The Dead Room

by Robert Ellis

  Eddie set the glasses on the table, realizing he’d forgotten a spoon when he hit the drawer for his stash. The idea of going upstairs again didn’t appeal to him. He was tired of counting numbers and too exhausted to play the role of a chef. He’d have to make do, he decided, and use his finger to stir the brew. He twisted off the cap on the spice jar marked Hot Chili Peppers and dropped two pills into the mortar. MDMA. Ecstasy. The magic potion had more than one name, but Eddie liked Love Drug best. Treats for the trainee and her trainer, he thought. They had to want to come out of the bathroom. They had to want to be with him before they could see his genius and fall in love.

  Crushing the pills with the pestle, he poured one hit into each glass careful not spill any of the powder. Then he added the orange juice and gave both glasses a good stir. He licked his finger, tapping on the bathroom door and hoping he wouldn’t startle Rosemary. After a moment, the door opened slightly. She still looked frightened, but that would go away soon.

  “Something to drink,” he said.

  Her eyes were on the glass. “Why are you doing this?”

  “It’s orange juice,” he said. “I thought you were thirsty.”

  She took the glass and closed the door. Eddie returned to the table, picked up his own glass and gulped it down. It would take the better part of an hour before either one of them began to feel anything. After that, they’d be in love and could let go. Eddie believed in group therapy. He believed in the magic of the Love Drug.

  He passed the time sitting in the greenhouse with a Tootsie Pop in his mouth. Although he couldn’t be bothered with keeping plants, he liked the humid air and bright light passing through the milky glass. It was almost like sitting in the backyard without having to take the risk of being seen. At the thirty-minute mark, he began to feel the rush. Glimpses of the first wave.

  The doorbell rang.

  Eddie wondered if it wasn’t his imagination. When the bell rang a second time, he checked the bathroom door and raced upstairs. He kept his back to the walls, sidestepping his way through the rooms quickly and avoiding the windows until he reached the den. Kneeling down, he scurried across the carpet and peeked through the curtain.

  It was Mrs. Yap, his landlady, standing on the front porch wondering why he wasn’t answering the door. He looked at his car in the drive and saw her Mercedes. She rang the bell again, cupping her hands around her eyes and peering through the foyer window.

  Eddie had grown tired of her frequent visits. If he answered the door, she’d undoubtedly want to come in. Mrs. Yap may have been older than him, but was within range, and he knew she liked him. She owned several rental properties, some of them large buildings. When she was in the neighborhood, she often stopped by for a cup of coffee. She talked about her business, but spent just as much time asking questions about his. Eddie endured the interrogations because he knew he had to. Still, he hated her curiosity. She always wanted to look at his things and often asked how much they cost. The price of his silver and where he picked up the oriental rugs or bought his antiques.

  Mrs. Yap tapped on the foyer window again like a bird. She reminded him of a bird every time he saw her. She wore bright-colored clothing, had a beaklike nose, and seemed way too peppy to be human.

  The room began to vibrate and he felt himself break into a sweat—the Love Drug rolling through him freely now. He bit through the Tootsie Pop, crushing the hard candy until he reached the soft, chocolaty center. He was in the flow. He was wading through it. And he hoped Mrs. Yap would get the message that he wasn’t home and just leave. He parted the curtain slightly and took another look outside. Then he did a double take and blinked.

  There was giant canary on the porch pecking at the window, then marching over to the Mercedes on stick-thin legs. He blinked his eyes again, trying to see through the hallucination, but the canary got behind the wheel and drove away.

  Was it the Love Drug or could it be his unique way of seeing the world? His vision. His genius. And what the fuck did it matter anyway?

