Justice Denied

by J. A. Jance

  “Does your husband have access to any weapons?” Mel asked.

  DeAnn stared at her. “You mean, like a gun?”

  Mel nodded.

  “Donnie does have a gun,” DeAnn conceded. “It belonged to his father. He keeps it locked in his desk in the bedroom. But why…?”

  “Is it there now?”

  Without a word, DeAnn left the room. When she returned a few moments later, her face was pasty white. “It’s gone,” she whispered, sinking onto the couch. “You don’t think he’s the one who did it, do you? I’m mean, it’s not possible!”

  But of course it was all too thinkable and all too possible, although I’m sure that was the very first moment it ever crossed DeAnn’s mind that her beloved Donnie, the father of her children, might have murdered her mother and stepfather.

  “What kind of gun is it?” Mel asked.

  “I have no idea,” DeAnn managed. “I don’t know anything about guns—anything at all. I just know I didn’t like him having one.”

  “But it was a handgun of some kind?” Mel persisted. “Not a rifle or a shotgun.”

  “Yes, I guess that’s what you’d call it—a handgun. I think Donnie said it was a.357, but I’m not sure.”

  Had I been asking the questions right then, my face probably would have given away the game. Mel’s didn’t. “I’ll go ahead and take down that missing persons information, then,” she said smoothly. “What kind of vehicle did you say your husband drives?”

  It was a deft pivot on Mel’s part, and DeAnn Cosgrove clung to that disarming piece of fiction as though her life depended on it. Maybe it did. Without being able to believe we really were taking a missing persons report, DeAnn might have fallen apart completely.

  “A Chevrolet Tahoe,” she answered. Surprisingly enough, the woman was still able to reel off Donnie’s plate number from memory. For the next several minutes, she located and supplied all the necessary info about the clothing her husband had been wearing when he left the house. She gave us his contact information at work as well as the names, addresses, and phone numbers of friends and relations.

  “Now what?” DeAnn asked when Mel finally put her notebook and pen away.

  “We’re going to try to find him,” Mel said.

  “But not hurt him, right?” DeAnn said. “I’m sure he hasn’t done anything wrong. He wouldn’t have.”

  I think she was trying to convince herself even more than she was us.

  “We’ll do everything in our power to see that no one gets hurt,” I told her.

  “Thank you,” DeAnn said gratefully. “Thank you very much.”

  She stood on the front porch as we made our way out the gate, down the driveway, and back to the sidewalk. At the end of the driveway a rolling garbage bin had already been hauled out to the street. Mel and I exchanged glances as we walked past it. She held out her hand. “I’ll drive,” she said.

  Gentleman that I am, I handed over the keys and climbed into the passenger seat. DeAnn watched while we fastened our seat belts and Mel started the engine. Only when we actually pulled away from the curb did DeAnn disappear into the house, closing the door and turning off the porch light. At the end of the block Mel negotiated a quick U-turn and then brought us back to the garbage bin parked at the end of the Cosgroves’ driveway.

  Garbage hauled out to the street no longer has the expectation of privacy. Since the Dumpster in question came from a house awash in toddlers and disposable diapers, opening the lid was not for the faint of heart. I can handle crime scenes. I can handle the stench of death. The odor of several dozen moldering dirty diapers, however, left me gagging.

  The top layer consisted of two large white plastic bags, carefully tied shut. For a time it looked as though I’d have to untie the bags and go pawing through them—not a pleasant thought. I hauled them out and placed them on the curb beside me. Then, to my immense relief, visible in the pale glow of a rain-drenched street lamp was exactly what I was looking for—a pair of mangled man’s sneakers. They had clearly been run through both a washer and dryer and looked as though they were no longer wearable.

  Triumphantly I grabbed them up, threw the trash bags back inside the container, and hurried back to the car with my booty.

  “Got ’em,” I told Mel. “Now drive. Next stop is the crime lab. Let’s see what, if anything, Luminol can tell us.”

