Justice Denied jpb-18

by J. A. Jance

  “And we’ll find your prints in the house?”

  I nodded. “In the living room. I sat on a couch with wooden arms. So my prints should be there. I doubt they’ll show up anywhere else. And they’re on file. Eliminating them won’t be a problem.”

  “Did Carol Lawrence tell you anything about the Anthony Cosgrove disappearance that you didn’t already know?”

  “Only that she and Jack were already involved before Tony went missing.”

  “Involved as in having an affair?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Other than that, she told almost exactly the same story DeAnn told.”

  “Almost?”

  I liked the way Lander caught my effort at hedging. He focused in on the wobbly modifier with laser precision.

  “Look,” I said, “we’re talking perceptions here. As I said, Carol told me the same story her daughter did. In fact, the two versions were virtually identical. The problem is, when DeAnn told me the story, it seemed like she was telling the truth. When Carol told me the same thing, I got the feeling she was lying. We’re talking gut instinct here,” I added. “I have no proof of this whatsoever. None at all.”

  “Lying or not,” Lander returned, “what exactly did Carol Lawrence tell you?”

  “That Tony Cosgrove was fishing on Spirit Lake the morning Mount Saint Helens blew up and that he died in the eruption.”

  “Do you think that was a lie?”

  “He may have gone fishing, but I don’t think he died in the eruption. His body was never found.”

  “Nobody ever found Harry Truman, either,” Lander pointed out.

  Lander looked to be somewhere in his early thirties. I doubted he was old enough to remember much about the eruption itself or the curmudgeonly old guy named Harry Truman who had lived there. In the face of a possible eruption, Truman’s adamant refusal to leave his home-his stubbornness and innate stupidity-had taken on a life of its own. Mount Saint Helens may have blown Harry Truman to bits, but his death-inducing exploits remained a part of Pacific Northwest lore and legend. Dead or alive, Tony Cosgrove didn’t have nearly the same kind of media staying power.

  “So you’re saying you don’t think Cosgrove’s really dead?” the young detective continued.

  “I didn’t say he isn’t dead,” I answered. “Carol admitted that she and Jack Lawrence were involved before Tony’s disappearance. DeAnn told me that once Tony was out of the picture, Carol moved on in a hell of a hurry. Instead of waiting around long enough for Tony to be declared dead, she divorced him and married Jack Lawrence within months of Tony’s going missing. That’s the real reason I wanted to see the Lawrences yesterday-to assess if the two of them might have had something to do with what happened to him.”

  “According to DeAnn, her stepfather seemed very disturbed to think that anyone would be revisiting Tony’s disappearance,” Lander said. “Did Carol give you any idea why that might have been the case?”

  “You mean other than the fact that they might have been behind it? No, she claimed Jack was upset because he’s a ‘very private man.’ That struck me as a load of crap. He may have been private, but I don’t think that’s the whole story.”

  “How did you leave things with Carol Lawrence?” Lander asked.

  “I handed her one of my cards and asked her to have Jack give me a call. I told her I needed to talk to him, but I figured it would be a cold day in hell before he ever called me back. In fact, I was a little surprised Carol even bothered to take my card in the first place.”

  “Not only did she take it,” Lander told me after a pause, “she kept it, too. The CSI guys found your business card in her hand. Her cell phone was on the ground next to her body. We know for sure that Carol Lawrence tried to call you on it. Your office number here at the office is the last one listed under dialed calls. She placed that call at eight fifty-seven p.m., which is about the same time the preliminary coroner’s report estimates as the time of death.”

  The idea that Carol Lawrence had tried and failed to reach me left me feeling half sick.

  “It was the weekend,” I muttered. “The office was closed. After-hours calls to SHIT go to our general voice mail. I can call our office manager and have her check to see what was left-”

  “Don’t bother,” Lander interrupted. “I’m sure she didn’t leave a message. The duration of the call is just over thirty seconds. Long enough to show that the connection was made but not enough to for her to make it through the voice mail prompts. Believe me, I already tried it.”

  “How did this whole thing go down?” I asked.

  Lander considered the question for a moment, weighing how he should proceed. Either he’d treat me as a suspect or as a fellow investigator. Considering that my dinner in Seattle made it impossible for me to be the killer, I figured he’d come down on the investigator side, and he did.

  “The scene’s a little chaotic,” Lander said at last. “We made casts of several different sets of tire tracks going in and out. We already know that one of those sets belongs to the kid who found the bodies. We’ve located an area where a car pulled off the road and sat for a while. We found several empty beer bottles and some discarded gum there in the dirt.”

  “So there could be fingerprint and/or DNA evidence?” I asked.

  Lander nodded. “If it turns out the shooter is the one who chewed it. We think he parked on the shoulder waiting for something, maybe for Jack Lawrence to come home. After that, it appears there was some kind of confrontation in the yard next to Jack Lawrence’s vehicle. All three of them were involved, including the two victims. In the course of the struggle several shots were fired. Jack was hit once in the right shoulder and once in the gut. We believe Carol tried to flee and was shot in the back.”

  “Did you find any brass?” I asked.