  Eddie Trisco laughed, rushing back downstairs and hoping Rosemary was finally ready to come out of the bathroom and join the party. They’d start with water and more Tootsie Pops. They’d listen to music and dance. Then maybe take a shower and spend the rest of the afternoon in bed getting to know each other while they sucked on teething rings and sniffed Vicks VapoRub. The people in the corner house could watch and listen all they wanted now. Eddie didn’t even care it they were reading his mind. He could feel his wings again. He could feel the joy. He was stronger than all the watchers in all the world put together. He was invincible. Soon to be famous and thinking in another language. Maybe it was the language of dolphins.

  He entered the basement filled with anticipation, his arms and legs feeling finlike. The bathroom door was open, the light on. He found Rosemary sitting at the worktable staring at the picture on her license and giggling. When he approached her, she looked up at him and smiled. He pulled the pop stick out of his mouth and smiled back. Ready, Eddie....

  THIRTY-THREE

  He legged it out of the Central Detective Division offices located in the art museum district, hustled to his car, and punched Carolyn Powell’s number into his cell phone. When her assistant refused to put him through, Teddy realized Powell was still angry with him. He told her assistant that he wanted another look at the Lewis house in Chestnut Hill, expecting Powell would make things difficult for him. But when her assistant came back on, she said an escort would be waiting for him at the house in an hour with the keys.

  His trusted escort. Michael Jackson. Perhaps the man who’d beaten him over the head until he was unconscious.

  Teddy slipped the phone into his pocket, mildly surprised and wondering why it had been so easy. Shrugging it off, he pulled down to the corner, hit the parkway, and set out for another look at the death house in Chestnut Hill.

  He’d gotten nowhere with the detective assigned to Rosemary Gibb’s disappearance. Maybe nowhere. Although Detective Ferarro wouldn’t show him a copy of the missing persons report, claiming it was confidential, he seemed happy to answer any questions Teddy might have.

  Originally from Baltimore, Rosemary Gibb had moved to the city only one year ago and was a student at Drexel University. She didn’t have many friends, and called home to check-in on a regular basis. Her mother had been reading the papers and was aware of the Darlene Lewis murder. When she couldn’t reach her daughter, she panicked and called the police. Detective Ferarro seemed to have taken a special interest in finding Rosemary, perhaps because Valerie Kram’s body had just been found. Rosemary lived within a mile of Boathouse Row and only four blocks from the Central Detective Division. An examination of her apartment revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

  Everything except for her picture. Her likeness.

  Ferarro admitted to Teddy that he spotted the similarity between Rosemary, Valerie Kram and ten other young women he’d been trying to locate over the past year. He stepped up his investigation, and with the help of a partner and ten cops in uniform, scoured the neighborhood. Because Drexel and Penn were set side by side, they worked both campuses with the help of volunteers from the police academy. By day’s end, they’d narrowed their search to a health club just off Walnut Street downtown. A classmate, another young woman who worked out at the gym, remembered seeing Rosemary on the Stair Master that night. They checked every business around the club, including a café located directly across the street, but turned up nothing. Rosemary’s classmate had been the last person who remembered seeing her before she vanished.

  The following day, Detective Ferarro was given an early heads-up on the DNA results linking Holmes to the murders of Darlene Lewis and Valerie Kram. Detectives Vega and Ellwood were asking him for his files on any related cases dated prior to Holmes’s arrest. That left Rosemary out, as Nash said it would. Ferarro was looking for her just the same as he was looking for thirty other people from all walks of life. But he was out of leads, and Teddy knew that
Rosemary was in the wind.

  Teddy made a right onto Scottsboro Road, didn’t see any cars or news vans outside the Lewis house, and pulled over to the curb. Breaking open the flap on a cup of take-out coffee, he took a sip and lit his second cigarette of the day while he waited for his escort. When a neighbor drove by in a Lincoln Navigator, a woman with two young children in the backseat, he caught the look in her eyes, the fear and suspicion. Darlene Lewis’s murder—that ominous feeling of death—pervaded more than just the Lewis house. It was part of the neighborhood now.

  Teddy turned back to the house. He wasn’t interested in the dining room or even the plumbing. Three days ago he’d walked through the place thinking Holmes had been caught in the act. He wanted to get a feel for the house without all that baggage. He wanted a clean view.

