The Dead Room

by Robert Ellis

  Teddy knew that he was staring at the very thing that made the void black. He was staring at Darlene Lewis’s tattoos....

  The buildings were made of human skin, stretched across the canvas and sealed with a thin coat of varnish or shellac. He felt his stomach turn, thought he might be sick and stepped back. He needed distance. The canvas was huge, and there were a lot of buildings with graffiti filling out the background. More tattoos and skin than Darlene could have provided. As he thought it over, Teddy realized there had to be another list of victims no one was aware of. A list of women whose faces didn’t match, only their skin.

  Someone moaned.

  Teddy heard it and flinched. He looked about the room and noticed all the doors feeding into the hellish maze.

  He heard it again, trying to get a grip on himself. The sound was coming from the door to his right. He inched over, listening through the wood. It was a woman.

  Teddy raised the pump gun and gave the door a push.

  He saw Rosemary stretched out on a worktable. When she lifted her head, her eyes rolled back, then forward again, passing over him without seeing him. He scanned the rest of the room, didn’t see anyone else, then rushed to her side. It didn’t take much to realize that she was overdosing on something. She was sweating profusely, her skin hot to the touch. Even worse, tremors rocked through her body as she tugged at the rags holding her down. She was in a continual state of involuntary motion. Teddy watched her try to get up, hit the limit of her restraints and fall back, then try to get up again. Rosemary was on automatic pilot. She couldn’t stop moving. She was circling the drain.

  Someone walked across the living room floor. Teddy froze, listening to the footsteps overhead. Trisco. When he heard them start downstairs, he looked at Rosemary. All he could think about was the videotape he’d seen in Nash’s office. The kid overdosing on the sidewalk outside a nightclub, bucking like a fish until he was dead. He needed to do something, but what? He needed to do it now.

  He checked the door, ripping the rags away from her wrists and ankles. Then he picked her up in his arms, grabbed the Winchester and burst into the studio. In spite of the dress she was wearing, he could feel the burn of her body as he pulled her closer. Kneeing open the French doors, he stepped out into the cold night air. Then he set the gun against the doorjamb and lowered her into the snow. She seemed to be looking at him now. Staring at him. Trying to communicate without words or even reason.

  He dug his hands into the snow, pushing the stuff over her body as quickly as he could. One armful after the next until he sensed something behind his back. A shadow in the gloom. Someone’s presence. He stopped and turned.

  Edward Trisco was standing in the doorway watching him. His eyes were the color of morphine—the same shade of amber Teddy had seen in the IV bag upstairs. There was a glow about them that flared up, then appeared to die out in the smoke of his ravaged face. He wore a short robe and a new pair of Nikes. His body was thin, his muscles still well defined.

  Trisco took a step closer, passing the pump gun leaning against the doorjamb without noticing it. Teddy’s heart skipped a beat. If Trisco spotted the gun, he’d snatch it up with one sweep of his hand. The safety was off, a round in the chamber, the weapon ready to rock and roll.

  “Help me,” Teddy said. “She’s dying.”

  Trisco took it in, surprised by the request and gliding his hand over the hundreds of cuts and scratches etched into his face. Then he spawned his rotten teeth and smiled. Teddy had to admit that asking for the madman’s help was ridiculous. But it had given him a chance to adjust his legs. If he needed to, he was ready to spring.

  The sound of a door opening and closing came from somewhere in the basement. Trisco had heard it, but didn’t move, his eyes locked on Teddy’s.

  Teddy struggled to hold the glance, searching the perimeter of his vision for the madman’s other hand. Although he couldn’t look directly at it, he didn’t think Trisco was armed. A muscle in Trisco’s neck rose and began twitching. After a moment, Trisco backed into the house and vanished, so smooth on his feet he might have had wings.

  Teddy shuddered, hyperventilating. He looked down at Rosemary’s face and caught her staring at him. As he smoothed his hand over her forehead and hair, he noticed that she’d stopped fidgeting. He dug his arms into the snow, raking the flakes over her until her body was entirely covered. And then he heard the sound of a gunshot.

  Teddy grabbed the pump gun and ran back into the basement. The sound had been muffled, and he guessed it had come from one the rooms behind the closed doors at the other end of the studio. Bolting past the greenhouse, Teddy kicked the door open and raised the gun. As he found his mark, saw it standing before him, he felt the blood in his veins heat up and boil over.

  It was the district attorney.

  It was Alan Andrews, in the room and crouching over Trisco’s body. He held a semiautomatic in his right hand, pressing the weapon into Trisco’s head as if he wanted to take another shot but had just been interrupted by a witness. Trisco had been hit in the mouth. He was pawing at the wound, gasping for air, unable to swallow the blood gushing out as he lay on the floor.