  Lander nodded. “That’s where we got lucky.” He grinned. “Nine millimeter. The killer was smart enough to go around picking it up but he missed one. Looks like that one bounced off something and rolled under Lawrence’s RAV4. We didn’t find it until early this afternoon, after the vehicle was towed.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to envision Carol and Jack Lawrence’s yard with its peaceful-looking log home tucked in among towering fir trees. It was hard to turn that idyllic setting into part of a deadly crime scene, one that had left two people dead.

  “Another vehicle was parked in the Lawrences’ yard when I was there,” I said, pulling out my notebook. “A Subaru, I believe. A Forester. I’m pretty sure I jotted down the plate number-”

  “That would be Carol’s car,” Lander interjected. “As far as I know it’s still there.”

  I was disappointed that my one little snippet of information wasn’t going to be of any help in solving the case. I returned the notebook to my pocket.

  “So who killed them?” I asked at last.

  “That’s what we were hoping you could tell us,” Lander replied. “For instance, what can you tell me about the son-in-law?”

  “About Donnie Cosgrove?” I asked. “I haven’t met him. I’ve only talked to him on the phone, but he sounds like a good guy. He’s an engineer of some kind and works for Fluke up in Everett. Makes enough money that his wife can be a stay-at-home mom.”

  “Did you call him or did he call you?”

  “He called me,” I said. “Lots was going on. I don’t remember exactly when he called, but I think it was Friday morning.”

  “What was said?”

  “He was mad as hell. Jack Lawrence had come to the house the day before and made a scene. Jack was convinced DeAnn had somehow jump-started our renewed interest into Tony Cosgrove’s disappearance.”

  “Had she?”

  “No, not at all. DeAnn Cosgrove had nothing to do with it. According to Donnie, Jack told DeAnn she didn’t know when she was well off-whatever that means.”

  “Did Donnie come right out and threaten Jack Lawrence?”

  “Not in so many words. H
e mentioned something about tearing Jack’s head off. He certainly didn’t say he was going to shoot him. I told him he should swear out a restraining order. But it sounds like you’re thinking Donnie’s responsible.”

  Lander gave me a grim smile. “Are we talking proof or gut instinct here?” he asked. “The man was nervous as hell when I was there talking to them this morning. He could barely sit still, his hands were shaking, he looked like he was about to puke.”

  The symptoms sounded familiar. “Maybe he was just hungover,” I suggested.

  “That’s what he told me,” Lander said. “Claimed he had been out late last night, drinking with his buddies and tying one on. I’ll be checking his alibi. I’ll also be checking the gum. And as I was leaving, Donnie Cosgrove’s SUV just happened to be parked out on the street and I just happened to have a camera with me, so even if he goes out this afternoon and buys a new set of tires, I’ve got a copy of the tread to match up with our plaster casts.”

  I thought about DeAnn Cosgrove-her little house in Redmond and her three little babies. I hated to think that her husband might be responsible for any of this. But a homicide detective’s suspicions often count for something, whether they’re mine or someone else’s. I had to give Detective Lander his due.

  “What about getting the Lawrences’ phone records?” I asked. “Finding out who they’ve called and who’s called them in the past few days would probably be a help.”

  Lander frowned. “We’re working on it,” he said glumly, “but of course that’s going to take time.”

  I know that drill all too well. When I used to send requests for phone information from Homicide at Seattle PD, getting a response usually took forever. Now that I worked for the A.G.’s office, however, that was no longer true. Requests for information that had been signed by Ross Alan Connors were usually handled with surprising alacrity. Not only that, I suspected that giving Tim Lander a leg up in his double homicide investigation now was something that could possibly serve me in good stead in some future investigation of my own.

  “Ross Connors could probably speed up that process for you,” I suggested.

  Lander looked at me sharply. “He could?”

  I nodded.

  “And would he?” Lander asked.

  “If you and I made a joint request.”

  Lander looked astonished to think that I might be able to bring the power of the Washington State attorney general to bear on his investigation. Since I’ve never been much of a team player, I couldn’t quite believe it either.

  “How long would it take to do that?” Lander asked.

  For an answer I picked up my phone and scrolled through my phone book. I located Ross Connors’s cell number and punched “send.” Ross himself answered after the fourth ring, and he didn’t sound the least bit fazed by the fact that my call was interrupting his Sunday-afternoon golf. From the sounds in the background he was already ensconced at the nineteenth hole.

  “So you think the new double homicide up in Leavenworth is related to your old missing persons case?” Connors asked once I finished.

  “No way to tell that for sure,” I told him, “but it’s a distinct possibility. I drove up to Leavenworth thinking the Lawrences might have had something to do with Tony Cosgrove’s disappearance and they had simply used the Mount Saint Helens eruption as convenient cover. Now, though, with both Jack and Carol Lawrence dead, there’s a possibility someone else was involved as well, someone who doesn’t want us looking into Tony’s disappearance any more than Jack did.”

  “All right, then,” Connors said. “Fax over the paperwork. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “He must be a pretty good guy to work for,” Lander commented after the call was finished.

  “He is that,” I agreed. “Ross is all about getting the job done. He doesn’t much care who gets the credit.”

