The Dead Room (46 page)

“You don’t have to, Holmes. You can do anything you want. You’re free.”

“But they’ve been calling.”

Holmes wiped his cheeks and turned away. Teddy followed his gaze to Holms burg Prison in the distance. Black smoke could be seen rising from one of the chimneys. Unwilling to face his own demons, Teddy tightened his grip on the wheel and looked away.

“And then there’s this,” Holmes said.

Teddy felt an envelope drop onto his lap but didn’t pick it up. Exiting off the interstate, he wound through a construction zone until he reached Third Street, and found a place to park beneath the Ben Franklin Bridge. Holmes’s neighbor hadn’t arrived yet. He left the motor running, easing the heat back as he opened the envelope and withdrew the letter. Noting yesterday’s date at the top, he started reading. It was a business offer, and a large sum of money was on the table. Someone wanted to open a chain of restaurants in the city using Holmes’s nickname as the
Veggie Butcher
. When Teddy glanced over at Holmes, the man actually smiled at the irony.

“I’m gonna need someone to oversee my affairs,” Holmes said.

“I’ll do whatever you want.”

Holmes glanced at the business offer. “I don’t want to do that.”

Teddy nodded, slipping the letter into his jacket pocket and reaching into the backseat for a paper bag. He handed it to Holmes, who seemed surprised. After a moment, Holmes lowered his sketches and magazines and dug into the package. Teddy had stopped by an art supply house on his way to the prison and bought a variety of paints and brushes. Holmes stared at the gift and appeared overwhelmed.

“Darlene Lewis modeled for you, didn’t she?” Teddy said.

Holmes remained quiet, flicking his thumb over a brush.

“I saw your paintings,” Teddy said. “The x-rays. You knew about the tattoos. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I used to take my time sorting the mail and peeking in the front window. Darlene thought I was looking at her, and sometimes I was. Who wouldn’t? Most of the time I was just looking at what they had hanging on the walls.”

“But she modeled for you, right?”

“No,” he said slowly. “She didn’t believe I painted. She teased me about it and called me a fool.”

“Then how did you know about the tattoos?”

“On the computer. She told me where the pictures were.”

“Why did you end up painting over them?” Teddy asked.

“They didn’t come out right. They looked so sad.”

Holmes turned away, his eyes lighting up as he noticed a metallic-blue Honda Civic pulling up to a parking meter across the street. Teddy recognized the young girl in the backseat as Holmes’s neighbor and looked at the woman behind the wheel. The gray sky was reflecting off the glass and blocking most of his view, but he caught the blond hair, her high cheek bones, a hint of blue in her eyes lost in the clouds. She looked young, gentle, somehow familiar. After a moment, it dawned on Teddy that she had modeled for Holmes as well. The first two paintings Andrews had shown him at the art museum had been her. Only now, all the melancholy was gone.

Holmes gathered his sketches and paints and opened the door.

“Do you remember what happened?” Teddy said. “Is the day Darlene Lewis died any clearer?”

Holmes shook his head and lowered his voice. “Just his face. The one in the paper. It’s the same face I see in my dreams. He’s holding a knife and slicing open my hands.”

Holmes shivered and gave him a look. The story was rising to the surface in bits and pieces, Teddy thought, like an airline that had broken up and plummeted into the sea.

“You’ve got my address and phone number at the house, right?”

Holmes nodded.

“What about your medications?”

Holmes tapped his jacket pocket and nodded again. They shook hands. Then he shut the door with his knee and crossed the street. Teddy watched him climb into the Civic, hugging the woman and her daughter and kissing them. When they finally drove off, the girl glanced back at Teddy through the rear window, flashed a smile, and waved.

*          *          *

Teddy pushed open the door and found Nash’s assistant, Gail Emerson, working at her desk. The door to Nash’s office was closed, but voices could be heard from the other side. Gail checked the wall clock and smiled.

“He’s in a meeting,” she said. “It’ll probably go for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe into the night.”

“Who’s he with?”

“The district attorney’s office and three students from the workshop. They’re going over their work from last semester.”

The five death penalty cases Andrews had been involved in. The district attorney’s office had put the investigation on the fast track.

“Is Carolyn Powell in there?”

Gail shook her head. “It’s only a briefing. They want to know what we have.”

She gave him a knowing look and smiled again like they had the goods.

“Do you think he’d mind if I went in?”

“I don’t think you should, Teddy. But I’ll let him know that you stopped by.”

Teddy took the hint and walked out. As he stepped into the cold air and started down the sidewalk to his car, he was struck by a feeling of loneliness. He was out of the loop. His role had played out and given way to a kind of emptiness he hadn’t experienced since his years as a teenager. He thought a beer might help. Maybe after two or three the pain in his shoulder might fade into the background as well.

SEVENTY-THREE

He looked at the note left by his mother on the kitchen counter by the coffeepot. Apparently there had been a lot of calls to the house last night. So many that she decided to switch call-forwarding on and send them directly to his cell phone, not knowing that it was at the bottom of the lake.

As he poured a cup of coffee, Teddy checked the drive and noticed his mother’s car was gone. It was after nine and he’d managed to sleep in.

He sat down at the table and picked up the phone, dialing his cell number. Then he punched in his pass code and waited for the digital voice to count his messages and retrieve them. There were fifty-seven. Apparently, the digital voice didn’t know that the phone had drowned either.

