by J. A. Jance
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 Cancún 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 Cancún 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.
“Okay,” Mel said once we had our shoes back on. “Dortman’s on the eleven forty-five flight for LAX. When he gets there, he’s scheduled to connect with an overnight Copa Airlines flight to Caracas, Venezuela. Booked his tickets yesterday. Paid full fare.”
“In a hurry to get out of town?” I asked.
“Do you think?”
The whole time we’d been going through the search procedure, Mr. Cross had been speaking into his walkie-talkie. “Okay, Ms. Soames,” he said, leading us in the direction of the D gates, “I’ve talked to baggage. They’ve got Mr. Dortman’s baggage isolated. If he doesn’t fly, neither will his luggage.”
A guy from TSA was doing all this? That absolutely put me in my place and made me realize Mel Soames was even more out of my league than I had thought.
As we approached the gate area I didn’t think it would be difficult to recognize Thomas Dortman. I had never seen any of his on-air commentary, but he had posted his photo all over his Web site. He was seated at the end of the bank of seats nearest the ticket agent’s counter and the door leading out to the jetway. He huddled there with his back to the window, looking as inconspicuous as possible.
His Web site photos must have been either very old or Photo-shopped into the male equivalent of Glamour Shots. The man depicted there had been younger and far leaner than this one. He also had a full head of hair. This one was jowly and slightly balding. He also looked haggard and bleary-eyed—as though he hadn’t slept in several days.
I could see we were arriving just in time. The departure door was already latched open and the gate agent was preparing to make her first boarding announcement. The nod she gave to Mr. TSA Walkie-Talkie indicated he had been in contact with her as well. Despite his unassuming appearance, Mr. Cross was obviously a go-to kind of guy.
Without any discussion, Mel and I approached Dortman from e
ither side, effectively boxing him in.
“We somehow missed each other in the Board Room, Mr. Dortman,” Mel said, casually flashing her ID in his direction. “I must have misunderstood.”
The gate agent made her announcement. Dortman started to rise. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “They’re calling my flight.”
“Have a seat, Mr. Dortman,” Mel said. “You paid full fare. If you miss this flight, you can always rebook.”
Unhappy about it, Dortman sat while nearby passengers studied us with open curiosity. Beads of sweat suddenly popped out on the man’s forehead.
Mel slipped onto the seat next to him. “So is your publisher putting out a Spanish edition of The Whistle-blower’s Guide?” she asked conversationally.
Dortman looked at her as though she were nuts. “No,” he said. “Why?”
“With a book coming out a few weeks from now, I’d think you’d need to be available for interviews and appearances. Won’t that be difficult to do from so far away, especially since you didn’t bother to book a return flight?”
“I have a meeting with a source in Caracas,” he said indignantly. “For my next book. In addition, my flight information is supposed to be confidential. You have no right to—”
It was time for me to step up. “When’s the last time you saw Carol and Jack Lawrence?” I asked.
“Who?” he returned.
“Wrong answer, Mr. Dortman,” I said.
I nodded toward Cross, but it wasn’t necessary. He was already picking up his walkie-talkie. “Okay with the luggage,” he said. “Take it off the cart and bring it to my office.”
“My luggage!” Dortman yelped. “You can’t touch my luggage. You don’t have a warrant.”
“They can’t touch your luggage,” Cross said pleasantly, glancing at Mel and me. “But I can, particularly if there’s a chance a traveler’s luggage will be on a flight when he isn’t.”
“But I haven’t missed my flight,” Dortman objected.
Darrel Cross smiled. “I believe you’re about to,” he said. “You need to come with us, Mr. Dortman.”
For a second or two, I thought Dortman was going to bolt and make a run for the jetway. Not that it would have done him any good, but desperate people can make some pretty stupid decisions at times. In the end he thought better of it. He shrugged and stood.
I was about to ask him to put his hands behind him. “This is my jurisdiction, Mr. Beaumont,” Cross said. “If you don’t mind, we’ll do the honors, but you’re welcome to read him his rights.”
Two more TSA agents appeared out of nowhere, patting Dortman down and cuffing him. You would have 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.
Sure, I thought. Firing off that whole barrage of shots was an accident. So was going around the crime scene collecting your brass.
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.
Here it comes, I thought. I’m finally going to find out what really happened to Tony Cosgrove.
“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.”
That’s why Carol Lawrence was shot in the back, you little shit, I thought. You were protecting yourself.
“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.
Like a confession exactly, I thought.
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 c
arried 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