The Dead Room (26 page)

“Yeah, why?”

“Because there’s the chance Rosemary might have a tattoo where it can’t be seen.”

“You’re forgetting that we interviewed her friend at the gym. She’s seen Rosemary in the shower. There aren’t any tattoos.”

“What about the others?”

“No one mentioned they had any either. You’re right when you said we ask. We always do.”

Teddy closed his phone. He knew that Ferarro didn’t want to end the conversation, but he was losing the signal on his cell as he pulled into the garage. He could tell the detective was suspicious. But keeping Ferarro suspicious was a positive step and reason enough to make the call and keep it short. It was in Rosemary’s best interest. It kept her file on top and might spark an idea in Ferarro’s head. Maybe the detective would hit on something and be moved to work the streets again.

Teddy found a place to park and hurried to the elevator. He found Jill in his office with two paperback copies of the book and a large pizza. Teddy picked up a copy as he sat down.
The Agony and the Ecstasy
was the novelization of Michelangelo’s life. This surprised him, and he could tell from the expression on Jill’s face that she was equally dumbfounded. He’d expected a book on crime, something that might shed light on the man they were looking for. Instead, this was a novel about the life of an artist. Even worse, the book looked long and the print was small.

“What’s going on?” Jill asked.

Teddy put the book down and reached for a slice of pizza. “Nash seems to think it’s important.”

“What’s Michelangelo have to do with Oscar Holmes?”

Teddy shrugged. “He gave me a riddle. What two things does the city grow best?”

She thought it over as she bit into a slice. Nothing came to mind for her either.

“Nash is weird, Teddy. I told you that before.”

She opened her briefcase, pulled out a paper she’d written in law school and handed it to him. Teddy glanced at the title page. She’d written it for Nash in her first year when criminal law was mandatory.

“It’s about his defense of the Venice Beach Strangler,” she said.

“How’d Nash do?”

“It depends on who you ask. Do you know where Venice Beach is?”

“Sure,” he said. “Just below Santa Monica in California.”

“Right. It’s not Italy, it’s Southern California. There’s a canal that winds through the city a few blocks from the beach. The homes along the canal are expensive. Beautiful.”

Teddy tore a second slice of pizza away from the pie, wondering what Jill was getting at.

“Once a month for six months,” she said, “the people who lived along the canal would wake up in the morning and find a body floating in the water outside their homes. They were always young women, raped and strangled to death. The police had a hard time identifying the bodies. There weren’t any clues and everyone was in a panic. After six months the murders stopped.”

“How’d they get the guy?” Teddy asked.

“The murders started again. Only this time the bodies were found in the hills along Mulholland Drive, just north of Beverly Hills. A homicide detective working out of the Hollywood Division put it together. He was looking for runaway kids that seemed to be disappearing from the streets. He had a house in the hills that he’d rebuilt after the earthquake, and it bothered him that someone was dumping bodies in his neighborhood. He worked the case on his own and discovered that a family had moved from the canals in Venice to Mulholland Drive. The dates and places the bodies were found matched the time of the move. It turned out the murderer was a twenty-year-old kid who still lived at home. He was psychotic. He hated his parents, and was dumping the bodies near the house to shake them up.”

“You’re saying Nash got the kid off?”

“The boy’s father was an executive at one of the movie studios. They had a lot of money. Nash didn’t defend the boy as much as he attacked the detective who caught him. Nash went after the man’s character. The detective had been abandoned by his parents and grown up in poverty. Nash said the detective wasn’t following the evidence, but targeting the boy out of a deep-rooted jealousy. He accused the detective of mishandling what evidence there was, and said the rest couldn’t be trusted. Because of the riots and police scandals, the jury bought it and came back with a not guilty verdict.”

“What happened to the kid?” Teddy asked.

“He was released. Three days later they found him floating in the canal. He’d been strangled to death.”

“It sounds like he deserved it. Who did it? The detective?”

Jill shook her head. “No. He was working a case in Florida. He and his partner left Los Angeles before the trial was over. They were three thousand miles away when it happened. No one knows who murdered the kid. The case is still open.”

“Who do you think murdered him?”

She lowered her slice of pizza, unable to eat. “I don’t know who committed the murder. Maybe it was the brother or father of one of the victims, or some cop who couldn’t take it anymore. That’s not the point. All I’m saying is that Nash plays games, Teddy. I could tell he knew the boy was guilty. Everyone in class could. Nash didn’t get him off because it was the right thing to do. He got him off because he’s smarter than everybody else and he knew how to. Once he’d won the case, he couldn’t have cared less what happened to the kid. His interest was in the game and it was over.”

Teddy checked his watch. It was after six, and Jill’s paranoia wasn’t getting them anywhere.

“We’ve got some reading to do,” he said.

She looked at him and nodded, then let out a faint smile as if she knew her words had fallen by the wayside.

“I’ll get the coffee,” she said.

They made a fresh pot together. When they returned to the office, Jill took the couch and began reading from page 1. Teddy sat behind his desk, opened
The Agony and the Ecstasy
to page 300 and got started. The read went quickly. Because Teddy had always been interested in art, he found the novelization of Michelangelo’s life fascinating. Still, Jill’s story about the murders in L.A. troubled him, and he often found his mind wandering. Teddy had tried to give her a fair shake and listen to her story because he liked her and admired her and they were friends. Yet as he gazed at her on the couch, he couldn’t help thinking that she was a victim of sorts, a measure of how well the media had been able to color what was happening and point their invisible electric finger at Holmes. It was clear to Teddy that Jill thought Holmes was guilty. It was clear to him that she was afraid that they might find a way to get him off. The press was another player in the mix, Teddy thought. They were shaping the story in people’s heads, jetting their way in the wrong direction with the police. Jill’s fears seemed so outlandish. But then so did reading this book at a time when he knew he should be looking for Rosemary Gibb.

