by Amanda Lamb
“Any working theories of the case yet?”
“Not really, but he was wearing his white coat you know, the one doctors wear, so he must have been leaving work when he got popped. Looks like he was killed somewhere else and then dumped like a bucket of old garbage in this swanky hood. Someone haphazardly tried to cover him up with that brush, but it was a half-assed attempt to hide him. My guess is that they had no time, or no means to bury him. So they just dumped him and hoped for the best. Most likely two people involved. A grown male stiff is heavy, would be hard for anyone to move alone.”
“That’s insane. I mean, whoever did it certainly wasn’t trying to cover it up, leaving his doctor’s coat on, dumping him in a public place. They obviously wanted him to be found.”
“That’s not the craziest thing. You’re not going to believe this next part.”
I was pacing the sidewalk, occasionally glancing through the window into the restaurant where Juan was still drinking his coffee and staring at his phone.
“I’m not sure I want to know.”
“He’s missing a hand.”
“A what?” I thought maybe I had heard him incorrectly. “Say that again, please. I though you said hand. Missing a hand.”
“That’s what I said, kid. A hand, like the kind you write with, eat with, brush your teeth with. Whoever killed the dude cut off his left hand after they shot him. Or at least, let’s hope it was after he was shot and not before.”
“That’s crazy. What does that even mean?”
“One of two things. It could be a serial killer who keeps trophies, or it was a drug cartel hit, sending a message about what happens to people who cross them.”
“Both of those seem pretty far-fetched, if you ask me. I mean, what would a serial killer want with Tanner Pope? Don’t they usually go after women? And drug cartels, that’s just bizarre. He’s a doctor. He can get drugs all day long on his own good drugs, opiates. Why would he be involved with a drug cartel?”
“Don’t know. Good question. Maybe he was selling, not buying, and something went wrong.”
“This is starting to sound like the plot of a horror movie.”
“People don’t get murdered for no reason. The part about the hand is way off the record, not for public consumption. If it gets out, I’m screwed. It will come right back and hit me in the damn face, so don’t burn me.”
“I won’t. You know I won’t. But the whole thing is so unbelievable. I’m trying to process it. Shoot. I need to go. I’m meeting with someone right now, someone who was looking for Tanner. I guess I need to let him know what’s going on. Is it public yet?”
“Soon.”
“Does Suzanne know?”
“Yes, they sent a cop to her door. She apparently took the news very hard according, to my guys.”
“Wow, okay. I will call her. I mean, he was still the father of her son, and the separation was new. It’s still got to be devastating.”
I leaned up against the brick wall of the restaurant and peered through the large picture window, back at my table, looking for Juan. Two abandoned cups of coffee sat in the middle of the table, and Juan’s chair was empty. To me, he just became suspect number one.
14
On the Record
Keri came by my desk in the newsroom that afternoon to tell me the great news—Fred had sent out a press release identifying the dead man as a local doctor named Tanner Pope. I could tell she was about to burst because she was so happy about finally learning the dead man’s identity. It made me pause and think about what an odd job this was, that the name of a dead person elicited joy.
“That’s great, Keri. I know you’ve been working hard on this case, waiting for a break.” I tried to act like the information was news to me.
She was so excited I doubted she would pick up on anything in my voice or expression that might give me away. While I knew the information before anyone else, I couldn’t tell a soul in the newsroom until the police confirmed it on the record. Otherwise I would have been breaching Kojak’s confidence.
“Yes, I still don’t know what took them so long. I guess because he’s a semi-important person, a doctor, they wanted to make sure they notified the family first.”
“That makes sense.” I powered down my laptop and started to load it into my computer bag. Keri was standing at the edge of my desk, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot like a boxer warming up.
“So I should go there, to his family’s house? Try and talk to his wife? Knock on her door? I have the address. It was in the press release.”
It struck me that she knew the answers to her questions before she asked them, but just wanted confirmation from me that this horrible thing she was about to do—knock on the door of a murder victim’s wife—was, in fact, what she was supposed to do.
I stopped loading my computer bag and turned to give Keri my full attention. Obviously she needed to try to talk to Suzanne. That’s what journalists did in these situations. Because I knew Suzanne, the professional thing for me to do was to introduce her to Keri. But I still felt protective of Suzanne and wanted to shield her from the onslaught of media that was surely already descending upon her house. My boundaries were blurry. I decided not to let Keri know that I knew Suzanne. If Suzanne was going to talk to anyone, maintaining her trust was the only way to make that happen. I might be able to facilitate something between her and Keri in the coming days.
“You can try that. It’s unlikely she will talk. After all, her husband was just murdered. But you never know. Dex is going to want you to at least try.” My head was bent over my computer bag, trying not to make eye contact with Keri. I felt guilty for misleading her.
“But if they don’t know who killed him, it might help for her to go on camera and plead for the public’s help, asking people to call the police if they have any information about the crime. That would be very powerful coming from the widow.”
