CHAPTER 21
We were almost back to 405 before either one of us spoke again. Mel was the one who broke the silence. “If Cosgrove was that drunk, do you think there’s any validity to the vehicle description he gave us?”
I could remember having momentary flashes of clarity like that in the middle of royally tying one on. I also knew there were times when I had driven home blind drunk with no memory of how I got there. It’s not something I’m proud of, and it’s something I make an effort to remember rather than forget.
“The man’s an engineer,” I said. “The vehicle ID may very well be accurate.” I tossed Mel my phone. “We’d better let Tim Lander know. His number is in there somewhere. Look for a 509 area code in the dialed calls.”
Detective Lander didn’t answer, so Mel left a message.
“Try Todd,” I suggested. “Let’s see if Dortman called him back.”
“He did,” Hatcher was saying when Mel turned my cell phone on speaker. “I just got off the phone with him. He said he couldn’t do an interview today because he’s been called out of town and is on his way to the airport. He gave me the number for his publicist in New York and suggested we arrange to do what he called a ‘phoner’ later. Sorry I didn’t do better,” Hatcher added.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “He called you from a cell phone?”
“Yes. Like I said, he’s on his way to the airport.”
“Give me that number.”
Mel pulled out her own phone. Because she’s a woman and, as she’s told me many times, can do more than one thing at once, she held one phone to her ear with her left hand and keyed the number into her own phone with the other.
“Mr. Dortman,” she said when he answered, “Melissa Soames with Special Homicide. We’re looking into a pair of homicides that happened up in Leavenworth over the weekend. If you don’t mind, we’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Sugar wouldn’t have melted in her mouth. “Oh, that’s quite all right, Mr. Dortman. We’re near the airport right now. Tell us where we can find you. Just a few questions. I’m sure you’ll have no problem making your flight. In the Alaska Board Room? Sure. That’s great. I know where it is.”
I had already hit the gas pedal. We were in fact nowhere near Sea-Tac Airport, but we would be soon.
“He couldn’t resist,” Mel said. “I love crooks. They always think they’re smarter than we are, and they always want to know what we know.”
My phone rang. Mel put it on speaker before she answered. “Bingo!” Tim Lander shouted. “Dortman has an ’04 Lincoln LS. How did you figure that out?”
“Donnie Cosgrove,” I told him. “That’s the vehicle he saw driving away from the crime scene in Leavenworth on Saturday. Dortman is on his way to the airport right now, and so are we. Do some digging on him if you can. Call us if you find out anything more.”
Sometimes I long for the old days when telephones couldn’t touch you in a vehicle. On the other hand, I’m glad we have them. I was especially happy about that when Tim Lander called back a few minutes later, long before we’d even reached the S Curves in Renton.
“I’m headed over the mountains right now,” Lander said. “Guess who has a license to carry? Our friend Dortman is the proud owner of a nine-millimeter Beretta, which would be consistent with that one piece of brass we found.”
“Which, with any kind of luck,” Mel said, “he won’t have on him at the airport.”
One can always hope. Even sworn police officers have a tough time getting through security with handguns these days.
“I’m in my car and headed in your direction right now,” Lander said. “When I get to Sea-Tac, I’ll call for an update. Or you call me.”
“What are we going to ask Dortman once we find him?” Mel asked me.
“We try to catch him in a lie. First we ask him whether or not he was in Leavenworth on Saturday night. Depending on how he answers the first one, we ask him whether or not he knew Jack and Carol Lawrence. If he lies about either one, he’s not flying today. But what do you think are the chances that he won’t be waiting for us in the Board Room?” I asked.
“I think the chances for that are excellent,” Mel returned. “So we won’t bother looking for him there. We’ll find out which plane he’s due to fly out on and catch up with him at the gate.”
That seemed unlikely. I’ve tried to get information out of airlines before. I’ve tried getting information about my own kids. Good luck with that. Airline personnel do not like giving out information of any kind. At least they don’t like giving it to me. Which is why I let Mel out at the departing passenger door and went to park. If gaining passenger information was a tough score, I knew that convincing a ticket-happy port police officer that my Mercedes 500 was parked in the curb lane on official police business was even less likely.
Bent on catching Mel, I was hotfooting it across the sky bridge toward the terminal when my phone rang. I grabbed it out of my pocket, thinking it would be Mel telling me where she was and where I should go. It was Ralph Ames.
“It’s taken me all morning to finally put together a conference call with the detectives down in Cancun and my translator in Phoenix,” he told me. “You’d think I was trying to broker a Middle East peace agreement.”
“I’m a little busy right now, Ralph,” I said. “Can I call you back?”
“Sure, but here are the high points. I’ve talked them into faxing you a copy of the ballistics information on the bullet taken from Richard Matthews’s body. They’ll be sending that to you at your office. But here’s the kicker. You’ll never guess who their main person of interest is. The cops in Cancun say they’re looking for a nun, a Catholic nun. Matthews and an unidentified sister were seen walking together on the beach shortly before he disappeared.”
Another nun! I stopped in midstride. A woman behind me, pushing an overloaded luggage cart, almost ran me down. “Did you say a nun?”
“Yes,” Ames answered. “A fairly young nun, early thirties at the most. I thought you’d be glad to hear it. You can call Mel Soames a lot of things, but a nun isn’t one of them. I asked for a composite, but they evidently don’t have one.”
At the moment I seemed to have unidentified nuns coming at me from all directions, and call waiting was buzzing in my ear.
“Look, Ralph, I’ve gotta go. But thanks. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” I switched over. “You found him?” I asked.
“Come to security at the main C Concourse gates,” Mel said. “Look for the first-class passenger and crew line. I’ve got someone here from TSA who’ll walk us through.”
If I had been with Mel instead of parking the car, I might have discovered how she worked that incredible piece of public relations magic. Not only had she charmed Dortman’s flight information out of someone at the ticket counter, she had also enchanted a member of one of the least cooperative law enforcement agencies on the planet, the Transportation Security Administration, into helping out as well. That wasn’t magic-it was downright miraculous.
When I came into the ticketing concourse, my heart fell. The crush of people waiting to clear security stretched all the way across the lobby. But I did as I was told and looked for the first-class line. There, next to a much shorter but still long line, I found Mel standing beside a wiry old geezer who looked more like a Wal-Mart greeter than a law enforcement officer.
When I caught up to them, Mel introduced him as Darrell Cross. Cross nodded curtly in my direction, spoke briefly into his walkie-talkie, and then opened a chain into one of the mazelike sorting areas and led us straight to the front of the line. While we were placing our shoes and weapons in the security trays, I leaned over to Mel. “Lady, when you’re good, you’re good. How the hell did you pull this off?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” she said with a smile.
We did have to show our IDs, but to my amazement there was no hassle about our carrying weapons or handcuffs, and not a word was said about our not having boarding passes.