“What was he upset about?” I asked.
“That DeAnn had talked to you. Wanted to know how dare she bring this back up after all these years. Told her she should learn to mind her own damn business and let sleeping dogs lie. Didn’t she know when she was well off. Stuff like that. Can you believe it?” Cosgrove demanded, his voice shaking in outrage. “He actually said that to her about her father—called him a ‘sleeping dog’! And in our own home, too.”
I gave Cosgrove a moment to get a grip on his emotions before asking, “You’re saying Mr. Lawrence seemed to think your wife had something to do with instigating our renewed interest in Anthony Cosgrove’s disappearance?”
“Evidently.”
“How did he find out about it?”
“DeAnn called her mother to see if you had contacted them. Carol is DeAnn’s mother, after all, so we try to maintain some kind of normal relationship with her—as normal as you can with a nutcase like Jack lurking in the background. Carol said you hadn’t called or stopped by, or at least not yet, but she must have mentioned the conversation to Jack. He hit the roof and drove all the way down from Leavenworth to bitch DeAnn out about it. I just wish I’d been there when it happened, but of course Lawrence is such a coward, he’d never tackle someone like me. He’d rather terrorize DeAnn and the kids.”
“Maybe you should consider swearing out a restraining order against him,” I suggested.
“What good would a piece of paper do?” Cosgrove wanted to know.
“For one thing, if he came back and caused trouble, DeAnn could call the cops and have him put in jail.”
“I’ve read about what happens to women with restraining orders,” Cosgrove said bitterly. “A lot of them end up dead.”
“Has your father-in-law been violent toward DeAnn in the past?” I asked.
“Why do you think she moved out of the house when she was in high school?” Donnie returned. “That’s why she went to live with her grandmother.”
“What about his wife?” I asked. “Does he beat her, too?”
“I’m not sure. She hasn’t ever come right out and said so,” Donnie conceded, “but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. She’s shown up with oddball bruises from time to time, but she always has one lame excuse or another for what’s happened to her.”
Domestic-violence victims almost always have excuses, I thought. They don’t want to say what has really happened to them, probably because they don’t think people will believe them, or maybe because they’re afraid they will.
“Anyway,” Donnie continued, “the man’s scary as hell. What I don’t understand is why your looking into Tony’s disappearance all those years ago would send Jack off the deep end.”
Observed over-or underreactions on the part of near and dear relatives or even those who are near and not-so-dear always raise red flags for homicide detectives. They indicate that something is out of whack with the relationship—that all isn’t as it should be. In this case I couldn’t help but be struck by Jack Lawrence’s over-the-top response to learning that we were reexamining a case that, on the surface, had opened and closed twenty years ago.
“What can you tell me about the man?” I asked.
“About Jack? You mean other than the fact that he’s an asshole and a bully?” Cosgrove returned.
“Other than that.”
“Jack Lawrence is a my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy,” Donnie answered. “Ex-marine. Tough as nails. Very opinionated. Always knows everything about everything. I can’t stand the guy and don’t want him in my house. And up until yesterday, he never had been. Like I said, we’ve tried to maintain a relationship with Carol, but Carol without Jack. Just being around him upsets DeAnn too much.”
“Is there a chance that Jack is distressed about our investigating Tony Cosgrove’s disappearance because he was somehow involved in it?”
There was a long pause before Donnie answered. “Maybe,” he said finally.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’ve heard rumors that Jack and Carol were romantically involved long before Tony went fishing at Spirit Lake. It always struck me as a little too convenient that Tony disappears and the next thing you know, Jack and Carol are a couple. But it all happened long before I was part of the picture. When I heard the rumors I kept quiet about them for DeAnn’s sake.”
“You don’t accept as fact the idea that Tony Cosgrove died in the eruption?” I asked.
“Not really,” Donnie said. “It never made sense to me that a man who hardly ever went fishing would just happen to be doing that very thing on Spirit Lake the day the mountain blew up. And I always thought it was strange that nobody ever turned up even the smallest trace of him or his vehicle. When vehicles get burned up or when people do, there are usually some traces—some little bits and pieces—that are left behind.”