  A car hit its horn. Teddy watched the DeVille sweep by and pull to a fast stop before him. Michael Jackson got out, not the dancer but the detective with tired legs and an old gun who’d worked with the DA since Andrews got rolling. He had a manila envelope in his hand. As he approached, Teddy tried to remember the shape of the figure standing in the darkness who clubbed him over the head. His memory wasn’t clear enough to make a match, but Jackson had a big smile going, and Teddy wondered if the detective wasn’t overcompensating for what he’d done.

  “I come bearing gifts,” Jackson said with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Just like Santy Klaus.”

  Teddy took the envelope, pried it open and peered inside. Photographs from the crimes scenes and autopsy.

  “You’re keeping an album, right?” Jackson said. “A murder book? Powell asked me to give them to you. She said she wants to keep you up to date.”

  “She say anything else?”

  “Yeah, kid. You can’t be trusted. We’ll have to stay close.”

  Teddy tossed the envelope on the front seat and they walked to the house. As Jackson pulled out the keys, Teddy glanced at the letter box on the wall, then turned to the door. The curtain on the other side of the glass was opaque. He heard the lock click and watched Jackson swing open the door.

  “Wait a minute,” Teddy said before the detective stepped inside. “I want to see something first.”

  “What do you want to see, kid?”

  “Stand out here a minute.”

  Teddy walked inside and started to close the door.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Jackson shouted. “You heard the lady. We’re supposed to stay close.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I just want a look through the curtain.”

  “Okay, but no tricks. I don’t like tricks, kid. I never have.”

  Teddy closed the door. Taking a step back, he looked through the curtain. He could see Jackson’s form, but any details were masked by the cloth. Darlene Lewis could’ve opened the door for the killer, thinking it was someone else. She could’ve let the man in.

  “You’re wearing me out, kid,” the detective barked through the door. “You seen it yet, or what?”

  Teddy opened the door. Jackson gave him a look and stepped inside.

  For the next hour, it worked the same way it had at Holmes’s apartment. Teddy would go through a room with Jackson standing behind his back chaining cigarettes and hacking on the smoke. When he walked outside for a look at the pool in the backyard, Teddy noticed the spent beer keg. He walked over and gave it a shake in the snow. To his surprise, the keg wasn’t empty, but full. Darlene Lewis had been planning a party before her death.

  Teddy stepped back into the dining room. The place hadn’t been cleaned up yet. He glanced at the blood spatter on the walls as he passed through the room and headed for the stairs. It still bothered him, but not like it had. He could hear Jackson behind him in the hall, staying close but trying to keep out of his way as well. Teddy walked into the girl’s bedroom, and paused. His eyes went right to the computer. He noticed a photograph on the table of Darlene with someone he guessed was her boyfriend. He turned on the computer. As the machine booted up, he heard the words, “You’ve got mail.”

  * * *

  Teddy saw him walk out of the library with his head down. Long brown hair, medium height with a pack thrown over his shoulder, and skinny as a rail. Teddy glanced at the snapshot he’d lifted from Darlene Lewis’s bedroom when Jackson opened a window and flicked his smoke outside. They were a match. The kid exiting the library was Russell Moss—Darlene Lewis’s classmate at the Friends School and the boyfriend who’d sent her the e-mail.

  He slipped the photo into his glove box, watching Moss stroll almost aimlessly away from the building. The campus had the feel of a small college, and Teddy guessed that tuition for the private school was just as steep. When Moss reached the sidewalk heading for Germantown Avenue, Teddy got out of the car and approached him.

  Moss looked up from the ground. Teddy’s suit threw him a little, but Moss was eighteen and there wasn’t much difference in their age.

  “I need to talk to you, Russell.”

  “What about?”

  “Darlene Lewis.”

  The kid’s eyes fell to the ground. “Who are you?”

  “A lawyer. Someone trying to help.”

