Did you do composites of her?”

  “I think so,” Donner said. “They’re probably locked away in the cold case room. Why?”

  “I’d like to get a look at them, if I could. Maybe you could fax them over to me.”

  “But…” he began.

  “Look,” I said. “I know you went out on a limb here by telling me this. If you like, you don’t even have to fax them to my office. If I give you my home number, we can keep this off everybody’s radar, right?”

  “Right,” he said. “That would be a big help. What’s your number?”

  CHAPTER 18

  What’s going on?” Mel asked as I hung up with Donner.

  “The cops in Bountiful had reports that Escobar spoke to a nun shortly after his release and just before his disappearance. There’s some evidence that the nun was in the car that ran down Escobar.”

  “She’s dead, too, then?”

  “No evidence one way or the other,” I returned. “And without a missing persons report or any evidence of foul play, Bountiful sat on that part of the case. I’ve asked him to fax over a composite sketch, but we won’t get that until after Detective Donner goes into work tomorrow—if then.”

  The phone rang. It was the doorman calling to say Ralph Ames was on his way up.

  Even late on a Sunday evening, Ralph arrived looking like someone who had just stepped out of a Brooks Brothers ad. Under the best of circumstances I look like your basic rumpled bed—tux-wearing occasions excepted. Fortunately our friendship is more than skin-deep.

  “Good evening,” he said. “Although, from the sound of things, there’s not much good about it.”

  Mel gave him a wan smile. “Not much,” she agreed. “Should I get my checkbook?”

  “Definitely,” he said. “Then let’s go over this whole thing again, from beginning to end. I’ve got a call in to Lucinda Reyes down in Arizona. She’s a retired Phoenix cop, and she’s the best translator in the business when it comes to talking with federales.”

  We spent the better part of the next two hours bringing Ralph up to speed on everything we had learned not only about the Matthews case but about Juan Carlos Escobar as well. In the end, Ralph seemed to agree with us.

  “Yes, it is a bit much to think that these are unrelated,” he said. “The fact that you and Ms. Hennessey are both involved in the same organization would seem to indicate some kind of connection. Are you finding any similar cases among those essays you mentioned?”

  “I’ve only checked out four of them so far,” Mel said. “One of those was a grandfather, a pedophile who died, reportedly of natural causes, thirty years ago. That’s approximately twenty-five years before SASAC was a gleam in Anita Bowdin’s eye, so I doubt that one has anything to do with this. One was a bar pickup scene date rape where no assailant was ever named, apprehended, or charged. The other two are still locked up in prison. One of those raped and murdered Professor Clark’s eleven-year-old granddaughter. The other attacked Justine Maldonado’s younger sister.”

  “And both of those are still alive?” Ralph asked.

  “Alive and kicking,” Mel said. “I already checked.”

  It struck me as interesting that in almost every case, with the possible exception of the date rape scenario, the women had all been galvanized into taking action—and joining SASAC—by an attack on someone other than themselves. Before I could make that observation, though, the phone rang.

  By then it was late enough in the evening that I expected it to be Scott telling me that he and Cherisse were safely home or Jeremy calling to give me the latest update on Kelly. Or maybe even Thomas Dortman finally getting around to returning my call. It wasn’t.

  “Mr. Beaumont?” a tearful female voice asked when I answered.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s me, DeAnn Cosgrove. I need to see you. Right now.”

  “Why? What is it? What’s going on? If it’s an emergency, you should probably hang up and call 9-1-1.”

  “No. I need to talk to you. Please.”

  Taking the hint, Ralph was already gathering up his things in preparation for leaving. DeAnn sounded utter
ly frantic, making me think that I was being invited into some kind of domestic dispute.

  “Is your husband there?” I asked. “Is there some kind of problem?”

  “Donnie’s not here,” DeAnn answered. “That’s why I need to talk to you.”

  Talking to hysterical women has never been my strong suit, and DeAnn definitely sounded hysterical.

  “All right,” I said, “but if you don’t mind, I’d like to bring my partner along. We’ll be leaving downtown Seattle in a matter of minutes.”