“True. But my gut tells me this is not a case where that might happen. Let me think about it a little more. I’ll make a few calls and see what I can learn about the case first before you do the drive-by. Give me about thirty minutes. I’ll call you or text you. Okay?”
Keri looked like she was about to hug me. She gave me a toothy smile and bounced off toward her desk.
I dreaded what I had to do next. I knew it was time for me to call Suzanne, to give her my condolences, to warn her about the media tidal wave that was about to cascade on her. I wasn’t sure how Suzanne was reacting to Tanner’s death given, their rocky relationship and the way it had all ended. That’s what friends did—lend support in difficult times. I had finally come to the conclusion that what Suzanne and I had formed, albeit under tragic circumstances, an unusual friendship.
O
At first I wanted to go to Suzanne’s house and speak with her in person, but I decided against it, figuring there might be lots of reporters staking it out. Plus, there could be police questioning her or even guarding her house if they believed she might be in danger from the person who killed Tanner. I didn’t want to risk being seen by anyone else. So I called her.
“Hello, Maddie, oh, thank God it’s you. So you’ve heard. I’m sure you’ve heard.” Suzanne’s voice trailed off into tears. “I just can’t believe it. How am I going to tell Winston? He’ll be home from school any minute.”
“You haven’t told him yet? You didn’t pick him up at school? Suzanne, everyone just sent out breaking news alerts. It’s all over social media. What if someone says something to him?”
“Oh, God, you’re right. What kind of mother am I? I need to go get him. Shit, he’s probably already in the carpool line.”
All I could hear was muffled crying through the phone. I immediately felt bad that I hadn’t gone to her house. I felt helpless listening to her sobbing on the other end of the line and not being able to do anything. I wanted to reach through the phone and give her a big hug.
“Suzanne is anyone with you. Can I call someone for you?”
I was surprised by the depth of Suzanne’s grief, but then I realized that relationships are complicated. On the one hand, her marriage was over, but on the other hand, she had a long history with this man, and a child. You don’t just stop loving someone overnight, even if that someone doesn’t treat you well. Plus, she also had to be thinking about what a tragedy it was for her son to lose his father.
“Suzanne, listen to me. You do need to call Tanner’s family, but you don’t need to talk to anyone else. Don’t answer the door. Don’t answer the phone unless it’s a number you recognize and it’s someone you really want to talk to. Your house is soon going to be crawling with media. A reporter from my station included. You have no obligation to speak with anyone.”
I felt overwhelmed with a great amount of concern for Suzanne. It was like I was transported back to the day we returned to our house in New Jersey after my mother’s murder, before Roger was arrested. Even though I was just a little girl, I clearly remember the news media camping out in the street in front of our house. We had left my grandparent’s house in Pennsylvania the day of the crime because it was swarming with cops. It was also surrounded by yellow tape. My grandparents went to a hotel, and we went to stay with Belle at her house in New Jersey. But soon Roger decided it was time for us to go home to our house.
Their bright television lights bathed our front yard in a soft yellow glow as the reporters stood in a line in front of their cameras along the curb. I remember peeking through the beige blinds when Roger left the room, pulling them back just enough so I could see them but they couldn’t see me. Sometimes they would catch me peeking at them and point at me. I would duck down into the couch and giggle, like it was a game.
I guess Roger wanted to show everyone that he was not afraid of their speculation that he had something to do with my mother’s death. Belle later told me that he had freely done interviews with police without a lawyer present to help them eliminate him as a suspect and find the real killer.
Those days with Roger after my mother’s death were fuzzy, but I clearly remembered the doorbell ringing again and again and Roger peering through the blinds to see who it was.
“Damn reporters,” he’d mumble. “Maddie, stay away from the window. I don’t want them trying to get a picture of you. And definitely don’t answer the door.”
The phone rang off the hook. Roger would let the answering machine pick it up. We would sit at the kitchen table and listen to the messages.
“Sir, I’m sorry to bother you at a time like this, but I’m calling from the Tribune. I’d like to speak with you about your wife. Maybe talking about her would help bring some closure to your tragedy. It might jog someone’s memory in the community maybe someone saw something and would come forward to the police. Please call me back and we’ll set up a time to get together.”
Even though I was very young, I couldn’t forget the look on Roger’s face when he heard those calls. He looked lost. Thinking back on it from an adult perspective, I now realized he truly was lost. He had lost his wife and was about to lose his child and his freedom. The buzzards were circling around him. It was only a matter of time. When a woman was murdered, it was almost always the husband. The reporters knew it and Roger knew it. When the police finally knew it, they would come for him. And they did. One day there was a knock on the door, and it wasn’t a reporter.
“Suzanne, what can I do to help?” I heard myself say after I pulled myself out of the reverie.
“Maddie, can you come over, as a friend? Not as a reporter. I just don’t have anyone else to turn to until Jessie gets here. You deal with stuff like this in your job all the time. You will know how to handle it.”
I was silent as I let the gravity of her plea sink in. For the first time in my career, I had no idea what to do.