  Mel, driving like a maniac as usual, steered us straight to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab on Airport Way south of downtown Seattle. There it took only a matter of minutes for Rena Bullworth, one of the criminalists specializing in blood evidence, to confirm what Mel and I already suspected. The Cosgroves’ Maytag may have done its darnedest to clean up the mess, but the Luminol’s telltale blue told us that there were still tiny traces of human blood lingering on the seemingly white shoelaces and seams of Donnie Cosgrove’s Reeboks.

  Seeing blood there was one thing. Being able to know whose blood we were seeing was another problem entirely.

  Moments later I was on the phone with Detective Lander up in Leavenworth telling him about this latest development.

  “So you think I’m right and the son-in-law could be our shooter?” he wanted to know.

  “Maybe,” I said. “The lady here at the crime lab isn’t very hopeful about being able to extract a DNA profile from what little blood is left on Donnie Cosgrove’s shoes, but she’s going to try.”

  “Even if the blood evidence isn’t there, we’ve got footprints,” Lander said. “If your shoes match our prints, we can at least put him at the crime scene.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “In the meantime, what kind of shell casings were found?”

  “Just a minute,” Lander said. “Let me check the log.” It took a while for him to come back on the line. “Here it is. A nine-millimeter Golden Saber. Why?”

  “Donnie Cosgrove’s wife told us he owns a handgun of some kind—a .357, she thinks,” I said. “But considering what she knows about guns, it could very well be a nine millimeter. Whatever kind of gun it is, it’s currently missing from its usual spot in their bedroom.”

  Lander whistled. “Sounds like we need to have a sit-down with this guy.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We do, but good luck finding him. He took off this afternoon after you left without telling his wife where he was going and hasn’t been seen since. He isn’t answering his phone.”

  “You want to post the BOLO on him, or should I?” Lander asked.

  In cop parlance, a “be on the lookout” is one step under an all-points bulletin, but it means pretty much the same thing. An unwitting DeAnn Cosgrove had willingly supplied all the necessary information.

  “Not to worry,” I said. “My partner’s doing that right now.”

  “Back to Redmond?” Mel asked as we left the crime lab.

  “I don’t see any way around it,” I said. So back to Redmond we went. When we arrived at the Cosgroves’ little rambler a second time, the porch light was still off but interior lights showed at the windows. A fully dressed DeAnn responded to the bell. She came to the door with a sleeping baby cradled in her arms.

  “Did you find him?” she asked anxiously. “Is he all right?”

  “No,” Mel said. “We have yet to locate your husband, but we did find something else. We need to talk to you about it.”

  By then DeAnn Cosgrove must have cried herself out and reached her own conclusions about our earlier visit. She listened to everything Mel and I had to say with dry-eyed concentration.

  “You’re telling me he’s a suspect, then?” DeAnn asked.

  Mel nodded.

  “So what should I do? When Donnie comes home, should I try to talk him into giving up? Tell him that he should turn himself in?”

  “No!” I interjected, probably more forcefully than I should have. “Absolutely not. Don’t even think about it. Convincing armed suspects to surrender is dangerous work even for trained emergency response teams.”

  I could have added that unarmed wiv
es are notoriously bad at it, but I didn’t. Even fully armed, Sue Danielson had been no match for her ex-husband. She hadn’t been able to convince him to lay down his weapon and stop shooting. I didn’t want DeAnn Cosgrove and her children to suffer the same fate. Neither did Mel.

  “It’s always possible that your husband had nothing to do with what happened up in Leavenworth,” she said in a far more conciliatory tone than the one I had used. “But I think we can all agree that his behavior today is unusual. Until we can locate him and sort this all out, our first concern has to be keeping you and your children safe. I think you should take the children and leave.”

  “Leave?” DeAnn repeated dully. “You mean run away?”

  Yes! I wanted to scream at her. Get the hell out of Dodge!

  “It’s the middle of the night,” DeAnn objected. “The kids are asleep,” she added. “I’d have to wake them up and load them into the van. Where would I take them?”

  “You said earlier that some of your friends from church came over this afternoon and helped you. Do you think you could stay with one of them?”

