The Dead Room

by Robert Ellis

  “I didn’t know what it was at first.”

  “Send it in anyway. I’ve received hundreds over the years, but it’s never gone anywhere. Some have prints and others don’t. The trouble comes in matching the ones that do to a name and a face. John Q. Public, or should I say Colt Forty-five. I keep mine in a file in the drawer.”

  Nash was trying to make him feel better, but it wasn’t working. As he watched Nash open a cabinet, he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. Then Nash handed him a plastic bag along with a pair of tweezers from the top drawer of his desk. In a way he felt like he might be overreacting. Nash had made it sound like death threats went with the job and that there would be more to come. At the same time, he felt a certain degree of terror as he pinched the note with the tweezers and read the words I’m watching you for the second time that morning. He dropped the note into the bag, then the envelope. As he placed them in his briefcase, Gail walked into the room with a sheaf of papers. Nash’s eyes went glassy as he looked at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, passing them over. “They started last January. I went back two years. This is all there is.”

  She left the room, closing the door behind her. Nash laid the sheets of paper out on the jury table, one after the next. It was another series of missing persons bulletins off the NCIC database. Teddy flinched as he saw the faces, counting them while Nash arranged them by date. There were eleven. Darlene Lewis’s murder made it twelve. Every one of them looked as if they’d been born of the same mother and father. As Teddy stared at them, it felt as though they were staring back.

  He shivered, pulling a chair away from the table and sitting down before them. He tried to look away, but couldn’t.

  “At least we know what we’re dealing with,” Nash whispered in a gravelly voice. “It’s a serial killer, Teddy. Holmes or somebody else. Either way, he’s been working the city without detection for the past year.”

  NINETEEN

  Teddy entered visiting room three, resting his briefcase on the floor and taking a seat at the small table. His escort told him Holmes was on his way down, then closed the door and walked off.

  He checked his watch. It was just after 9:00 a.m. He would have liked to use the free time to check in with the office, but his phone had been taken at the front desk when they searched his briefcase. The door opened, and he turned to watch Holmes enter from the hall in his orange jumpsuit and sneakers.

  Holmes’s appearance seemed even worse than two nights ago. There was a certain edge to his face, as if the panic had taken root and wouldn’t let go. And he looked worn-out and ragged like he hadn’t been sleeping. Teddy slid a chair away from the table, but Holmes shook his head and grunted without looking at it. He seemed fixated on the larger meeting room on the other side of the second door where inmates were beginning to visit with their families.

  “Not in here,” he said. “I wanna be out there with them.”

  Holmes stepped through the doorway. Teddy grabbed his briefcase and followed his client into the meeting room. When Holmes passed an empty couch heading straight for the far wall, he knew Holmes wanted to look at the paintings. Teddy had wondered why fifty works of art were on display in the main meeting room at Curran-Fromhold Prison and asked the assistant warden about it on his way out the other night. They were part of the one percent rule maintained by the city. Teddy was already familiar with the requirement because of his interest in real estate, but hadn’t expected it to filter down to a prison. If you were planning to build within the city limits, then one percent of your construction budget had to be designated for public art no matter what the amount. The one percent rule had transformed the city. Apparently, there weren’t any exceptions.

  Teddy kept his eyes on Holmes as the big man carefully examined the first canvas, then moved on to the next. Although the paintings were of varying quality, Holmes seemed to linger over them without distinction.

  “How you holding up?” he asked.

  “Nightmares,” Holmes said in a voice that wouldn’t carry. “Bad dreams. There’s a man in the cellblock who cries all night. I think he’s only a boy.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  Holmes shook his head back and forth without saying anything, his eyes moving to the next painting.

  “What about your sister? You talk to her yet?”

  Holmes stirred a little and shook his head again. Teddy was surprised.

  “You haven’t had any visitors?”

  “No,” he said. “Just you.”

  “What about your neighbors?”

  Holmes paused a moment as if the question hurt. “Just you,” he repeated more quietly.

