Justice Denied

by J. A. Jance

  Mel emerged from the bedroom fully dressed, made up, and looking far better than she should have under the circumstances.

  “Didn’t mean to wake you,” Todd Hatcher apologized. To her. I noticed he hadn’t bothered apologizing to me.

  “It’s okay,” Mel said. “We had to get up anyway. What have you got?”

  “I spent most of the weekend working on my copies of the abstracts,” he said. “I’ve gone over all but two of them and input most of my observations. If you two could sit down and work on the rest of them this morning…”

  That seemed unlikely to me. On less than three hours of sleep, I wasn’t going to be in the best condition to go searching for tiny discrepancies in a stack of old dead files. Mel gave me a look, took her stack of paper and her cup of coffee, and settled down in the window seat to go to work. I was saved by a phone call from Detective Lander over in Chelan.

  “Any word on Donnie Cosgrove?” I asked.

  “Not since he got to the hospital. I tried checking, but the hospital wouldn’t give me any info.”

  Welcome to the world of patient privacy.

  “I have DeAnn’s cell phone number,” I told him. “I’ll try reaching her. When they hauled Donnie away in the ambulance, it didn’t look too promising.”

  “What do you think about this supposedly suicidal non-confession?” Lander asked. “Do you think he really wasn’t involved in the Lawrence homicides, or was he just trying to throw us off?”

  I had been in the room and had seen the note Donnie had left behind as the drugs and booze took effect.

  “I think Donnie Cosgrove really did mean to kill himself,” I responded.

  “Does that mean he meant the rest of the note as well?” Lander asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “He doesn’t claim to have witnessed the actual shooting. He says he saw a vehicle that could have been the killer’s drive away. At this point, even a description of the vehicle would give us a big leg up.”

  “You’ll check on Cosgrove and let me know if and when I can come talk to him?” Lander asked.

  “Will do,” I said.

  “In the meantime, Ross Connors came through like a champ. The phone records we ordered yesterday were on my desk when I showed up this morning. Have you seen yours yet?”

  The fact that Tim Lander was absolutely focused and on task annoyed the hell out of me. Obviously he hadn’t spent the whole night traipsing back and forth across Lake Washington.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “They’re pretty interesting,” he continued. “They go along in a pretty predictable pattern. Most of the time the Lawrences were calling the same numbers and the same people over and over. That lasted right up until early last week. After that, we’ve got a bunch of calls that haven’t shown up on the records before. Who was that guy you mentioned to me yesterday, the one you’d said you’d left a message for but he hadn’t called you back?”

  “Dortman,” I said. “Thomas Dortman. Why?”

  “Because I have a whole series of calls from Jack Lawrence to Thomas Dortman starting first thing on Tuesday morning.”

  “That would be the day after I first talked to DeAnn.”

  “Like I said, there are no calls at all to this Dortman character until Tuesday morning. Then there are eight, nine, ten calls altogether from Jack Lawrence’s cell phone. Why were you looking at Dortman again?”

  “Because in the process of reexamining Tony Cosgrove’s disappearance, I came across an article by Dortman that mentioned Tony by name.”

  “This Tony guy is DeAnn’s father, the one who disappeared back when Mount Saint Helens blew?”

  “That’s right,” I replied. “Dortman mentioned Tony as a possible whistle-blower. I wondered if there might be some connection between them. They both worked at Boeing around the same time, so I thought maybe they knew each other there or worked in the same department. I also wondered if there might be a relationship between Tony’s possible whistle-blowing activities and his disappearance.”

  “Which you’re thinking may not have had anything at all to do with a volcano?” Lander asked.

  “Exactly. So we probably do need to talk to Dortman. I have a phone number but no street address.”

  “I have his number, too,” Lander said. “In fact, I already tried calling it. No answer. I left a message. If he didn’t get back to you, I probably won’t hear from him either. I have his street address, but I don’t know how much good that’ll do. The one other oddball phone call was placed to a number in Portland to a phone listed to someone named Kevin Stock. That one—and there was only one—was made on Saturday morning from the Lawrences’ home phone.”

