Justice Denied

CHAPTER 16

Breakfast wasn’t nearly the disaster it could have been. Despite my misgivings about her, Iris Rassmussen turned out to be the life of the party. She was full of one off-color Sven and Ole joke after another, and she told them with all the verve and style of an aging stand-up comedienne. She kept all of us in stitches, me included, and that was pretty remarkable in view of the fact I wasn’t in much of a joking mood. Lars laughed along with the rest of us, and chowed down on his oyster omelet with his customary enthusiasm. Laughing seemed to do wonders for his appetite.

Iris was tuning up to deliver yet another punch line and the waitress had yet to drop off the check when my phone rang. The Fisherman’s Restaurant is low on six-tops, and I was stuck in a corner with my back to the window, which meant I couldn’t very well leave the table to take the call. I was relieved when a glance at the readout displayed an unfamiliar number. At least it wasn’t Ralph.

“Mr. Beaumont?” a woman asked. The voice wasn’t one I could place, but she sounded upset. I excused myself and made my way outside.

“Yes.”

“It’s me-DeAnn Cosgrove,” she said. “There’s someone here who needs to talk to you.”

I heard her passing the receiver to someone else. “Mr. Beaumont? I’m Detective Tim Lander of the Chelan County Sheriff ’s Department. I understand from Ms. Cosgrove here that you intended to go see Jack and Carol Lawrence in Leavenworth yesterday.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s right, and I did go there. Why?”

“I’m investigating a double homicide,” he said. “Carol and Jack Lawrence were found shot to death in the yard outside their home early this morning. A kid delivering their Sunday paper found the bodies.”

When husbands and wives perish together, it’s usually pretty easy to fill in the blanks, and the outcome is one that would come as no surprise to “those women” gathered in their evening finery at the Sheraton. A husband or ex-husband or boyfriend or ex-boyfriend murders the woman who was once the love of his life and then turns the weapon on himself.

“Murder/suicide?” I croaked.

“No,” Lander answered. “That’s not how it looks so far, since no weapon was found at the scene. Would it be possible to meet with you this morning? I’d like to discuss the purpose of your meeting with them yesterday. I’d also like to know what the outcome was.”

Lander had made his approach in an offhand way, but I knew there was nothing casual about his invitation. Both the Lawrences were dead. Now it seemed likely I was one of the last people to see Carol Lawrence alive. In the eyes of homicide investigators, that automatically made me a person of interest, if not an outright suspect. It also meant that Detective Lander wanted to talk to me, and he wanted to talk to me now. No doubt DeAnn had mentioned that I was with the attorney general’s office. That explained why Lander’s request for an interview was couched in a way that made allowances for professional courtesy. It was incumbent on me to respond in kind.

“I didn’t meet with both of them,” I corrected. “Jack Lawrence wasn’t home at the time. I only spoke to Mrs. Lawrence, but of course I’ll be glad to meet with you. Just tell me where and when. I’m in Seattle right now. Where are you?”

“Redmond,” Lander answered. “Talking with DeAnn Cosgrove and her husband at their house.”

“I could meet you at the Special Homicide offices in Eastgate, if you like.”

“Where’s that?” Lander asked. “And how soon can you be there?”

I glanced at my watch. “Depending on traffic, half an hour to forty-five,” I said. Then I gave him Special Homicide’s street address as well as driving directions. When I returned to the restaurant, Iris Rassmussen was still holding forth. The only other person paying any attention to my phone call was Mel, who was giving me what I’ve sometimes heard my son-in-law refer to as “the stink eye.”

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Work,” I said, flagging down our harried waitress. “I’m going to have to go into the office.”

“Good,” she returned. “I’m coming along.”

I had been hoping to have a chance to confer with Ralph Ames in relative privacy, but telling Mel she wasn’t welcome to ride along would have caused an immediate uproar, especially since we had arrived at the restaurant in the same vehicle. We made our way out to the parking lot and said our good-byes to Iris and Lars and to Scott and Cherisse as well.

