Justice Denied

any romantic overtones on my part or hers.

But I definitely was in love with Mel. On the surface of it, that should have made me that much more reluctant to put her in any danger. But I had seen how Mel reacted when she was under fire. I knew that if things got tough I could trust her implicitly. When you’re out in the real world dodging bullets, it doesn’t get any better than that.

“Ross Connors is a little behind the times,” I said, pulling her close. “We were partners long before he got around to saying so.”

CHAPTER 10

When you awaken to the enticing smell of freshly brewed coffee it’s easy to think that all’s right with the world. Mel’s side of the bed was cool to the touch. There was a hint of floral fragrance lingering beneath the aroma of coffee. That would be her shampoo. So Mel had been up long enough to shower and make coffee. I got up and wandered out into the dining room, where I found my two daily crossword puzzle pages, removed them from their (for me) completely extraneous newspapers, and laid them out on the dining room table. Mel came down the hall a moment after I poured my first mug of coffee. She was fully dressed.

“I’m going to go see Lenny,” she announced, slipping on a pair of low-heeled pumps.

I knew that meant she was on her way to visit the crime scene folks at King County to check out the missing-bullet situation.

“I’ve talked to Todd,” she added. “He’s on his way here.”

“Here?” I’m sure I sounded more than a bit territorial. After all, a man’s home is his castle, and the idea of having an itinerant economist show up on my doorstep along with my first cup of coffee did not compute.

“Yes, here. Ross doesn’t want us working on this in the office, remember? Todd’s bringing abstracts of the files on all the cases Ross mentioned last night, and the ones on my list, too.”

“Has anybody told Harry about our new working arrangements?”

“Already handled,” Mel said with a smile. “Ross took care of that bright and early this morning. What about the kids? Have you heard anything from them?”

“As far as I know they’re sightseeing today.”

“So you’re off ‘Gumpa’ duty?” she asked.

“Looks like,” I said.

She gave me a good-bye kiss and left, steaming travel cup firmly in hand. We Seattleites don’t go anywhere or do anything without our personal jolt of java.

Able to ignore the cross-lake traffic reports for once, I settled in at the table with my own hit of caffeine. I doubted Ross Connors would begrudge me the time it would take for me to whip through the Friday New York Times puzzle. I was making excellent progress when my cell phone rang. I figured it was either Mel, who had forgotten something, or else the kids, who had decided they wanted to take me up on my offer to buy breakfast after all, but the number wasn’t one I recognized.

“Mr….” It was a male voice-a relatively young male voice. “Beaumont,” he said uncertainly, butchering my name by pronouncing the “Beau” part the same way you’d say the B-U in “Butte” instead of the way it’s supposed to be pronounced, Beau as in “go.” If this had been my landline phone, I would have expected to hear a recorded spiel offering to sell me vinyl siding for my nonexistent house or to pick up my household castoffs to benefit the blind. But this was my cell phone. Solicitation calls aren’t supposed to intrude on my cell phone minutes.

“The name is Beaumont,” I said, pronouncing it properly for him but all the while trying to sound as cantankerous and off-putting as possible.

“My name’s Donald,” he said nervously. “Donnie, actually. Donnie Cosgrove. I think you talked to my wife earlier this week.”

Was that just this week? I wondered. So much had happened that it seemed eons ago, but I realized it had only been a few days earlier, on Monday, when I had stopped by the Cosgroves’ neat little Redmond rambler.

“Of course,” I said, at once modifying my tone. “DeAnn. What can I do for you, Mr. Cosgrove?”

“I told her I was going to go clean the jerk’s clock, but DeAnn begged me to talk to you instead.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Slow down. What are you talking about?”

“Jack,” he said. “Jack Lawrence, DeAnn’s stepfather. He came roaring through here yesterday while I was at work, yelling and raising hell. Woke the kids up in the middle of their naps. Threw our whole household into an uproar.”

“What was he upset about?” I asked.

“That DeAnn had talked to you. Wanted to know how dare she bring this back up after all these years. Told her she should learn to mind her own damn business and let sleeping dogs lie. Didn’t she know when she was well off. Stuff like that. Can you believe it?” Cosgrove demanded, his voice shaking in outrage. “He actually said that to her about her father-called him a ‘sleeping dog’! And in our own home, too.”

I gave Cosgrove a moment to get a grip on his emotions before asking, “You’re saying Mr. Lawrence seemed to think your wife had something to do with instigating our renewed interest in Anthony Cosgrove’s disappearance?”

“Evidently.”

“How did he find out about it?”

“DeAnn called her mother to see if you had contacted them. Carol is DeAnn’s mother, after all, so we try to maintain some kind of normal relationship with her-as normal as you can with a nutcase like Jack lurking in the background. Carol said you hadn’t called or stopped by, or at least not yet, but she must have mentioned the conversation to Jack. He hit the roof and drove all the way down from Leavenworth to bitch DeAnn out about it. I just wish I’d been there when it happened, but of course Lawrence is such a coward, he’d never tackle someone like me. He’d rather terrorize DeAnn and the kids.”

“Maybe you should consider swearing out a restraining order against him,” I suggested.

“What good would a piece of paper do?” Cosgrove wanted to know.

“For one thing, if he came back and caused trouble, DeAnn could call the cops and have him put in jail.”

“I’ve read about what happens to women with restraining orders,” Cosgrove said bitterly. “A lot of them end up dead.”

“Has your father-in-law been violent toward DeAnn in the past?” I asked.

“Why do you think she moved out of the house when she was in high school?” Donnie returned. “That’s why she went to live with her grandmother.”

“What about his wife?” I asked. “Does he beat her, too?”

“I’m not sure. She hasn’t ever come right out and said so,” Donnie conceded, “but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. She’s shown up with oddball bruises from time to time, but she always has one lame excuse or another for what’s happened to her.”

Domestic-violence victims almost always have excuses, I thought. They don’t want to say what has really happened to them, probably because they don’t think people will believe them, or maybe because they’re afraid they will.

“Anyway,” Donnie continued, “the man’s scary as hell. What I don’t understand is why your looking into Tony’s disappearance all those years ago would send Jack off the deep end.”

Observed over-or underreactions on the part of near and dear relatives or even those who are near and not- so-dear always raise red flags for homicide detectives. They indicate that something is out of whack with the relationship-that all isn’t as it should be. In this case I couldn’t help but be struck by Jack Lawrence’s over-the-top response to learning that we were reexamining a case that, on the surface, had opened and closed twenty years ago.

“What can you tell me about the man?” I asked.

“About Jack? You mean other than the fact that he’s an asshole and a bully?” Cosgrove returned.

“Other than that.”

“Jack Lawrence is a my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy,” Donnie answered. “Ex-marine. Tough as nails. Very