  Teddy stepped back as Holmes moved down the row. He guessed it would take fifteen minutes before Holmes was through. He didn’t mind because it gave him a chance to review his first impression of the man. A lot had happened since the night Teddy met Holmes. His client had been a bona fide murderer then, fitting the part to a tee. He still looked menacing, his hands remained heavily bandaged from the knife wounds he’d received on the day of Darlene Lewis’s murder, and the fingerprints Teddy had seen with his own eyes on the girl’s body matched conclusively. As Teddy tried to imagine Holmes teaching the little girl who lived across the hall how to paint—picking her up from school and making her dinner the way a father would—he was struck by the same feeling he’d had last night. The idea that he was missing something and not seeing the whole. The possibility that even though the physical evidence added up to Holmes, somehow there might be another explanation.

  Holmes finally reached the last canvas. When he turned away, they found a place to sit down where Holmes could keep an eye on the paintings. He was staring at them like he needed them, like he was trying to hang on to something meaningful from his former life.

  “We need to talk about the other day,” Teddy said.

  Holmes remained silent and appeared frightened by the prospect.

  “Darlene Lewis,” Teddy continued steadily. “You said you couldn’t remember anything. You ran away and the next thing you knew you were home.”

  “I’m having nightmares. I already told you that. I wake up screaming and then I hear that kid crying in his cell. It feels like the place is haunted.”

  Teddy nodded, beckoning the man on.

  “I can almost see her face, if that’s what you’re asking. I can almost see it even though I’d do anything not to see it. It’s like it’s coming at me just before I wake up. Only she’s not beautiful anymore. She’s not even a she. It’s chasing me like a ghost and laughing at me. It’s a real bad dream. I’m glad I wake up.”

  Holmes shuddered, trying to shed himself of the vision.

  “What about your hands? If you can’t remember how you got cut, then how do you think it happened?”

  Holmes shook his head in frustration, unable to find the words.

  “It’s important, Holmes.”

  “Why?” he asked. “What if it’s more important that I don’t remember? That I never remember?”

  Holmes was getting loud. A guard looked over. Teddy turned back to his client and saw fear welling up in his eyes. Deciding he’d let it pass for now, Teddy pulled a file out of his briefcase containing the newspaper article on Valerie Kram’s disappearance. Holmes took the sheet of paper, wincing as he gazed at the photo of the Darlene Lewis look-alike, Valerie Kram. Teddy watched him carefully, searching for any indication that he recognized the girl. But as Holmes began reading the article, the man’s face remained blank, even numb. When he was finished, his eyes rose to the date and stayed there.

  “Is she dead, too?” Holmes asked.

  Teddy nodded.

  Holmes’s eyes rolled back to the picture of Kram. “Are they gonna say I did it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s early. The evidence isn’t in yet.”

  Holmes passed the article back, unable to settle in his chair. “They look the same, but they’re not,” he said.

  “How so?”
<
br />   “I don’t know. They’re just different. That piece of paper said this one wanted to be an artist.”

  “What about the date? I went through your place last night and didn’t notice a calendar. Do you keep a date book?”

  “No.”

  “It was a Wednesday. October twenty-sixth.”

  Holmes shrugged helplessly. “Then I must’ve been at work.”

  “It happened after work. Where’s your checkbook? Maybe that would help you remember.”

  “I keep it on the kitchen counter with my bills.”

  Teddy didn’t recall seeing his checkbook in the kitchen. The police either moved it when they tore up the plumbing or took it for some reason. He made a mental note to call ADA Carolyn Powell when he got out of here. A check written to a dentist or doctor or even for groceries or art supplies would do more than jog the man’s memory.

  “What about credit cards?” Teddy asked.

  “I’ve only got one, but I’ve never used it. I got it just in case of emergencies.”

  “What about the little girl who lives across the hall? She says you pick her up at school.”

  “Not on Wednesdays. She takes music lessons. She plays the drums. Her mother picks her up on her own.”