  Mel met and held DeAnn’s gaze for a period of several long seconds. When DeAnn looked away first, I knew Mel had her. Give a mother a choice between her babies and her husband, and most women will take the former.

  “I’ll call Mary Jane,” she said.

  Mel and I stayed around while DeAnn packed up a vanload of food, clothing, and toys. Once the child gear had been loaded into the Dodge minivan in the garage, Mel and I helped carry the three sleeping kids out to the car and strap them into their car seats.

  With the engine running, DeAnn backed out of the garage and closed the garage door behind her. In the driveway, though, she paused and rolled down the window. “Shouldn’t I leave Donnie a note?” she asked. “What if he comes home and we’re not here? Won’t he be worried? Shouldn’t I let him know where we are?”

  I was afraid that if she went back into the house, we’d never get her to leave a second time. Mel must have shared that concern.

  “You have a cell phone, don’t you?” she asked.

  DeAnn nodded. “Yes, but—”

  “You can talk to him on the phone if he calls you,” Mel advised. “Tell him you and the kids are fine, but don’t tell him where you are or how to find you, and whatever you do, don’t agree to meet him. If he contacts you—if he tells you where he is—you call us. We’ll negotiate with him, not you.”

  “All right,” DeAnn agreed at last, putting the minivan in gear. “If you think that’s the best way to handle it…”

  Mel and I stood in the street and watched until DeAnn’s taillights disappeared around the next intersection. The process of talking her into leaving had left me drained.

  “Can we go home now?” I asked Mel. “This has been a very long day.”

  CHAPTER 19

  You did a good job with DeAnn,” I told Mel as we headed back to Seattle.

  “Thanks,” Mel said.

  We didn’t know it yet, but our self-congratulations at rescuing DeAnn Cosgrove were more than slightly premature. We went home. We went to bed. Breakfast at Fisherman’s Terminal seemed eons in the past, and we had missed having dinner altogether, but I was too tired to be hungry. I fell into bed and was asleep almost immediately. When the phone rang at two-twelve I was so far off in la-la land that I tried to shut off the alarm instead of answering the phone.

  “Mr. Beaumont?”

  I hadn’t spoken to DeAnn Cosgrove all that often, but even half asleep I recognized her voice in the urgent whisper on the other end of the line. “Are you all right?” I asked at once.

  “I’m at the house,” she said. “Donnie’s here, too. I can see him through the window. He’s asleep on the couch.”

  My heart constricted inside my chest. DeAnn was at the house and so was Donnie. In my mind’s eye I could foresee the worst of all possible outcomes.

  “What in the world are you doing there?” I demanded. “I thought I told you—”

  “I was worried about him,” DeAnn continued hurriedly. “I left the kids in Issaquah and drove by the house just to see if Donnie might have come home. And he did. His Tahoe is right here on the street where he usually parks it. His gun’s there, too—locked inside. I can see it on the front seat, but I don’t have my own key to the Tahoe. It’s still in the house. I thought about breaking the window to get at the gun, but I’m afraid that will set off the car alarm and wake him.”

  Mel sat up next to me. “What is it?” she asked.

  “You say Donnie’s asleep on the couch?” I said as much to Mel as to DeAnn, trying in that one sentence to calm DeAnn while at the same time bringing Mel up to speed. “Hang up the phone, DeAnn,” I ordered. “Get in your car and drive away. I’ll call 9-1-1 and have them send someone to—”

  “No,” DeAnn whispered to me. “No way. I’m not leaving and don’t call 9-1-1, either. Please. If armed cops show up here, they won’t think of Donnie as the man I love or the father of my children. They’ll only see a suspected killer.”

  Which he is, I thought.

  “Please, Detective Beaumont,” DeAnn continued. “If you’ll just talk to him, I’m sure he’ll listen to you.”

  I wasn’t nearly as convinced of that as DeAnn was, but by then I was already pulling on my pants. Mel scrambled out of bed after me and padded down the hallway to dress.