  I know Tim Lander was talking, but I wasn’t really paying strict attention. Suddenly I had another idea.

  “Hold on a second,” I said into the phone. Then I called over my shoulder to Mel. “Hey, Mel, when you looked up Thomas Dortman the other night, didn’t you tell me he had a book coming out sometime soon?”

  “Something about whistle-blowers,” Mel replied. “You’re right. I think it’s due in bookstores sometime in the next several weeks. If you need the exact date, you can always check on Amazon.”

  “Give me a little time,” I told Lander. “Maybe I can figure out a way to get in touch with our friend Dortman.”

  When I put down the phone, Mel was staring at me. “What?” she said.

  “Supposing you were someone who had cut a corner here and there in the past. Supposing you’d done something really wrong, but as far as the world was concerned, you’d gotten away with it clean. So you’re free as a bird, with nothing but a guilty conscience. Then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, you get a call from some guy who says he works for the Washington State Attorney General’s Office. Would you be eager to call him back?”

  “Not me,” Mel said.

  “Me either. But what do authors need more than anything else?”

  Mel wasn’t at the top of her game either. “I give up,” she said finally.

  “Publicity?” Todd Hatcher asked.

  “Bingo,” I said. I scrolled down my outgoing calls and handed Mel my phone. “Here’s the number, but call him on your phone, not mine. Tell him you’re writing a magazine article or a newspaper article or something and you want to review his book. Tell him you’re working on a deadline and don’t have time to go through his publicity department.”

  “What good will that do?” Mel wanted to know.

  “You make an appointment to talk to him, only we show up instead.”

  Mel was shaking her head and giving me one of her glowers when Todd took the phone from me and said, “I’ll do it.”

  He did, and he did a credible job of it, too, leaving a message that was flattering enough that I figured no author in his right mind would be able to resist. In the meantime I took my own phone back and called DeAnn Cosgrove. She sounded more with-it than I would have expected, and certainly more connected than I was feeling about then.

  “J. P. Beaumont,” I said when she answered. “How are things?”

  “Better,” she said. “The doctor was here just a little while ago. They’re going to keep him until later on today, maybe even until tomorrow. For observation.”

  For a psychological evaluation, I thought. That’s standard procedure with attempted suicides.

  “Is he well enough to answer questions?” I asked.

  DeAnn stalled. “I don’t think—”

  “You know about the note he left, don’t you?” I interrupted.

  “I know there was a note,” she said. “I haven’t seen it.”

  “Your husband admitted being at the scene of the crime,” I said. “It’s possible he saw the killer drive away after that person shot your mother and stepfather. We need to talk to Donnie. We need him to tell us what he saw.”

  “This isn’t some kind of trick? I mean, if he’s still a suspect, shouldn’t he have a lawyer here when he talks to you?”

  “Your husband isn’t a sus
pect at this point,” I said. “He’s not even a person of interest. As a potential witness he doesn’t need a lawyer.”

  “You’re sure? I mean, he had his gun there and everything.”

  I was losing patience. “Whoever killed your mother and stepfather fired a pistol,” I said. “Your husband’s .357 is a revolver. Unless Donnie has another weapon none of us knows about, he can’t have been the shooter. Now, can Mel and I come over and ask him some questions?” I asked. “Please?”

  “Okay,” DeAnn said at last. “I guess it’ll be all right.”

  I closed the phone. “Okay,” I said to Mel. “Come on. Let’s go talk to Donnie Cosgrove.”

  “What about me?” Todd asked.

  “Keep working,” I said. “There’s fresh coffee in the pot. We’ll be back.”

  “And what if that Dortman guy calls to set up an interview?”

  “Tell him where and when and then call us,” I said and gave him the number.

  It was daytime. Since we didn’t need to get to Kirkland in a hell of a hurry, I drove. At the hospital, when we located Donnie Cosgrove’s room, he was still hooked up to an IV. Looking haggard, DeAnn hovered on the far side of the bed.

