Dead Last

by Amanda Lamb

  When I got there, the woman’s family was crammed in the living room of the tiny house, chain smoking, pacing, and taking constant phone calls from friends wanting to know what was going on. I worked on them for an hour, explaining that everyone wanted to know what really happened, and telling them that they had the power to shape the narrative. Again, this was my special talent—convincing people to go on camera. Sometimes it left me with a queasy feeling when I pushed too hard.

  Eventually the woman’s mother agreed to do an interview with us on her porch if we didn’t reveal her identity. We got the interview and headed back to the station after two hours of working to convince her. I was exhausted, but triumphant. We found out later that night, the woman had agreed to do an interview with a competitor full-face, revealing her identity. It rendered what we had done moot. Given this scenario, offering hidden identity interviews was not my go-to. It was a last resort.

  I was afraid my colleague waiting in the wings was going to spook the woman with the baby, to make her feel like she was about to be ambushed. So I had to get rid of him.

  “Can I come in for a minute and just talk? I won’t use your name or address, I promise. I’m just trying to get a handle on how this whole thing unfolded.”

  She reached down and picked up the little dog and opened the door up just enough to let me squeeze by her. She then closed it and locked it behind us.

  I had shed my muddy shoes on her front steps and walked barefoot behind her as she ushered me into a large, modern living room with oversized gray couches facing one another, adorned with huge, square white fur pillows. A monitor with a flashing green light emanating the low rumble of white noise sat on the glass coffee table in between the sofas. As I got closer, I could see a tiny video screen on the monitor that showed the dark outline of a sleeping baby on its stomach. The baby’s head was to its side as the baby sucked on a pacifier. There was a yellow blanket draped over the child, and a stuffed lion curled up in the baby’s hand.

  “I really don’t know anything,” she said nervously, perched on the edge of one of the massive couches that would have swallowed a normal family’s living room.

  She reminded me of a suspect who was cornered in an interrogation room. She was twisting her wedding ring in circles. She pulled her hands apart just long enough to gesture for me to sit on the opposite couch.

  “I didn’t get that close, for obvious reasons.” She motioned to the baby monitor, which I took to mean the baby was her main “obvious reason.”

  “I know stuff like this can happen anywhere, but why here? I mean, it’s a very nice, quiet neighborhood. Why here?” she said to no one in particular, looking out the room’s expansive bay window revealed a barren field, clear-cut of trees to create another phase of the subdivision.

  She was now furiously twisting her wedding ring in circles again. She looked back at me. “But then again, why not here?”

  “True,” I said, not wanting to interrupt her train of thought.

  Most of the time, when I was trying to get someone on camera in a sensitive story, I stayed quiet. What I had learned from many years of interviewing people was that it was better to just let people talk and not to try and fill the silences with your own words just because you might momentarily feel uncomfortable. This was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn. But I realized if I interrupted people in these tense situations, it might break their rhythm and derail their stream of consciousness. Sometimes the slightest interruption gave them a moment to pause and think about what they were doing, often bringing the interview to a screeching and permanent halt.

  “There’s going to be a black cloud in this neighborhood, you know something you can’t ever get over or forget. It changes everything. I don’t know if I can stay here. Robert, that’s my husband. Robert is not going to understand this, when I tell him I can’t stay.” She brushed stray wisps of hair away from her weary face. I got the impression that she usually looked more put-together than she did at this moment based on the pristine condition of her den and judging by the beautiful framed family photos around the room. In the photographs, she had perfectly coiffed hair, gleaming white teeth, and color-coordinated outfits with Robert and the baby. Today she looked like a harried, imperfect mother of a young child.

  Ultimately, after talking with her for about thirty minutes, she agreed to talk to us on camera if we hid her identity. I reluctantly agreed to this after pitching a full-face interview multiple times. No matter what angle I approached this from she vetoed the idea. She was afraid the killer might still be in the neighborhood. I agreed this was a reasonable fear. I texted Buster and told him to come quickly and bring his equipment.

  Once she ushered him into the living room, I assured her that Buster was a pro at shooting anonymous interviews. I always said this in front of him as he set up so that he could then offer his own reassurances.

  “So I’ll be shooting you from behind. Basically, we’ll see Maddie’s face listening to you, and just a little bit of your hair. I might shoot your hands on a tight-shot, but nothing else that would identify you.” Buster gingerly clipped the wireless microphone on the sagging scoop-necked collar of her tired sweatshirt. “So if you see my camera pointed in your direction, don’t worry. I am not shooting your face. I wouldn’t do that.”

  True to his word, Buster shot her from behind so you could only see the slightest outline of part of the back of her head. Most of the frame was filled with my focused face, nodding and reacting to her statements. She repeated what the chief had told us, with a few more details—how the baby had started crying, how the sky was so gray, and that there were vultures. She told me from the distance could see just one article of clothing, a white jacket on the man. Maybe a chef, she thought.

