Justice Denied (22 page)

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.”

W
e 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.”

Sugar wouldn’t have melted in her mouth. “Oh, that’s quite all right, Mr. Dortman. We’re near the airport right now. Tell us where we can find you. Just a few questions. I’m sure you’ll have no problem making your flight. In the Alaska Board Room? Sure. That’s great. I know where it is.”

I had already hit the gas pedal. We were in fact nowhere near Sea-Tac Airport, but we would be soon.

“He couldn’t resist,” Mel said. “I love crooks. They always think they’re smarter than we are, and they always want to know what we know.”

My phone rang. Mel put it on speaker before she answered. “Bingo!” Tim Lander shouted. “Dortman has an ’04 Lincoln LS. How did you figure that out?”

“Donnie Cosgrove,” I told him. “That’s the vehicle he saw driving away from the crime scene in Leavenworth on Saturday. Dortman is on his way to the airport right now, and so are we. Do some digging on him if you can. Call us if you find out anything more.”

Sometimes I long for the old days when telephones couldn’t touch you in a vehicle. On the other hand, I’m glad we have them. I was especially happy about that when Tim Lander called back a few minutes later, long before we’d even reached the S Curves in Renton.

“I’m headed over the mountains right now,” Lander said. “Guess who has a license to carry? Our friend Dortman is the proud owner of a nine-millimeter Beretta, which would be consistent with that one piece of brass we found.”

“Which, with any kind of luck,” Mel said, “he won’t have on him at the airport.”

One can always hope. Even sworn police officers have a tough time getting through security with handguns these days.

“I’m in my car and headed in your direction right now,” Lander said. “When I get to Sea-Tac, I’ll call for an update. Or you call me.”

“What are we going to ask Dortman once we find him?” Mel asked me.

“We try to catch him in a lie. First we ask him whether or not he was in Leavenworth on Saturday night. Depending on how he answers the first one, we ask him whether or not he knew Jack and Carol Lawrence. If he lies about either one, he’s
not flying today. But what do you think are the chances that he won’t be waiting for us in the Board Room?” I asked.

“I think the chances for that are excellent,” Mel returned. “So we won’t bother looking for him there. We’ll find out which plane he’s due to fly out on and catch up with him at the gate.”

That seemed unlikely. I’ve tried to get information out of airlines before. I’ve tried getting information about my own kids. Good luck with that. Airline personnel do not like giving out information of any kind. At least they don’t like giving it to me. Which is why I let Mel out at the departing passenger door and went to park. If gaining passenger information was a tough score, I knew that convincing a ticket-happy port police officer that my Mercedes 500 was parked in the curb lane on official police business was even less likely.

Bent on catching Mel, I was hotfooting it across the sky bridge toward the terminal when my phone rang. I grabbed it out of my pocket, thinking it would be Mel telling me where she was and where I should go. It was Ralph Ames.

“It’s taken me all morning to finally put together a conference call with the detectives down in Cancún and my translator in Phoenix,” he told me. “You’d think I was trying to broker a Middle East peace agreement.”

“I’m a little busy right now, Ralph,” I said. “Can I call you back?”

“Sure, but here are the high points. I’ve talked them into faxing you a copy of the ballistics information on the bullet taken from Richard Matthews’s body. They’ll be sending that to you at your office. But here’s the kicker. You’ll never guess who their
main person of interest is. The cops in Cancún say they’re looking for a nun, a Catholic nun. Matthews and an unidentified sister were seen walking together on the beach shortly before he disappeared.”

Another nun!
I stopped in midstride. A woman behind me, pushing an overloaded luggage cart, almost ran me down. “Did you say a nun?”

“Yes,” Ames answered. “A fairly young nun, early thirties at the most. I thought you’d be glad to hear it. You can call Mel Soames a lot of things, but a nun isn’t one of them. I asked for a composite, but they evidently don’t have one.”

At the moment I seemed to have unidentified nuns coming at me from all directions, and call waiting was buzzing in my ear.

“Look, Ralph, I’ve gotta go. But thanks. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” I switched over. “You found him?” I asked.

“Come to security at the main C Concourse gates,” Mel said. “Look for the first-class passenger and crew line. I’ve got someone here from TSA who’ll walk us through.”

If I had been with Mel instead of parking the car, I might have discovered how she worked that incredible piece of public relations magic. Not only had she charmed Dortman’s flight information out of someone at the ticket counter, she had also enchanted a member of one of the least cooperative law enforcement agencies on the planet, the Transportation Security Administration, into helping out as well. That wasn’t magic—it was downright miraculous.

When I came into the ticketing concourse, my heart fell. The crush of people waiting to clear security stretched all the way across the lobby. But I did as I was told and looked for the
first-class line. There, next to a much shorter but still long line, I found Mel standing beside a wiry old geezer who looked more like a Wal-Mart greeter than a law enforcement officer.

When I caught up to them, Mel introduced him as Darrell Cross. Cross nodded curtly in my direction, spoke briefly into his walkie-talkie, and then opened a chain into one of the mazelike sorting areas and led us straight to the front of the line. While we were placing our shoes and weapons in the security trays, I leaned over to Mel. “Lady, when you’re good, you’re good. How the hell did you pull this off?”

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” she said with a smile.

We did have to show our IDs, but to my amazement there was no hassle about our carrying weapons or handcuffs, and not a word was said about our not having boarding passes.

