Justice Denied

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 he’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.

“Besides,” she added, circling around to turn onto Mercer, “if it’s a choice between having you at my back or having a bunch of gun-happy SWAT guys, I’ll take you any day of the week. Now get DeAnn on the phone. Let’s find out what’s going on.”

I picked up the phone. With Mel at the wheel, we’d either get to Redmond in a hell of a hurry or we wouldn’t get there at all. I knew I was better off manning the phone than I was watching the speedometer.

“Where are you?” I asked when DeAnn Cosgrove came on the line.

“I’m doing what you said,” she told me. “I moved my car down the street. Are you coming?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, we are. We’re on Mercer now, heading for I-5.”

There was a pause before DeAnn said, “Just because you found blood on his shoes doesn’t mean he did it, you know. Isn’t there such a thing as innocent until proven guilty?”

Sitting alone in the dark, I’m sure DeAnn had been replaying everything that had happened in the course of the last several days, everything that had been said.

“Yes,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t.” I was agreeing for form’s sake and to keep DeAnn talking. The blood on Donnie’s clothing, his bizarre behavior, his going missing. None of those spoke of innocence, but I didn’t say that aloud.

“What if he goes to prison?” DeAnn asked with a despairing catch in her throat. “What will happen to the kids and me then?”

I wanted to say, You’ll do what you have to do. But I didn’t say that, either. The idea that Donnie Cosgrove was on his way to prison was a likely possibility.

“Let Mel and me talk to him first,” I said, throwing DeAnn a reassuring bone. “Let us get his side of what happened.”

“Just don’t hurt him,” DeAnn said. “Please don’t hurt him. I don’t care what he did. I still love him.”

“You’ve got to let us handle this, DeAnn.”

“I’m hanging up now,” she said. She did. When I tried calling back, she didn’t answer.

Sick with worry and a short fourteen minutes after pulling out of the parking garage at Belltown Terrace, we turned onto the Cosgroves’ quiet cul-de-sac. Unplugging the flasher, Mel pulled in front of Donnie Cosgrove’s SUV and shut down the engine.

Before the Mercedes could come to a complete stop, I was out the door and racing back toward the Tahoe. There I was relieved to see for my own eyes that DeAnn was right. The blued-steel handle of a.357 Magnum lay partially visible under a folded newspaper that had been left on the passenger-side front seat. As soon as I saw the revolver, I knew for sure it wasn’t the weapon that had left behind the shell casing that had been found at the scene of the Lawrence double homicide. Revolvers don’t eject their brass.

By then Mel had joined me on the sidewalk. “His gun’s here,” I whispered to Mel. “As least we’ve got that much going for us.”

Just then there was a single flash from a pair of headlights on a car a block or so down the street. A car door slammed some distance away and running feet splashed toward us on the rain-soaked pavement.

“Thank God you really did come alone,” DeAnn said, gasping. “I was afraid you were lying to me, that you’d bring a whole army along with you.”

I had given DeAnn Cosgrove the benefit of my very best advice. She wasn’t listening to any of it. “Go back to your vehicle,” I whispered urgently, catching DeAnn by the arm and bodily turning her. “Or else go sit in ours and stay the hell out of the way. Let us do our jobs. Is the front door locked or unlocked?”

“It was locked when I left it,” she said, “but I don’t know if it’s locked now.”

“Give me the key.”

She hesitated, so I said it again. “The key. Give it to me.”

Reluctantly she reached into her jacket pocket and handed it over. “This one,” she said. “The Schlage.”

“Now get out of the line of fire.”

“What do you mean, ‘line of fire’?” she yelped, her voice rising. “You said you wouldn’t hurt him. You promised. I checked on him just a minute ago. He’s still sleeping. He hasn’t moved.”

“Shut up!” I ordered. “Stay the hell out of the way!”

There are essentially two ways for police officers to approach a sleeping subject. In one, you sneak up on him and try to catch him completely unawares. In the other, you come on like gangbusters. You burst in with guns drawn, breaking down doors and screaming, “Police! Police! Get on the ground! Get on the ground!” at the top of your lungs. The second method is generally used when you have overwhelming firepower to back you up. The god-awful racket is calculated to do two things-to ratchet up the courage for all arriving officers and let them know where all the good guys are and to scare the living crap out of the unsuspecting suspect.

