Dead Last

by Amanda Lamb

  I wondered how it had come to this. How had I wound up covering such inane stories? It was a redundant question. I knew the answer. I made a choice to change. Now it was up to me to embrace this change. People loved animal stories. Give them what they want, I remembered a news director in one of my earlier jobs saying to me. After all, who was I to judge what information people really needed to have?

  “Okay, I’ll do the giraffe thing. Do you have a psychologist in mind?”

  “Funny you should ask. I do. She’s a social psychology professor at N.C. State. I already spoke with her. I think she will be great on camera. Her name is Dr. Wanda Partridge. I’ll email you her contact info. She’s available at eleven, so I already set it up.”

  “Before you talked to me?” I said, with feigned anger.

  “I knew you’d do it.” She laughed.

  And she was right. I was nothing, if not a team player.

  “By the way, what’s going on with the murder case?” I hadn’t spoken with Suzanne, Kojak or Keri in a few days. On the one hand, I was trying to keep my distance from it, but on the other hand, I couldn’t help being curious.

  “You didn’t hear?”

  “No, that’s why I’m asking you.”

  “Oh, I just figured you got news alerts on your phone.”

  “I used to, but I turned them off. Too much distraction. Overwhelming.”

  “Well they made an arrest a few hours ago. Some woman. Isn’t that weird? A lady killer, a black widow. She’s on her way to the jail right now to be processed. Turned herself in at the police department.”

  “A woman? What’s her name?” My heart started racing. My vision started to blur. I couldn’t see the details on the chickens anymore, just blobs of orange and white waddling around in front of me. I felt nauseous. It couldn’t be, but it had to be. Suzanne. She shouldn’t have done that press conference. I should have stopped her from talking. It was all my fault.

  “Let me look.”

  I could hear Janie tapping on her keyboard, looking for the press release from the police department, which was likely buried in the thousands of emails in her inbox. I started focusing on the ambient noise of the newsroom in the background—people talking, phones ringing, scanners chattering.

  “Lopez, Maria. Maria Lopez. I don’t know what the connection is yet. Investigators haven’t said much.”

  “Thanks,” I said, sounding a little too shocked.

  It was like being on a train that jumped the tracks. My brain couldn’t wrap around the fact that I was going from Suzanne to Maria in a split second. It didn’t make any sense to me that a woman was behind such a gruesome act. From what I had learned from Juan, Maria didn’t have a motive to hurt Tanner. The hand they found in the freezer from the restaurant must have been Tanner’s. It was too much of a coincidence. But did that mean she was responsible for his death?

  “You okay?” Janie finally interrupted my stunned silence.

  “Sure, got to go. Tell Buster I will meet him at the professor’s office on campus at eleven.”

  “Will do. You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m sure.”

  But I wasn’t sure.

  O

  Dr. Wanda Partridge explained. “So it’s a collective experience shared by everyone, and gives people a sense of hope. In the not-so-distant past, people gathered around the television set and shared important events, like the first moonwalk or a high-profile trial, for example. Today, the Internet is the collective force that brings people together. The only difference is that because there’s so much noise on the Internet, it’s very difficult for something to stand out, to take hold, to get people’s attention.”

  I wasn’t going to need to ask the professor many questions. I just had to prompt her here and there with head nods and positive murmurs to keep her rolling. I was trying to pay attention to what she was saying, but I kept thinking about Maria being arrested. It was so incongruous. She just had a baby. How would she have had the strength to move his body and cut off his hand? The only thing I could think of was that someone must have helped her, someone like Juan. Just thinking about being in such proximity to him made me shiver. I remembered how he held my hand too tightly for too long when we had coffee.

  “The shared experience of the giraffe birth is almost like a rebirthing of hope for everyone who watches it, separately on their computers, on their phones, on their iPads. Alone, with others, it doesn’t matter, because the experience is still a shared one through the collective connectivity of the Internet.”

  It took me a minute to realize Dr. Partridge had stopped talking. I was so lost in my own thoughts.