  DeAnn didn’t wait around long enough to reply one way or the other. She simply hung up. Before I could do the same, Mel was slipping her shoes back on her feet.

  “Wait up,” she said to me. “My Glock’s down the hall. So’s my jacket.”

  Ralph, Mel, and I rode down in the elevator together. Ralph exited at the lobby and Mel turned to me. “Who was that on the phone?” she asked. “Where are we going and why?”

  “DeAnn Cosgrove is a woman whose father disappeared in the Mount Saint Helens eruption in 1980. She lives in Redmond, and that’s where we’re going. As to why? I have no idea. She said she needed to talk to me, and waiting until morning evidently isn’t an option. The other problem, of course, is that her parents were gunned down last night up in Leavenworth. The last thing her husband said to me on the phone was that he was going to rip the stepfather’s head off. Not surprisingly, Detective Lander, the guy working the Leavenworth homicides, is wondering if DeAnn’s husband may have had something to do with the shooting.”

  “Do you think he did?” Mel asked.

  “Donnie told Detective Lander he was out drinking with his pals last night,” I replied. “But at this point, I don’t have enough information on Donnie Cosgrove to think one way or the other.”

  “But he isn’t home right now, is he?” Mel ascertained.

  “Right,” I told her. “That’s what DeAnn said on the phone.”

  We drove for a while in silence. The clearing that had happened earlier was now a thing of the past. The wind was coming in sharp gusts and it was spitting rain as we headed for the bridge. I knew I should keep my mind on the Cosgroves and what was happening there, but it kept coming back to Mel.

  “What’s Anita’s deal?” I asked.

  “Anita’s?” Mel returned. “What do you mean?”

  “The other women you were telling us about, the ones on the board, all but one of them—you included—got involved because of something that happened to someone else—a friend or a relative. Since Anita’s the mover and shaker behind all of it, I’m just curious about what set her off. Did something happen to her? Did it happen to someone she cared about?”

  “I don’t know,” Mel said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever said. Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Mel remarked, “I am, too.”

  By the time we parked in Donnie and DeAnn Cosgrove’s driveway, the sprinkles had changed into a hard rain. The porch light was on. The moment we pulled into the driveway the front door opened and DeAnn came dashing out to meet us. Her hair, hanging loose, seemed to stand on end in the blowing wind and rain.

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” I said at once.

  “Thank you,” she said, stepping forward to meet me. “And thank you for coming. I didn’t know what else to do or who else to call. And with the kids already asleep, I couldn’t just throw them in the car and go traipsing all over God’s creation looking for him.”

  “Looking for Donnie?” I asked.

  She nodded. “He left the house a little while after Detective Lander did. I was so upset about my mother that I couldn’t think straight. I really needed him here with me, but he said he had to go out, that he’d be right back. But it’s been hours now, and I have no idea where he is. I’ve tried calling his cell and his office phone, but he isn’t answering. I even tried calling his friends, the ones he said he was with last night.” She paused.

  “And?” I prompted.

  “They hadn’t seen him,” she said. “They hadn’t seen him today—or last night either, Detective Beaumont. What does it mean if he wasn’t where he said he was?”

  Mel rounded the back corner of the car. Neither she nor I answered, but we both knew what it meant: Donnie Cosgrove’s alibi was out the window.

  “I even called some of the local hospitals,” DeAnn continued distractedly. “But then, when I found the note…”

  “What note?” Mel asked, speaking for the first time.

  DeAnn wheeled and turned on Mel. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  Obviously a good part of what we’d said on the telephone hadn’t penetrated DeAnn Cosgrove’s frantic concern.

  “I’m Detective Beaumont’s partner, Melissa Soames,” Mel explained. “He asked me to come along and see if I could help. Since it’s raining so hard, maybe it would be best if we went inside.”

  Nodding, a distraught DeAnn Cosgrove led us into her house. The place looked entirely different from the way it had looked on my previous visit. The living room appeared to have been cleaned within an inch of its life. There were fresh vacuum cleaner tracks on the rugs. The dining room table had been cleared of almost all paper debris, and no toys at all were anywhere in evidence.

