2007-’Everything reminds you he’s gone’

Date: 04/19/07
Widow of slain Metra officer struggles to raise two children

By Lauren FitzPatrick and Courtney Greve
Staff writers

In her dreams, they’re doing something ordinary.

Going to the grocery store. Watching their children play soccer. Riding in the car.

Then she wakes. She reaches toward his side of the bed, fumbling for warmth and finding only cold sheets. Sadness rushes back.

But those dreams are better than the nightmare, the one she’s had over and over since the night of Sept. 27.

Ding dong.

She hesitates before moving toward the foyer. It’s late, and she
recalls her husband’s warnings about not answering the door late at night.
She shrugs off the thought. It could be the neighbor telling her she left
the garage door open again.

Ding dong. The noise could wake the children. She turns the knob and pulls.

An officer stands in the doorway. He doesn’t speak. She knows why he’s here.

Her husband, a police officer, was killed in the line of duty.

Reliving that moment makes Pam Cook shudder.

Now a widow, a suddenly single parent of two children and the sole family provider, the reality of life without her husband pursues her days like a stalker.

“You try not to think about it,” she said, “but everything reminds you he’s gone.”

Nearly seven months ago, Metra officer Tom Cook was shot twice in the back of the head as he sat in his squad car parked in the 147th Street station commuter lot in Harvey.

The son of a late police chief and brother of a sheriff’s deputy, Cook left the Riverdale force for what he thought would be a “less risky, more secure” gig with Metra, his wife said.

Instead, at 43, he earned the distinction of being the first Metra cop slain in the line of duty.

The Cooks will travel to Springfield and Washington in May to see Tom’s name etched into police memorial walls.

Pam isn’t sure how she or her children will react at the sight, but it feels right to go.

“It makes me feel good about the person he was and that people want to honor him,” she said.’Wake up. You’re on duty’

Bob Cook tore over to that parking lot after he learned his youngest brother, the one he calls Tommy, had taken two shots to the head. During the drive, he was replaying a conversation they had earlier that week:”Why are you doing this?” he recalled asking his brother. “Why are you going out there and killing yourself for a few hours of overtime?”

Crime-scene officers waved Bob, a longtime Cook County sheriff’s deputy, past the police tape to where Tommy was slumped over his steering wheel.

“Wake up,” Bob wanted to scream. “You’re on duty.”

“At least in the back of the ambulance during Last Rites, I was able to hug him and tell him I love him,” he said as he sat next to a photo of his brother.

After the funeral was over, Bob turned his focus to catching his brother’s assassins.

“It’s sad. They’re cowards, the shooters. No one but a coward would come up behind you and shoot you in the back.”

The longtime Cook County sheriff’s deputy posted at the Bridgeview courthouse has watched other families endure the pain of a sudden homicide. Criminal charges are only the start of a long path toward justice, but could help the family get some answers.” ‘Why’ is the toughest question to answer,” Bob said. “I don’t know why it happened — no one can answer that. I don’t know if it was a gang initiation, or to
take my brother’s gun.”

A suspect in custody

Officer Cook’s SIG-Sauer handgun disappeared from his holster and has yet to be recovered. Dive teams from Southland fire departments dredged the Little Calumet River near the crime scene in the days after the shooting but came up empty-handed. Police also continue to search for the weapon that fired the fatal shot, likely a revolver that left no shell casings behind.

Cook was one of 11 murder victims in Harvey last year, and his shooting brought in the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force to take over the investigation from Harvey’s beleaguered force.

While dozens of officers no longer work together around the clock — as they did in the days after Cook was found in his squad car — a select team of investigators continues to chip away at the case.

Joe Kosman, one of the lead prosecutors, has been reviewing thousands of documents, trying to build a case. The former Blue Island police chief now heads up the gang prosecutions unit out of the Markham courthouse, and he’s anxious to charge the right person with solid evidence.

“For some people it’s a snail’s pace,” he said of the six or so months that have passed. “I would have loved to see charges five minutes after it happened, being an ex-police officer myself.”

The investigation has slowed somewhat, but everyone involved insists it hasn’t stalled.

Though no one has been charged, Kosman said, his team is on the right track.

“The message out there (is) we will not rest until the case is complete,” he said.

Sources close to the investigation believe their man already is behind bars, awaiting trial on numerous other shooting and weapons charges. That 19-year-old Harvey man is accused of leading a shooting spree during the week Cook died. He’s allegedly been caught with weapons in the jail two times.

Bob Cook finds some solace in knowing the best suspect isn’t free.”But pieces of the puzzle still are missing,” he said. “(Investigators) are trying to find something that’s not there.”

Frustrated that no one has been called to answer for Tommy’s killing, Bob screamed at investigators a few weeks ago. Though his badge has given him insider access to the investigation, he has not been able to call his mother in Tucson or his sister with the news they yearn to hear.

But charges will come, Bob knows, because the case is in good hands.

“This investigation with my brother’s murder will eventually take its course, and the family in the end will have a little peace,” he said. “If it falls through the cracks, it’ll be a worse blow to my family.”

A family man

Pam Cook wants her husband’s killer locked up. But she is anything but fixated on the investigation.There are simply too many other things to worry about, namely 9-year-old Jimmy and 7-year-old Jessica.

Their father was equal parts playmate, teacher and motivator. He coached their soccer teams, organized game nights and created an outdoor movie theater in their back yard.

“He was the first one they wanted to tell if they got an A on a spelling test and the last one they wanted to see at night,” Pam said.

Tom’s death left a void.

Jimmy no longer plays soccer. The children played on different teams at different venues and the same time. Something had to give.

“I think he understands, and he’s OK with it,” Pam said.

They go to bed earlier to avoid succumbing to their nighttime habit of looking for Tom’s headlights as he would pull into the driveway.

Movie nights have yet to resume. Christmas left the family “numb.” The patio furniture stayed on the backyard deck all winter. Soon Pam will take over mowing the lawn, Tom’s cherished chore.

And since Pam can no longer bring herself to prepare Tom’s favorite meal, chicken and dumplings, she takes the kids out to eat more often. She cringes every time she tells the hostess “three” instead of “four.”

Pam said Tom’s death helped her find her voice.

“He talked on my behalf for everything,” she said. “I’ve gotten stronger. I’ve had to.”

A benefit will be held Friday at 115 Bourbon Street, Merrionette Park, to raise money for Pam and the children. Pam said proceeds will be put into college trusts for Jimmy and Jessica.

Pam never had a police star necklace until after her husband died. She couldn’t choose between Metra and Riverdale, so she didn’t get either.

After his murder, she got both.

She also got the flag that draped his casket.

Folded into a crisp triangle and stored in a glass box, it rests on the mantle near Tom’s collection of miniature police cars, including the one ordered from the Franklin Mint because it looked like his father’s patrol car.

All of Tom’s things remain as he left them. Packing them up would do no good anyway.

Everywhere she looks, she sees his hand — such as the floor tiles and light fixtures he spent hours picking out when they moved two years ago from Riverdale to Dyer, Ind., to build their dream home.

“We finally got the dream,” Pam said, getting choked up for only a moment. “And he’s not here to be in it with me.”

Lauren FitzPatrick may be reached at lfitzpatrick@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5964.

Courtney Greve may be reached at cgreve@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5983.

If you go
What: Thomas Cook Benefit
When: 3 to 11 p.m. Friday 4/20
Where: 115 Bourbon Street, 3359 W. 115th St., Merrionette Park
Tickets: $20
For more information, visit www.thomascookbenefit.org