  “Can I ask you a question off-topic, not on camera?” I turned around to look at Buster. He nodded and pointed the lens down to make it obvious we weren’t recording.

  “Sure. Shoot.”

  Dr. Partridge sat waiting for me to ask my question. Her curly red hair was barely contained by a multi-colored scrunchy. She peered at me over the rims of her bright blue glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She looked like a middle-aged hipster who had made a wrong turn and ended up in a professor’s office instead of at a coffee house.

  “What kind of woman murders someone? I mean, it’s very unusual, correct?”

  “Well, I’m not a forensic psychologist, and I really haven’t done any profiling, but I can tell you that women are less likely to be violent. Generally, if a woman kills someone, it’s in self-defense.”

  “But what if it’s not in self-defense? I mean, what kind of person, what kind of woman is capable of doing that?”

  “Well, in general, and this is a big generalization, women, like I said, tend to be less physically violent. They are more likely to be emotionally abusive if anything. But if you mean cold, calculating, planning someone’s murder, in general, a woman would have to be a sociopath. The most likely scenario is that the victim is in her way, for whatever reason, and she wants to get rid of that person. Again, this is a sweeping generalization based on what I have read over the years. I am by no means an expert in this area.”

  “What about postpartum depression? Is a woman who is suffering from this more likely to lash out, to be violent?”

  “Postpartum depression can manifest itself in many ways. Women are often so sad and desperate that they can harm their newborns.”

  “Could it cause a woman to want to do harm to someone else, like the baby’s father, perhaps?”

  “Sure, in extreme circumstances, I think so. Although, I am not aware of any documented cases of this.”

  Buster cleared his throat behind me. He knew exactly why I was asking these questions, and I anticipated a tongue lashing from him once we got in the car.

  Why do you care? he would ask. I wished I didn’t care. I decided that as soon as I was done with this interview, I had to talk to Kojak and find out what they had on Maria.

  “So back to the main topic. Are we good? Was I clear on the collective hope issue? I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a class to teach in about fifteen minutes, so I really need to wrap this up.”

  “Absolutely I really appreciate your time. Thanks again for agreeing to speak with us. I will shoot you a text and let you know when the story will air.”

  As we got up to leave, all I could think about was that hope was something I could use a lot more of at this moment.

  O

  “What in the world?” I said for the fifth time.

  “I know it’s crazy. I agree, but it’s strong.”

  Kojak leaned back in his tired office chair. The blue material on the armrests were faded from the sun and frayed from years of overuse. His old wooden desk was scarred with ink stains, coffee mug rings, and cigarette burns from the days when they allowed smoking in offices. I was pretty sure Kojak had continued to smoke in here well after that law was passed, until he quit. He was not one to follow rules when they didn’t suit him.

  “But it makes no sense. What about cutting off the hand? I can’t imagine a wo
man doing that.”

  “They think she had help, for sure. Probably one of her brothers. But she’s not talking. Her lawyer shut us down. So she’s going down alone.”

  “But she just had a baby. There is absolutely no way she did this alone and for what reason?”

  “I agree. It’s crazy. Pretty sure one of the brothers did the deed and then cut the hand off for good measure, to make it look like a drug thing.”

  “If they did it under some misguided belief that they were protecting her honor, why would they let her take the rap for it?”

  “Because they think a jury is less likely to convict a woman, especially one who just had a baby.”

  “What else do they have on her?”

  “Besides the hand in the freezer? Pretty sure that’s enough.”

  “But it doesn’t specifically tie Maria to anything. It could have been any person in her family, anyone who had access to that restaurant.”

  “Precisely. But the physical evidence is airtight, let me tell you. My guys found the gun in a vat of salsa in the walk-in refrigerator. No prints, wiped clean. Well, not clean. It was covered in hot peppers, but there were no prints to be found. Still the ballistics matched the slug we found in the doctor.”

  “Okay, still strong against someone in that family, but why focus on her specifically?”