“What’s wrong?” Mel asked as soon as the Mercedes’s doors shut behind us.

“What makes you think something’s wrong?”

She rolled her eyes. “Something’s bothering you,” she said. “And don’t try blaming it on whoever called you just now. You were wound tight long before the call came in.”

That’s one of the most disconcerting things about Mel. I sometimes think she understands me better than I understand myself. Or that she can read my mind. But she was absolutely right-I had been wound very tight. I screwed my courage to the sticking place and tackled the issue head-on. Well, more or less head-on.

“Where did you go when you went to Mexico last fall?” I asked.

“Cancun,” she said, sounding surprised.

Cancun. Bad answer. There it was-out in the open. My heart did a flip-flop at the very sound.

“Why do you want to know about that?”

I ignored her question. “When were you there?” I asked.

“The end of October through the first week in November,” she said. “But I don’t understand. What’s this all about?”

The dates she mentioned hit me like a second blow to the gut. The end of October coincided exactly with the time when Richard Matthews had reportedly disappeared from his early-morning beachside walk. In Cancun. Having launched this disturbing conversation without waiting for any kind of confirmation from Ralph Ames, I realized there was no turning back.

“Remember your dead friend’s father?” I asked. “The one you told me about yesterday?”

“Richard Matthews, Sarah’s father?” Mel asked. “Of course I remember him. Why?”

“He disappeared in Cancun on the first of November.”

“Disappeared?” she asked.

“His body was found later. He died from a single gunshot wound.”

She chewed on that one for a while. “And you think I had something to do with what happened to him?”

“Did you?” I asked.

We were on Mercer by then, headed for I-5. “Why don’t you stop the car and let me out,” she said. “I’ll walk back to the house.”

“We need to talk about this,” I said.

“It sounds like I’m a suspect here,” she said. “Like maybe you need to read me my rights. Maybe I should have an attorney present. Or do you want to pick up my weapons and turn them over to ballistics?”

“Mel, please,” I said. “It’s not like this hasn’t happened to me before.”

“So that’s what this is all about?” Mel demanded after a pause. “It’s all about Anne Corley, isn’t it? Since she went off the rails and killed somebody, you automatically assume I must have done the same thing. Is that what you think?”

Of course she had me dead to rights on that one, and the similarities between the two cases in terms of motivation and deadly results was far too close to ignore. I didn’t answer her question immediately, not aloud, and that in itself was answer enough. A glance in Mel’s direction showed me that she was sitting on the far side of the car with her arms folded across her chest. When Melissa Soames folds her arms, it is not a good sign.

“What happened to Richard Matthews?” she wanted to know.

“I’ve told you everything I know. He went for a walk on the beach on the morning of November first and never returned. His wife filed a missing person’s report right after he disappeared. His badly decomposed body was found sometime later, and an autopsy revealed he had died of what I believe was a single gunshot wound. I’m not sure whether or not a bullet was recovered.”

“I may have been in Cancun at the time he was shot,” Mel said, “but I had no idea that’s where he lived. And no matter what you think, I’m not responsible for what happened to him.” She paused briefly and then added, “When did you learn all this?”

“This morning,” I said. “I stumbled across it on the Internet while you were showering.”

“And you immediately leaped to the conclusion that since Richard Matthews was dead, I had to be the one who killed him?” Mel shook her head. “That doesn’t speak very highly for whatever it is I thought the two of us had going.”

“Mel,” I began. “It’s just…”

“Don’t bother with the apology bit,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it.”

My phone rang then, right in the middle of the I-90 bridge. The way my luck was going, there was no need to check the caller ID readout. I knew it had to be Ralph as soon as the phone rang and before I answered.