O
When Adam was dying, I used to cry alone in my car at stoplights. People would look over at me and stare. I’m sure they thought I was crazy. But something about being alone in my car felt safe despite that it was a fish bowl on wheels.
My car had always been my safe haven, especially when the kids were babies. After sleepless nights when one twin would wake up as soon as I got the other one back to sleep, I couldn’t wait to wrap myself in the solitude of my car. In the morning I would leave them in the strong, capable hands of our nanny at the time, Daisy, and skip to my car. I set my travel coffee mug in the cupholder, put down the windows, and turned up the radio just enough to feel celebratory, but not enough to distract me from my, peaceful respite. Other than the shower or the running trail, the car was the only place I was ever truly alone with my thoughts.
Now I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. My head was swirling with so much information. I kept replaying the facts in a loop, hoping I might get some new understanding each time I reran the timeline.
The facts—I met Suzanne after her accident at the road race. She told me she thought her husband, Tanner, had poisoned her and was trying to kill her. She was afraid to leave him because she was concerned that he would try to take their son away from her. She also suspected him of having an affair with a mystery woman nicknamed G6, a woman I thought might be a prostitute, and who had just given birth. The woman, Maria Lopez, has a brother named Juan. Juan told me Tanner was not romantically involved with his sister, and that Tanner was missing. Suzanne told me Tanner had left her. Tanner wound up dead. What was I missing?
The man behind me, in a shiny silver Audi, laid on his horn as I daydreamed at the green light. It wasn’t a gentle reminder to go, but a self-important long beep that annoyed me enough to want to remain sitting there for a few more seconds.
“Chill out,” I said. “I’m sure you’re not in that big of a hurry.”
My phone was vibrating in the cup holder. I tried hard to set a good example for the kids by not texting and driving. This meant ignoring the texts even when the children weren’t in the car. I had to be consistent. As a runner, I had watched drivers swerve and almost hit me while texting, many times.
When I first met Adam, texting was just starting to become a thing. I had a flip phone, and each key had three letters on it. So in order to text you had to hit each key multiple times until it got to the correct letter. It was tedious and time-consuming. But this meant when you received a text, you knew the person had worked for it. Oh, how I loved those early texts from Adam, about how I looked that day or how he couldn’t wait to see me that night. Now my text messages were almost always a source of angst because they generally involved someone needing something from me.
I turned up the radio and tried to ignore the incessant vibration.
You’re giving me a million reasons to let you go. You’re giving me a million reasons to quit the show, Lady Gaga crooned in her hipster, country pop tune.
I sang along with the song, not caring that people could probably hear my crappy voice through my open window as traffic crawled. I wasn’t sure where I was going. I had told Suzanne I was coming over, but there were so many reasons why this was a bad idea. The number one reason was that I was a journalist and I didn’t need to insert myself in the middle of a murder investigation. I was already in too deep with Suzanne as it was. If the investigators thought I knew any information that might help solve the case, they had every right to call me in for questioning. That wouldn’t look good for me or the station.
I finally glanced down at my phone as I sat stationary in a never-ending traffic jam. I clicked on the most recent text. It was from Juan.
The doctor is dead. We are very sad. Do you know what happened? —Juan
I had forgotten to circle back with Juan after he left the restaurant. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe Tanner had just been a friend to Maria and
his family. Or, maybe Juan had fooled me. Maybe he was using his concern for Tanner’s disappearance to cover up that he was involved in his death.
And then there was the missing hand. I couldn’t get my mind off that bizarre detail. I wondered if Suzanne knew about it.
At the next exit, I pulled off the highway. I texted Suzanne and told her I would be there as soon as I could, but that I needed to make a stop first. I figured the later I got to her house, the better. Under the cloak of darkness, I would be less likely to be noticed by the reporters and photographers camping out in the street in front of her house.
I also texted Keri and told her I had learned that the family wasn’t talking to the media right now, so there was no need to go by the house, but that I would keep her posted. If at some point there was an opportunity to interview Suzanne, I would make sure it was with Keri. But until I knew more about what was going on, I wanted Suzanne to stay out of the spotlight.
Keri texted back and said that Dex was making her go to Suzanne’s house anyway, just in case she changed her mind and decided to talk. I knew Keri had no choice but to do what Dex asked her to do. I was just glad I wouldn’t be the reporter feeling desperate tonight.
O
On instinct I decided instead of heading to Suzanne’s I would pay Juan a visit at La Fiesta. When I finally pulled up to the restaurant after making my way back across town in the insufferable rush hour traffic, it was crawling with police. The parking lot was cordoned off with yellow tape that read police line, do not cross in bold black letters. Crime scene investigators from the Tirey County CSI team were coming and going from the building with large brown paper bags and boxes of items labeled evidence in large red letters. They wore blue plastic gloves as they loaded the boxes and bags into unmarked white vans. Knowing it often took several hours to get a search warrant, I realized that the focus on Maria and her family must have started immediately after Tanner’s body was identified.