Chapter Twelve #2
“Agreed. After the last few months, the chief is not putting up with any bullshit. He hopes that in addition to getting rid of Ramsey, this’ll send the message that bad cops have no place in this department.”
“God, I hope so. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with bad cops.”
“Me, too.”
“What are you hearing about the deputy-chief thing?” Sam asked, hoping the mayor had shifted her focus away from Sam, who’d declined the offer of a promotion she didn’t want.
“Nothing new. She’s still aiming for a woman.”
“Have her look at Erica Lucas. She’s an outstanding detective, as you well know.”
“I do know that. I’ll send the idea up the flagpole. On another note, are you planning to attend the hearing in your dad’s case after the holidays?”
“I don’t know yet. Do I need to be there?”
“Not in any official capacity. We kept your name out of the reports for obvious reasons.”
“I don’t want it to turn into a circus, and that seems to happen everywhere I go lately,” Sam said.
“I understand. Let me know if anyone from the family plans to attend, and we’ll take care of getting you all in and out.”
“We’ll figure that out after the holidays.”
“In the meantime, can you brief the press on the Tappen case when you get back to the house?”
“Do I have to?” she asked, as she always did.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Fine. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“You’re welcome, Captain.” She’d hated dealing with the media before Nick became vice president and then president.
Now she hated it even more because they were forever trying to get her to tell them things about him even though she’d repeatedly made it clear that wasn’t going to happen—ever.
But that didn’t stop them from asking irrelevant questions that she had no intention of answering every time she briefed them.
“Keep me posted on what you find out from the coach.”
“Will do.” Sam slapped her phone closed with a satisfying smack and went back inside. “When will your lawyer be here?”
Ouellette, who’d been slouching in his chair, sat up straighter. “Any minute now.”
Sam sat in the chair facing his desk and trained her gaze on him.
He refused to look at her.
At least she knew for sure he had something big to tell her, or he wouldn’t be so easily intimidated or asking for a lawyer.
Ten minutes later, the guy came rushing through the door, red-faced and huffing. “So sorry to keep you waiting, Mrs. Cappuano.”
Sam rolled her eyes and showed him her gold shield. “Lieutenant Holland. My partner, Detective Cruz. Your name?”
“Joseph Holleran. Pleasure to meet you both. My wife won’t believe I met the first lady.”
“Enough with that,” Sam said, scowling. “I’m here as a police officer, as you well know, and the one thing I hate is people who waste my time. I’m trying to figure out who killed Pam Tappen. Your client has information relevant to the case that I need, so let’s get this moving.”
“I’d like a moment to confer in private with my client,” Holleran said.
Sam gestured for him to have at it. “Make it snappy.” She and Freddie got up and left the room.
“I thought I’d have to hold you back for a second there,” Freddie said, grinning. “When he added the part about his wife, I was ready.”
“Why do people have to state the obvious? Why, why, why?”
“Um, probably because they’ve never had a first lady pounding the pavement as a cop before?”
“Why do you have to state the obvious? You’re supposed to be on my side.”
Laughing, he said, “I am on your side, but it’s going to take a while for the novelty to wear off.”
“Anytime now.” She was giving them five more minutes before she went back in there to start kicking ass and taking names.
Three minutes later, the lawyer opened the door and invited them back inside. “My client is willing to speak to you about highly personal matters with the understanding that he’s doing so voluntarily and out of a desire to find justice for Pam.”
While Freddie cleared his throat to keep from laughing at the outrageous statement, Sam met the lawyer’s gaze head on. “Let me clarify some things for you, Mr. Hapigan.”
“It’s, um, Holleran.”
“Whatever your name is, this is a homicide investigation, which means I can arrest your client for failing to provide relevant information. He’s not doing us a favor here. He’s cooperating with a homicide investigation and thus saving himself from being arrested. Are we all clear now?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Pam!” Ouellette said.
“Shut up, Mark,” Holleran said.
“I didn’t! I cared about her. We were friends. I’d never harm her.” His chin quivered and his eyes filled, and Sam again felt the tingle that came with a potential break in a baffling case.
“What is it you wish to tell us, Mr. Ouellette?” Sam asked, forcing herself to use a patient tone when she was tempted to rip his head off for dragging this out.
“I want you to know that Pam was a wonderful friend, mother, wife. She did so much for so many people and was always willing to lend a hand when needed.”
“And?”
To her great dismay, he began to cry. For fuck’s sake…
“I love my wife and my kids. My family is everything to me, and Pam’s family was everything to her.”
“But?”
“We, I… We had an affair.”
Bingo. “When?”
“It started about a year ago.”
“How long did it last?”
“It was ongoing.”
“Who knew about it?”
“No one! We were very discreet.”
“I want details. How it started, when it started, where the encounters took place.”
“That’s, um, kind of personal.”
“Mr. Ouellette, I’ll remind you again that Pam was murdered, which means nothing is personal.”
He dropped his head into his hands. “I can’t believe anyone would ever hurt her. She was the best person. Everyone loved her.”
“I want the details, Mr. Ouellette. Now.”
Seeming to realize he had no choice, Ouellette released a deep sigh and began to talk.
“She was the president of our boosters, and I relied on her for everything. We were in constant contact, and over time, we began to share confidences. At first, it was about our kids, who were teenagers and giving us the usual stress that goes along with that time in their lives. We commiserated, you know? One thing led to another, and we began to talk about our marriages and how as much as we loved our spouses, we both felt something was missing.”
“And that something was sex?”
“No, it was more than that. Intimacy, connection and sex, too. We felt terrible for even talking about it outside our marriages, but we were both desperate for someone to talk to. She adored Bob. She truly did. She never had a bad word to say about him. He was an excellent father and provider and all the things anyone would want in a husband. But at some point, they’d lost the spark.
