home from taking his wife to Europe for their fortieth wedding anniversary. He gets off the plane and his car is missing from the airport parking lot.”
“Let me guess, a blue Buick Riviera.”
“You got it. The parking lot attendant figures the guy just forgot where he parked, so he gets a security guard to drive him around. When they find it, it’s there in the lot all right, but the date and time stamp on the ticket is a whole twenty-four hours after the guy and his wife landed in Paris. When the crime lab went over it, the interior had been wiped down pretty thoroughly, but they did find pieces of Juan Carlos still stuck to the front end and undercarriage.”
“What about the nun?” I asked. “Did you ever find her?”
“Look,” he said, hedging, “this is a small town. I’m not sure I should go into all this.”
After blithely spilling his guts about Escobar, I found Donner’s sudden reticence mystifying.
“Come on, Detective Donner,” I urged. “Did you find her or not?”
“We never found her,” he said. “But nobody ever reported her missing, either,” he hurried on. “We never found a body. Never found any remains or any blood evidence. So we didn’t have any way of knowing if we even had a second victim. The chief made the call. Said we were keeping it under wraps until we had an actual ID or a missing persons report to go on.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What are you saying?”
Donner sighed. “When the crime lab went over the Buick, they found a single thread-a long black thread. The guy who owned the car didn’t own anything black like that and neither did his wife.”
“So the nun was in the car.”
“That’s what we think, but we have no idea what happened to her afterward.”
“The thread’s still there?”
“As far as I know.”
“Did you do composites of her?”
“I think so,” Donner said. “They’re probably locked away in the cold case room. Why?”
“I’d like to get a look at them, if I could. Maybe you could fax them over to me.”
“But…” he began.
“Look,” I said. “I know you went out on a limb here by telling me this. If you like, you don’t even have to fax them to my office. If I give you my home number, we can keep this off everybody’s radar, right?”
“Right,” he said. “That would be a big help. What’s your number?”
CHAPTER 18
What’s going on?” Mel asked as I hung up with Donner.
“The cops in Bountiful had reports that Escobar spoke to a nun shortly after his release and just before his disappearance. There’s some evidence that the nun was in the car that ran down Escobar.”
“She’s dead, too, then?”
“No evidence one way or the other,” I returned. “And without a missing persons report or any evidence of foul play, Bountiful sat on that part of the case. I’ve asked him to fax over a composite sketch, but we won’t get that until after Detective Donner goes into work tomorrow-if then.”
The phone rang. It was the doorman calling to say Ralph Ames was on his way up.
Even late on a Sunday evening, Ralph arrived looking like someone who had just stepped out of a Brooks Brothers ad. Under the best of circumstances I look like your basic rumpled bed-tux-wearing occasions excepted. Fortunately our friendship is more than skin-deep.
“Good evening,” he said. “Although, from the sound of things, there’s not much good about it.”
Mel gave him a wan smile. “Not much,” she agreed. “Should I get my checkbook?”
“Definitely,” he said. “Then let’s go over this whole thing again, from beginning to end. I’ve got a call in to Lucinda Reyes down in Arizona. She’s a retired Phoenix cop, and she’s the best translator in the business when it comes to talking with
We spent the better part of the next two hours bringing Ralph up to speed on everything we had learned not only about the Matthews case but about Juan Carlos Escobar as well. In the end, Ralph seemed to agree with us.
“Yes, it is a bit much to think that these are unrelated,” he said. “The fact that you and Ms. Hennessey are both involved in the same organization would seem to indicate some kind of connection. Are you finding any similar cases among those essays you mentioned?”
“I’ve only checked out four of them so far,” Mel said. “One of those was a grandfather, a pedophile who died, reportedly of natural causes, thirty years ago. That’s approximately twenty-five years before SASAC was a gleam in Anita Bowdin’s eye, so I doubt that one has anything to do with this. One was a bar pickup scene date rape where no assailant was ever named, apprehended, or charged. The other two are still locked up in prison. One of those raped and murdered Professor Clark’s eleven-year-old granddaughter. The other attacked Justine Maldonado’s younger sister.”
“And both of those are still alive?” Ralph asked.
“Alive and kicking,” Mel said. “I already checked.”
It struck me as interesting that in almost every case, with the possible exception of the date rape scenario, the women had all been galvanized into taking action-and joining SASAC-by an attack on someone other than themselves. Before I could make that observation, though, the phone rang.
By then it was late enough in the evening that I expected it to be Scott telling me that he and Cherisse were safely home or Jeremy calling to give me the latest update on Kelly. Or maybe even Thomas Dortman finally getting around to returning my call. It wasn’t.
“Mr. Beaumont?” a tearful female voice asked when I answered.
“Yes.”
“It’s me, DeAnn Cosgrove. I need to see you. Right now.”
“Why? What is it? What’s going on? If it’s an emergency, you should probably hang up and call 9-1-1.”
“No. I need to talk to you. Please.”
Taking the hint, Ralph was already gathering up his things in preparation for leaving. DeAnn sounded utterly frantic, making me think that I was being invited into some kind of domestic dispute.
“Is your husband there?” I asked. “Is there some kind of problem?”
“Donnie’s not here,” DeAnn answered. “That’s why I need to talk to you.”
Talking to hysterical women has never been my strong suit, and DeAnn definitely sounded hysterical.
“All right,” I said, “but if you don’t mind, I’d like to bring my partner along. We’ll be leaving downtown Seattle in a matter of minutes.”
DeAnn didn’t wait around long enough to reply one way or the other. She simply hung up. Before I could do the same, Mel was slipping her shoes back on her feet.
“Wait up,” she said to me. “My Glock’s down the hall. So’s my jacket.”
Ralph, Mel, and I rode down in the elevator together. Ralph exited at the lobby and Mel turned to me. “Who was that on the phone?” she asked. “Where are we going and why?”
“DeAnn Cosgrove is a woman whose father disappeared in the Mount Saint Helens eruption in 1980. She lives in Redmond, and that’s where we’re going. As to why? I have no idea. She said she needed to talk to me, and waiting until morning evidently isn’t an option. The other problem, of course, is that her parents were gunned down last night up in Leavenworth. The last thing her husband said to me on the phone was that he was going to rip the stepfather’s head off. Not surprisingly, Detective Lander, the guy working the Leavenworth homicides, is wondering if DeAnn’s husband may have had something to do with the shooting.”
“Do you think he did?” Mel asked.
“Donnie told Detective Lander he was out drinking with his pals last night,” I replied. “But at this point, I don’t have enough information on Donnie Cosgrove to think one way or the other.”
“But he isn’t home right now, is he?” Mel ascertained.
“Right,” I told her. “That’s what DeAnn said on the phone.”