  “This is Mr. Beaumont,” she said as we approached. “I think you talked to him on the phone. And this is his partner…”

  “Melissa Soames,” Mel supplied easily, holding out her hand. “Most people call me Mel.”

  In the heat of the moment, when we’d been milling around in the Cosgroves’ living room, summoning EMTs and trying to determine whether Donnie Cosgrove was going to live or die, I hadn’t taken the time to look at him very closely. Now I did. Propped up in his hospital bed, I realized he was a big man, in a flabby, flaccid kind of way. And the distended veins on his nose spoke of a man with a more-than-nodding acquaintance with the sauce. I’ve spent enough time with boozers and ex-boozers to read the signs—as in, it takes one to know one.

  “They’re the people who saved your life last night,” DeAnn continued.

  “No,” Mel corrected. “That’s not true. The person who saved your life is your wife. When everyone else was busy giving up on you, when everyone else was telling her to stay away, DeAnn insisted on coming back to check on you. If she hadn’t, we’d be talking about a successful suicide here, not an attempted one.”

  “I’m sorry I made such a mess of things,” Donnie said to DeAnn. “Sorry I put you through so much…”

  “Hush,” she said. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. They need to talk to you is all. Need to ask you a few questions.”

  “What kind of questions?” Donnie asked.

  “Tell us about Saturday—everything about Saturday.”

  “I’d been thinking about Jack ever since he showed up at the house on Thursday. It just burned me up that he could come over and raise hell like that and get away with it. I wanted him to know that wasn’t okay, and I wanted to get a little of my own back. Saturday I decided I was going to go give him a piece of my mind. I told DeAnn that I had some work to do at the office, even though I didn’t, and when I left the house I put my .357 in my pocket. Did you ever meet Jack Lawrence?”

  The question seemed to be directed at me. “No,” I said. “I never met the man.”

  “He was a big guy—bigger than me—and very tough. I’m not exactly awash in muscles. I may not be a ninety-pound weakling, but close enough. So I took the gun along, sort of to even things out between us, if you know what I mean. To buck up my courage a little bit. And on my way there I stopped off a couple of times for a beer or two.”

  “As in liquid courage?” I asked.

  He nodded. “But it didn’t work. Not really. When I got there I was so nervous I couldn’t drive up the road. I parked at their turnoff instead.”

  “Parked and chewed gum?” I asked.

  “Nicorette,” he said. “I’m trying to stop smoking.”

  So much for our possible DNA ID from the chewing gum, I thought. “What happened then?” I asked.

  “The beer,” he said. “I was just sitting there thinking about him and then I fell asleep. Something woke me up—I’m not sure what. Maybe it was the gunshots. Anyway, I woke up with a start and was sitting there trying to get my bearings and think what to do next when this car comes barreling out of Jack and Carol’s driveway. Scared the crap out of me. I thought Jack had seen me and was coming out to clean my clock. I was grabbing for my gun to defend myself when the driver turned in the other direction and took off like a bat out of hell.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “An ’04 Lincoln LS,” Donnie said. “Silver. I didn’t see the plates.”

  I was surprised. Most people are lucky to remember the color. The make, model, and year was way more than I expected.

  “Donnie knows cars,” DeAnn put in. “He’s already teaching the boys which are which when they come on TV.”

  “What happened next?” Mel asked.

  Donnie bit his lip, and for the first time in the whole encounter he clearly didn’t want to talk anymore.

  “What?” I pressed.

  “Nothing,” he said finally, not looking at DeAnn when he answered. “That’s what’s so bad—why I feel so guilty. I sat there in the car for a while. I mean, I didn’t have any way of knowing something awful had just happened, so I sat there and had another beer or two—thinking things over. If I had gone right then, when it first happened, maybe I could have helped them. Maybe it would have made a difference. But when I got there and found them, it was too late. There was so much blood that I just couldn’t think straight.”

