The Dead Room

by Robert Ellis

  Teddy looked up and caught Barnett staring at him. He’d been watching him think it through as if seated at a poker table with a winning hand.

  “You see how we’re gonna play it,” Barnett said.

  Teddy nodded, even smiled. Barnett had found a quick way out for everyone concerned. Once Nash was in, he guessed the only player in the mix who wouldn’t be willing was Oscar Holmes. But Barnett was probably right about that, too. They had plenty of time to work on Holmes. The longer he sat in a cell, the more pliable he’d be.

  NINE

  Teddy set the murder book down on his desk and looked at Jill sitting before the computer at the worktable by the window. She had a desk of her own with the rest of the clerks in an open room off the library. Although there were times after hours when they were both working late and she used the computer in Teddy’s office to study, this wasn’t one of them. He knew she’d been waiting for him to finish with Barnett and wanted to know what happened.

  “You’re defending him, aren’t you?” she said. “Oscar Holmes.”

  He nodded and took a deep breath, then sat down and opened the binder. The murder had occurred twenty-four hours ago, yet the paper on the homicide was already half an inch thick. Teddy thumbed through the pages and realized they were in chronological order. Half the reports were filed by Detective Vega. But the other half were authored by a Detective Nathan Ellwood. Teddy hadn’t met the second detective, but assumed he was Vega’s partner. Barnett had told him the investigation was on the fast-track, and Teddy checked the time and dates at the top of the detectives’ preliminary reports. They’d begun writing at four in the morning. Both detectives had worked through the night.

  Jill gently cleared her throat. “How could you defend someone who did the kind of things they’re saying Holmes did on TV?”

  “What are they saying on TV?”

  “That he cut her up. That maybe he tortured her.”

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I’ve never done this kind of thing before.”

  She looked at him a moment, her light brown eyes searching his face. When she turned back to the computer, he checked the time and returned to the binder. He needed to get through the murder book before he faced William Nash. And he wanted to be on campus within the hour.

  The early reports mirrored what the district attorney had told him yesterday. An elderly neighbor, Beatrice McGee, had seen Holmes running from the house covered in blood. When he raced off in his mail truck, she noticed that the front door was open and walked inside the house. She found Darlene’s body on the dining room table and called the police, then popped a nitroglycerin tablet because she had a bad heart. The officer who took her initial statement noted that she was upset, but appeared clear in mind and didn’t require any medical assistance. She knew Holmes by name, and said he’d been her mailman for many years.

  Once they had a name, Ellwood left Vega in Chestnut Hill and took off for the city. Holmes hadn’t completed his mail route or returned his truck to the post office. Ellwood caught up with the man at his apartment at Twenty-third and Pine where he made the arrest. Holmes was driven downtown to the homicide division at police headquarters. Ellwood stayed at the apartment, supervising the investigation. They found Holmes’s clothing buried in the trash, the murder weapon stuffed in his mailbag on the front seat of his truck. After the crime scene was processed, Ellwood returned to headquarters and the interview began.

  Teddy read Holmes’s statement carefully. There was no mention of his prior relationship with Darlene Lewis. None of the sexual taunting and teasing. But Holmes seemed as confused as he’d been last night, admitting to Ellwood that he was there but saying he couldn’t remember what happened and wanted to talk to his lawyer. He gave the detective Jim Barnett’s name. Because he was so distraught, Ellwood made the call for him. Once Barnett arrived and they had a chance to speak, Holmes was photographed and fingerprinted. Blood and hair samples were taken with Barnett’s consent, along with two prints of Holmes’s lips.

  Although the results from the rape kit weren’t in yet, the finger and lip prints were conclusive. Every print Teddy had seen on the girl’s body under the black lights belonged to Oscar Holmes. Additional prints had been found on the legs of the dining room table where the girl’s arms and legs had been tied down with rags. These prints matched Holmes as well.

  Teddy flipped the page and felt a chill ripple up his spine. He was staring at a photograph of Holmes that must have been taken in his apartment at the time of his arrest. The face the police had seen when Holmes answered the door. Holmes may have had time to ditch his clothing in the trash, but he hadn’t washed up yet. And his face hadn’t been sprayed with the girl’s blood, but was entirely covered in it as if hit by a mud pie. The blood looked like it had dried and thickened, and Teddy could see it caked in the man’s hair and between his teeth. Behind the hideous blood mask, the look of insanity in Holmes’s wild eyes was something Teddy knew he would never forget. The man hadn’t just killed the girl. He’d burrowed his face in her wounds and gobbled up her skin.

  He threw the binder on the desk and gasped. Jill turned from the computer, saw the murder book opened to Holmes’s picture and jumped to her feet.

  “Jesus Christ,” she shouted.

  Teddy grabbed the binder and slammed it closed. He was carrying enough of the horror inside his head for both of them.

  “What do you know about William Nash?” he asked.

  He was trying to distract her by raising a simple question, but her eyes were locked on the binder. From the look on her face, Teddy hadn’t closed the book fast enough.

  “He teaches at Penn,” she said slowly.

  “You ever take any of his classes?”

  She nodded. “One. But only because I had to.”

