The Dead Room

by Robert Ellis

  Teddy pushed the doctor out of the room, slammed the door shut and flipped the lock. When he heard the doctor start pounding with his fists from the other side, he ignored it and turned to face Barnett. The window curtains were drawn, and Barnett was still confined to his bed in the darkness. He looked frightened, but he couldn’t move—his legs held together by that array of metal pins and hardware.

  Teddy knew he should have gone straight to Nash and told him about Holmes’s confession. But Barnett had acted something like a father toward him ever since Teddy joined the firm. A mentor. Barnett had taken a special interest in his career, guiding him through his introduction to the legal profession. Teddy had trusted the man and admired him and made the mistake of emulating him. Now he was nowhere.

  The banging stopped, followed by shouting from the hallway. Teddy moved to the window, jerking the curtain open and flooding the room with light.

  “What are you gonna do?” Barnett said, shaking.

  Teddy looked at the IVs in the man’s arm. He felt like pulling them out, watching Barnett squirm his way into the void where he belonged. He glanced at the chair, but didn’t sit down. For a moment he thought about his college loans, but only long enough to count up his debt. One hundred and ninety thousand dollars. Teddy didn’t care anymore.

  “I closed the deal,” Barnett managed. “The death penalty’s off the table. Holmes will get the care he needs. He’ll live, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Stop pretending that this is about helping Holmes,” Teddy said. “This is about you. It’s always been about you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your little secret,” Teddy said. “Your brother-in-law. The minute the story showed up in the papers, you folded. You don’t even care if he’s innocent or not. All you care about is you.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Are you afraid they’ll hear me? They already know. Everybody does. The Veggie Butcher and Jim Barnett are brothers.”

  Barnett cringed. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”

  “I came here to ask you the same question. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “My name’s Jim Barnett,” he said through clinched teeth. “And I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”

  “You sure do. That’s why you sold Holmes out from the beginning. You were embarrassed. You made the deal thinking you might contain the secret. Holmes never had a chance. Not with a brother like you.”

  “Stop calling him my brother,” Barnett shouted. “He’s always been strange. He’s an oddball. He’s a freak.”

  Teddy gave Barnett a long look, deciding that he’d let what was just said pass for now. “How did you convince Andrews to make the deal?” he asked.

  “It was easy. They did the x-rays yesterday. When Andrews told me what they found underneath the paintings, I told him about the profile you and Nash put together. I think it caught Andrews by surprise. He seemed shocked by it and wanted to see it. He said he thought he needed a confession. We worked the deal out in five minutes. Holmes confessed in less than two.”

  “Thanks for letting me know.”

  Barnett looked away and seemed to shrink. “That was Andrews’s idea,” he said after a moment. “I needed to know that what he told me about the paintings was true.”

  Teddy grimaced, burying the scope of the betrayal as deep as it would go. “So now you’re saved,” he said. “You can host another treasure hunt and gloat over your picture in the society pages. If I were you I’d hire someone who knows how to handle the press. They’ll need to turn you into a victim. Tell the whole story from your point of view. You can handle the interviews from here. A picture of Jim Barnett in his hospital bed should go a long way. Holmes hurt everyone. Even you.”

  “Larry Stokes already has someone in mind,” Barnett said. “You should know better than me why I did everything I could to keep the story from getting out. Look what happened to you after your father’s arrest.”

  It hung there. Teddy standing motionless.

  “That’s right,” Barnett said. “I know all about your goddamn father. That’s why I asked you to help me with Holmes. You’re a loser, Teddy. You don’t get it. Wake up and smell the roses. Your father’s arrest for murder ruined you and the reputation of your family. No matter what the truth was, is, or will be, you will always be Teddy Mack, the son of the architect on the Main Line who murdered his business partner. I asked for your help not because I thought you might bring something to the case. How could you at your age? I asked for your help because I thought you’d toe the line just like every other asshole who’s running from the truth. But you didn’t. You couldn’t. Everything you did made things worse. Now get out and toe the line.”

  The door burst open. Teddy was lunging for the bed when two security guards grabbed him from behind and tackled him down to the floor.