“Okay,” Mel said once we had our shoes back on. “Dortman’s on the eleven forty-five flight for LAX. When he gets there, he’s scheduled to connect with an overnight Copa Airlines flight to Caracas, Venezuela. Booked his tickets yesterday. Paid full fare.”

“In a hurry to get out of town?” I asked.

“Do you think?”

The whole time we’d been going through the search procedure, Mr. Cross had been speaking into his walkie-talkie. “Okay, Ms. Soames,” he said, leading us in the direction of the D gates, “I’ve talked to baggage. They’ve got Mr. Dortman’s baggage isolated. If he doesn’t fly, neither will his luggage.”

A guy from TSA was doing all this? That absolutely put me in my place and made me realize Mel Soames was even more out of my league than I had thought.

As we approached the gate area I didn’t think it would be difficult to recognize Thomas Dortman. I had never seen any of his
on-air commentary, but he had posted his photo all over his Web site. He was seated at the end of the bank of seats nearest the ticket agent’s counter and the door leading out to the jetway. He huddled there with his back to the window, looking as inconspicuous as possible.

His Web site photos must have been either very old or Photo-shopped into the male equivalent of Glamour Shots. The man depicted there had been younger and far leaner than this one. He also had a full head of hair. This one was jowly and slightly balding. He also looked haggard and bleary-eyed—as though he hadn’t slept in several days.

I could see we were arriving just in time. The departure door was already latched open and the gate agent was preparing to make her first boarding announcement. The nod she gave to Mr. TSA Walkie-Talkie indicated he had been in contact with her as well. Despite his unassuming appearance, Mr. Cross was obviously a go-to kind of guy.

Without any discussion, Mel and I approached Dortman from either side, effectively boxing him in.

“We somehow missed each other in the Board Room, Mr. Dortman,” Mel said, casually flashing her ID in his direction. “I must have misunderstood.”

The gate agent made her announcement. Dortman started to rise. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “They’re calling my flight.”

“Have a seat, Mr. Dortman,” Mel said. “You paid full fare. If you miss this flight, you can always rebook.”

Unhappy about it, Dortman sat while nearby passengers studied us with open curiosity. Beads of sweat suddenly popped out on the man’s forehead.

Mel slipped onto the seat next to him. “So is your publisher putting out a Spanish edition of
The Whistle-blower’s Guide?”
she asked conversationally.

Dortman looked at her as though she were nuts. “No,” he said. “Why?”

“With a book coming out a few weeks from now, I’d think you’d need to be available for interviews and appearances. Won’t that be difficult to do from so far away, especially since you didn’t bother to book a return flight?”

“I have a meeting with a source in Caracas,” he said indignantly. “For my next book. In addition, my flight information is supposed to be confidential. You have no right to—”

It was time for me to step up. “When’s the last time you saw Carol and Jack Lawrence?” I asked.

“Who?” he returned.

“Wrong answer, Mr. Dortman,” I said.

I nodded toward Cross, but it wasn’t necessary. He was already picking up his walkie-talkie. “Okay with the luggage,” he said. “Take it off the cart and bring it to my office.”

“My luggage!” Dortman yelped. “You can’t touch my luggage. You don’t have a warrant.”

“
They
can’t touch your luggage,” Cross said pleasantly, glancing at Mel and me. “But I can, particularly if there’s a chance a traveler’s luggage will be on a flight when he isn’t.”

“But I haven’t missed my flight,” Dortman objected.

Darrel Cross smiled. “I believe you’re about to,” he said. “You need to come with us, Mr. Dortman.”

For a second or two, I thought Dortman was going to bolt and make a run for the jetway. Not that it would have done him any good, but desperate people can make some pretty stupid
decisions at times. In the end he thought better of it. He shrugged and stood.

I was about to ask him to put his hands behind him. “This is my jurisdiction, Mr. Beaumont,” Cross said. “If you don’t mind, we’ll do the honors, but you’re welcome to read him his rights.”

Two more TSA agents appeared out of nowhere, patting Dortman down and cuffing him. You would have thought that, having cleared airport security, Thomas Dortman would have been unarmed. That wasn’t true, however. In the pocket of his jacket they found a plastic cheese knife that, wielded properly, could have done a good deal of damage to soft body tissue.

Dragging Dortman’s two fully loaded pieces of carry-on luggage with us, Mel and I followed Dortman and his TSA contingent back down the concourse and out past security. On the way, my phone rang. It was Lander.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“We’ve got him,” I said. “He’s in custody. TSA has him for carrying an unauthorized weapon through security, but you’d better come up with probable cause pretty damned quick. I’m guessing he’ll be lawyered up before we ever get to the TSA office. That’s where we’ll be talking to him.”

I’ve seen jail cells more welcoming than Darrell Cross’s windowless hole of an office. It was carved out of otherwise wasted space between a men’s restroom and the back of an abandoned ticket counter and furnished with grim gray-green federal building castoffs. Two enormous suitcases were tucked into one cramped corner of the room. We took seats around a scarred Formica-topped conference table. One of Darrell Cross’s TSA minions removed Dortman’s cuffs.

Had he called for a lawyer, we would have gotten him one.
And had an attorney appeared, his first bit of advice would have been for Dortman to shut the hell up. But no attorney had been summoned, and by the time we seated ourselves around the battered tabletop, Dortman was in tears.

“I didn’t mean to,” he blubbered, lowering his head onto his arms.

Sure
, I thought.
Firing off that whole barrage of shots was an accident. So was going around the crime scene collecting your brass
.