  And suddenly, like a flashbulb going off in my head, I knew why Donnie Cosgrove hadn’t come forward at the time, why he had staggered around in Jack and Carol Lawrence’s blood without bothering to report the shootings to anyone. He wasn’t thinking straight because he was drunk.

  “And you were afraid if you called the cops they’d either think you had done it or give you a DUI,” I said accusingly. “Or both.”

  Donnie Cosgrove gave me a baleful look and nodded. “I already have one,” he admitted.

  Even though I had already figured out the lush part, his admission made me mad as hell. DeAnn deserved better. Their three kids deserved better. It made me want to pick Donnie up out of his sickbed and toss him through the nearest window.

  “I think we’re done here,” I said.

  With that I turned and left the room. A few minutes later Mel joined me in a covered breezeway.

  “What the hell were you thinking walking out like that? You didn’t even bother asking him if he’d seen the shooter.”

  “Had he?” I asked.

  “No, but—”

  “That’s what I figured. That’s why I left—and to keep me from flattening the drunken bum’s nose.”

  “I don’t understand…” Mel began.

  “Of course you don’t. But I do. Donnie Cosgrove is a self-important bastard with a gorgeous wife and three little kids who all think he walks on water. And why shouldn’t they? He’s told them so. He’s got an education and a good job. But he’s too busy drowning his nonexistent sorrows on the weekends to pay any attention to them. And when he came across Jack and Carol Lawrence’s bodies, he was too damned drunk to do the right thing.”

  “But I thought DeAnn told us he hardly ever went out drinking like that,” Mel said. “That he loved spending time at home with her and the kids.”

  “Of course she told us that,” I said. “She wants to convince everyone her life is perfect, even if the first person she has to convince is herself. As for Donnie, he’d rather commit suicide than face up to his own mistakes. Talk about a worthless excuse for a human being.”

  We were out in the parking lot by then. Naturally it was raining. Again.

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little harsh about this?” Mel wanted to know. “A little judgmental?”

  Maybe she was right. Maybe Donnie Cosgrove’s failures as a husband and father too closely mirrored my own.
Maybe that’s what set me off.

  “Not nearly judgmental enough,” I shot back at her. “Believe me, I recognize the symptoms. I’ve been there, done that, and I’ve got the T-shirt.”

  CHAPTER 21

  We were almost back to 405 before either one of us spoke again. Mel was the one who broke the silence. “If Cosgrove was that drunk, do you think there’s any validity to the vehicle description he gave us?”

  I could remember having momentary flashes of clarity like that in the middle of royally tying one on. I also knew there were times when I had driven home blind drunk with no memory of how I got there. It’s not something I’m proud of, and it’s something I make an effort to remember rather than forget.

  “The man’s an engineer,” I said. “The vehicle ID may very well be accurate.” I tossed Mel my phone. “We’d better let Tim Lander know. His number is in there somewhere. Look for a 509 area code in the dialed calls.”

  Detective Lander didn’t answer, so Mel left a message.

  “Try Todd,” I suggested. “Let’s see if Dortman called him back.”

  “He did,” Hatcher was saying when Mel turned my cell phone on speaker. “I just got off the phone with him. He said he couldn’t do an interview today because he’s been called out of town and is on his way to the airport. He gave me the number for his publicist in New York and suggested we arrange to do what he called a ‘phoner’ later. Sorry I didn’t do better,” Hatcher added.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “He called you from a cell phone?”

  “Yes. Like I said, he’s on his way to the airport.”

  “Give me that number.”

  Mel pulled out her own phone. Because she’s a woman and, as she’s told me many times, can do more than one thing at once, she held one phone to her ear with her left hand and keyed the number into her own phone with the other.

  “Mr. Dortman,” she said when he answered, “Melissa Soames with Special Homicide. We’re looking into a pair of homicides that happened up in Leavenworth over the weekend. If you don’t mind, we’d like to ask you a few questions.”