  FIFTY

  The aftermath. The done deal. It had been so ugly.

  Teddy sat at the jury table and stared at the pictures of the missing look-alikes tacked to the wall. They seemed so far away. The confession changed things. Whether it was true or not, Holmes’s statement and signature on the document had a certain weight about it.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” Nash asked from his desk.

  “I’m okay.”

  “What about something stronger?”

  Teddy shook his head, then turned to the door as Gail Emerson, Nash’s assistant, entered the room with a cup of coffee. Her eyes were puffy and she appeared as upset as they were. She set the cup on the table before Teddy, wouldn’t take no for an answer, and gave Nash a worried look as she left the room. Teddy liked Gail, and sipped the coffee. It tasted fresh and hot, and he appreciated the kind gesture.

  Nash cleared his throat. “Barnett shouldn’t have said those things to you, Teddy. I’m sorry. Did he fire you?”

  “I don’t know yet. He’s still bedridden. They’ll need someone to do the paperwork and sit at the table with Holmes. I’m not sure anyone at the firm really wants their picture taken beside a serial killer.”

  Nash flashed a warm smile. “I’d say you’re right about that.”

  “What about Rosemary?” Teddy asked.

  “As far as I’m concerned, nothing’s changed. We already knew something was going on between Holmes and Darlene Lewis. Now we know what it was. The confession, based on the man’s state of mind, isn’t even worth reading. But we’re alone. Westbrook called when the bureau got the news from the DA’s office. He’s upset. He said he’ll do anything he can to help, but it will have to remain unofficial now.”

  “We know the profile’s accurate,” Teddy said. “From what the manager at the café told us, this guy with bad teeth followed Rosemary out the door the night she disappeared. Her gym bag wasn’t found in her apartment. We know she never made it home.”

  Nash got up from his desk and sat down with Teddy at the jury table. He’d been collecting press clippings on Alan Andrews since he began researching the DA’s past. He laid several of them out on the table, one beside the next, then bummed a cigarette from Teddy’s pack. He’d never done that before.

  “What do you think of this?” Nash asked. “What’s your opinion?”

  Teddy counted six clippings. He scanned the copy long enough to get the gist.

  “Andrews was an overzealous prosecutor,” he said. “Judges complained, but he ran a hard race and became the district attorney. He wasn’t liked much. Still, the office generated a lot of prosecutions and crime was down.”

  “What else?”

  Teddy thought it over. “It looks like the press tolerated him. Judges were relieved he wouldn’t be appearing in court as often, if ever, as long as he held the office.”

  “Then what?”

  “You hit Andrews for sending the wrong man to his death,” Teddy said. “All his faults were in the papers again. But it didn’t last because Holmes was arrested that very day. People got scared. The city was being terrori
zed by a maniac. As far as they were concerned, Alan Andrews saved them and any mistakes he made in his past were forgiven. So what if the wrong man got the needle. That’s the way people think. The guy was probably a lowlife and deserved to die for something else he’d done.”

  Nash gazed at Andrews’s clippings, his eyes more dilated than usual, more sad. “You have to admit that it’s remarkable though. His resurrection, I mean. I thought he’d be booted out of office when my workshop made its findings public. Now it looks like he’ll be rewarded. He’ll become the city’s next mayor, then who knows, maybe even governor. Whether you like him or not, he’s a survivor. You have to give him credit for that.”

  “What about your workshop next semester? What about the other cases you’re working on?”

  “They’re old,” Nash said, lowering his voice. “Evidence is scarce. In some cases contaminated or even destroyed. Money’s an issue as well.” He blew smoke toward the window, watching the sunlight give the cloud form. “It’s an uphill battle,” he said. “It’ll take time.”

  Nash became silent. Teddy watched him smoke the cigarette for a moment, then grabbed his briefcase and stood.

  “There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” Teddy said before leaving.

  Nash looked at him without saying anything. He seemed tired. Like Teddy, he needed a break.

