Dead Last

by Amanda Lamb

  Keri had shoulder-length brown hair and a kind, open face with twinkling green eyes. She always dressed professionally. She had the kind of girl-next-door look that women and men both found approachable. She was the type of woman you would want to hang out with or go on a date with.

  “My pleasure. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  Keri thanked me profusely, grabbed her bag, and trotted back toward the station. In that moment, I realized that I did care about the outcome of the murder case, but that I no longer had an emotional connection to it like I did when it was my beat. I was finally free of my addiction. It was time for someone else, someone younger, someone with more fuel, like Keri, to take over. For the first time since Adam’s death, I realized I was ready to move on in more ways than one.

  13

  Reunited

  I was still worried about Suzanne. Despite her cheerful phone call, I wasn’t convinced that she was out of danger or that she was truly okay with her husband leaving. I decided I would reach out to her and see if she wanted to have breakfast the next morning. She agreed, and we met at a hotel near Blake and Miranda’s school that had a nice outdoor seating area.

  I arrived a few minutes late, and she was already seated, sipping coffee and eyeing the menu through large black sunglasses, her long black, wavy hair cascading around her face, her large silver bag slung over the back of her chair, as usual. I often wondered what she carried in that oversized bag, as it always seemed to be bulging. She looked up and gave me a princess-in-a-parade wave as I approached.

  “You look great!” I pulled the heavy wooden chair out and scooted myself into the table. She reached across the table to give me a little hug and an air kiss.

  “I feel great, like a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders. It’s seriously amazing. Everything looks different now, better. The trees swaying in the breeze, the birds chirping, the sunshine dancing across the pavement. It’s like when you cry, and suddenly everything in your field of vision gets sharper and comes into focus.” Suzanne gestured to the manicured lawn beneath the patio, where the first vestiges of the southern spring were blooming. The whole scene was bathed in a golden sunlight, which glistened on the surface of the nearby pool.

  “Wow, that’s terrific. I was worried about you. That’s why I wanted to touch base. To check in.”

  The waiter poured me a cup of coffee, and I reached for the cream as I waited for Suzanne to respond.

  “Worried?” She cocked her head and put her coffee cup down on the saucer in front of her.

  “Well, after all you have been through, even though you got the result you wanted, the end of a marriage is never easy. I hear it’s like a death, grieving the end of the relationship.”

  “Well, not in my case. I feel free as a bird for the first time in years. Anyone who has been in an abusive relationship can relate to how I’m feeling now. I’m just so happy to be rid of him. I really am. I had no idea it would feel this good. I might even make one of those online dating profiles.” She chuckled.

  I imagined her posting a sexy photo with a side profile shot, looking coquettishly into the camera. I was pretty sure she would immediately get responses on just about any dating site she chose. But it seemed kind of strange to be even joking about dating so soon after splitting with your husband. I wasn’t sure if I would ever think about dating again.

  I sat back and studied Suzanne for a moment. She looked so happy, almost too happy. But I couldn’t see her eyes behind the big jet-black sunglasses. Maybe she was just putting on a good show of strength for me because she didn’t want me to feel sorry for her. She was right about one thing—I had never walked in her shoes. Sure, Adam and I had our moments, but it wasn’t the same thing. I had never been emotionally abused by a man, so what did I know?

  “I’m sorry, Suzanne. I didn’t mean to be critical of your feelings. I’m honestly very happy for you. I’m so glad things turned out the way they did. And I hope, moving forward, you guys can stay amicable and agree on Winston’s custody.”

  “Sure, when I find him. I filled my lawyer in on the latest developments, but there’s nothing we can do until Tanner surfaces again, which is fine. I’m willing to wait, as long as I don’t have to deal with him in my house every single day.”

  “So no word from him. No word on where he went?”

  “None. My guess is that he’s with that woman, the one he said he was leaving me for, the pregnant one. Frankly I don’t really care where he is. He can stay away forever if he wants. Good riddance.”

