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.
Fortunately for all concerned, I kept my mouth shut. Sitting behind his battle-worn desk, Darrell Cross seemed content to let Mel and me take over the questioning process. “Maybe you’d like to tell us about it,” she suggested.
“Jack was going to go public,” Dortman said. “He was going to spill his guts.”
“About what?” Mel asked.
“Jack was completely paranoid,” Dortman continued. “Once someone started looking into his wife’s ex- husband’s death, Jack said he was sure they were going to come after us, too. I tried to tell him that the statute of limitations had run out long ago and there was no way for anyone to lay a glove on us. He was retired. Since I’m still working, I was the one who’d get hurt in the deal. If I got linked back to that whole scandal thing, that would be the end of my credibility.”
“What scandal thing?” I asked.
Dortman shook his head. “There was so damned much money floating around,” he said. “Those were the days when planes didn’t get sold unless someone’s palm got greased. Since Jack was in sales, he knew all about the kickbacks. We figured out a way to skim some off the top. Not very much, in the big scheme of things, but enough.”
“Enough for Jack Lawrence to retire early?”
Dortman nodded. “I would have been all right, too, but I got caught up in the dot-com bubble. Lost my shirt. And I’m still working. So when Jack threatened me, I had to do something. I tried to convince him to keep quiet. When I went to talk to him about it, he came after me. What happened was really self-defense. All I was doing was protecting myself.”
“What about Tony Cosgrove?” I asked.
“What about him?” Dortman returned. “He went fishing. The mountain blew up. End of story.”
“Was he involved in the skimming?” I asked.
“He figured it out,” Dortman said.
“And he was going to tell? I believe that’s what you said in the article you wrote. I read it in some obscure engineering magazine or other.”
“I never should have mentioned his name,” Dortman murmured.
“True,” I agreed. “You shouldn’t have, but you did. So what happened?”
“I was out of the country when that all came down. For all I know, maybe Jack did get rid of him, but I had nothing to do with it.”
Being accused of three homicide charges is only marginally worse than two. I let that one go.
“What about Kevin Stock?” I asked. “Who’s he?”
Dortman shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “Never heard of him.”
A laser printer sat behind Mel. She reached around to it and removed a blank sheet of of paper, which she slid across the table so it came to a stop directly in front of Thomas Dortman.
“Maybe you’d like to write some of that down for us,” she said, passing him a pen as well. “Just to be clear.”
That little byplay seemed to be enough of a reality check to snap Dortman out of his spasm of stupidity. “You mean, like write down a confession or something?” he asked.
Mel didn’t reply because Dortman was already shaking his head. “I’m not confessing to anything,” he declared. “I want a lawyer. Now. You have to let me go.”
Darrell Cross had maintained his silence throughout the process. “No,” he said. “Actually we don’t. Not only did you have a dangerous weapon in your possession that you carried through security, we’ve now x-rayed your checked luggage. We know that there’s at least one weapon in there as well.”
“I have a license for that,” Dortman objected. “A valid license to carry. I want a lawyer.”
We all knew it was a little late for a lawyer, but Darrell Cross was entirely agreeable about it. “And you’ll have one,” he said. “With any luck, he’ll arrive about the same time we have the warrant to search your luggage. You’re welcome to use my phone here to call your attorney if you like. Have him meet you at the King County Justice Center down in Kent. Or, if you’d rather, you can call him from there-your choice.”
“I’ll call from there,” Dortman said.
“As you like,” Cross responded.
He pressed a button on his phone console. The door opened and the two TSA officers who had brought Dortman into the office appeared once more. “I believe Mr. Dortman here is ready to be transported.”
The guards led him away. I couldn’t help feeling let down. “I thought we were going to come out of here with a confession,” I groused. “Right up until you passed him that paper. Then he freaked.”
“Not to worry,” Darrell Cross said with his Cheshire-cat smile. He motioned toward the clock behind him. Only then, upon closer examination, did I notice the camera lens that had been discreetly concealed inside the face of it.
“You recorded it?” I asked.
“Every bit of it,” Cross replied. “Every single word, in full video and audio. Whenever we bring people in here, they’re always complaining that we’re abusing their rights. I’ve found it helpful to be proactive about that-to take preemptive measures, if you will. With all of us visible in the room, I think Mr. Dortman will have a hell of a time convincing anyone that it was a forced confession. Copies, anyone?”
“Yes, please,” Mel said.
And while Darrell Cross went to fetch ours, I sat there in his office and decided perhaps it was time to rethink my long-standing contempt for the TSA. Maybe Homeland Security wasn’t in such bad hands after all.
CHAPTER 22
Darrell Cross remained pleasant and cordial enough, right until Tim Lander showed up. He arrived with his legally executed search warrant in hand about the same time Darrell Cross’s warrant appeared. That was when some old-fashioned TSA rigidity and noncooperation arrived on the scene as well.