  “All right,” I agreed finally. “I’m coming. We’re coming,” I corrected. “Mel Soames and I both. If you don’t want us to call anyone else to meet us there, you have to promise me one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you won’t stay there with him by yourself. Drive down the street. Pull into someone else’s driveway. You can stay close enough to keep the truck in view so you can let us know in case he wakes up and starts to leave. But you cannot—you must not—be there in the house with him alone. Understand?”

  “I already told you. It’s okay. His gun’s out in the Tahoe in plain sight.”

  I reminded myself that this was a woman who probably wouldn’t know the difference between a .357 sidearm and your basic firecracker.

  “What makes you think that’s the only gun he owns?” I demanded. And what about knives? I asked myself silently. How many of those does he have?

  DeAnn started to reply, then stopped. “Donnie’s my husband…” she declared finally.

  “Look, DeAnn,” I said, struggling to sound reasonable. “I know he’s your husband and I know you love him, but in Donnie’s current state of mind, armed or not, there’s a good chance he poses a danger to himself and others—you included.”

  “But Donnie loves me,” she insisted. “He’d never hurt me.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” I said.

  Of course she was betting on it—betting her entire existence—or she would never have returned to the house in the first place.

  “What becomes of your children if something happens to you?” I demanded. “What happens to them if both their parents turn up dead? Your mother’s not here to step in. Do you want the state looking after your babies? Do you want Child Protective Services calling the shots for them? Think about your kids, DeAnn. They need you a whole lot more right now than Donnie does.”

  I held my breath and hoped I’d made a convincing argument. About then Mel returned to the bedroom. Completely dressed, she was already wearing her Kevlar vest. She tossed mine onto the bed.

  “I’m hanging up now so I can get dressed,” I told DeAnn. “Promise me you won’t go anywhere near the house. Promise?”

  For an answer she pushed the button and ended the call. I threw my phone onto the bed in utter frustration while I buttoned up my shirt. “What the hell is the matter with that woman?” I demanded. “What does she use for brains?”

  Mel ignored my outburst. “Where’s Donnie Cosgrove and where’s his gun?” she wanted to know. “And how are we going to play this?”

  “Donnie’s asleep on the couch. At least DeAnn thinks h
e’s asleep. She claims his gun is locked in the car out on the street, but we have no idea if the one she’s seeing in the vehicle is his only weapon. As far as your question about how we should play this is concerned? You tell me.”

  “The way I see it, smaller is better,” Mel said. “I’m all for understated elegance. Come on.”

  In one way, she was right. Summoning an emergency response team to a quiet residential neighborhood in the middle of the night is a lot like putting a huge locomotive in gear, sticking the throttle to the floor, and sending the train roaring down the rails. Like high-speed trains, once ERTs are in motion it’s hard as hell to stop them. Or change their direction. Or purpose. I didn’t want DeAnn’s cozy little home shot through with bullets or permanently damaged with a lobbed canister of tear gas. And regardless of what he’d done, I didn’t want Donnie Cosgrove shot full of bullets, either.

  On the other hand, approaching a possibly armed and dangerous suspect with too little firepower and no backup is one of those fatal errors cops can make—one many officers make only once. Just ask Seattle PD’s Paul Kramer.

  On the way down in the elevator, Mel held out her hand. “Give me the keys,” she said. “I’ll drive. DeAnn called you. Try to get her on the phone and keep her there. At least that way we’ll know, minute to minute, exactly where we stand and can call in reinforcements if we need them.”

  Mel pulled our bubble light out of the glove compartment and slapped it on the roof of the Mercedes before she even pulled out of the parking space. We exited the garage. Half a block later we turned north on First Avenue. A rain-shrouded Queen Anne Hill loomed ahead of us. Seeing it, I couldn’t help but remember the last time Mel and I had set off on this kind of a fool’s errand. When it was over, Heather Peters’s boyfriend had been fatally wounded. It was only pure luck that Heather herself wasn’t killed that night.

  I glanced over at Mel as she turned onto Broad. “If you’re having second thoughts…” I said.

  “I’m not,” she said. “We’re a lean, mean force.” With that she slammed on the accelerator and sent us racing through four stoplights in a row, clearing each intersection as the light changed from yellow to red.