  “Where do I sign on?” Lander asked.

  “We’re full up right now,” I told him. “But I’ll tell Harry I. Ball about you and ask him to keep you in mind.”

  “Harry who?” Lander asked.

  “Harry I. Ball,” I told him. “My boss.”

  “You’re kidding me. That’s his name, no shit?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Harry middle-initial-I Ball.”

  Detective Lander shook his head in wonder. “Sounds like you guys have a great time working here.”

  “We do,” I said. “It’s a barrel of fun.”

  “Anything else I should be tracking?” he asked as he stood up to leave. “Any other leads?”

  Since we were working together, there was no reason to hold back. “I’ve got a call in to someone named Thomas Dortman,” I said. “He’s a defense analyst who years ago used to work at Boeing with Carol Lawrence’s first husband, Tony. I called him looking for background information more than anything. Since I haven’t heard back, he’s probably out of town.”

  “If you find out anything useful from him, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

  “You bet,” I told him. “I’ll be glad to.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Because the elevator is key-controlled on weekends, I had to escort Detective Lander back down to the parking lot. On our way I noticed that Mel’s door was open and the lights and radio were both off.

  Here we go again, I told myself. She’s probably gone AWOL just like she did yesterday.

  I had visions of her walking back to Seattle, striding purposefully through the bike traffic on the I-90 bridge. Back upstairs, I tried calling her cell phone and was surprised when she answered.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Outside,” she said. “In the smokers’ hut.”

  Last year the Washington state legislature passed its most recent rendition of the statewide no-smoking ban. The rules and regs not only prohibit smoking inside public buildings, they also forbid smokers from congregating within some arbitrary number of feet from any building entrance or exit. Knowing that some smokers, including our office manager, Barbara, will never quit no matter what, SHIT’s compassionate landlord had handled this legal bump in the road by installing a two-car-wide canvas-topped vehicle canopy just outside the prescribed boundary. He had stocked this rain-proof shelter with ashtrays, trash cans, and picnic tables. In other words, banished outdoor smokers would still freeze their butts off (in every sense of the word), but at least they wouldn’t be wet.

  I hurried downstairs. With a brisk wind blowing down off the snow-covered Cascades, it was clear and sunny outside but cold as hell. Mel was huddled inside one of the collection of justin-case outerwear she keeps in her office-a hooded, fleece-lined jacket. She sat at the table with a lighter and a package of Marlboros and a huge glass ashtray in front of her. An unlabeled file folder lay next to the ashtray.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said, taking a seat across from her as the chill of the picnic bench bit into my backside.

  Mel blew a column of smoke skyward and watched it drift off toward the traffic speeding past along I-90. “I don’t,” she said. “I borrowed these from Barbara.”

  It seemed mean to point out that she was indeed smoking. For once in my life, I had brains enough not to say anything.

  “The last time I smoked before this was the day I came home from work early and found Greg in bed with my best friend,” Mel continued. “I walked into the bedroom and there they were, both of them stark naked. I didn’t say a word to either one of them. I stripped off my work clothes, put on a pair of sweats and tennis shoes, and went jogging. Threw my cigarettes into the bedroom trash can on my way out. I knew I couldn’t jog and smoke. Never smoked again-until today.”

  These were gory details from Mel’s past that I had never heard before, but knowing her, especially knowing her when she’s mad as hell, I could see it all in my mind’s eye. In another time and place I might have made a joke about it, but she was hurting way too much for me to make light of her pain. I didn’t want to make it worse than it already was.

  “Why t
oday?” I asked.

  “Someone’s trying to frame me for murder,” she said. “And it must be one of my so-called friends. It’s so damned close to what happened to me before, with Greg and Gina, that it really set me off. Brought up all those bad old times; sent me looking for some of my bad old friends-one of these, for instance.” She pointed at the pack of Marlboros.

  I wasn’t surprised. This is the kind of emotional setback that can send long-sober drunks bellying up to the nearest bar.

  Mel stubbed what little was left of her smoldering cigarette into the ashtray. I pushed the ashtray aside and covered her icy hand with mine.

  “Which so-called friend do you think is involved?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “One way or another, it’s all tied in with SASAC. I came down here to work up my courage before calling Ross. I’m sure he’ll want to put me on a leave of absence before somebody in the media gets wind of this rather than after, the way he had to do with Destry.”

  “Destry?” I asked. “Destry Hennessey?”

  “Sure,” Mel said. “It was three years ago, just after she came back here but before I showed up. Don’t you remember?”

  I did remember, but only vaguely. I wasn’t involved with a news junkie back then; current events tended to get by me. “Something about her grandmother?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Mel answered. “The shorthand version of the story goes like this. The grandmother had been widowed for several years and was living alone in Salt Lake City when a sixteen-year-old punk broke into her house one night, robbed her, raped her, and left her to die. But she didn’t die-not right then. A neighbor saw the kid running out of the house and reported it. He was only two blocks away and still on foot when the cops managed to nail him with some of the grandmother’s personal goods still in his possession. When the case went to court, the kid’s defense attorney finagled a plea bargain. Juan Carlos Escobar went to a juvie facility up in Logan until he was twenty-one.”