  Teddy stood up, glancing at the picture of Valerie Kram as he grabbed his briefcase. Expecting Holmes to remember what he was doing almost two months ago seemed hopeless. As an exercise, Teddy had returned home last night and tried to piece together his own day on October 26. He’d started at the firm in September and kept a weekly planner. Even so, all he came up with was that he’d spent the morning in the library researching past cases and had lunch with Barnett. The afternoon and evening remained blank. How could he expect anything more from Holmes?

  Holmes rose to his feet slowly. Teddy could tell the man didn’t want his only visitor to leave, didn’t want to return to his cell.

  “How did the second one die?” Holmes whispered.

  “It’s a different case.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  “The autopsy’s this afternoon,” Teddy said. “But she was cut.”

  Holmes seemed shaky as he took it in. After a moment, they started walking back to visiting room three.

  “Would you agree to hypnosis?” Teddy asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The day Darlene Lewis died. We’d bring in a doctor. We’d put you under hypnosis. Then maybe you could relax enough to remember what happened.”

  Holmes stopped in his tracks and that wild look was back. The fear and panic. Teddy noted the guard walking toward them who would escort Holmes to his cellblock. Holmes saw him coming, too, his voice pleading.

  “No,” Holmes said. “Please. She was just a girl. I don’t want to remember what happened. I don’t want to know what I’ve done.”

  It hung there, with Teddy staring into Holmes’s dead eyes. The nightmares were winning.

  He pulled Holmes away by the arm. Tears were streaming down the man’s cheeks and his head was down. Teddy moved closer, whispering into his client’s ear.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “You need to pull yourself together and figure a way to sort this out. There’s the chance someone else was there. Do you hear me, Holmes? That’s why we need you to remember. We need your help. There’s a chance someone else was there.”

  Holmes didn’t react. He was staring at the picture of Valerie Kram in Teddy’s hand. When he finally raised his head, his face was blank, distant, in the zone. The guard led Holmes away. As Teddy watched them walk off, he doubted Holmes had heard him. Doubted that what he’d said got through. The man believed he’d murdered Darlene Lewis, maybe even Valerie Kram. His mind was a jumbled mess.

  TWENTY

  Barnett slammed a copy of the Daily News down on his desk, shaking in anger.

  “This is bullshit,” he shouted. “This is exactly what I didn’t want. Look at it. It’s not a fucking headline, it’s as big as a sign.”

  Teddy read the three-inch headline, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, then glanced at the photo of Holmes in his postal uniform behind the bold text. The picture had been enlarged from Holmes’s photo ID to fill out the page, the blow up so distorted anyone looking at it would think him a monster. In a three box set below the monster’s chin, pictures were included of Darlene Lewis and Valerie Kram, along with a shot of the boathouse and an arrow indicating the spot where Kram’s body had been found in the river.

  Barnett yanked his desk drawer open. When he found the pill bottle he was looking for, Teddy noted that it wasn’t Tylenol anymore, but a prescription.

  “I gave you a simple task,” Barnett was saying as he threw a pill into his mouth and gulped it down. “You knew how we were gonna play this thing. Bring Nash in to scare the district attorney, then do the deal. That’s all I asked of you. That’s all you were supposed to do.”

  Teddy closed the door. “Things have changed.”

  “What change?” Barnett said, spitting out the words.

  “It’s possible that Holmes is innocent.”

  Barnett spun around, staring at him as if Teddy was insane. “Innocent? Yesterday Oscar Holmes was a guy with a history of mental illness who went off his rocker and was charged with a single count of murder. Today he’s a serial killer and the whole fucking city’s up in arms. Don’t you get it? Don’t you see what’s going on?”

  Teddy grabbed the newspaper and sat down on the couch, stunned by Barnett’s attitude but keeping it to himself. As he thumbed through the first three pages, he realized that the headline may have been tongue-in-cheek, but what the articles implied were anything but. Holmes’s connection to the two murders was now in print. He glanced at Barnett slumped in his desk chair, then got started reading.

