are we going to play this?”
“Donnie’s asleep on the couch. At least DeAnn
“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,
“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