  The kid was nervous, shifting his weight and adjusting his book bag over his left shoulder, then switching it to his right.

  “I’ll miss my bus,” the kid said.

  “You’re girlfriend’s dead and you’re worried about catching a bus?”

  The kid looked him in the eye. His nervousness wasn’t born of fear, but of sadness. Maybe even a measure of self-inflicted guilt.

  “Drive me home,” he said. “What you want is there.”

  They got in the car and made the short drive to the teenager’s house. Russell Moss was a latchkey kid. When he came home from school, there was no one there. The modest house was set on a heavily wooded half-acre lot three blocks south of Germantown Avenue a mile or so west of the school. Once they were inside Teddy noted the fresh paint on the walls, the polished hardwood floors, the comfortable furnishings. He glanced at the bookcases in a small room by the stairs as they headed up to the kid’s bedroom. Moss came from a family of readers.

  “What do your parents do?” Teddy asked.

  “My father’s a lawyer and would probably have a shit fit if he knew you were here. My mother teaches at Temple University.”

  They entered the room, the kid clearing a joystick off his desk and flipping on his computer. Once the machine booted up, he logged onto the Web, clicked a bookmark, and sat down.

  “I couldn’t show you at school,” Moss said. “But I can show you here.”

  Teddy leaned over the kid’s shoulder for a closer look. He saw an image of Darlene Lewis appear. He caught the sleepy smile and looked at her body. It was a porno site. She didn’t have any clothes on.

  “We built the site together,” Moss said. “I didn’t think anything would happen. But then it did.”

  Moss gave up his seat, moving to the bed and sitting down before the window. Teddy grabbed the mouse, clicking through the images. Darlene Lewis posing in a bra and panties, on her knees cupping her breasts in her hands, on her back with her legs spread open. The shots were crude and didn’t leave much to the imagination.

  “She got a boob job,” the kid said. “She liked to show them off.”

  Teddy wasn’t really listening. He was too busy clicking through the images. Toward the end, the photos switched to hard core. Darlene giving a guy without a face a hand job, then blowing him and fucking him. Moss glanced at the monitor and seemed to shrink. There were fifty thumbnail shots, and Teddy looked at every one of them. He could feel his heart beating in his chest.

  “Are they real,” he said to the kid.

  “I just told you she got a boob job.”

  “Not her tits,” he said. “The tattoos. They’re in every shot. Are they real?”

  The kid nodded, thrown by Teddy’s intensity.

  Teddy paged back to the early photos of Darlene, enlarging a shot of the girl masturbatin
g on a couch with her legs spread open. The lazy look in her eyes and the slow smile on her face were haunting. The pose all the more disturbing because it brought back memories of her lying dead on the dining room table—his response to seeing her corpse laid out on the gurney at the morgue.

  Teddy winced as he studied her naked body. The tattoos were on her calf, just above her vagina, and on the underside of her inflated breasts.

  He tried to keep cool. Tried not to think about why a girl who came from a family of means would do something like this. It was all about the murder, he told himself. The man who murdered Darlene Lewis had cut her skin away. But his approach hadn’t been haphazard. There was purpose in the act. Some horrific reason.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Teddy slid a disk into Nash’s computer, copied the file onto his hard drive and clicked on the image of Darlene Lewis masturbating on the couch. Nash found the black and white print of the girl’s corpse on the dining room table and held it up to the monitor. Teddy didn’t need to compare the images to know what the killer had done.

  The patches of missing skin found on her body matched the placement of her tattoos perfectly. The killer had removed her tattoos with his knife and taken them.

  Nash gazed at the nude photo for a long time. “The tattoo artist wasn’t very talented, was he?” he said. “I can’t say much for the photographer either.”

  “Her boyfriend, Russell Moss.”

  “Has he spoken with the police?” Nash asked.

  “No. Not about this anyway. They came to the house and asked about his relationship with Lewis. He answered their questions, but that’s it.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “When I left, he was tearing the Web site down.”