  “They got a tip, anonymous caller, saw her at a grocery store with him the night before he disappeared. They were getting into a car in the parking lot of a Food Stop. Woman caller didn’t want to be identified, didn’t want to get involved, but it checked out with the guy who rolls the carts in. Showed him her picture, and he positively identified Maria.”

  “Okay, I guess it is pretty strong. But maybe she just led him to the spot where her brothers killed him.”

  “Possible, but that still makes her an accessory. If she knew about what they were going to do in advance, it makes her just as guilty under the law as the person who pulled the trigger.”

  I looked out the window streaked with yellow lines of pollen. It looked like someone had tried to wash it off and then gave up. Kojak’s office was on the seventh floor of an ancient building that desperately needed some attention. Around his office were piles of abandoned files stacked on top of battered metal filing cabinets. There were dogeared yellow labels in the square metal brackets on the front of each drawer written in fading blue ink: Open Files, Closed Files, Homicide, Sexual Assault.

  “Face it, they got her. And in record time. We got no choice but to move forward with this prosecution. There’s a lot of pressure from Madame District Attorney to get this show on the road. You going to the doctor’s funeral?”

  “Yes. I haven’t spoken to Suzanne since that first night. She lawyered-up. It got weird. I had to extricate myself from the whole thing.”

  “She lawyered-up?”

  “Yes I thought it was odd, too. But she’s an educated, professional woman. I guess she decided it was the prudent thing to do.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.”

  We sat in silence for a minute. I knew we were thinking the same thing. Was Tanner Pope’s murder really solved?

  O

  Tanner’s funeral could not take place until Maria’s arrest because his body was being held at the state medical examiner’s morgue as evidence until the case was officially closed. Following Maria’s arrest, his body was released to Suzanne and she had him cremated.

  The day before the service, Suzanne emailed me about Tanner's wishes to be cremated. Maddie, it would mean so much to me if you came to the service tomorrow. I don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable situation professionally, but I would love to have you there for support. You’ve been so good to me. Think about it.

  It felt awkward having this kind of personal communication with Suzanne. We had shared a lot in a short period of time, but after seeing the callous way she acted that night after Tanner’s death, I realized I really didn’t know her at all. She was a stranger whose path had crossed mine, but we had little to nothing in common. Still I felt obligated to do the right thing and go to Tanner’s funeral despite my discomfort.

  I finally revealed to Dex that I was friends with Suzanne. He appreciated my candor and I could not cover the story from here on out because it would be a conflict of interest, but he also urged me to stay on top of it from the background and feed Keri anything I could to help our coverage. It was the classic conundrum of the news business: don’t report about people you know personally unless they happen to have a good story.

  I agreed to Dex’s terms and took them with a grain of salt. If there was anything that I could give Keri that wouldn’t compromise what Suzanne had said to me in confidence, I would do it. Otherwise, I was going to the funeral as a private citizen, not as a reporter.

  Tanner’s funeral was being held at a stately old Episcopalian church in the heart of Oak City. Despite the floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows, the stone building was dark and cold inside. The ancient organ droned through the sanctuary, bouncing off the cathedral ceiling to produce an eerie, somber dirge.

  Suzanne fit the role of the grieving wife elegantly in her snug, chic black dress, with a tight wad of tissues balled up in her hand. She stood at the back of the church and greeted people as they walked in, with quick hugs and mournful nods, as gentle tears cascaded down her cheeks. I was confused by what appeared to be her genuine grief in the face of the flippancy I had witnessed at her house.

  A little boy, I assumed was Winston, stood in between Suzanne and the woman I now understood was her sister, Jessie. There was no doubt they were sisters, with their shared porcelain skin and jet-black locks. The boy extended his hand to visitors, looking every bit the uncomfortable young son of a dead man.

  I felt sorry for Winston as I stood in line, knowing a child his age had no real capacity to understand mortality, especially the murder of his father. I knew how hard my own children, especially Blake, had taken Adam’s death. I also knew it was not a loss a child would ever get over.