  For some reason I felt hesitant to share with Suzanne what Juan had told me—that Tanner was missing from Maria’s life, too.

  O

  As I sat in my home office, I could hear the laundry in the nearby dryer rolling around a zipper, or perhaps a button, or a coin, slamming against the metal of drum with each rotation. I could hear the whir of my space heater that kept the basement cozy even in the spring and summer when the air condition was too cold for my taste.

  If I concentrated hard, I could also hear a television upstairs, with an audience laugh track playing in the background behind the actors’ up-tempo dialogue. Chances are it was a television left on, not one being watched. Above me, I also heard footsteps on the kitchen floor. I knew they were Miranda’s because they were clicking and clacking, hard-sole shoes, one lazy foot dragging—her trademark walk.

  Isolating these sounds made me think about just how important listening was. I needed to take a moment and really listen to what Suzanne was telling me. It wasn’t just about her words, but about everything else—the way she looked and acted, her body language. What was she telling me without saying anything at all?

  Something wasn’t adding up in the cavalier way she had eliminated Tanner from her life. He was simply gone, vanished, and she was no longer worried about whether he posed a danger. She didn’t seem at all concerned about whether he might try to take their son away from her. She also didn’t seem to care or be even the least bit curious about where he was.

  Let it go, let it go, let it go, said the voice inside my head. Something about Tanner taking off didn’t seem plausible. And he wasn’t with Maria, so who was he with? Maybe he was just so fed up with both women that he left the country. Good riddance. This was one of the rare times when my radar about a person was shut off. There must be another side to this man that I hadn’t seen.

  I started thinking about every possible scenario. Maybe he didn’t take off at all. Maybe something had happened to him. I knew nothing about Juan. Maybe he was trying to protect his sister from certain heartache and something had happened between the two men, something violent. Maybe his call to me and pleas for help were well-constructed attempts at covering his tracks. There was only one way to find out. It was time for me to find Juan.

  O

  “The reason it’s so easy to get injured in a situation like this is that you naturally assume it can’t happen. You assume you’re safe,” Clare, the woman who was attacked by a zebra, said to me through the uninjured side of her mouth.

  The other side of her face was covered in a thick white bandage with gauze peeking out, the edges of it stained pink from blood. Her arm on the same side was also wrapped in a thick layer of tape and gauze from her wrist almost to her shoulder.

  “Because it’s a zoo?” I followed up. I was perched on a hard plastic chair next to her hospital bed.

  Buster was over my left shoulder with his camera.

  “Yes, because it’s a zoo.” Clare motioned to her sister on the other side of the bed, to bring the cup of ice water to her from the bedside table.

  The sister hopped up quickly and brought the straw to Clare’s lips. Clare tried unsuccessfully, to lift her head to reach the straw. Her sister motioned for her to stay put as she patiently held the cup just below the woman’s chin.

  “You just think you’re safe in a zoo. I mean, children go to zoos. If there’s a risk, kids are going to take it, dangling their arms or legs over the fence
of an exhibit. I wasn’t doing anything like that. I was just leaning on the fence, eating an ice cream cone and digging in my purse for my phone to take a picture, when it happened.”

  I sat quietly, not wanting to interrupt Clare’s train of thought. There was nothing worse than re-watching the interview on my computer, only to find out that I had broken someone’s stride during the best part of the interview. She was silent for a minute, and I nodded for her to continue. No matter what kind of pressure I was under, it was important not to make her feel rushed. Our deadline was not her concern.

  “I saw something like a flash out of the corner of my eye—a rush of black and white, black hair flying, and then big teeth grabbing my arm, pulling me in. A sound, like gnawing, pain in my face, my arm, pain like I’ve never experienced. I can’t adequately explain it. Worse than childbirth. Surreal. It was like it was happening to someone else and I was watching it outside of my body.”