Teddy leaned back and grabbed the pad and pen off the counter, sipping hot coffee and paging through the messages without listening to them for more than a second or two. Most of the calls were from people he didn’t know. Reporters wanting information and requesting interviews. Jill had called from the office and left two messages, once yesterday afternoon, and another this morning. Barnett had even called, announcing his release from the hospital. His voice had a certain perk to it. A fake vitality Teddy found so irritating, he skipped to the next message. But it was the last call that shook him up. He peered through the steam in his watch, fighting off his memory of the lake trapped inside the lens and realizing the message had been left just twenty minutes ago.

Alan Andrews had called. He wanted to meet as soon as possible and said they needed to talk. He was being held at Curran-Fromhold, and guessed that Teddy knew where the prison was.

Teddy thought it over as he gazed through the doorway at the greenhouse his father had built. The additions to the house had been made with precision and remained seamless. His father had been in his prime when he’d been knocked down by a man like Alan Andrews.

He lifted the handset and punched in the direct number to his desk at the office. To his surprise, the line hadn’t been changed and Jill picked up after the first ring.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“They’ve spent the morning tearing apart your office,” she said.

“What are they looking for?”

“Your termination notice. First Stokes, then Barnett on crutches. They’re looking for the envelope. Stokes put it on your desk and now it’s gone. They seem upset. Even frantic.”

Teddy detected a certain joy in her voice, but couldn’t keep up with her.

“Start at the beginning, Jill.”

“Have you seen the papers this morning?”

“No. Not yet.”

“You’re on the front page,” she said. “The story’s coming out. They’re saying you solved the crime. You saved the girl’s life. You’re the reason the E.T. Killer is dead, and an innocent man was set free.”

“Who’s they?”

“Nash, Carolyn Powell, the police and the FBI—everyone.”

Teddy took another sip of coffee without saying anything.

“Barnett and Stokes are looking for the termination notice because they want to tear it up. It makes them look bad that they fired you. Don’t you see, Teddy, you and Holmes are famous now.”

He thought about the business proposition offered to Holmes. A chain of restaurants opening around town called the
Veggie Butcher
. The circus was underway, American ingenuity, afoot.

“I haven’t been in,” he said. “I don’t have the letter.”

“Of course you don’t. Stokes changed the locks. Now he’s had them changed back again so you won’t notice.”

He shook his head. Stokes defied explanation.

“Then where’s the notice?” he asked.

“In my purse,” she said. “I picked it up for you the day Stokes put it on your desk.”

He smiled as he listened to her laugh. She’d spent the past few hours watching Barnett and Stokes squirm and probably savored every minute of it. Barnett and Stokes deserved to squirm and more. Much more. And Jill was a good friend.

“I’ll see you in an hour,” he said.

*          *          *

He crossed the garage and stepped into the elevator, carrying two boxes he’d picked up at the liquor store on his way into town. The law firm occupied the sixteenth and seventeenth floors. He could probably empty his desk and make it out the door before Barnett and Stokes received word that he was even in the building by simply entering the office on the lower level and using the stairs within the firm to avoid passing the receptionist’s desk. That’s if he cared. But he really didn’t.

The elevator stopped at the lobby and a woman entered. He knew her to be a seasoned attorney and partner at another firm on the fourteenth floor. In the past she had never spoken to him. Today she said hello, and even smiled as she got off. The doors closed again, the elevator starting up.

He could feel his heart beating in his chest and became angry at himself as he acknowledged his nervousness. He couldn’t work for a man like Barnett. No matter what his financial situation, or the hardships he might face, he couldn’t do it.

The elevator opened, and he breezed through the lobby ignoring the people staring at him. From the corner of his eye, he caught the receptionist reaching for her phone.

He legged it down the hallway and into his office, lowering the boxes to his desk. Jill turned from the computer, got up and gave him a long hug. He felt her lips press against his cheek, then move to his neck, burrowing in. He tightened his grip, holding her in his arms.

“I was so worried about you,” she whispered.

“It’s over, Jill. It’s done.”

She pulled away and looked at the boxes. “You’re leaving,” she said.

He nodded without saying anything, then moved around to his desk. He started with the top drawer, jerking it out and off the rollers and dumping the contents into the first box. As he pushed the drawer back into the desk and yanked out the second, he sensed someone in the doorway and looked up.

Jim Barnett was standing in the hall, dressed in one of his hand tailored suits from Milan and leaning on two aluminum crutches, his legs now set in plaster casts. He looked pathetic. And Teddy knew he was using it, milking it, but that it wouldn’t work.

Teddy dumped the contents of the second drawer into the box and grabbed the third.

“You’re being overly dramatic,” Barnett said. “If you want a raise, it’s done. If this is because of what I said about your father, then I apologize. I said things I didn’t mean.”

Teddy dumped the third drawer into the box and reached for another. “Who said anything about money?”

“I mention it because I know you need it. We all do. Some more than others.”

Barnett hobbled into the office, irritated when he noticed Jill in the room and realized that they weren’t alone. Teddy moved on to the next drawer. Unfortunately, nothing Barnett could say would change what the man had done. On the upside, until ten days ago Barnett had treated Teddy like a son. There was something to be said for what he’d suffered after being run over by his car as well. But in the end, Barnett had betrayed his own brother-in-law, selling him out to the district attorney in order to hide their relationship. He’d betrayed Teddy, making the deal with Andrews in secret and allowing Holmes to confess to a crime he’d only witnessed. As Teddy thought it over, he realized the position Barnett was in. Holmes had been innocent. Barnett had sold out a member of his own family in order to maintain his social standing. When the story appeared in the papers, no amount of work by a PR firm could balance the scale. Barnett would be dropped from consideration in
Philadelphia Magazine’s Power 100
issue. He’d be bounced off the list. Cast to the side as nothing more than an overeager worm.