  “Are you okay, Jill?”

  She nodded again, her eyes finally meeting his as she sat down. Teddy made a point of settling back in his chair.

  “I’ve never met him,” he said after a moment. “But everybody says he’s good.”

  “He gets people off for murder. I’m not sure I’d call that good.”

  Jill was still preoccupied with the binder. Teddy threw it in his briefcase, then got up and moved over to the couch.

  “That’s what defense attorneys are supposed to do,” he said.

  “I don’t mean the innocent ones,” she said. “I mean the people where all the evidence is against them, and Nash finds a way to get them off on a technicality. The people who really did it. Remember in your first year when you had to take everything? Who’d you get for criminal law? Diliberto?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, Nash was filling in for Diliberto, and I got stuck with him. He went through his past cases. The Hilltop Rapist. The Venice Beach Strangler. That man who killed seven women in Michigan and buried them in the sidewalk outside his house. Nash defended them and got them off. It was like he was happy about it. Proud of what he’d done.”

  Teddy wasn’t sure about the first two cases, but thought he remembered reading something about the Sidewalk Murders in a news magazine. The man lived in a suburban neighborhood outside Detroit. He’d been retired for ten years and spent most of his days working on his lawn and various gardens. It was a quiet neighborhood, most of the middle-class homes owned by families with young children. The kind of place where kids still played in the street. And the little man who lived at the end of the block always seemed to take great pleasure in watching the children play on his section of the sidewalk. Then one day an underground water main burst open. When the utility company tore up the street and sidewalk, they found the bodies of seven women buried in the concrete.

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

  “Everyone in the neighborhood liked the old man. No one could believe he did it. And he was small man with a bad back. The police couldn’t figure out how he tore up the concrete, put the bodies in, and then laid new concrete down. Neither could the jury. Nash got the m
an off and he was set free.”

  Teddy laughed. He couldn’t help it. Jill seemed so intense.

  “Maybe he didn’t do it,” he said.

  She shrugged, brooding in silence.

  “Then how’d he get the bodies in the concrete, Jill?”

  “The bodies weren’t in the sidewalk,” she said. “They were under it. He could’ve dug the holes when he was gardening and slid them underneath.”

  “I thought he was an old man with a bad back.”

  “Maybe he had help. What does it matter? He did it, and Nash manipulated the jury and got him off.”

  Teddy stood up, rubbing the back of his neck. His headache was gone, but not the tightness above his shoulders.

  “Then why do you think Nash is so popular on campus?” he asked.

  Jill shook her head. “Are you trying to recruit him? Are you trying to make the world a better place by getting Oscar Holmes off?”

  “I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”

  He packed up his briefcase and got into his coat. As he headed for the door, he turned and gave her a look.

  “If Jones stops by,” he said, “tell her the files she wants are right beside you on the windowsill.”

  TEN

  He scanned the building directory, unable to find Nash’s name among the list of faculty members. Although he’d graduated from the school, Teddy had been so absorbed in his own studies that he never had a reason to meet Nash or visit him in his office. It struck him that the legal workshop operated out of its own building on the edge of campus. Nash’s office would probably be there.

  He looked around for someone to ask, but the lobby was deserted. With the holidays less than two weeks off and exams underway, students wouldn’t be in class. Teddy exited the building. Squinting at the bright sunlight reflecting off the snow, he turned down the path and headed for the library. He could have called Nash, of course, but the man had already refused Barnett. Giving him another easy chance to say no over the phone didn’t seem to make much sense.

  The librarian behind the checkout desk found Nash’s address in the faculty directory, confirming that his office and workshop were in the same building. It was five blocks west. Rather than return to his car, Teddy buttoned his jacket and set out on foot. The truth was that he needed Nash as much as Barnett or even Holmes did. He needed the case to go away, needed his nightmares to sink back into the past so that his fresh wounds would have time to heal.

  The light turned green and he started across the street. It was a small, two-story brick building set on the corner. Teddy guessed it had been built sometime in the early 1900s, but undergone a major renovation in the last few years. The mortar between the bricks looked fresh, and the windows on the second floor were too large and modern to fit the period.

  He found the front door unlocked and entered a central hallway. There were three rows of unmarked doors on each side of the staircase. The smell of fresh plaster caught his attention. When he glanced inside one of the rooms, he saw sheets of blue board stacked on the floor and realized the building’s renovation was still underway.

  He climbed the staircase, greeted by the smells of fresh paint and polyurethane. Directly before him were a set of glass doors opening to a small library. Skylights had been installed in the ceiling, flooding the rows of books with overhead light. When he checked the doors he found them locked. On the other side of the hall were two classrooms. Then Teddy noticed a door to the right of the library and opened it. Construction was complete, but the walls remained unpainted and it looked as if the room was being used to store the construction workers’ more expensive tools.

  The door at the other end of the hall opened. Teddy turned, watching a middle-aged woman start for the stairs.

  “I’m looking for Professor Nash,” he said.

  The woman smiled. “Are you a student?”

  “I used to be. I’ve never been here before.”

  She pointed to the door she’d just exited through. “In there,” she said. “The signs aren’t up yet.”