  “I was thinking about it on the drive in from the hospital,” Teddy said. “I know why my boss wanted to make the deal. All he cares about are his own press clippings and what his neighbors think. I even understand why the district attorney thinks Holmes is guilty. If I were Andrews, I might think it, too. Let’s face it, Andrews still has the facts on his side. The case is so strong, I have doubts about what we’re doing every day. But look at these clippings. Just these few clippings tell a different story, and I don’t get it.”

  “What part of the story don’t you understand?”

  “Why Andrews made the deal,” Teddy said.

  A moment passed. Nash had a faraway look going in his eyes, like Teddy had found another fault line in the rocks. A crack in the mountain no one else had seen.

  “Why stop the headlines?” Teddy said, pointing at them on the table. “Why make a deal that would end this, especially when everyone on the street wants Holmes dead. If he’d refused to the plea the case, the trial and headlines would’ve lasted until his election. Now they’re gonna go away. Every blood-and-guts idiot in the city is gonna be pissed off at him. It’s not in Andrews’s interest to make this deal. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Nash took a second cigarette and handed over the pack, appearing stunned.

  “No, it doesn’t,” was all he could say.

  FIFTY-ONE

  He knew the word was out the moment he entered the lobby. He knew it wasn’t good. Jill filled him in as soon as he reached his office.

  Teddy’s stay at the firm was finished.

  He’d be kept on to see Holmes through the process, just as he thought, because no one else wanted to be associated with a serial killer. No one in the firm wanted their picture taken beside the Veggie Butcher. Once Holmes pled guilty and received his sentence of life without parole, Teddy would receive his notice. Jill had gotten the news from Barnett’s assistant, Jackie, who’d overheard Larry Stokes on the phone. Stokes had already written the termination notice and would keep it in his desk until Holmes was admitted into a psychiatric facility for the criminally insane. According to Jackie, Stokes told Barnett that he never liked Teddy and was secretly glad to see him go. She couldn’t hear the entire conversation, but thought it had something to do with Teddy’s father and the reputation of his family.

  Teddy sat down at his desk. Brooke Jones passed the door without looking inside, but he caught the faint smile branded on her profile.

  He opened his briefcase, found the aspirin, and chugged two pills down with bottled water. As he sat back, he went over the events of the day in his head. He remembered the way it had ended at the art museum this morning with Andrews on his back. He’d been too upset to really notice what was going on at the time. Andrews had just nailed Teddy, yet the man couldn’t keep eye contact. Andrews had looked away like maybe he was nervous. Like something else was on his mind.

  Why did he do the deal? It didn’t make sense.

  Andrews should have insisted on a trial. Fought for it until the bitter end. Instead, Barnett had said it was easy. The district attorney agreed almost immediately. The entire conversation lasted only five minutes.

  Why?

  Barnett read the profile and initiated the call. Andrews spoke first and told Barnett about the nudes Holmes had painted over that included Darlene Lewis. Then Barnett brought up the profile Teddy and Nash had created and said that they were looking for an artist. A painter or sculptor.

  Teddy wondered if it wasn’t the profile. But what? There had to be a reason why Andrews would risk taking heat from the public to do the deal.

  He looked at Jill, staring back at him from the computer.

  “You think you could do me a favor?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “Pull up Andrews’s past cases for the last ten years. Sort them by verdict and print them out. All I need is the list and a summary. But do a second printing and sort them by the crime. Is that doable?”

  “It’s easy,” she said.

  Her eyes flashed toward the door. Larry Stokes entered the room without noticing her. His face was shut down, his appearance as lifelike as a body in an open casket.

  “I’d like to have a word with you,” he said quietly. “In my office.”

  Teddy shot Jill a look and followed the man out of the room. They walked down the hall to the other side of the floor without exchanging a single word. When they reached his office, Stokes stepped aside and let Teddy enter first. Teddy didn’t notice the older man sitting on the couch until the door closed.

  “Have a seat,” Stokes said, pointing to the chair before his desk.

  Stokes hadn’t bothered to introduce Teddy to the man on the couch. Teddy did as he was told and took the chair. There was a mirror behind the desk, and he could see the man staring at his back. The man knew who Teddy was. He was sure of it. Yet Stokes had no intention of introducing them.

