Page 82 of The Best Lawyer
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 afive-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. Hewouldn’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.
