Dead Last

by Amanda Lamb

  “Sure, if you’ll talk to me.”

  She stared at me, surveying me up and down. I regretted wearing heels and a fitted red dress. I was coming across as a city girl—not the best way to approach a country girl.

  “Okay, first you post the cat online. Then we’ll talk.”

  I did as she asked, luring Snowball to me with some high-pitched baby talk while I followed her with my iPhone to get her on video.

  “I got good pictures of her that I can send you if you give me your phone number. I love to take pictures. Take pictures of her all the time.” Rose followed me closely as if she didn’t trust me with Snowball.

  I posted the video and the pictures on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, along with a note that she needed a good home. I also included Rose’s name and contact information, although I was starting to think Rose had given me a fake name, because when I called out to her, it took a few seconds for her to realize I was speaking to her each time.

  The lady I knew as Rose then invited me into her den to talk, scooping a pile of laundry off the tattered, stained couch, and brushing ashes off the faded green seat cushion as she ushered me to sit down.

  “Met us in a gravel parking lot up in Oak City somewhere, not sure where. Don’t know the city that well. Woman had the freezer on a little dolly, used a pull-out ramp to roll the freezer up into the truck. Real friendly gal. She was with a guy, messy hair, lots of tattoos, skull rings. You know, like a motorcycle dude. She had help, I thought. But who?

  “I stayed in the truck, but Bud got out and dealt with them. He’s good that way with people. I’m on the shy side. The guy said nothing at all, just helped Bud load it up. But then that lady came over to the passenger window in the truck where I was sitting, and she told me to make sure I kept it plugged in from the minute we got home. Said these freezers lost their ability to cool if they stayed unplugged for too long. The top was wrapped in duct tape, she said to keep it stable on the ride. Didn’t open it for a few days, until I did my big shopping at the Cost Mart and needed the space for the big packs of meat and whatnot.”

  I listened intently, not leaving her gaze. It was true that the restaurant had recently sold some of its freezers and replaced them with new ones. But they were all sold directly from the restaurant. Buyers pulled up, and Maria’s brothers loaded the freezers into their trucks and vans. There was no mention of any being sold offsite, in a random gravel parking lot in Oak City. I was amazed that this detail had slipped through the cracks of the original investigation. Or maybe detectives discarded it because it didn’t gel with their narrative of the case. And who was the mystery man, the helper?

  “When I did open it, it was smaller than I expected. Bud didn’t even think the food from my one shopping trip was going to fit. I was pissed. About to tell Bud we got gipped. But we crammed the food in. Was a white panel in the bottom of the thing. It was uneven. When I put my groceries in there, they was lopsided. Wouldn’t stand up straight. About drove me crazy. We took everything out and I pried up the panel with my nails. Couldn’t believe my eyes, like something out of a scary movie. Plain as day. It was a hand, a bloody hand in a plastic bag. Thought it was some kind a sick joke. Closed it and we called my neighbor Earl to come take a looksee. Earl has seen some rough stuff in his days. Said it was real. So we called 911 right away. I didn’t want to get caught with that thing up in my house. I knew it had to belong to somebody. Somebody was missing it.”

  “The woman, the one who sold you the freezer. What did she look like? Do you recall?”

  “Sure, I do. Long black hair, real plain, no makeup. Baseball hat, jeans. But pretty. Said her name was Maria, and that the freezer was from a Mexican restaurant her family owned. Funny thing is she wasn’t no Mexican. She was a white girl.”

  “Did you or Bud tell the police this?”

  “Nope. They didn’t ask us. We don’t tell cops more than we need to. I already done told you way more than I should, but it’s for a good cause, for Snowball’s sake.”

  “If I showed you a picture of the woman I think it might be, do you think you would recognize her?”

  “Sure, I could. But you don’t need to do that. I got a picture of her and him, the guy she was with.”

  “What?”

  “She was in the background while the motorcycle dude and Bud were unloading the freezer. I was taking pictures of Snowball prancing around the parking lot. We take her with us everywhere, and when a cat’s been cooped up in the cab of a truck for forty minutes, Lord knows she’s got to roam.”

  I looked down at her phone as she handed it to me. There was a picture of Snowball, larger than life, in the foreground. In the background, an older man in overalls—who I assumed was Bud—was strapping down the freezer with bungee cords in the back of the truck, with the help of a forty-something messy haired, hard-living motorcycle dude as Rose had called him. A pretty, dark-haired woman was standing in the background, to the right of the truck, with her work-gloved clad hands on her hips. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that the woman was not Maria—it was Suzanne. It took me longer to identify the man. But after staring at the photo for another minute I recognized him. It was Larry Boone, the artist who had made the duck crossing sign at the Food Stop, Lucinda’s co-worker.

