Mel sat up next to me. “What is it?” she asked.
“You say Donnie’s asleep on the couch?” I said as much to Mel as to DeAnn, trying in that one sentence to calm DeAnn while at the same time bringing Mel up to speed. “Hang up the phone, DeAnn,” I ordered. “Get in your car and drive away. I’ll call 9-1-1 and have them send someone to-”
“No,” DeAnn whispered to me. “No way. I’m not leaving and don’t call 9-1-1, either. Please. If armed cops show up here, they won’t think of Donnie as the man I love or the father of my children. They’ll only see a suspected killer.”
Which he is, I thought.
“Please, Detective Beaumont,” DeAnn continued. “If you’ll just talk to him, I’m sure he’ll listen to you.”
I wasn’t nearly as convinced of that as DeAnn was, but by then I was already pulling on my pants. Mel scrambled out of bed after me and padded down the hallway to dress.
“All right,” I agreed finally. “I’m coming. We’re coming,” I corrected. “Mel Soames and I both. If you don’t want us to call anyone else to meet us there, you have to promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That you won’t stay there with him by yourself. Drive down the street. Pull into someone else’s driveway. You can stay close enough to keep the truck in view so you can let us know in case he wakes up and starts to leave. But you cannot-you must not-be there in the house with him alone. Understand?”
“I already told you. It’s okay. His gun’s out in the Tahoe in plain sight.”
I reminded myself that this was a woman who probably wouldn’t know the difference between a.357 sidearm and your basic firecracker.
“What makes you think that’s the only gun he owns?” I demanded. And what about knives? I asked myself silently. How many of those does he have?
DeAnn started to reply, then stopped. “Donnie’s my husband…” she declared finally.
“Look, DeAnn,” I said, struggling to sound reasonable. “I know he’s your husband and I know you love him, but in Donnie’s current state of mind, armed or not, there’s a good chance he poses a danger to himself and others-you included.”
“But Donnie loves me,” she insisted. “He’d never hurt me.”
“Don’t bet on it,” I said.
Of course she was betting on it-betting her entire existence-or she would never have returned to the house in the first place.
“What becomes of your children if something happens to you?” I demanded. “What happens to them if both their parents turn up dead? Your mother’s not here to step in. Do you want the state looking after your babies? Do you want Child Protective Services calling the shots for them? Think about your kids, DeAnn. They need you a whole lot more right now than Donnie does.”
I held my breath and hoped I’d made a convincing argument. About then Mel returned to the bedroom. Completely dressed, she was already wearing her Kevlar vest. She tossed mine onto the bed.
“I’m hanging up now so I can get dressed,” I told DeAnn. “Promise me you won’t go anywhere near the house. Promise?”
For an answer she pushed the button and ended the call. I threw my phone onto the bed in utter frustration while I buttoned up my shirt. “What the hell is the matter with that woman?” I demanded. “What does she use for brains?”
Mel ignored my outburst. “Where’s Donnie Cosgrove and where’s his gun?” she wanted to know. “And how are we going to play this?”
“Donnie’s asleep on the couch. At least DeAnn thinks he’s asleep. She claims his gun is locked in the car out on the street, but we have no idea if the one she’s seeing in the vehicle is his only weapon. As far as your question about how we should play this is concerned? You tell me.”
“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, You’ll do what you have to do. But I didn’t say that, either. The idea that Donnie Cosgrove was on his way to prison was a likely possibility.
“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.