  Teddy stared at the missing piece to the puzzle and shuddered. Andrews wasn’t protecting Trisco and didn’t have plans to ship his mistake off to an insane asylum. Andrews had come to get rid of it. He’d seen his way out. Murder Eddie Trisco and prosecute Oscar Holmes for the crimes in spite of his innocence. Teddy took the jolt, his mind racing. The district attorney had read their profile and knew they were looking for an artist. But he’d also known about Trisco. That’s the only possible explanation for why he made the deal with Barnett so quickly. Andrews wanted to rush Holmes through and win a conviction. He’d known about Trisco since he read the profile. Andrews was on his own, trying to keep everything secret.

  “You knew,” Teddy said.

  “Lower the gun,” Andrews shouted.

  There was a gas mask on the floor. Trisco reached for it and was trying to place it over his face.

  “You knew,” Teddy repeated.

  “Lower the fucking gun, kid.”

  Teddy shook his head. Andrews glanced at him, then turned back to Trisco. He kicked the gas mask away, wiped his forehead and seemed overwrought.

  “You think I did this?” Andrews shouted. “I just got here. It’s an obvious suicide.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Teddy flicked his eyes around the room. He saw the open door directly behind Andrews. To the right was a passageway leading to the stairs. On the other side of the hall was an open door to the room he’d found Rosemary in. The dead room.

  “Lower the fucking gun,” Andrews spit through his teeth.

  Teddy shook his head again. Andrews was staring at him now, mulling it over with a crazed expression on his face. He knew the way it looked. The way it really was. After a moment, he raised the semiautomatic and pointed it at Teddy.

  The man had come to murder Eddie Trisco.

  In the end it was his only way out. His misguided attempt to save face, continue his career and become the city’s next mayor. Teddy adjusted his grip on the pump gun. The dots were finally connected, the picture drawn.

  Andrews fired the gun.

  The piece of shit actually did it, bolting for the door and slamming it behind him. Teddy felt the round crease his shoulder. Blood splattered onto his cheek and something shattered behind him. He swung the Winchester toward the door and pulled the trigger. The sound of the three-and-a-half-inch magnum was deafening and shook the house. The door broke away from the hinges and blew back into the room. He could see Andrews scrambling through a second doorway and trying to get away.

  Teddy pumped the slide and pulled the trigger. The round exploded through the room and he heard Andrews scream.

  He pumped the slide again, stepped over the broken door and stopped, listening to the spent rounds dissipate into silence as he peered into the second room. The lights were out. Teddy noted a door cracked open a
t the other end of the room and took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. The furnace began to appear in the shadows. Tools leaning against the wall. A bin used for storing coal a long time ago. He didn’t see Andrews and started across the room.

  Three steps in was all it took before he heard the sirens approaching the house. Then something brushed against the ceiling and he felt Andrews drop onto his shoulders from above. The shotgun fired and he crashed to the floor with Andrews on top of him. He saw the district attorney’s pistol slide across the concrete. The man was like a live wire, clawing at his face and neck and reaching for the gun. Teddy tried to pull Andrews’s hand away, but his arm was pinned down and felt heavy from the wound. Andrews inched forward and stretched out.

  Then someone else entered the room and stopped in the darkness. Michael Jackson, Teddy thought. Maybe even Trisco. It was over. The police wouldn’t make it in time.

  Andrews wrapped his hand around the gun. The figure moved closer, his face grazing a shaft of light. Teddy spotted the color of his eyes as they glistened and cut through the darkness like headlights.

  Cat’s eyes. Cobalt-blue and heavily dilated.

  Nash grabbed a shovel and swung it down with his teeth clinched. The blow was devastating, the steel shovel pinging like a tuning fork as it smashed against bone and crushed it. Andrews took the hit on his forehead and dropped onto the concrete floor like a dead soldier. People were rushing down the stairs and shouting, everything moving in a blur. The gun fell away from Andrews’s hand and he wasn’t moving. Yet Nash stepped on the district attorney’s hand and raised the shovel in the air, giving Andrews a second hard whack over the head just to make sure. Then the lights switched on, and Teddy saw Powell’s face. She was running toward him and bending down. Vega and Ellwood were right behind her. Their eyes seemed fixed on his left shoulder.

  SIXTY-NINE

  The veil had been ripped away from Andrews’s face. In spite of his pleas to the contrary, everyone knew who he was and what he’d done. How deep and far he’d slid into the cosmic hole to nowhere.

  Teddy lay on the gurney, watching Powell and Nash approach Trisco’s skin painting as a medic worked on his shoulder and two others dug Rosemary out of the snow. He saw their eyes drifting across the canvas, then stop, their faces flushing with dread. The bar had been reset, and he could tell that’s what was on their minds. Trisco had advanced the cause of the unthinkable. Pushed it another mile or two down the road. And Powell and Nash were seeing it for the first time. Feeling the challenge. Wondering what came next.

  Nash glanced at him a moment as if he’d aged some, then turned back to the canvas.

  Teddy could hear Vega and Ellwood in the next room, directing a small army of crime scene techs. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the medical examiner bagging up Edward Trisco’s remains. Trisco’s eyes were still open and he held the gas mask in his hand. But there was something odd about his face Teddy couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe it was the lighting, but Trisco reminded him of a caricature of a human being and didn’t appear real. Like a broken toy lying on the floor without batteries.