I understood that better than just about anyone, because that’s what’s happened to me, too.
My wife, Josie, is amazing. She’s the best mother I’ve ever known and the sweetest person.
I love her more than anything, but I’m not in love with her anymore.
I haven’t been for a very long time.” He wiped away tears with his shirt sleeve.
“I’m sure this sounds horrible to you, but Pam and I turned to each other for something that was missing in our marriages.
We felt awful about betraying our spouses, but it was important to both of us to remain in our marriages and to keep our families together. ”
“I’ll ask again. Who knew about the affair?”
“Neither of us told anyone. We made a pact at the beginning that it had to stay between us. Our lives would’ve been ruined if anyone found out.”
Without taking her eyes off Ouellette, Sam said, “Detective Cruz, would you please call up the images from the vehicle where Mrs. Tappen was found?”
“Yes, ma’am. Here you go.” He handed her his iPhone.
“This is what was done to Pam, Mr. Ouellette.”
After glancing at the image on the screen, he broke down once again. “Oh my God,” he whispered.
“She was bound and gagged and left to die in the cold by someone who wanted her to suffer, so I’ll ask you once again. Who did you tell about the affair?”
“No one. I swear on the lives of my children.”
“Is there any chance your wife found out and didn’t tell you?”
“I think I’d know if she did, and there’s been no sign of that.”
“Tell me where you met for sex.”
He took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Hotel rooms mostly. Sometimes I met her when she was working a show.”
“And that would require you to fly?”
“At times, yes.”
“How did you pay for the hotel rooms and the flights?”
“I had a credit card just for that purpose, and the bills came here.”
Sam was revolted by the notion of him having a special credit card to pay for an affair. “Where were you on Friday?”
“At an AAU football tournament in Delaware.”
“When did you return?”
“Around midnight on Sunday. I was with my son the entire time and never left my house after I got home.”
“Can you prove that?”
“I have an alarm system that I set when I returned home, and I didn’t deactivate it until the next morning.”
Sam glanced at Freddie, who’d know she wanted him to confirm that. “Did your wife go to the tournament?”
“No, she was home with our other children.”
“You said you have four?”
“Yes. The oldest is my son, who was with me in Delaware. He’s nineteen.”
“And still in high school?”
Ouellette nodded. “He repeated eighth grade to give him an extra year to grow and mature as a player. He’s one of the most highly recruited quarterbacks in this year’s class. Everyone wants him.”
“When was the last time you saw Pam?”
He thought about that for a second. “We had dinner last Tuesday.”
“Where?”
“We drove over to a place in West Virginia.”
“You drove all that way just for dinner?”
“We spent the night.”
“Where did your spouses think you were?”
“Pam said she was meeting with a new client, and I was at an AAU meeting. Both are things we did frequently.”
Sam couldn’t believe the way these two had had an affair in almost plain sight.
“Did anyone suspect you and Pam were more than just friends?”
“Not that I’m aware of. We were very careful. We both had a lot to lose.”
“Not even your son, who you spent so much time with, knew about it?”
“I never told him. If he found out, I was unaware.”
“I’d like to speak to your wife.”
He blanched and then looked at the lawyer, who seemed equally shocked. “Why?”
“I need to know if she knew you were having an affair with Pam.”
“You’re going to come right out and ask her that?”
“I am. And I’m going to ask Bob Tappen, too, because the two of them are the only people I’ve heard of yet that would’ve had motive to kill a woman everyone loved.”
“You can’t do that! You’ll ruin my life!”
She held up another photo of Pam. “Her life has already been ruined, Mr. Ouellette, by someone who wanted her to suffer. Do you care at all about getting justice for her?”
“Of course I do, but you’re asking me to implode my entire life to get justice for someone who’s gone now.”
“I’m sorry that it’s come to this. We’re not out to destroy anyone’s life, but your wife and Mr. Tappen have motive because of the affair.”
“Even if they didn’t know about it?”
“You think they didn’t know.”
“I’m sure of it. My wife isn’t the type to put up with something like this. If she knew, she would’ve killed me, not Pam.”
“Did she know Pam?”
He nodded tentatively. “Our boys grew up together, played football from a young age on the same teams.”
“Did she consider Pam a friend?”
“They were mom friends. They didn’t run around together or anything like that.”
“But they were friends.”
“Yes, I guess you could say that they were.”
“So if your wife knew, not only had she been betrayed by her husband, but also by a longtime friend.”
“She would never do something like that to anyone,” he said, gesturing toward the pictures of Pam on the phone. “She doesn’t have that in her.”
“Let me tell you something I’ve learned about people, Mr. Ouellette. When they’ve been betrayed by the people closest to them, they’re capable of anything.”
“Not my Josie. She’d never leave someone to die like that. She rescues birds with broken wings and takes them to the sanctuary. That’s who she is.”
“I’m sorry, but I’ll need to speak to her, and I’ll need to ask her if she knew about the affair.”
Ouellette made a tortured-sounding moan.
“How could you do this to her, Mark?” Holleran asked. “That’s my sister. You’re on your own with this.” When he would’ve stormed out, Freddie stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“We need you to keep the details of this investigation confidential until we’ve had the chance to speak to Mrs. Ouellette,” he said. “Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I understand. I’m not allowed to tell my sister her husband is a dick. Got it.” He pulled free of Freddie’s grasp and walked out.
Sam put her notebook on the desk in front of Ouellette, who was now weeping quietly. “Write down the information about where we can find your wife. And please don’t play any games or do anything to waste more of our time, or I will arrest you.”
He took the notebook from her and started writing.