by Amanda Lamb
I bristled at her suggestion that her grief could be equated to mine. I truly loved my husband, so in my mind, there was no comparison. Not once during this visit did she ever mention the bad things that had happened between her and Tanner. It was like his death had erased his sins. But I knew the truth. The marriage was over and she wanted out.
I shook my head, trying to erase this flashback of my visit with Suzanne. I returned my attention to the pile of photos that were now spread out across my kitchen table in front of me.
There were several photos, from multiple angles, of the large, metal vat of salsa where the gun was found. The photographs showed the industrial-sized can tipped on its side, the muzzle of the gun peeking out from the red chunky liquid.
There were also photos of the gun inside a large plastic evidence bag laid on a white towel. Red, sticky sauce with bits of onions and peppers stuck to the plastic inside the bag.
Defense attorneys argued during the trial that the gun was kept beneath the register at the restaurant for security reasons, but that shortly before Tanner’s murder, it disappeared, only to show up later in the salsa container, during the search of the restaurant.
There were a few gruesome photos of Tanner’s hand, in the plastic bag at the bottom of the freezer. There were also a few photos of the hand by itself on a white towel on a table, dark red and shriveled like a fake hand you might see as a Halloween decoration.
I cringed thinking about Miranda looking at these. This was definitely not my finest parenting moment. I was hoping maybe she thought the hand was fake. Or maybe it had gone right over her head. I made a mental note to explore this with her later to see if she understood what she saw.
There were routine photos of Tanner and Suzanne’s home, during a standard search. Most of the shots were mundane—garage, kitchen, den, bedroom—normal scenes of life in anyone’s home, which only stopped being normal when someone was murdered.
There were several shots of Tanner’s dresser. The top of it was a jumble of loose change, golf tees, and crumpled receipts. It didn’t look like the dresser of a man who had packed his belongings and left his wife. In the middle of what appeared to be a pile of junk, something caught my eye. There was a Rolex watch—not something anyone would leave behind. Right next to the watch, I spotted something else. It was small, silver, and shiny. I grabbed my magnifying glass from the kitchen drawer so I could examine it to more closely. A wave of clarity washed over me as I confirmed that the object was Tanner’s custom-made wedding ring with the crisscross pattern of tiny diamonds. There was the ring he never took off, the one that should have been on his missing left hand. Yet it was right there in the pile of discarded stuff, hidden in plain sight.
17
Silver Linings
I sat snuggled on the couch in the den, wrapped in a furry throw blanket even though the heat was cranked up as a defense against the cool early fall breeze nipping at the windows’ edges. The photograph was on my lap. The shiny ring was a beacon calling to me in the middle of what anyone else would see as just a pile of stuff. I was itching to call Kojak and tell him what I had discovered in the picture, but he was out of town on a well-deserved vacation in Florida, with his wife. I didn’t want to bother him, especially because I didn’t know exactly what seeing the wedding ring on Tanner’s bureau meant. I knew for sure his wedding ring was never presented as evidence at trial. I remembered the district attorney, Joan Starr, telling the jury in her closing statement that his missing ring was one of the many mysteries of this case that would probably never be solved. Police must have missed it when they searched the house. Where was it now?
My gut told me it meant that Suzanne had kept her husband’s wedding ring, kept it from police, kept it for herself. But how did she have access to it if his left hand was missing and he never took it off, except for surgery? My mind wasn’t ready to accept what this could mean.
In my experience, once you truly hated someone the way Suzanne had appeared to hate Tanner, it was hard to imagine loving that person enough to publicly grieve for him. I couldn’t imagine even pretending to love a man if he had done half of what Suzanne claimed Tanner had done to her. Had he really done those things to her? Or had she made them up to make herself look like a victim?
I studied the photograph again. There was no doubt it was the ring I saw Tanner wearing that day in his office, the ring that should have been on his missing left hand when he died. Instead it was discarded on his bureau in a pile of junk like it didn’t mean anything at all. Maybe he took it off when he left, as a symbolic gesture of the dissolution of their marriage. "They cost a small fortune." I recalled Suzanne telling me the day we went running. "He never takes it off, even to sleep. He is paranoid about someone stealing it. It is a symbol of our lifetime union."
If Suzanne had something to do with Tanner’s death, but wanted to keep the expensive ring, or maybe sell it, she couldn’t have put it with her things; that would have been too obvious. In case investigators found it, she would need to make it look like Tanner had just taken it off and left it on his bureau among his other belongings. It was reckless, but smart. When police didn’t zone in on the ring during the search, maybe she figured she was home free and it was hers to do with what she wanted.
I realized my new theory was as crazy as the drug cartel cutting off Tanner’s hand. His left hand was his surgery hand, his golden hand, but it all seemed so far-fetched. In my mind, either the killer wanted investigators to think a deranged person had killed Tanner, or the killer was a deranged person. My brain was racing with so many disjointed thoughts that I almost didn’t hear my phone ring.
“This is Maddie, Maddie Arnette.”
“Mrs. Arnette, I’m not sure if you will remember me. My name is Lucinda, Lucinda Bark.”