“Mel flew in and out of Cancun along with seven other women on board a private jet that belongs to someone named Anita Bowdin,” Ralph said. “They stayed at a beachfront home called Casa del Sol owned by Ms. Bowdin. They arrived on Thursday, October twenty-eighth, and returned to Seattle on Wednesday, November third.”

“Thanks,” I said, hoping to cut short the conversation. “I appreciate it.”

But Ralph was just tuning up. “If the guy disappeared on November first, she would have been there at the time. So we’re definitely talking opportunity. I’m printing out whatever I can find on the guy on the Web. Is there anything else I can do to help right now?”

“No,” I said. “Thanks for the invite, but I don’t think we’ll be able to make it to dinner tonight.”

“She’s with you, then?” Ralph asked. For a guy, Ralph Ames is remarkably perceptive.

“Right,” I said. “Maybe later this week. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

“Okay then,” he finished. “Give me a call when you can.”

“What was that all about?” Mel wanted to know as soon as I hung up.

“Ralph and Mary were inviting us over to dinner tonight,” I lied. “It didn’t seem like such a good idea.”

“I’ll say,” Mel said. And that was the last thing she said to me for the remainder of the trip. It was a very long and quiet six miles.

When we reached Eastgate, Detective Tim Lander’s unmarked Chelan County patrol car was parked in a visitor’s spot in the garage. While I went to greet him, Mel bailed out of my car without a word or a backward glance and headed for the elevator. I let her go on ahead.

“Mr. Beaumont?” Lander asked, exiting his vehicle.

I nodded. We shook hands and I led him onto the elevator and then upstairs to the SHIT squad offices on the third floor. He paused at the hallway door where the offending acronym was emblazoned in large gold letters on the glass. The sign guy had wanted to spell out the words in full. Harry I. Ball, for perverse reasons all his own, had insisted on putting the more objectionable shorthand version there for all to see.

Lander stopped in his tracks. “Are you shitting me?” he wanted to know.

“Special Homicide Investigation Team,” I explained. “We never close. Our official motto is: ‘All shit all the time.’”

I led him inside. We walked past Barbara Galvin’s empty desk. Beyond that, the door to Mel’s office was shut. The merest hint of Sunday’s edition of talk radio penetrating from there to the outside world posted a not quite audible but entirely understandable message: keep out. Or maybe even keep the hell out!! We kept right on walking.

“This is all part of the attorney general’s office?” Lander asked as I cleared off the guest chair in my cubicle-sized space so he could sit down.

I nodded. “There’s a squad here, one down in Olympia, and a third one over in Spokane to cover eastern Washington.”

“And what exactly do you do?” Lander asked.

“We investigate whatever Ross Alan Connors asks us to investigate. When I first got here we were doing a lot of work on the Green River killer. At the moment he has me working on cold missing persons cases from all over the state. That’s why I went to see DeAnn Cosgrove and Carol Lawrence-looking into the case of a man who disappeared twenty-plus years ago.”

Lander pulled out a notebook and consulted a page of scribbled notations. “That would be Anthony David Cosgrove?” he asked. “Disappeared on May eighteenth, 1980.”

“Correct,” I said. “DeAnn’s father and Carol Lawrence’s first husband.”

“And you said you actually saw Carol Lawrence? You spoke to her?”

I nodded. “Yesterday,” I said. “Up in Leavenworth.” This was stating the obvious, since he clearly already had this information, but we needed to go over the basics anyway.

“What about her husband?” Lander asked. “Did you see Jack?”

“No. He wasn’t home at the time,” I replied.

“And what time was that?”

“A little before noon.” I took out my phone and scrolled through my incoming calls until I found the one from Kendall Jackson. “Here,” I said. “I had lunch in Leavenworth after I talked to Carol. This call came in about the same time my food showed up, and the call record says it came in at twelve-ten. I must have arrived at the Lawrences’ house around eleven or so. After that I came back to Seattle. By seven-thirty or so I was having dinner at El Gaucho with my kids.”

“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. He 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.”