  I took a photo of Rose’s screen with my phone, and then texted the picture to Kojak, with an explanation of what he was looking at. He sent me back an emoji of a smoking gun.

  O

  It was race day again. The anniversary of the day my world first collided with Suzanne’s. I could still recall my intense energy that morning, jumping around, stretching, trying to shake off the nerves. A damp mist had wrapped around us in the dark as we waited not-so-patiently for the sunrise start. If I had known what was about to happen, I might not have left the starting line that day.

  This was my first time watching a race instead of participating. I couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment that I wasn’t part of it. But today I had a greater purpose.

  It was chillier than it had been last year. I was bundled up in a medium-weight zip-up down coat, a hat and gloves. The runners started with layers, many of them from the thrift shop, and shed them along the way as they got hot. The street was littered with old oversized sweatshirts, ripped sweatpants, and cheap mittens and hats most likely purchased from the Cost Mart dollar bins. Just looking at the runners stripped down to their tank tops and tiny running shorts gave me a secondhand shiver.

  I had parked my car a few blocks away, tucked into one of the many unknown secret spots in the city that only true locals knew about, and walked towards the finish line. I was waiting for Kojak’s call. He promised me I would be the first person to know after he got the go-ahead from the district attorney.

  As I watched the exhausted runners slog toward the end of the 26.2 miles, I noticed that most of them, despite their obvious fatigue, were smiling. And why not? They could see the finish line now. For most of the race they could only imagine it. But now it was there, glowing in the distance, not a mirage, but a tangible thing, a beacon of hope, a reward for all their hard work over the past few months. I recalled this moment vividly, the visceral exhilaration in a race I felt when the end was in sight.

  One more important piece of information had surfaced in Tanner’s murder case. After I gave investigators the photo of Tanner’s wedding ring, they interviewed his nurses and desk staff about whether he was wearing the ring when he left his office the day he disappeared. They said that he was. He was also still wearing his white doctor’s jacket. Police re-interviewed Maria and her family, too, although they were reluctant to speak with investigators after what they had put her through. But her lawyer gave her the go-head to answer a limited number of questions. They, too, said Tanner was wearing the ring and his white jacket when he left to pick up diapers and formula for her.

  I marveled at the variety of runners who were almost at the finish line. They all had unique stories that had brought them here. There was
an older man with a white beard and a headband decorated like a rainbow. He was staggering towards the finish with a huge grin on his face despite his obvious pain. There was a young woman with a freckled face, dressed head-to-toe in purple, with her hair in French braids, bopping her head to her music. There was a middle-aged man dressed in a US Navy t-shirt, running with a prosthetic leg.

  My observations were interrupted by the annoyingly loud ringing of my phone, which Miranda had secretly changed to “I Want You Back” by her favorite band, 5 Seconds of Summer. I fumbled with the phone, embarrassed to be interrupting everyone.

  “We got it,” Kojak said, in a loud whisper. “The arrest warrant. We got it.”

  “Wow. I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s all you, kid. You made this possible. You wouldn’t give up. You’re an honorary detective now. Larry Boone talked. Spilled the beans. Met him at the grocery store. Said she paid him a bunch of money and also gave him a little roll in the hay in return for his help and silence. Said he thought they were in love, if you can believe that shit. He’s getting a deal in return for his testimony.”

  “Wow, that’s amazing,” I said, noticing myself using Janie’s catch phrase. But this time it fit. “My pleasure. But keep my name out of this.”

  “What name? I don’t even know who I’m talking to,” Kojak chuckled softly.

  “Did they find the wedding ring?”

  “Just where you said it would be. In the garden, under Winston’s palm print stone. Very creepy place to hide it.”

  It had been a guess, but it was a good guess.

  “Thanks for the call.”

  “You bet.”

  As I put my phone back into my pocket, I watched more runners zoom by me with their it’s-almost-over smiles. Some were limping, some were crying, others scanned the crowd for their family and friends. Finally, I spotted her. She was triumphant. Her shiny black ponytail bounced high atop her head. She was dressed all hot pink—a tight tank top and capri leggings decorated with purple swirls. She wore black, wraparound sunglasses. White Airpods protruded from her ears and connected to her iPhone in a clear plastic case on her upper right arm. As she passed, she noticed me on the sidelines for just a split second and gave me a frantic little wave. I almost felt guilty. Almost.

  It might have been the wireless earbuds, or the roar of the cheering crowd that blocked out the sirens. Seconds before Suzanne’s feet would have touched the finish line, two Oak City police officers pulled up in a patrol car across the street, blue lights blazing. They jumped out, hopped over the orange webbed safety fence, and grabbed her by her elbows. She looked from one to the other. At first her face looked surprised, then resigned. She looked like she might collapse as they escorted her to the waiting patrol car. The crowd of runners swallowed the trio, and I lost sight of them.

