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.