On the way to Redmond, Mel and I had discussed which strategy was called for in this particular situation. In view of DeAnn’s claim that Donnie’s gun was safely locked in his car and assuming-hoping-that was the only weapon involved, we had come down on the “let sleeping dogs lie” side of the equation. If Donnie really was sound asleep and since we’d be entering the house with DeAnn’s permission, it wasn’t necessary to go breaking down doors in the process. And if we came upon Donnie quietly enough and fast enough, it seemed likely that we’d be able to subdue the man before he woke up fully and knew what was happening.

We had determined that Mel would go around to the back of the house and wait on the far side of the patio doors in case he made a break for it and tried to exit that way. Once she was in place, I’d go in through the front door and tackle him wherever he was sleeping.

That was the plan, at least. Once we arrived, we didn’t stand around jawing about it before putting it into play. I nodded to Mel and off she went.

I suppose there are those who think I shouldn’t have sent Mel off like that. Some people are of the opinion that if I really loved her, I would never have put her in jeopardy. The reality is this: I had and have one hundred percent confidence in Melissa Soames and her abilities. I know what she’s capable of, and I know I can count on her.

With one hand resting on her Glock, she set out through the side yard to circle around to the back of the house. Rain was falling at a steady enough clip that it thrummed on the rooftops and dripped out of the gutters. I hoped the noise of the rain would help muffle the sounds of our moving footsteps. The front yard was a minefield of scattered Big Wheels and toys, and I hoped there weren’t more of the same waiting in the side-or backyard to send Mel ass over teakettle. In this kind of life-and-death situation the last thing I needed was to have my partner taken out by somebody’s toy fire engine or dump truck.

Wanting to give Mel plenty of time to get into position, I stayed where I was and counted to one hundred-very slowly. Only then did I move forward. Carefully. Quietly. One silent step at a time.

I eased my way up onto the porch where glass sidelights on either side of the front door offered a narrow glimpse of the living room. Pressing up to one of the windows, I saw the figure of a man lying sprawled against the back of the living room couch. One arm dangled limply over the end of the armrest with no sign of movement. On the coffee table I glimpsed the outline of a spilled booze bottle, which probably accounted for why Donnie Cosgrove was sleeping so soundly despite all the unusual activity in front of his house.

As I reached for the doorknob I knew there was a fifty-fifty chance that the door would be locked, but it wasn’t. The knob turned easily in my hand. The latch let go with what was probably only a tiny click, but the sound bore an ominous resemblance to a bullet dropping into a chamber. I waited for a moment to see if Cosgrove had heard it, but there was no movement from the couch, none at all.

Grateful that the Pergo flooring didn’t sag or squeak under my weight, I stepped into the tiny vestibule. On the far side of the living room I caught a glimpse of Mel through the glass of the patio door. She had yet to draw her weapon, and neither had I. If we could do the takedown without unholstering our weapons we’d all be better off-and a hell of a lot safer. Being shot by friendly fire is no benefit, especially if you’re dead.

I was within three steps of the couch when DeAnn Cosgrove took Mel’s and my well-thought-out plan and smashed it into a million pieces. Without any warning, she darted past me, screaming like a banshee. “Donnie, wake up! You have to wake up!”

I tried to grab her, but she dodged out of the way. Despite the racket, though, Donnie Cosgrove didn’t move; didn’t even budge. And that’s when I saw several empty prescription-drug containers next to an almost empty vodka bottle that had spilled most of its remaining contents on the coffee table.

Mel popped the flimsy lock on the patio door, shoved it open, and burst into the room. Kneeling beside the couch, she grasped Donnie’s loose wrist. By then I had managed to grab DeAnn and hang on to her. She was screaming frantically when Mel turned to us. “He’s still alive,” she said. “Barely. Call 9-1-1.”

From the look on Mel’s face I knew the situation was serious, and there wasn’t much time. I can tell you straight out that it’s impossible to hold a desperately struggling woman with one hand while dialing a cell phone with the other. I finally gave up and let DeAnn loose in favor of calling the EMTs. DeAnn raced around the coffee table and fell to her knees at her husband’s side, shaking him and begging him to wake up. He didn’t stir.