Why had Nash insisted on it? What was the idea he said he needed confirmed?
What two things does the city grow best
?

“Page two-O-nine,” Jill shouted.

Teddy looked up and saw the terror on her face.

“Two-O-nine,” she said, catching her breath.

He found the page and started reading. It was the story of Michelangelo’s struggle to carve Hercules as a young man. Day after day he stared at the blank stone, unable to find the magic. He felt inept, even unworthy of the subject. How could he approach the stone without first knowing what was inside the man? Any man? He considered the idea of stealing a body from the graveyard for his studies, but realized he couldn’t pull it off without getting caught. Several days passed and a new idea came to mind. The morgue. A place called
the dead room
.

Teddy’s eyes lit up. The writer likened it to a sign from God. Michelangelo sneaking into the dead room every night with his knife and candle. Ripping the bodies apart with a slice down their chest. Cutting their ribs away, examining their muscles and organs and feeling the tissue in his hands until he understood what a human being was made of.

What two things does the city grow best
?

Nash was working up a profile of the killer. He’d been right. He’d been right all along.

“Shit,” Teddy said.

He threw the book down and grabbed the phone. Nash was still in his office and sounded tired, almost as if he’d been waiting for the call.

“Lawyers and artists,” Teddy said. “That’s what the city grows best. The killer is an artist. That’s why the faces all look the same. He’s working on a painting or sculpture.”

He looked at Jill standing before the desk. The investigation was another step closer and he could tell she knew it as well.

“It would seem so,” Nash said over the phone. “But I wanted your thoughts first. He rejected Darlene Lewis because of her tattoos, and he cut Valerie Kram open because he wanted to look inside.”

“But Michelangelo did it because of his time in history,” Teddy said. “He didn’t have the materials available today. He was starting from scratch.”

“That’s true,” Nash said. “And he was working on cadavers, dissecting them as if a scientist, learning about anatomy for the first time. The man we’re looking for isn’t Michelangelo, although he may think he is. The man we’re looking for is beyond the pale.”

Holmes’s makeshift art studio flashed through Teddy’s head. “Holmes is an artist,” he blurted out.

“So you’ve said before.”

“I didn’t get a good look at his work.”

“If it would ease your mind any, I think you should have another look,” Nash said. “Just make sure you’re here in my office tomorrow by one o’clock. I’m having a criminal psychiatrist over. He’s coming up from Washington and works with the FBI. I want a rough semblance of a profile completed by the end of the day.”

Teddy hung up the phone. Something about the idea of an artist becoming a serial killer rattled his bones. The two might pass each other on the sidewalk, but they were headed in opposite directions.

Jill cleared her throat and seemed upset. “I’m sorry about what I said before. I didn’t mean it was a game. I didn’t understand.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, checking the time and dialing Carolyn Powell’s number over at the DA’s office.

A man picked up the phone. Michael Jackson, not the dancer but the detective with the old gun.

“I’m glad you’re there,” Teddy said. “I need to speak with Powell first.”

“She was just walking out, kid. Let me see if I can grab her.”

The phone went dead. Teddy waited a moment, noticing that Jill had returned to the couch with another slice of pizza and was reading the book again. He heard the phone click and Carolyn’s voice come on.

“What is it, Teddy?”

“I need another look at Holmes’s apartment.”

“I got a call from Ferarro in missing persons,” she said. “He thinks something’s up.”

“Good,” he said. “Because something’s up.”

“What have you got?”

“Nothing that would change your mind. Not yet anyway. All I’ll say is that you guys should be helping Ferarro, not the other way around.”

There was a long pause.

Teddy remained undaunted. “Jackson answered the phone so I know he’s there. Can I get into Holmes’s apartment tonight or what?”

“He’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she said. Then, without a good-bye, she hung up.

THIRTY-SIX

Michael Jackson made it up the steps to Holmes’s penthouse apartment on the third floor. Once the hacking stopped he lit another cigarette and unlocked the door. His jacket was open, and Teddy got another look at the gun clipped to the detective’s belt. He could tell it had a history, and wondered if it wasn’t a throw-down gun. Teddy had read that some cops, the dirty ones anyway, were known to carry two weapons. The first gun was registered with the department. The second couldn’t be traced to anyone and had a far darker purpose.

Jackson spotted Teddy’s eyes on the gun and smiled as he swung the door open. “Two times in one day,” he said. “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this, kid. People might get the wrong idea.”

“This won’t take long,” Teddy said.

“I hope not. I clocked out a half hour ago. I could charge them for this, but it’s on the way to my favorite watering hole.”

Teddy entered the apartment, heading straight for Holmes’s studio. He knew he couldn’t sleep tonight with the chance that they might be off track. He needed to see the man’s work and get a feel for it. He needed to know whether or not Holmes had any reason to study human anatomy first hand in a psychotic misinterpretation of Michelangelo’s dead room.

He turned the lock and yanked the door open. Switching on the lights, he crossed the room to the easel and flipped the dust cloth over for a look at Holmes’s work. It was a landscape without any people. But it wasn’t complete either.

He looked around and spotted the canvases leaning against the wall. There were five stacks, ten to twelve paintings deep. Teddy flipped through the paintings as quickly as he could. It was difficult because he realized Holmes’s talent was genuine. Holmes had a way of playing with color that drew out the viewer’s emotions. A hill might be black, the sky red. It was a singular view of seeing the world. A unique vision. There was a certain violence in the work, but it seemed to be a part of Holmes’s natural style. And there were people as well, but they lacked detail. They looked like shadows, silhouettes—almost as if you took an abstract photograph of a strange landscape with the sun behind your back, casting your shadow across the foreground in a field of deep blue grass.