  Teddy watched her vanish down the stairway. Then he swung what seemed like an unusually heavy door open and stepped across the threshold.

  It was a lobby. No one was at the desk, and Teddy figured the woman he’d just met was Nash’s assistant on her way to an early lunch. When he heard someone begin speaking, he looked through a second doorway into Nash’s office. He was on the phone, staring back at Teddy from his desk at the far end of the long room. It was an odd look, piercing at first, followed by the slightest of smiles, as if the man recognized him and had been waiting for him.

  Nash waved him in, motioning Teddy to take a seat beside his desk. Not wanting to invade the man’s privacy, Teddy hesitated a moment before finally deciding to enter.

  The walls were more red than orange, the wood planked floors, a light beech. He spotted a set of open doors leading to the library on his right and realized the books belonged to Nash. To the left, oversized windows had been cut into the wall offering a view of the campus on the other side of the street. He passed a long table set in the middle of the office, thinking it looked a lot like the kind found in a jury room. When he sat down, he counted the number of chairs and hid his smile. There were twelve. Nash worked at his desk each day facing a jury room.

  Although the office had been newly renovated, the place had the look and feel of being used and broken in. Files were strewn across the jury table and piled against the walls. Teddy noticed the media center beside Nash’s desk. The cabinet was open revealing a TV switched to a local station with the sound muted. Numerous videotapes were stacked on the floor, labeled by hand.

  From what Teddy could tell, Nash’s telephone call wasn’t personal. It sounded more like an interview. Nash was talking about his press conference yesterday. District Attorney Alan Andrews had questioned the results of the students participating in his legal workshop, Nash was saying. Unfortunately for Andrews, the DNA results spoke for the themselves and the science couldn’t be discounted. Andrews prosecuted the wrong man, pressed for the death penalty, and now an innocent man was dead. This wasn’t the time for political posturing, but for someone to step up and do the right thing. If Andrews couldn’t, then Nash told the reporter he’d be more than willing. And, yes, because of these results, Nash and his workshop would be reviewing any past cases the district attorney handled in order to rule out what he thought might be a trend.

  Nash may have been in his late fifties, but his voice matched his overall appearance remaining young and virile. He was dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and black slacks. His face was lean and angular, his blond hair mixed with gray sweeping straight back from his forehead. But it was his eyes that Teddy thought probably worked best in a courtroom. They were cobalt blue and had a definite reach about them, his pupils dilated slightly as if a cat’s. Nash didn’t approach hostile witnesses in trial, Teddy imagined. He saw through them and sprung.

  Nash finally hung up the phone, lifting a cigar out of the ashtray and relighting it.

  “Actually, there are five,” he said, toking up. “Five more cases Mr. Andrews has to account for. There could be others, of course. But we’re just getting started.”

  Teddy didn’t say anything. He’d just noticed the poster-sized lithograph hanging on the wall by the door to the lobby. It was an empty prison cell with afternoon light feeding in through a small window. The cell door stood open, and a blanket had been left behind.

  “Do you like it?” Nash asked. “It’s called Free At Last.”

  Teddy nodded, watching Nash gaze across the jury table at the image of the empty cell.

  “It’s by one of my former clients,” Nash said. “He was a bank robber in Los Angeles. A safe cracker. Now he’s an artist living in New York City. Who would’ve guessed the man had so many talents?”

  Nash laughed and shook his head. From the dreamy smile he bore, Teddy knew that at least part of what Jill had said was true. The man loved his work, was morall
y complex, and could easily generate fear in others because of his enthusiasm and intelligence.

  Nash checked his cigar and tapped the end in the ashtray, his eyes drifting across the desk and settling on Teddy with weight.

  “Your boss is in over his head,” he said. “But you already know that, don’t you.”

  Teddy wondered how the man knew who he was. Nash spoke up before he could ask.

  “I often take long walks,” he said. “I used to watch you row from the bike path by the river. Barnett mentioned your name last night on the phone.”

  He sat back in the chair, savoring the rich smoke. Teddy opened his briefcase, pulled the murder book out and passed it across the desk.

  “Then you know why I’m here.”

  Nash took the binder, but didn’t open it. “Not really,” he said.

  “We’re trying to take the death penalty off the table. We’re trying to make sure Holmes gets the psychiatric treatment he needs.”

  “What did Oscar Holmes do to win over so many good friends?”

  Teddy noted the cynical tone in Nash’s voice. He reached for the murder book and thumbed through the pages until he found the picture of Holmes wearing Darlene Lewis’s blood on his face. When he passed it back, Nash examined the photo without any visible reaction, then held the notebook closer noting the flecks of blood between the man’s teeth.

  “It’s the help his family wants and thinks he needs,” Teddy said.

  Nash grimaced, setting the binder on his desk. “I’m not particularly interested in what his family may or may not think he needs.”

  “All we’re doing is seeing Holmes through the system. I’m willing to do the leg work. It shouldn’t take much of your time at all.”

  “That’s exactly what I was afraid you’d say.”

  Their eyes met. He’d put Teddy down again and wanted him to know it. He settled back into his chair, appraising Teddy by the inch.