  Stokes leaned across his desk, folding his hands. “Your future at the firm of Barnett and Stokes is in jeopardy,” he said. “How you conduct yourself over the next few weeks will determine your fate. Is that clear, young man?”

  Teddy knew his future had already been determined, his fate sealed. It was in an envelope in Stokes desk awaiting delivery. He checked the mirror and saw the strange man staring at his back. The man looked like he was in his sixties. His hair was almost white. His face narrow. His eyes an arctic blue. Teddy wondered if he was one of Stokes’s buddies from the club. Some idiot rich guy with good breeding who wanted to witness this moment for laughs.

  “Is that clear?” Stokes repeated.

  “Perfectly,” Teddy said.

  “In return for your good behavior, no charges will be filed against you for attempting to assault Jim Barnett at the hospital this morning. You have my word.”

  Stokes was a stupid man. Teddy could see it in his eyes. His capped teeth, and the gold ring. The seal from a yacht club on his blue blazer. And his threat didn’t sting because Teddy already knew it was a lie. He was immune.

  “I believe Jim mentioned something to you about toeing the line,” Stokes said after a moment. “That’s what we do here. We do what we’re told. We do it with sincerity and in good conscience. We do what we believe is right. We carry a certain standard at this firm and...”

  Teddy stopped listening to the bullshit. It was the man’s stump speech. The one he used with new clients. When he thought Stokes had finished, he got up and left the room.

  FIFTY-TWO

  He found Jill in his office by the printer. She’d pulled the district attorney’s cases for the past ten years. There were hundreds, thousands—the printer spewing out s
o much paper, all he could think about were dead trees.

  “What did Stokes say?” Jill asked.

  Teddy shrugged. “I’m toast, but I’m not supposed to know it yet. He gave me a pep talk.”

  He sat down at the computer, checking the list on the monitor. They’d made a mistake. Because Andrews was the district attorney, the search parameters were including every case the office had handled since the election.

  “We need to stop this thing,” he said.

  Jill leaned over his shoulder, grabbed the mouse and hit CANCEL. When the printer continued eating up trees, she shut the machines down to clear the memory and rebooted.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “I want to narrow the search down to cases Andrews handled on his own as a prosecutor.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Beats me,” he said. “All I know is we don’t have time to look through this much paper.”

  They switched places. Jill changed the search parameters. Within a few minutes the printer was spitting out more paper again. There were two hundred and thirty-seven cases. It still seemed overwhelming, but Teddy grabbed the printout, sat at his desk and got started. He had two copies of the list. The first was sorted by verdict, the second by crime.

  Teddy started with the second list, weeding out the misdemeanors and concentrating on felonies. There were only seventy-five. When he cross-checked them by verdict, three stood out. Each case occurred within the first two years of Andrews’s promotion to homicide in the district attorney’s office. Each case was a loss.

  The first involved a man accused of murdering his wife. She’d been shot once in the chest. Medics couldn’t revive her, and she was pronounced dead at the scene of the crime. The man claimed it was an accident. While cleaning a gun, his wife stepped through the doorway just as the weapon fired. Although he said he didn’t know the weapon was loaded, he was a gun collector and should have. Andrews figured he was lying and prosecuted the case based on interviews with neighbors who had heard the couple arguing earlier in the day. The medical examiner agreed. The woman’s death only required a single bullet because it was a bull’s-eye aimed directly at her heart. But Andrews was a young assistant district attorney at the time. He lacked experience in jury selection. He’d loaded the box with women, thinking they would sympathize with the victim. What he didn’t count on was the defendant. He was a lady’s man. Smooth, handsome, even sympathetic. What Andrews didn’t realize was that every woman in the jury had fallen for the guy. They couldn’t keep their eyes off him. When the man took the witness chair and spoke in his own defense, he worked the women in the jury like Gato Barbieri making it with a saxophone. He spoke of his love for his wife, his devotion, how much he missed her. Wiping tears from his eyes, he said his life had been ruined and didn’t care what happened to him now. The jury bought it, and found the man not guilty. Once he was free and clear, Andrews learned that the man had been having an affair for six months with a younger woman who lived down the street. She’d moved in the day after his release from prison.