“Does your husband have access to any weapons?” Mel asked.
DeAnn stared at her. “You mean, like a gun?”
Mel nodded.
“Donnie does have a gun,” DeAnn conceded. “It belonged to his father. He keeps it locked in his desk in the bedroom. But why…?”
“Is it there now?”
Without a word, DeAnn left the room. When she returned a few moments later, her face was pasty white. “It’s gone,” she whispered, sinking onto the couch. “You don’t think he’s the one who did it, do you? I’m mean, it’s not possible!”
But of course it was all too thinkable and all too possible, although I’m sure that was the very first moment it ever crossed DeAnn’s mind that her beloved Donnie, the father of her children, might have murdered her mother and stepfather.
“What kind of gun is it?” Mel asked.
“I have no idea,” DeAnn managed. “I don’t know anything about guns-anything at all. I just know I didn’t like him having one.”
“But it was a handgun of some kind?” Mel persisted. “Not a rifle or a shotgun.”
“Yes, I guess that’s what you’d call it-a handgun. I think Donnie said it was a.357, but I’m not sure.”
Had I been asking the questions right then, my face probably would have given away the game. Mel’s didn’t. “I’ll go ahead and take down that missing persons information, then,” she said smoothly. “What kind of vehicle did you say your husband drives?”
It was a deft pivot on Mel’s part, and DeAnn Cosgrove clung to that disarming piece of fiction as though her life depended on it. Maybe it did. Without being able to believe we really were taking a missing persons report, DeAnn might have fallen apart completely.
“A Chevrolet Tahoe,” she answered. Surprisingly enough, the woman was still able to reel off Donnie’s plate number from memory. For the next several minutes, she located and supplied all the necessary info about the clothing her husband had been wearing when he left the house. She gave us his contact information at work as well as the names, addresses, and phone numbers of friends and relations.
“Now what?” DeAnn asked when Mel finally put her notebook and pen away.
“We’re going to try to find him,” Mel said.
“But not hurt him, right?” DeAnn said. “I’m sure he hasn’t done anything wrong. He wouldn’t have.”
I think she was trying to convince herself even more than she was us.
“We’ll do everything in our power to see that no one gets hurt,” I told her.
“Thank you,” DeAnn said gratefully. “Thank you very much.”
She stood on the front porch as we made our way out the gate, down the driveway, and back to the sidewalk. At the end of the driveway a rolling garbage bin had already been hauled out to the street. Mel and I exchanged glances as we walked past it. She held out her hand. “I’ll drive,” she said.
Gentleman that I am, I handed over the keys and climbed into the passenger seat. DeAnn watched while we fastened our seat belts and Mel started the engine. Only when we actually pulled away from the curb did DeAnn disappear into the house, closing the door and turning off the porch light. At the end of the block Mel negotiated a quick U-turn and then brought us back to the garbage bin parked at the end of the Cosgroves’ driveway.
Garbage hauled out to the street no longer has the expectation of privacy. Since the Dumpster in question came from a house awash in toddlers and disposable diapers, opening the lid was not for the faint of heart. I can handle crime scenes. I can handle the stench of death. The odor of several dozen moldering dirty diapers, however, left me gagging.
The top layer consisted of two large white plastic bags, carefully tied shut. For a time it looked as though I’d have to untie the bags and go pawing through them-not a pleasant thought. I hauled them out and placed them on the curb beside me. Then, to my immense relief, visible in the pale glow of a rain-drenched street lamp was exactly what I was looking for-a pair of mangled man’s sneakers. They had clearly been run through both a washer and dryer and looked as though they were no longer wearable.
Triumphantly I grabbed them up, threw the trash bags back inside the container, and hurried back to the car with my booty.
“Got ’em,” I told Mel. “Now drive. Next stop is the crime lab. Let’s see what, if anything, Luminol can tell us.”
Mel, driving like a maniac as usual, steered us straight to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab on Airport Way south of downtown Seattle. There it took only a matter of minutes for Rena Bullworth, one of the criminalists specializing in blood evidence, to confirm what Mel and I already suspected. The Cosgroves’ Maytag may have done its darnedest to clean up the mess, but the Luminol’s telltale blue told us that there were still tiny traces of human blood lingering on the seemingly white shoelaces and seams of Donnie Cosgrove’s Reeboks.
Seeing blood there was one thing. Being able to know whose blood we were seeing was another problem entirely.
Moments later I was on the phone with Detective Lander up in Leavenworth telling him about this latest development.
“So you think I’m right and the son-in-law could be our shooter?” he wanted to know.
“Maybe,” I said. “The lady here at the crime lab isn’t very hopeful about being able to extract a DNA profile from what little blood is left on Donnie Cosgrove’s shoes, but she’s going to try.”
“Even if the blood evidence isn’t there, we’ve got footprints,” Lander said. “If your shoes match our prints, we can at least put him at the crime scene.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “In the meantime, what kind of shell casings were found?”
“Just a minute,” Lander said. “Let me check the log.” It took a while for him to come back on the line. “Here it is. A nine-millimeter Golden Saber. Why?”
“Donnie Cosgrove’s wife told us he owns a handgun of some kind-a.357, she
Lander whistled. “Sounds like we need to have a sit-down with this guy.”
“Yes,” I said. “We do, but good luck finding him. He took off this afternoon after you left without telling his wife where he was going and hasn’t been seen since. He isn’t answering his phone.”
“You want to post the BOLO on him, or should I?” Lander asked.
In cop parlance, a “be on the lookout” is one step under an all-points bulletin, but it means pretty much the same thing. An unwitting DeAnn Cosgrove had willingly supplied all the necessary information.
“Not to worry,” I said. “My partner’s doing that right now.”
“Back to Redmond?” Mel asked as we left the crime lab.
“I don’t see any way around it,” I said. So back to Redmond we went. When we arrived at the Cosgroves’ little rambler a second time, the porch light was still off but interior lights showed at the windows. A fully dressed DeAnn responded to the bell. She came to the door with a sleeping baby cradled in her arms.
“Did you find him?” she asked anxiously. “Is he all right?”
“No,” Mel said. “We have yet to locate your husband, but we did find something else. We need to talk to you about it.”
By then DeAnn Cosgrove must have cried herself out and reached her own conclusions about our earlier visit. She listened to everything Mel and I had to say with dry-eyed concentration.
“You’re telling me he’s a suspect, then?” DeAnn asked.
Mel nodded.
“So what should I do? When Donnie comes home, should I try to talk him into giving up? Tell him that he should turn himself in?”
“No!” I interjected, probably more forcefully than I should have. “Absolutely not. Don’t even think about it. Convincing armed suspects to surrender is dangerous work even for trained emergency response teams.”
I could have added that unarmed wives are notoriously bad at it, but I didn’t. Even fully armed, Sue Danielson had been no match for her ex-husband. She hadn’t been able to convince him to lay down his weapon and stop shooting. I didn’t want DeAnn Cosgrove and her children to suffer the same fate. Neither did Mel.
“It’s always possible that your husband had nothing to do with what happened up in Leavenworth,” she said