  Clare exhaled and closed her eyes, like explaining the experience required such an abundance of energy that it became too much for her to speak.

  “Do you need a moment?” I whispered after the silence had lasted for a minute.

  “No, I’m good. Let’s just finish. The next thing I remember, I was on the ground. There were lots of people standing over me, yelling for help, looking down at me. I will never forget the looks in their eyes. It was the kind of look you get when you see something horrible, something that can’t be fixed. People were also kneeling next to me, shouting. The sun was so bright in my eyes, and I could feel the blood trickling down, sticky and thick on my face. But my arm, I couldn’t feel it at all. It was like it wasn’t there. I tried to scream, Where’s my arm, where’s my arm? but nothing came out. And that was that. Then I woke up in the hospital.”

  “That’s an unbelievable story.” I wondered immediately if I should have kept this commentary to myself.

  “Yes, it is. Unbelievable that it happened, unbelievable that I survived. I was so lucky to be life-flighted here, to come home to University Hospital. There was a plastic surgeon waiting for me when I arrived. It was like all the pieces came together to give me the best possible chance of recovery.”

  “So what is it that you want people to know?”

  “I want people to know that safety is an illusion. That’s it’s just a thing we tell ourselves so we can function, because if we walked around worried all the time about all the bad things that might happen to us, we would never be able to handle it. We would be paralyzed. But it’s precisely in those situations where we feel too safe, in situations where we’re taking a calculated risk, that we need to be on guard. This zebra was not supposed to be able to get that close to the fence. He was supposed to be on the other side of the ditch that separated the grass from the fence. It was usually filled with water and rocks, but it had been dry. Somehow he made his way across it. They’re not supposed to be that aggressive, but I was told later that there were some baby zebras on the other side of the ditch. A zoologist called me and said the zebra must have thought the babies were in danger when he attacked me.”

  “That is crazy.” I scribbled notes on my pad out of habit, even though I would watch the interview in full later. It kept my hands busy.

  “It is. I’m tired now. I think I’m done.”

  I thanked Clare, stood and softly squeezed her good hand. I looked back at Buster to make sure he had all the shots he needed before we left. He nodded. He was good about getting his shots while we were chitchatting in the beginning of an interview so he wouldn’t have to do it at the end and make the person wait.

  As we walked down the hallway, I kept thinking about what Clare had said. Danger always lurked where you least suspected it. I thought about Suzanne and how I had jumped into her situation without investigating it or questioning it. I was vulnerable in her presence because she knew I had my own story about my mother and domestic violence. Then it hit me—one of the details my mind had been trying to locate. She said Pennsylvania when she asked me about my mother during our recent lunch. Pennsylvania. How could she have known that? I didn’t remember telling her about Pennsylvania. What did it mean? I didn’t know. I filed it away for another day.

  O

  I called Juan and left him a voice message when I left Clare’s hospital room that night. I didn’t hear back from him, so I busied myself with logging the tape from Clare’s interview and writing her story on my laptop, at home. I tried not to work at night at home, but the kids were already asleep. Candace had stayed late again so I could work. It seemed like I was falling back into my old bad habits, but I told myself it was just a night here and there, that I was still present for my children. I was doing what I had to do to provide for them.

  I worked because I couldn’t sleep. The second I lay down, my mind would begin jumping from one topic to another—I need to make a dentist appointment for the twins. We’re almost out of coffee. Where is Tanner?

  After a restless night, I noticed I had a missed call from Juan, but there was no message. I decided to try to reach him again. He picked up on the first ring and said he wanted to talk about Tanner. We agreed to meet me at a local coffee shop.

  Juan was short, stout, and older than I expected him to be. He had jet-black hair, a small mustache, and a belly that protruded slightly between the overextended buttons of his light blue work shirt. There was a name embroidered in red on the right breast pocket. It said Skip, but I was pretty sure it was either a joke, a nickname, or maybe a co-worker’s shirt. He caught me staring at it.