  I listened with reverence and sincerity, understanding that for her this was a defining moment in her life, and the least I could do was acknowledge that. So many times I had interviewed people who’d witnessed tragedy. By necessity I had become partially immune to their emotions. I had erected a steel wall around my heart, with a window where I could observe the gritty details of a case without allowing it to penetrate my psyche and poison my soul.

  When Adam died, it became harder for me to keep the wall from being breached. After being present for someone’s death, I finally understood the gravitas of the moment in a way that was deeply personal. It made me empathize with other people who had experienced death. In a second, without warning, I could be transported back to the moment I realized he was gone. The room got quiet. That’s how I knew his breathing had stopped. I jumped up from the couch where I was sleeping, near his hospital bed in our den, and put my hand to his mouth. I felt one last warm exhale of breath. It made the tiniest sound, like the last bit of air leaking out of an almost deflated balloon. He opened his eyes, turned his head, looked at me for a second, and then he was gone.

  After Adam’s death, my grief counselor told me I could see Thestrals now, the mythical winged horses from Harry Potter that only appeared to people who were present for someone’s death. According to the story, it gave them special powers. My new special powers seemed to be a depth that allowed me to connect with someone else’s grief at a high rate of speed. I wasn’t sure if it was a good power or a bad power.

  The woman said her name was Pam—a name I would never use on camera or in the story. So I didn’t call her by name because I didn’t want to slip it into the story by accident. This was always awkward, not calling someone by her name in an interview. I found myself apologizing multiple times for the omission, even after I had explained why I was doing it.

  “What if he comes back, the person who did this? I love walking in this neighborhood. I won’t feel safe again, I won’t. I’m so angry that he took that away from us, the man who did this,” Pam said, with large, messy tears streaming down her red cheeks. Tears that no one would ever see on camera. They were just for me and Buster.

  She grabbed a tissue from a box on a table next to the couch and b
lotted her face.

  I could feel tears welling up in the corners of my eyes, and I reached for my own tissue. My wall had been compromised and there was no going back.

  O

  “I got nothing,” Kojak said to me, as I cradled the cell phone in the crook of my neck and tried to type on my tablet balanced precariously on my lap in the passenger seat of Buster’s news car. “Lydia is shutting this one down hard. No leaks. I don’t get it. Something fishy about it. I’ve been poking the bear but getting nowhere. Sorry, kid. We have a meeting later, where she is supposed to fill in the details to the rest of our team in Major Crimes. But right now it’s just her and the investigators from the scene who are on the inside of this one. And they’re not talking.”

  “Maybe they truly just don’t know the identity, and because it’s in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, they’re being cautious. They want to make sure they get it right. Do everything by the book. Rich people are less understanding about screw ups.”

  “Also because he’s white. Let’s face it. They think he might be someone important, or at least someone who thought he was important.”

  “Think you’re reading too much into it.”

  This type of speculation had come to define our relationship. Sometimes when we knew nothing, it was more sport than actual conversation.

  “Nope, this is my area of expertise. Tight lips mean something in the cop world, and it ain’t good.”

  It always cracked me up when Kojak tried to sound like his namesake, like a tough talking cop from a bygone era. But his old-school gumshoe vibe had no effect on me. I was immune to it by now.

  “Shit, I lost my Internet connection. Got to go. Got to reboot, on deadline. The dreaded technology curse is hanging over me again.”

  “Kid, you need to get back to swimming rabbits and runaway cats. You don’t need this stress,” Kojak said, with a combination of sarcasm and concern.

  “You’re right, but I am doing this today, and only today. So I need to do my best. Keri will be back tomorrow and take over. At least, that’s what I’m told. And by the way, I have not done a story on a runaway cat, not ever. That’s so common.”

  “Whatever. Sure, like you’re just going to drop it. Not possible. I know you, remember?”

  “Look, really got to go. On deadline.”

  “Gotcha but real quick, on another note. What’s going on with your side gig, your little mystery with the crazy lady, Suzanne?”

  “Actually, a whole lot. I don’t have time to get into the details right now. Fill you in later. But the most recent development is that the alleged cheating husband is MIA. I still don’t know if he was at the hospital the night Maria had the baby, but I do know from a credible source that he was with her shortly after she had her baby. Went out for and errand and never came back.

  “So to summarize, he ditched her. Got cold feet after the little bundle of joy came into his complicated life. Makes perfect sense to me. Don’t call that missing. Call that coming to Jesus.”

  “Agreed, but it’s weird. Her brother made it sound perfectly normal that Tanner was there with Maria, not like he’s a cheating husband with a whole other family. And he said it wasn’t like Tanner to leave and not come back. Sounds like they know him pretty well.”

  “He’s missing all right. Missing from his other family. Finally came to his senses, crisis of conscience, and went home to his wife and first kid. Guy has a lot on his plate. Don’t blame him for being a little confused, a little unpredictable.”

  Buster leaned in my partially open car window. “What are you doing? Get off the phone and get back to writing. Do I need to crack the whip?”

  He hated it when he thought I was lollygagging when I was supposed to be working. He had to wait for me to write my script and record my voice track before he could edit the piece for the show. Meanwhile, he had been hamming it up with a group of cops near the crime scene tape, so he didn’t appear to be worried about whether we were going to make deadline.

