Chapter 27 #2
She was pretty, with fine features and a generous mouth. She wore a faded blue cashmere cardigan and a white blouse with a lace collar.
Eric climbed back behind the wheel. “I noticed her following us about a mile after we pulled out of her driveway. I had a hunch.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Leon is pretty protective of me. I should have told that lady who works for you not to have you come to the house.”
“Thanks for that,” I said, unable to hide my sarcasm.
“Please don’t blame him. His heart is in the right place. Without Leon, I really don’t know where I’d be. He helped me straighten myself out.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re here. Can I assume that means you’re willing to answer some tough questions?”
“Yes.”
“And you know why I’m asking?”
She carried a giant brown purse. She pulled it off her lap and rested it on the seat beside her.
“You want to know about Tom. That’s why Leon is so upset. He doesn’t trust cops.”
“We’re not the cops,” Eric said.
She gave him an exasperated look. “But you’re the closest thing. My husband thinks you’re going to force me to come to court and talk about things that might trigger me. Are you? Forcing me to come to court?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “For now, I just wanted to talk to you.”
“I’m not the person I was a few years ago.
I was in a really bad place for a really long time.
I hurt people. I mean, I hurt their feelings.
And I scared people. I’m better now. It’s taken me a very long time but I finally feel like I have my life on track.
I have a husband who loves me. You saw that with your own eyes. Do you love her?”
She looked at Eric. “Yes,” he answered without hesitation.
“And that means that you’d do anything to keep her safe in your eyes, doesn’t it? Including using that gun of yours to scare off somebody you thought could do her harm?”
“Yes,” he said before she could barely finish her sentence.
“Okay,” she said. “Then you can maybe understand Leon. That’s all that was. He thinks me talking to you is going to do me harm.”
“But you don’t think so,” I said.
“I hope not,” she answered. “I know Tom Loomis is one of the people I hurt though. I know I scared him and caused him some distress. I feel bad about that now. Especially now. So if you think talking to me could help him in a way, then I think I owe him that. That’s why I’m here.
I just couldn’t get Leon to understand it from my point of view.
He thinks I’m too fragile. But I’m not.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And you don’t have to try to protect me either. You said you had hard questions. Just ask them. My answers can’t hurt me anymore.”
“I respect that,” I said. “So I’ll get right to it. You know what I’m interested in? You know I represent … or my firm represents Tom’s wife.”
“The one everyone thinks killed him,” she said.
“Do you think so?” Eric asked.
She blinked but didn’t answer his direct question. “I have these,” she said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a thick accordion file and handed it to Eric. His brow furrowed; he opened it. I leaned over to see what he saw.
She had pages and pages of photocopied journal entries.
Dates. Times. Places. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at.
Then it hit me. For nearly a year, she tracked Tom Loomis’s movements.
The hours he worked. The stories he put on the air.
Where he had lunch. Clippings from news articles mentioning Tom.
“These are old,” Eric said.
“Six and a half years ago,” she said. “And I told you. I wasn’t in a good place then.
I thought Tom was something he wasn’t. I created him as this character in my head.
Like in a romance novel. When he winked at the camera at the end of his broadcasts, I thought he was winking at me. I know better now.”
“Maisy,” I said. “There are emails from you to Tom as recently as last year. You reached out to him after he moved to Delphi. You knew where he lived.”
She put her head down. “I know. And I know that’s what scared him. I know I wasn’t supposed to do that.”
“We understand Tom’s replacement actually tried to get a protection order against you,” Eric said, waving the folder.
“I’m ashamed of all of it. Last year, I did something stupid and tried to take myself off some medication that I need.
Leon switched jobs and for a little bit, we had a gap in our insurance.
We couldn’t afford the pills. I tried taking them every other day.
It put me off kilter for a while. But the doctor fixed it. ”
She took out another stack of papers from her bag and handed them to me. These were printouts of her medical records. She highlighted a few sections detailing her prescription medication. I recognized a few names. Maisy was on a potent combination of anti-depressants.
“Thank you for this,” I said. “And I’m sorry you’ve had to struggle so much.”
“I know Tom isn’t real. I mean, I know my fantasies about him weren’t real.
I was projecting this image onto him that fit this narrative in my head.
You don’t need to know all my sad stories.
And I can’t promise it won’t get bad again.
I’m living my life one day, sometimes one hour at a time now.
I have good support at home. Leon makes sure I keep my appointments and take my medication the right way.
I’m seeing a therapist. I’m in a support group. ”
“Those are all really positive things,” I said.
“But it doesn’t answer your big question, does it?”
Eric and I passed a look between us.
“See, Leon thinks you think I killed Tom. Do you? Think I killed him?”
“I think I just wanted to hear your side of things. You can understand why we’d have questions.”