  “I ran out of work shirts. Belongs to a guy who used to work for us. Fired. Boss gave me his shirts in case I needed some extras.”

  Juan didn’t smile at the end of his explanation. He stated it matter-of-factly as if to clear the air before our conversation so that I wouldn’t be focusing on some unnecessary detail instead of on what he had say. He had an accent, but his words were clear as a bell.

  Juan extended a small, weathered hand across the table with a firmness that surprised me, and then turned to the waitress and ordered a black coffee before sitting down.

  “Thank you for meeting me. We’ve been so worried about the doctor. Makes no sense.” Juan shook his round head and looked down into the steaming hot cup of black coffee the waitress had just placed in front of him.

  But didn’t make a move to pick it up. He looked back up at me with warm brown eyes that appeared to have tears in the corners.

  “My pleasure. I could tell you were very upset. First, let me ask you a few questions so I can fully understand the situation.”

  Juan nodded and appeared to be hanging on my every word. He didn’t come across as a man with something to hide. It occurred to me that he probably had no idea that Tanner had a wife and a son, that he must have thought Tanner and his sister were in a monogamous relationship.

  “Anything, anything at all,” said Juan.

  “How long had she known Tanner? The doctor?”

  “For at least a year. He was a very good man. Very good to her. Very good to us.”

  “In what way?”

  “He brought us food, clothes, got Maria’s car fixed. When our water heater broke, he gave us money to replace it. He said he would help with things the baby needed.”

  That’s big of him. He was going to help with his own child.

  “He helped Maria settle down, get away from bad men, people that treated her with no respect. She has been through a lot. But thanks to him, she’s in a better place now. We were all so relieved when he came into our lives. He was a blessing to us. That’s why we worry now.”

  Juan reached across the table and squeezed my hand. He held it just long enough to make it a little awkward, but his intentions appeared to be genuine. So I sat there in uncomfortable silence until he finally pulled his hand away.

  “He sounds like he means a lot to you and your whole family. Do you know anything else about him? About what he did when he wasn’t with you, wasn’t with Maria?”

  “
Oh, sure. The doctor is a very important man. He works a lot. He also has a wife and a son named Winston. He showed us picture of them. He is a very proud man, a family man.”

  I was stunned.

  “And Maria doesn’t mind? It doesn’t bother her that Tanner has a wife and son?”

  “Why should it?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I would think she would be jealous or something.”

  Now, Juan was the one looking confused. He cocked his head to the side as if he were listening for some special frequency that might explain what I was talking about.

  “Did you think the doctor and Maria were together?”

  “I assumed.”

  “No, no, absolutely not.” Juan shook his head and pushed back his chair from the table as if he needed to put more space between us after what I said. “He is our friend. The doctor is our friend. That’s all. He helps us.”

  I was trying to make sense of what Juan was telling me when I felt my phone vibrate on my lap. I looked down and saw the goofy picture of Kojak flash across my screen.

  “Juan, if you will excuse me for a moment. I need to take this.”

  I stood from the table and stepped outside onto the sidewalk to take Kojak’s call.

  “Maddie Arnette,” I chimed out of habit.

  “Kid, are you sitting down?”

  “No, I’m standing. Why?”

  “We had our meeting with the chief. Get ready to have your mind blown. The stiff from the fancy neighborhood. They identified him.”

  I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. My biggest fear was finding out that a dead person was someone I knew. The way Kojak was drum-rolling the information, I felt like this might be that moment.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s the guy, the guy you’ve been investigating, the guy who disappeared, the doc, the Pope guy.”

  Everything was starting to make sense. Tanner wasn’t missing—he was dead. But who would want him dead? Suzanne? Maria? Juan? Or maybe he was just the victim of a random crime? Unlikely, but possible. Yet none of the possibilities seemed to fit. Being angry enough to kill someone was an enormous leap.