  By the time I crossed the road, dodging the finishers, the patrol car was already pulling away. I looked down at the ground where the car had been. It was littered with runners’ numbers, empty water bottles, and confetti. Race waste. But one thing caught my eye—a bright pink hairband emblazoned with purple smiley faces. I had never seen another one like it. It was mine, the one Miranda had given me for good luck at my first race, the one I had given Suzanne the day we ran together in the park. I reached down, scooped up the hairband and shoved it into my jacket pocket.

  I turned and headed toward my car. Over my shoulder, in the distance, people were struggling to finish the race. I remembered that feeling, when I was close to the end of a race and wasn’t sure if I could make it. The truth was that no matter how many runners started the race, someone always had to be last. Today that person was Suzanne Parker.

  Preview of

  “Lies that Bind”

  That single sentence unraveled all the good in just a few seconds. The good vanished like an exhale on a cold day, that floats away immediately after you take a breath.

  It wasn’t really an admission. It was just four simple words. You couldn’t help yourself. My questions put you on the defensive.

  “What’s it to you?”

  They came on the heels of my inquiry, indirect, but subtle words with a subtext we both understood to be an accusation. It wasn’t what you did. It was about what it symbolized—the darkness of a person I didn’t know, didn’t want to know.

  “You know what you did,” I said.

  To my surprise, I said it without anger, or even despair. It just came out. I hadn’t planned to say it, but there it was, out in the open. And once it was out there, you only had two choices—lie, or admit to it.

  I’m pretty sure that you knew me well enough to know your admission changed everything. It undermined any positive narrative I had spun about you over the years. My naïve heart was broken, shattered under the weight of your ugly truth.

  “What’s it to you?”

  The flippant way you said it, your inflection, made me realize you were not the man I had fantasized about. You were a stranger, a vain interloper preying on my vulnerable spirit. How could I be so wrong about a person? I’ve been beating myself up every single day since that moment, wondering where I went off course.

  No, you didn’t do it to me. Frankly it had little to do with me. But your admission finally made me see the real you. It also did something else, something brilliant. It set me free.

  —Tilly

  “Maddie, Maddie Arnette?” The unfamiliar woman tugged at my sleeve. I was used to people coming up to me in public places because I was a local television news reporter, but this was something different. This felt personal.

  I scanned the grocery store and surveyed the dozens of people milling around the produce, examining the tomatoes, avocados, and heads of lettuce for imperfections and then putting them into their carts once they had passed the eyeball test. I was safe. I was not alone. Nothing bad could happen to me here. At least that’s what I told myself.

  “Yes,” I replied, after a long pause. “That’s me.”

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for a while. This is going to sound weird, but I have some important information for you. I know something that you need to know.”

  “I’m listening,” I finally got a grip on the thin plastic bag, and peeled it open to put bananas inside.

  It took me three tries to open the bag, one less than usually. I was silently applauding myself.

  I was half-listening. People routinely approached me with story ideas. Most of the time, their pitches were like the diverging roots of a tree—long and bending, curling down into the soil in a million directions with no real focus. Stories I could never corral into a minute-and-a-half television segment. But I always tried to be polite.

  “It’s about your father, Roger.”

  “What about Roger?”

  My heart started beating faster. I chose not to think about him most days, because when I did, I spiraled into a panic attack. We had been estranged so long—decades—that it was easy for me not to think about him.

  “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I know Roger didn’t kill your mother.”

  The other shoppers in the brightly lit grocery store vanished, and it was just me and the woman in the red puffy winter coat, standing between the apples and the oranges.

  “How do you know that?” I whispered, as I leaned closer to her.

  “Because my son is the one. He killed your mother. The wrong man went to prison.”

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank all the characters I have met along the way, in the television news business and in the field, who served as muses for my first work of fiction. Any perceived connection to real people or real news stories I have covered is coincidental. All my characters and scenarios are fictional. I would also like to thank my cousin Leslie for originally editing the book, and my favorite unpaid assistant, Kelly, for giving me important notes. And special thanks to Light Messages Publishing and my editor Elizabeth Turnbull for all their hard work in making my first novel so
mething of which I can be truly proud.

  About the Author

  Amanda Lamb is a television reporter with three decades of experience. She covers the crime beat for an award-winning NBC affiliate in the southeast. She is also the author of nine published books—three true crimes, four memoirs, and two children’s books.

  Amanda makes her home in North Carolina with her husband, two daughters, and her poodle, Dolly Parton.

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