Chapter Six
While Malone waited for Crime Scene detectives to comb through the carnage in her office, Sam returned to the conference room to check on Mr. Tappen.
“My sons should be here soon.”
“They’re here. One of our officers is bringing them in. Please allow me to tell them about their mother.”
He nodded, and judging from the puffiness of his eyes and face, he’d been weeping while he was alone in the room.
Her heart went out to him as he absorbed the terrible shock that came with a loved one’s murder. One minute, he’d been making dinner at home, and the next, his entire life—and his children’s—had been turned upside down.
Two handsome, dark-haired young men were brought into the room by a patrolman.
“Justin and Lucas, this is Lieutenant Holland,” Mr. Tappen said.
“You’re the first lady, right?” Justin, the younger of the two boys, asked.
“That’s right. Can you come in and have a seat?”
“Why are we here, Dad?” Lucas asked, eyeing her with curiosity.
“It’s about Mom,” Bob said when the two boys were seated next to each other.
“What about her?” Justin asked, his gaze moving between his father and Sam.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you that your mother was found dead today,” Sam said, having learned getting right to the point was the best strategy in these cases.
Justin’s eyes filled as he looked to his father for confirmation. “Is it true, Dad? She… She’s dead?”
Bob nodded and reached for his younger son, who broke down into sobs.
Lucas looked down at the table while his brother’s heartbroken sobs filled the room. “What happened to her?” Lucas asked, glancing up at Sam with torment in his expression.
“She was found bound and gagged in the back of her van, which was parked in Southeast.”
Hearing that, Lucas dropped his head into his hands. “Do you know who did it?”
“Not yet,” Sam said. “We’re in the earliest stages of the investigation.”
“Does Molly know?” Justin asked.
“Not yet,” his dad replied. “We’re going to call her.”
“You should have Aunt Amy go there and tell her,” Justin said. “She shouldn’t be alone when she hears this.”
“That’s a good idea,” Bob said.
“Who’s Amy?” Sam asked.
“My wife’s best friend from college. She lives an hour from where Molly goes to school. The kids have always been close to her.”
“I think it’s a good idea to have her there when you tell Molly,” Sam said. “Why don’t you make that call now? Please put it on speaker.”
Sam had to listen as Bob told his wife’s best friend that Pam had been murdered. Her friend’s heartbroken screams of disbelief echoed through the conference room.
When the woman had finally calmed to the point of soft sobs, Bob said, “Is Tom home, Amy?”
“He’s right here.”
“Can the two of you go to be with Molly when we tell her the news?”
“Yes, of course. We’ll go now.”
“Call me when you’re close.”
“I will. You’re sure it’s her, right?”
“Yes, we’re sure.”
“God, who could’ve done such a thing to Pam? She was the best person I ever knew.”
Sam wished she had a dollar for every time she heard a murder victim described that way.
There were, of course, exceptions, such as recent homicide victim Ginny McLeod, who’d alienated nearly everyone in her life by stealing from them before she was murdered by her husband.
“We’ll do our best to get you some answers,” Sam said.
The people who loved Pam were in the earliest stages of realizing that the answers they craved wouldn’t bring back the person they’d loved.
While they waited for Amy and her husband to get to Molly Tappen, Sam asked the most pressing question she had for them. “Was she having problems with anyone in her life? Personal, work, neighbors, friends?”
All three were shaking their heads before she finished asking the question.
“Everyone loves her,” Justin said. “My friends like to hang out at our house because she makes us cookies and listens to their problems.”
His use of the present tense to describe his mother gutted her, as it always did. It would be a while before he spoke of her in the past tense.
“She avoided drama like the plague,” Bob said. “She’d dropped friends who’d brought drama to her life.”
Sounds like a girl after my own heart, Sam thought. “Would any of them have been angry enough about being dropped to do something like this to her?”
Bob shook his head. “That happened years ago. We haven’t seen any of them in ages.”
“We’re going to need a list of her closest friends, work colleagues and others she interacted with on a daily or weekly basis, with their contact information and addresses if you have them.
Can you work on that while we wait for Amy to get to Molly’s?
” Sam pushed a yellow pad and pen across the table to Bob. “Also, who else has keys to the van?”
“Just Pam and I did. The boys have another vehicle they use.”
“Okay, work on that list, and I’ll be back.”