The name sounded familiar. It was an unusual name, not one you were likely to forget. I scanned my photographic memory for an image. A vision of a beautiful black woman with dreadlocks and a peasant shirt came to mind, but I couldn’t place her.
“A while back I did a story with you about ducks, saving ducks in the Food Stop parking lot.”
“Yes, yes, of course I remember you.”
The last thing I wanted to think about at that moment was a story about saving ducks, but I also realized I had chosen to answer the phone. I could have let it go to voicemail. So I needed to be polite, but my energy and attention for the mundane were waning.
“Well, I’m not sure if you know this or not, but I was interviewed by the police about a murder case I think you covered. The doctor, the one they found in the ditch, the one with the missing hand?”
She had my full attention. It was like two disparate worlds colliding, creating an explosion of confusion. I couldn’t imagine what the duck lady would have to do with Tanner’s murder case.
“I didn’t testify at the trial because I was back in Haiti. My mother was dying of cancer, and I went home to take care of her until she passed.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“M, too. Thank you. She was an amazing woman. And as far as the case went, I just didn’t want to be on display in a courtroom. I’m sure you hear this all the time, but with what I was going through with my mom, I really didn’t want to be involved. I know it sounds weak, like I didn’t care about the truth, about doing the right thing, but I did, I really did, in my own way. It just wasn’t a battle I had the energy to deal with at that time. The police assured me they had another eyewitness from that night, another employee who saw the same thing I did. He was willing and available to testify. So they really didn’t need me. Anyway, they took a statement from me about what I saw. I told them I saw the doctor, Tanner Pope, and the woman who was charged, Maria Lopez, with the long dark hair, getting into his car at the grocery store the night he disappeared. Of course, I didn’t know his name at the time, but I remembered the fancy car and the personalized license plate.”
While I hadn’t covered much of the trial, on a personal level, I had followed it
closely. I remembered how important this detail was to the state’s case. There was no physical evidence connecting Maria to Tanner the night he was killed. This eyewitness sighting was the only thing that put them in the same place.
“Anyway, I really need to speak with you, because I think I may have been wrong, and I don’t know what to do about it now. I’ve got to make it right. I can’t sleep at night. It’s been consuming me. I didn’t know who else to talk to. You were so fair and kind that day I met you. I thought you might be able to help steer me in the right direction.”
I sat there holding the photo of Tanner’s wedding ring on his bureau with one hand and cradling the phone in the other hand as Lucinda rambled on nervously. At that moment my discovery and what Lucinda was about to tell me seemed of equal importance.
“What makes you so sure you were wrong?”
“It’s been tugging at me for a long time, back there in the deep in my brain. I kept trying to ignore it, but I just can’t do that anymore. I was so caught up in what was going on with my mother that I couldn’t process it. When I saw them that night in the parking lot, the woman, well she turned and looked at me, maybe for just a fraction of a second, but I could see her face clearly under the bright light in the parking lot. You’d be surprised how bright those lights are when you stand directly beneath one. I just caught a glimpse, but she looked very different than the woman they arrested. I watched the trial online. And I studied that woman’s face, Maria’s face. I really don’t think it was her that night in the parking lot. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’m sure I was wrong.”
“Well, as you know, she was never convicted. So thankfully, your misidentification, if it was wrong, didn’t cause an innocent woman to go to prison. But it’s an important detail, one that you need to share with police. Because if it wasn’t her, then there is a killer still out there, and that person needs to be caught. Plus, Maria could always potentially be retried on this charge, although I don’t think it will happen. But she does deserve to have her name properly cleared, after what she’s been through.”
“I agree one hundred percent. I knew it was the right thing to give you a call. I knew you would know what to do. And one more thing, I don’t know if this means anything, but I never mentioned it to police because I didn’t think it was important at the time, but maybe it is. The woman I saw that night, she had a purse, a big silver purse over her shoulder. I’m absolutely positive about that.”
O
Lucinda’s call unnerved me. There had been so many signs pointing to Suzanne’s involvement in Tanner’s murder, but I had ignored them. A woman could never do this alone. Kojak and I had repeated a hundred times to each other. So she had help. She’s a beautiful woman. It’s not crazy to think someone would be willing to help her.
I had a fitful sleep where I wrestled with my covers and eventually threw them off because I was burning up despite the whirring ceiling fan. When I finally awoke, something else jumped into my mind. She said Pennsylvania. The day I met Suzanne at the Oak City Bistro for lunch and she told me Tanner had left, she referred to Pennsylvania during our conversation, the place where my mother had been killed at my grandparents’ house. When I first realized it, it bothered me. But I shrugged it off, thinking I must have mentioned it to her. But now I was positive that I had never mentioned Pennsylvania to her in any of our previous conversations. I had remembered this detail earlier and dismissed it, thinking I must have heard her wrong. But I hadn't. She knew this detail before I told her, which meant she must have researched me. She must have known my family’s history all along. She targeted me, used me in her scheme to play the victimized wife because she knew I would be more likely to believe her. Plus I was the former crime reporter at the station, so I had sources within the police department. I had influence within the newsroom. What better ally to have in her master plan than someone like me?