  The connection hadn’t been made by new evidence or even a leak. It had been made by Andrews at his press conference last night just as Teddy feared it would. Both women had been cut. That, along with their age and appearance, was enough to bind the two cases together. Getting to Holmes without confirming anything alleged was even easier. While one reporter detailed the events leading to Holmes’s arrest for the murder of Darlene Lewis, another writer spent yesterday afternoon at Holmes’s former butcher shop, interviewing old ladies from the neighborhood who remembered Holmes, and getting photographs of them buying flank steak and pork sausages. The women recounted stories of Holmes’s talent with a knife, mixed with excited laughter and occasional squeals over what he’d done. Most of the women seemed to be saying that, for the love of God, they could’ve been next. Teddy glanced back at their photos, fighting off an urge to smile as he noted their age and weighty figures. None of them looked quite like Darlene Lewis or Valerie Kram, and he imagined they were safe for now.

  He closed the paper, concluding none of it was real. The district attorney may have gotten the headlines he wanted. Oscar Holmes was tagged a serial killer without really saying it, and the case was the talk of the town. But the ground had been fertilized by innuendo. Not a single fact had been leaked and the word cannibalism hadn’t appeared in print. They’d gotten off lucky, Teddy thought. When the details were brought out in court, the headlines would be far worse.

  Barnett swiveled his chair around from the window. The pill must have kicked in because his anger had subsided and an almost eerie state of calm had set in.

  “Do you understand why headlines are never going to work in our favor?” he said in an unusually quiet voice.

  Teddy nodded. “They’ll spoil the jury pool.”

  Barnett grimaced and blinked, trying to rein his emotions back in. “No, goddamn it. Because every new headline makes Andrews stronger and moves him farther away from making a deal. I’ve spoken with Nash, and he agrees.”

  “When did you talk to him?”

  “I hung up the phone when you walked in.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Just what I’m saying to you. This case is about avoiding the press and getting Holmes to plead gu
ilty. This case is about making sure someone who needs medical attention gets the psychiatric care he so obviously needs.”

  While Barnett may have spoken with Nash, Teddy didn’t believe that Nash agreed to capitulate. Particularly now, when they’d just isolated ten more victims, and Holmes’s guilt remained up in the air. It didn’t make sense.

  “What did Nash say?” Teddy asked.

  “At first he didn’t see it that way. When I brought him back to reality, he did.”

  “What’s the reality?”

  Barnett gave him a look. “That in a civilized world, we don’t execute the mentally impaired.”

  Teddy had to hand it to Barnett. The man had an uncanny ability to dig up a bottom line and make it sound good even if it might be the wrong one.

  Holmes stood out. There was no question that he was different, maybe even odd. And he was distraught, confused, teetering on the edge. But he had a right to be, Teddy thought. For two days he’d been told he murdered someone, and like everyone else, he didn’t appear to know what actually happened. He was alone. All he had were glimpses of the murder scene, the dead body, a young girl’s blood on his clothes. Who wouldn’t be having nightmares? Given the circumstances, the gore, who wouldn’t lose faith in themselves? The man needed help, but nothing Teddy had seen in his two visits indicated he was mentally ill.

  “How’d you leave it with Nash?” Teddy asked.

  “What’s with the twenty questions?”

  “How did you leave it?” he repeated.

  Barnett adjusted his cufflink, his eyes glazed. “The way you did last night. He’s still on board. What’s with you?”

  Teddy didn’t say anything. As he looked at Barnett, he became overwhelmed with worry for him. He liked Barnett and admired him, but didn’t understand his reasoning. It was obvious enough that Barnett still wanted to sweep Holmes under the rug and make the case go away as quickly as possible. How the truth might play out seemed lost in Barnett’s frayed emotional state. Maybe it was to protect Holmes’s family. Barnett had mentioned that they’d been friends for a long time. Perhaps Barnett looked at what happened to Darlene Lewis and guessed that no crime so horrible could be a killer’s first step into the gloom. Given the circumstances, there had to be more. Teddy wished he could help Barnett. He wished he could understand and do something for him.