Sam stepped out of the conference room into the chaos of a Crime Scene investigation unfolding in her office. Looking to avoid that, she went to the cubicle belonging to Detective Dominguez and called Nick on the BlackBerry.
“Hey, babe. How’s it going?”
“Another rough one. A beloved wife and mother found bound and gagged in her own minivan. She’d apparently been there for days by the time she was found.”
“She wasn’t reported missing?”
“No, she wasn’t. I guess it wasn’t unusual for her to go silent when she was working at a conference, which was what she did for a living. Her company supported conference events.”
“And she didn’t talk to her family at all?”
“Nope.”
“That’s weird.”
“See, I thought so, too. I can’t for the life of me picture going a whole weekend without talking to you or Scotty or the twins. Or even my sisters and my dad, when he was still here.”
“I’d hunt you down before I’d go a weekend without talking to you. I’d be twitching after twelve hours.”
“Same, but we’re strange that way.”
“I like our kind of strange. It works for me.”
“Me, too. How are things there?”
“I just checked the kids, and everyone is asleep. In other news, I’m already getting serious pushback on my comments from earlier, but I’m not backing down from them. We absolutely must attack the mental health element behind the violence in this country.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“It hasn’t been made public yet, but the gunman had a history of violent episodes that had led his family on more than one occasion to ask to have him held for psych evals.
He was never held for longer than seventy-two hours because he refused treatment every time.
And then he managed to get his hands on a gun and do what he did today.
The people closest to him believe his goal was to be killed by the police, which is what happened. ”
“The thing I never understand is if he’s looking to end his own life, why does he have to take innocent people with him?”
“I don’t understand that either. If he wanted to kill himself, as horrible as that is, I suppose that’s his right, but he certainly didn’t have the right to take others with him.”
“No, he didn’t. My heart is hurting for all the families that were forever broken by his selfish actions.”
“Are you going to head up my mental health task force?” Nick asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that, and I’d like to be involved, but I don’t think I can be the chair. Maybe we should ask Dr. Trulo? As the department psychiatrist for close to thirty years, he’s seen it all and would be better positioned to oversee it.”
“That’s a brilliant idea. If you text me his number, I’ll give him a call.”
“You’ll give him a heart attack if you call him. At least let me warn him.”
Nick’s soft laughter made her smile as only he could. “Go ahead and give him a heads-up that he’s going to hear from me.”
“I’ll do that, and I’ll send you his number.”
“Thank you. Are you there all night?”
“Probably not, but for a while longer. Oh, and get this… We think Ramsey tossed my office.”
“How did he get into your office?”
“He must’ve picked the lock somehow. Everything is on the floor. A total mess. Malone has Crime Scene processing it.”
“Why do you think it was him?”
“Because he was skulking around and cornered me in the vending area.”
“Cornered you. What does that mean?”
Sam immediately regretted sharing that detail. “He tried to start something with me, but I definitely got the upper hand, and then Malone came along and told him to fuck off.”
“Jeez, Sam, that’s the stuff that gives me nightmares.”
“I was never in any danger.”
“Sure, you weren’t. That guy can’t stand you.”
“He might’ve stepped into it big-time by being in the building when my office was trashed.
I’m just hoping he was sloppy about it, and CSU can tie him to it.
” Even if that would mean another of her colleagues had ended up in trouble that somehow involved her.
It wasn’t her fault that Stahl had wrapped her in razor wire and threatened to set her on fire, or that Conklin had sat on info relevant to her dad’s unsolved shooting for four years, or that Detective Offenbach had been off having an affair when he was supposed to be at a conference.
“I hate to think of you having enemies within the department.”
“I suppose it goes with the territory, especially if a woman is good at a job that’s traditionally done by men.”
Lindsey came into the pit and stopped short at the sight of CSU working in Sam’s office.
“I need to run, babe. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
“Be careful. Your husband loves you.”
“Love you, too.”
Sam ended the call and stood, waving Lindsey over to the cubicle.
“What. The. Hell. Sam?”
“Someone trashed my office. I discovered it about ten minutes after Ramsey cornered me in the vending area to tell me his wife is divorcing him and somehow that’s my fault.”
“Holy crap. How in the hell is that your fault?”
“Someone sent him anonymous proof of an affair through interoffice mail. I guess the word has gotten out and back to his wife somehow. He blames me for that.”