There was no doubt that I had been duped. Suzanne knew exactly who I was the day she must have faked her accident and accused her husband of trying to kill her. She made me believe her, made me worry about her, and used me to make a case against Maria. I set Maria up by sharing information with Kojak, who in turn shared it with homicide detectives when Tanner turned up dead.
After the mistrial, the detectives continued to work on the case, acknowledging behind the scenes that they may have been wrong. They focused primarily on Maria’s brothers. But Kojak told me they worked on it halfheartedly, knowing the district attorney, Joan Starr, was unlikely to give them another shot at a new suspect after the time and money she had spent trying Maria.
Still when I told Kojak about the ring, about Lucinda’s recanting of her eyewitness identification, and about the silver purse, he couldn’t help but get excited. He didn’t even mind that I was interrupting his vacation. Like me, he had always been skeptical of Maria being the killer. At most he believed maybe one of her brothers or cousins had killed Tanner in a misguided attempt to protect her honor, but even that theory never sat well with him.
“And she knew about me, about my personal story, details I never told her,” I said to Kojak, with embarrassment in my voice.
“About your mom?”
“Yes, about my mom.”
That was the moment he went from considering I was on the right track, to believing I was on the right track.
Kojak always told me that every case had one irrefutable piece of evidence, and that if you found it, you had your man, or in this case, your woman.
Detectives worked quietly with the new information I had given them, all the while digging deeper into Suzanne’s background. They learned she had cashed in on a major life insurance policy after Tanner’s death. They also learned from her ex-husband, Clint Stamos, that she had been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder during their marriage, a condition that ultimately tore them apart after she refused to go to therapy.
In their divorce filings, Stamos said Parker was “full of delusions of self-grandeur, paranoid, devoid of empathy, sometimes terrifying to be around.” He said she frequently lied and often made up horrible stories about him to her friends to get attention. He also said she had a twisted fascination with symbolism that included keeping a lock of hair from a girl she had once fought in junior high, as a trophy in an old scrapbook. He said when he asked her about it, she told him she had ripped the girl’s hair out behind the bleachers during a football game because the girl had made a pass at her boyfriend. Rather than being embarrassed by the incident, Stamos said Suzanne appeared to be proud.
In a new official photo lineup, which included pictures of Maria, Suzanne, and others, Food Stop employees Claude Roper and Lucinda Bark identified Suzanne as the woman in the parking lot with Tanner that night, not Maria. Claude profusely apologized to investigators, telling them he never meant to lie on the stand, but he had only been shown one photo originally—a photo of Maria.
While the new identifications were groundbreaking evidence, it would be problematic for the state if the case went to trial and the witnesses had to explain to the jury why they had changed their opinions. And these revelations were not enough on their own to make a case for murder. Investigators needed the smoking gun, or in this case, something to link Suzanne to Tanner’s missing hand. It was also going to be hard to convince the district attorney that Suzanne did this by herself—cut off a man’s hand and dumped a body. Kojak and I were sure she had help, but who that help came from we would probably never know.
I decided to do a little investigative work of my own. I knew detectives had already gone down this road and that Kojak would be furious if he found out what I was up to, but I decided it was time to pay a visit to the person who bought the freezer with Tanner’s hand inside.
O
The heavyset woman said, “We bought it from a restaurant in Oak City off Craigslist. They were replacing all their freezers, getting modern ones.” She adjusted her purple scoop neck t-shirt and swayed back and forth on the balls of her feet.
/> She said her name was Rose, and her husband, Bud, and she had driven to Oak City to pick up the freezer. Bud wasn’t home now, but Rose had opened her door to me, a perfect stranger, and now we were chatting in front of her house.
“But I really don’t think I need to be talking to you. I already talked to the cops. You a lawyer?”
“No, nothing like that. Just a writer trying to figure some things out.”
“A writer. Wow. I been writing a book for a long time now. It’s pretty good, I think. Do you think you could look at it? I’d love a professional to read it.”
A small white cat walked in between us and nuzzled my ankle.
“That’s Snowball. My neighbor died and now I have her. She’s a real sweetheart, but the problem is, I don’t have the money to get her fixed, get her shots, feed her, buy litter. Already have two dogs. Nothing against cats. Need to find a home for her. I really need to go now. Bud wouldn’t like me talking to you.”
The woman dropped her cigarette in the dirt and crushed it with the toe of her faded yellow Croc. She turned to go back inside her tiny brick ranch house that had nothing but dirt for a front yard. Piles of old stuff—cans, broken clay pots, wooden planks—were stacked up on the porch near the front door. As she opened the screen door, I tried to think about what I might offer her, anything that would keep her talking to me.
“I may be able to help you find a home for your cat. I have so many followers on social media. We’ll post a picture of her, with your contact information.”
“You would do that for me?” The woman peered back at me through the screen door, suspiciously. I was anxious to make the deal because I was pretty sure Bud would shut her down if he came home and found me there.