By then it was almost three o’clock in the still of a cold March morning. I’m guessing the ambulance crew was thrilled to have something happening on their watch. They showed up in their rubber boots and waterproof jackets in something less than three minutes. When they arrived, my heart was still pounding with post-incident jitters. While I attempted to keep a shaken and sobbing DeAnn out of the EMTs’ way, they slapped Donnie onto a gurney. They wheeled him out to the waiting aid car. With a burst of noisy sirens the ambulance took off, headed for Evergreen Hospital a few miles away.

At the time they were leaving, there was no way to know if a stomach-pumping procedure would do the trick or if Donnie Cosgrove was a goner.

“I’m going, too,” DeAnn insisted. She pulled away from me, and I let her go.

Moments later Mel and I were alone in a living room littered with the ambulance crew’s debris-muddy boot prints and discarded latex gloves.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Mel nodded. “But you’d better take a look at this,” she said.

She was pointing at the coffee table. Next to the vodka bottle and under one of the empty prescription bottles lay a page of notebook paper covered with writing.

“Suicide note?” I asked.

“Looks like,” she said.

I moved over to the table and examined the paper without actually touching it. At the beginning of the note the penmanship was reasonably legible. Toward the bottom of the page it devolved into an illegible scrawl. The ballpoint pen still lay on the floor where it had fallen.

Honey Bun,

I didn’t do it, but they’ll think I did. That cop I talked to will think I killed them because I told him I was going to. I even had the gun along. My gun. But that was only because I wanted to scare the shit out of Jack Lawrence. I wanted him as scared as you were the other day. But mostly I took the gun along for protection. I was there when it happened, or right after, and the cops will be able to figure that out. They’ll find my footprints there. There’s blood on my clothing and on my shoes. I never knew there could be so much blood. It was awful.

I saw the car of the guy who did it-at least I think it was his car. I watched him drive away. You’ve got to believe me when I tell you they were already dead when I got there. I checked. That’s how the blood got all over me, but there was nothing I could do to help them, God help me. Nothing.

I know I should have called right then and reported it. But there was so much blood that I just panicked. I was scared and couldn’t think straight. I just wanted to get away. And when that detective came to the house this morning to tell you what had happened, it just got worse and worse. By not reporting it to begin with, that was one lie. And by not saying anything then, that was another.

I’m sorry…and you and the kids…

The note ended its illegible scrawl in midsentence. It was unsigned.

“What do we do about this?” Mel asked.

“We call Detective Lander over in Chelan and let him know that we’ve got Donnie. He may not be our suspect, but he is a potential eyewitness.”

“If he lives,” Mel muttered. “And if DeAnn had listened to us and stayed away from here, he’d be dead for sure.”

About that time there was a knock-a firm, businesslike knock-on the door and a uniformed Redmond cop entered the room.

“We understand there’s been a disturbance here,” he said. “Maybe you two would like to tell me what’s been going on.”

That took time. Local jurisdictions do not look kindly on other law enforcement agencies conducting raids or investigations of any kind on their turf without letting the home team know what’s happening. We showed the patrol officer our SHIT ID. We told him what had transpired. It made no difference. Not only was the responding officer not impressed, he was offended. The patrol officer’s supervisor, when he arrived, was also offended. And when the desk sergeant heard about it, he was really offended. We tried explaining why DeAnn Cosgrove had summoned us instead of them, but to no avail. Nothing was going to fix it since DeAnn wasn’t there to vouch for us.

At three forty-five I finally admitted defeat and did what I should have done to begin with. I called Harry I. Ball at home and woke him up. He arrived on the scene in fifty minutes flat-all the way from the far side of North Bend. We gave him the shorthand version of what had happened.

“Fair enough,” he said. “You’ve told them all this?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the assembled local yokels.

“Several times,” I answered.

“You two go on home, then,” Harry told us. “Leave this to me. I’ll kick ass and take names later.”

Mel and I retreated to the Mercedes. As we drove away we could hear Harry bellowing into his cell phone at some poor hapless soul or other.

“There are occasions when Harry I. Ball can be annoying as hell,” Mel observed, “but there are other times when you’ve gotta love the guy.”

This was definitely one of the latter.