  “After Detective Lander left, he did, too,” DeAnn went on. “I mean, how could he do that, leave me here alone with my mom dead and everything? After a while I called some of my friends from church, just so I’d have someone here with me, so I wouldn’t be alone. They came over and helped with the kids. Helped get the house cleaned up. They finally left a little while ago. I knew I needed to get some rest whether Donnie came home or not. That’s when I found the note—when I was getting ready for bed.”

  “What note?” Mel prompted.

  DeAnn hurried over to the dining room table and picked up a single three-by-five card. On it was written: “I’m sorry. I love you. Donnie.”

  “Sorry for what?” I asked.

  DeAnn shrugged. “About my mother, maybe? I guess that’s what he meant.”

  I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor woman. Her mother and stepfather had both been murdered, but at this juncture she was so concerned about her missing husband that grief for the two homicide victims had yet to gain any real traction.

  “And the note,” Mel said, “where did you find it?”

  “Folded up in my nightgown, under my pillow. Donnie would have known I wouldn’t find it until I started getting ready for bed. I understand that now. It means he knew he wasn’t coming back before bedtime. But why? Why would he do that?” DeAnn wailed. She was crying in dead earnest now.

  “You hadn’t quarreled?” Mel asked when DeAnn quieted down some.

  “Well, maybe a little,” DeAnn admitted. “I was really mad at him for staying out so late last night. I’m here with the kids all day every day. I expect us to be together on weekends, and usually we are. But last night he said he needed to meet some guys from work. We had a fight about it before he even left.”

  “What time did he come home then?” Mel asked.

  “Late,” DeAnn answered. “And I mean real late. After the bars closed. He didn’t think I’d be awake, but I had been up with the baby. He parked on the street and then came sneaking in through the garage wearing nothing but his underwear. Said one of his buddies had gotten drunk and barfed all over him, so he put his clothing in the wash before he ever came into the house. That seemed really strange to me because, barf or not, doing laundry isn’t Donnie’s thing. And this morning, when I went out to the garage to do a load, I saw that he’d washed everything, even his sneakers—washed them and put them in the dryer. I don’t know what he was thinking. They came out of the dryer completely wrecked. I had to throw them away.”

  “What happened then?” Mel inquired.

  “He was really quiet all morning,” DeAnn answered. “I kept asking him what was wrong—if he was sick or hungover or what. I even went out and checked on his car. I was afraid he h
ad wrecked it or something and was scared to tell me about it. Then, when Detective Lander was here, it was like Donnie was…” She paused, as if struggling to find the right word.

  “What?” Mel asked.

  “I don’t know,” DeAnn said. “Just weird. I mean, my mother was the one who was dead. I needed him to be here for me, but it was like he was out of it or something. And, of course, the kids picked right up on it. Since we were both upset, they were upset, too. It was all I could do to concentrate and answer Detective Lander’s questions. Then, as soon as the detective left to meet you, Donnie left, too. He told me that he had to go out, that he’d be back later.”

  “And you haven’t heard anything from him since?” I asked.

  DeAnn Cosgrove’s eyes filled with tears. “Not a word,” she said, shaking her head. “Except for the note. What does it all mean?”

  “After your stepfather came by here the other day and after Donnie called me, did he go to Leavenworth?”

  “He talked about it,” DeAnn allowed. “Donnie was livid Jack had come here to cause trouble. He said he was going to go to their house and do the same thing, but I told him not to. I told him two wrongs don’t make a right and that we’re supposed to be big enough to turn the other cheek.”

  I had a feeling that Donnie had been focused on something far more Old Testamenty—an eye for an eye, for example.

  “You said you’d done some calling around, looking for your husband,” Mel said. “Where all did you check?”

  “He sometimes works weekends, so I thought he might have gone to his office,” DeAnn said. “But I called and checked with the guard shack where people have to sign in and out. Nobody there had seen him. When I found out his friends hadn’t seen him, either, that’s when I finally called you. I didn’t know who else to ask. Should I file a missing persons report now, or is it too soon?”

  Under the circumstances, it seemed unlikely that a missing persons report would be needed to jump-start a search for Donnie Cosgrove.