  “You came.” Suzanne's face lit up when she saw me. I still couldn’t figure out why she was so drawn to me. She pulled me in for a real hug, unlike the limp air hugs she had given the people in line in front of me. “Thank you.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the people behind me wore curious looks. They were wondering what our relationship was. Winston shuffled his feet and then looked up at me with a questioning gaze. I pulled away from Suzanne and extended my hand to the little boy.

  “I’m so sorry young man.”

  “Thanks. Me too.” He glanced up at his mom with a concerned look, as if he might have said something wrong.

  “I just can’t believe he’s really gone.” Suzanne put her hands on Winston’s shoulders.

  Instead of gentle tears, large tears were now pouring down her red cheeks. “And for what? An affair? A jealous woman’s rage.” She bowed her head and touched her forehead to the top of Winston’s head, burying it in his hair.

  I was shocked that she was talking so openly about the murder case in front of Winston. She had lowered her voice so others couldn’t hear her, but there was no way he didn’t.

  I almost believed that she really missed Tanner. Almost. Then I watched Suzanne center the clasp of her thin silver belt on her dress. It was askew from all the hugging. Then she smoothed the right side of her hair down and pulled it forward over her ear. They were almost imperceptible, but deliberate movements. They were not the movements of a woman consumed and distracted by grief. I knew grief, and I was not witnessing it.

  16

  Jury of Her Peers

  Keri was assigned to cover Maria’s trial, but she had scheduled a vacation months before the trial date was set. It included nonrefundable plane tickets, so I had to fill in for several days until she returned. Dex suddenly decided it wasn’t a conflict of interest for me to cover the case because I didn’t know Tanner personally, just Suzanne. I vehemently disagreed with his logic, explainin
g that in an unrelated capacity, Tanner had been Adam’s doctor at one time. Despite my strong protests, I lost the battle because we simply didn’t have enough people to cover it. I was stuck in the courtroom for a week.

  Suzanne sat stoically in the front row, on a wooden pew just behind the prosecutor. She was always pulling tissues out of her big silver bag, and her sister, Jessie, sat nestled next to her, leaning against her like a baby bird. It looked like they were propping one another up. While they weren’t twins, they looked like clones of one another, with their long dark hair, creamy white skin, and bright red lipstick.

  Suzanne was tight-lipped once the trial started, nodding at me from across the courtroom when I walked in every morning, but never stopping to chat in the hallway during the breaks. I wasn’t sure why she was keeping her distance from me. We had talked a few times between the funeral and the trial, mostly through emails and texts. I had gone to her house one time for coffee to pay my condolences, but that was the last time we spoke face-to-face. It was fair to say our friendship, or whatever it was, had run its course. I was relieved that it was over.

  I still couldn’t shake the creepy feeling she gave me at Tanner’s funeral—the little signs that made me question her grief. But as time passed, I started to question my observations from that day. Maybe I was being too hard on her? After all, it was normal for her to have had mixed feelings about a man she thought was trying to kill her in the weeks leading up to his death. Maybe her grief was for Winston’s sake.

  After Keri returned from vacation and started covering the trial again, I remained a voyeur, watching excerpts of her coverage in between my snake-on-the-loose story in an elementary school, and the monkey at one of the local university research laboratories who could do fifth grade math. I did a deep dive into the online coverage of the trial every day on my phone while I waited for the kids in the carpool line.

  It looked like the state’s case was falling apart. The defense had done a good job of punching holes in the Maria and Tanner relationship theory. They revealed that Tanner was on the board of the local human trafficking organization Stop Human Trafficking in its Tracks. His lawyers said that in that role, he had reached out to Maria and helped her get away from an unhealthy relationship where the boyfriend was advertising her on a website for sex and setting up dates in local hotel rooms. Maria’s defense attorneys said Tanner learned of her situation from a counselor affiliated with the group. He was passionate about the issue and was eager to do more than just sit on the board. Tanner was the kind of person who wanted to get his hands dirty, not just sit around a table and talk about the annual fundraiser at the local country club.