“Sure. Of course. Part of my recovery is holding myself accountable. Admitting my weaknesses. Recognizing the times I need to ask for help. But your big question. The answer is no. I didn’t kill Tom Loomis.
I would never ever have hurt him. I know you might have a hard time believing that. So I brought you this.”
Maisy leaned forward and took the medical records back from me. She turned to a tabbed page and handed it back.
I quickly scanned the document. They were discharge orders. On March 16th, two days after Tom’s murder, she’d been released from Munson Medical Center after a five-day stay.
“I had my gallbladder out,” she said. “I ignored the symptoms for a couple of days too long. I was lucky it didn’t burst. I might have died. They had to open me all the way up. I can show you the scar.”
Before I could tell her not to, Maisy lifted her shirt. She had a six-inch-long diagonal surgical scar from just below her rib cage to just above her right hip.
I handed her records back to her.
“You can keep the rest of it,” she said.
“My journals. It’s all accurate. I don’t know if it’s of any use to you.
Probably not. I shouldn’t have kept them.
Leon doesn’t know I did. If he had found them, it would really upset him.
I kept them because it was a reminder. Something tangible I could hold and look at to tell myself how bad it really got back then. To help me from going back.”
“Thank you,” I said. Though I didn’t know what use I’d have for Tom’s comings and goings over six years ago. Long before he’d even met Katy and moved to Delphi. But something else occurred to me.
“Maisy,” I said. “There’s something that’s always perplexed me. Tom’s job at WDTN. That’s the largest market in the state. He’d have had to go to Chicago or New York to get bigger. He didn’t though. My understanding is that he left Detroit right on the cusp of a promotion. Then he came to Delphi.”
“That was hard for him,” she said. “He tried to pretend it’s what he wanted but I don’t think it was.
Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I know Tom wasn’t really my friend.
I didn’t really know him. But I watched him.
I could tell when he was having a good day or a bad day or even if he got a good night’s sleep, by how he appeared on camera.
He had tells. He wouldn’t smile as broadly.
Or he’d have circles under his eyes. Sometimes the way he looked off camera when he was distracted.
It’s all in my journal. You can read it.
But I can tell you, he was not happy when he first came to Delphi. He didn’t want to be there.”
“Do you know why?” Eric asked. “We’ve seen his personnel file. It seems incomplete.”
This felt ludicrous, relying on the impressions of a woman who had been admittedly mentally fragile. At the same time, I had nothing else to go on.
“He was dating somebody,” she said. “Somebody he shouldn’t have been.
She was pretty. Far too young for him. And they used to meet in secret.
They’d meet at this hole in the wall bar in Hamtramck of all places.
One time … I saw them together. In his car.
In the parking lot. Anyway, that was all around the time he left WDTN.
She worked there. I saw her coming in and out. ”
It made some sense if the timeline tracked. She was young. Was she a subordinate? If HR got involved, if she filed a complaint, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think the station gave Tom the option to quit or be fired. But those were a lot of what ifs.
“You don’t know her name?” Eric asked.
“He called her Tess,” she said. “But her real name was Theresa. I figured out she was an associate producer. Just out of college. Like I said, way too young for him.”
Eric thumbed through the journal. She had photographs of Tom she’d clearly taken without his knowledge. Most of them he was sitting in his car or walking down the street.
“Did you take pictures of them?” Eric asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Are they in here?” I asked, reaching for the file. But Maisy took it first. She walked her fingers over the pocket tabs until she found the one she wanted. She pulled out a small, white envelope and handed it to me.
“These are the only copies,” she said. “The negatives are inside. I’m old school. I like my trusty 35 millimeter. It was my dad’s. One of the few things I’ve got left of his.”
I opened the envelope. I had to blink twice to reassure myself I saw what I thought I saw. Eric leaned over and swore under his breath.
“Thank you,” I quickly said.
“Will it help?” she asked. “Do you think this Tess knows what might have happened to Tom? I don’t know if they were still involved. I never saw her after he left Detroit. I think she still worked at the station for a while but I didn’t keep track.”
“It might help,” I said, trying to keep my tone and expression neutral. “Thank you, Maisy.”
“You won’t need me to come to court?”
I couldn’t give her the answer she wanted. The truth was, I didn’t know it. She was a problematic witness at best. But she’d just unwittingly handed me a bombshell.
Eric took my lead. He stepped out of the car and went around to her side, opening her door for her like a true gentleman. Maisy said her goodbyes. We waited for her to drive off. Eric climbed back behind the wheel. I held Maisy’s photos in my lap, trying not to hyperventilate.
“It explains a lot, Cass,” he said.
I held up the clearest photo of the couple. He had his arms around her, resting his chin on her head as he held her against him. They looked happy.
“Tess,” I said. “Theresa.”
I knew her as neither. But there, in the photo, with a dreamy expression on her face as she looked up at Tom, was Tallon Shipley.