  “My computer crashed.” I looked up at him with the most innocent eyes I could muster.

  “I doubt you’re talking to IT about it. Pretty sure you’re jabbering about something else totally unrelated to the task at hand.” He tapped the window for good measure and walked back to his circle of officers.

  Buster loved cops, and they loved him. It worked in our favor.

  “You go deal with your dead guy,” Kojak said on the other end of the line, having overheard dozens of similar arguments between me and Buster over the years. He hung up abruptly.

  “I will. Triage, triage, triage is how I will get through this day,” I said into the phone that was now connected to no one.

  12

  Hot Water

  I was thankful when I returned home that night and Miranda and Blake were in their rooms, engaged in homework. I had to credit Candace, my guardian angel, for that and for making them dinner. Thankfully, she was well again and back at work. These days I rarely imposed on her to stay late and help with evening duties, because I was able to organize my feature reporting around the kids’ schedules. So an out-of-the blue call to duty for one night was no big deal to her. She had agreed to stay late, and I appreciated her.

  I checked in on the kids, gave them quick hugs and pecks on their foreheads while getting a synopsis of their day. It reminded me of a study I read online that said parents on average interacted with their children a total of seven minutes per day. Was I that parent? Not anymore. I used to be, before Adam died. Now, most days, my total time with them was much greater than seven minutes. But today was an exception to this new norm. Tomorrow I would do better.

  It was time for a hot bath, the place I did most of my thinking, other than on the running trails. It was the one time of the day where I could let go of my angst and sort through things, versus reacting and putting out fires. It was a time for me to examine the hot spots from my day and figure out how to keep them from re-igniting. There was something about submerging my limbs in a bathtub full of scalding water that calmed my monkey brain.

  Going to a crime scene always made me feel like I was covered with an invisible film of dirt, like death was something you could catch. I worried I would feel that way about my house after Adam died in the den. On the contrary, I felt at peace in my house because it was the last place we spent time together. It was different when someone was murdered. You could wash away death, but not evil.

  In this case, there was some actual truth to my concerns about being dirty. My black flats were caked with a thick layer of red mud from the crime scene. I left them on the front porch, by the front door. I was pretty sure they were going to be a total loss, but I would try to salvage them later when I was less weary. This was a familiar feeling from my crime reporting days that I didn’t miss—sheer exhaustion, mental, emotional and physical. I had nothing more to give.

  As I sank down into the boiling hot water, I pictured the silhouette of Adam standing over the tub, trying to talk to me. It had always annoyed me at the end of a long day, when he tried to invade my sacred space with his talk of carpool logistics and grocery lists.

  “A little privacy,” I would say, without opening my eyes, and he would go away, quietly shutting the bathroom door behind him with a tiny click.

  How I longed to call him back again now, to talk to him about who was picking up which kid and when, and who would run out to the store and get milk so we would have it for breakfast the next morning.

  I wondered if the man in the ditch was a husband or a father. I wondered if someone was missing him tonight. Surely if he was loved, someone would be looking for him.

  As hard as I tried to block it out of my mind, it was the white coat I kept coming back to. It was a strange thing for someone to be wearing. Maybe it was a uniform of some kind? I had to put it aside. I had spent too many sleepless nights going over the details of a crime in my head, hoping the next time I went down the list something new would come to me.

  It would be Keri�
�s problem tomorrow. I would be back on my animal beat, and I could leave all this gooey red clay behind me for someone else to clean up.

  O

  When Janie called me the next morning and told me a small town outside the city had a missing town peacock. I couldn’t help but smile. The kids were at the kitchen table happily eating scrambled eggs with cheese and multi-grain toast—a new habit I had gotten into, trying to make them a healthy, protein-infused breakfast. They still preferred sugary cereal to my basic culinary delights, but they were getting used to it. Plus, they liked us all being together in the kitchen.

  “What’s so funny?” Janie sounded miffed by my laughter at her story suggestion.

  “Nothing, I just had someone tell me yesterday that I should get back to missing cat stories. Here I am about to do a missing peacock story. Ironic, don’t you think?”

  “Not really. A missing-peacock story has so much more depth than a missing-cat story. Those are, like, a dime a dozen. But sure, spin it however you need to. Anyway, Piper was a fixture in the Pinnacle town square. One family fed him, but he belonged to no one in particular, just the town. People used to always see him walking down the sidewalk, crossing the street, strutting his peacock stuff. He was like the town mascot. Then poof, he vanished. No ransom note yet.”

  I was thinking that if Piper was kidnapped he was probably a long way from Pinnacle by now. I assumed they were expensive birds and probably could be sold for quite a bit of money. The other, more distasteful option—Piper was roadkill. Crossing the street didn’t seem like a good plan for a peacock, especially on a busy four-lane road like the one that bordered Pinnacle. Traffic was always heavy as drivers navigated rush hour in and out of the burgeoning Oak City suburb.