  The medic asked Teddy to face forward and he did. The wound didn’t hurt. The bullet had grazed his shoulder. Although he’d lost enough blood to weaken him, he’d been more than lucky. Vega had emptied the clip in Andrews’s gun. The rounds were hollow points. If the bullet had been another inch lower, it would have ripped out his chest.

  Teddy glanced over at the district attorney. He was sitting on the floor with his wrists cuffed behind his back. The buckshot peppered through his backside wasn’t deemed serious by the medics, and could wait until later. But his eyes were still dulled from the concussion. Underneath his blank face, Teddy could tell that the man was seething.

  Andrews maintained it had been a case of suicide. He’d heard the shot, followed the sound into the room and found Trisco on the floor. He spotted the gun right away and picked it up because Edward wasn’t dead and still appeared dangerous. That’s when Teddy entered the room with the shotgun, Andrews said. Teddy wouldn’t lower the gun. Fearing for his life, Andrews fired a shot in self-defense and fled. The serial numbers had been filed off the gun, so there was no way to determine who owned it. Andrews’s story had a certain ring to it until Ellwood walked outside and searched the district attorney’s car. A box of ammunition was found in the glove compartment. Hollow points. After that, Andrews requested an attorney and quieted down.

  The basement windows lit up. Teddy guessed that they were camera lights and the press had arrived. Andrews must have noticed as well because he was staring outside and suddenly looked frightened.

  After a few minutes, Vega and Ellwood entered the room, trading glances. Teddy realized they’d been waiting for the press to arrive before taking Andrews outside to their car. They wanted it on videotape. They wanted the image on the TV news. Andrews would be ruined in a single, decisive blow. He would be humiliated in public for all to see. Teddy had no doubt that the video clip would be played over and over again for months.

  “You can’t do this,” Andrews shouted as they approached him.

  “Sure we can,” Vega said. “Let’s go.”

  “But they’re out there with their cameras.”

  Ellwood smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re gonna be a movie star.”

  Andrews yelped as they grabbed him by the shoulders. His faced reddened and he began sputtering out words and making grunting noises. He was fighting them off as best he could, shrinking away from them with his hands bound. When he refused to walk or even stand, neither one of the detectives had much patience. Instead, they muscled him up off the floor and led him away. Once they reached the stairs, Andrews began whining.

  Teddy wondered if the prosecutor who took his father away ever faced the music. He needed to see this, he decided. Pulling the medic’s hand away from his shoulder, he eased himself off the gurney and followed the detectives upstairs. Then he crossed the living room to the window and gazed outside.

  It was more than a local party—the number of cameras waiting for the district attorney too many to count. A black-and-white idled directly before the house with its lights flashing. The car looked as if it had just been washed and waxed for the occasion. Teddy noticed the crime scene tape had been brought in so no one would miss the shot.

  Ellwood opened the front door and glanced at his partner. As they started outside, the video cameras zoomed in for their close-ups and the strobe lights started flashing. The barrage of light was so fast and heavy, everything fixed to the ground appeared to be shaking. Andrews tried to lower his head, but it didn’t work. Vega and Ellwood had him by the shoulders and it looked as if his neck was stuck.

  When they reached the car, the detectives hesitated before opening the rear door and turning their suspect over to a stern-looking man with a mustache dressed in plainclothes. A new wave a fear exploded over Andrews’s face. Vega pulled a card from his pocket. Microphones popped out of the crowd. They were reading him his rights in front of everyone, Teddy realized. Slowly, and in a voice loud enough that everyone could hear. As Andrews listened, his eyes went dead and bottomed out like an empty sky after a shooting star. He’d been made. Snuffed out as he crashed into the atmosphere. All burned up like a small rock that didn’t have enough stuff to reach the ground.

  SEVENTY

  Teddy gazed at the IV bag slung over a stand on wheels, noting the amber color of the morphine. His eyes drifted with the tube down to the needle in his arm. The pain in his shoulder must have been caught in traffic, he figured. It never made it to Trisco’s house. Instead, the pain was waiting for him when he reached the hospital and his adrenaline ran out. It struck with a vengeance, enveloping his arm and shooting through his chest and back in waves. When the doctor ordered morphine, Teddy had mixed feelings about it until the needle pierced his skin and the drug eventually chased the agony away.

  He didn’t mind the hospital room that much. He found the din of city street noise
filtering through the window somehow reassuring. Even soothing. Outside his room he could see a cop sitting in a chair reading a magazine. It wasn’t really necessary. The cop was here to run interference. But no one really thought a reporter could get past the team of cops downstairs.

  Detectives Vega and Ellwood had stopped by a few hours ago and taken his statement with a small tape recorder laid on the bed. Teddy went through what he’d said to them, hoping he hadn’t left anything out. He’d told them about finding the bodies in the lake, and how he figured out where Eddie lived. He said he couldn’t wait for them to show up because of Rosemary. He had the gun, knew how to use it, and made the decision to go in. Both detectives agreed that while it was crazy and he could have been killed, in an emergency the situation defines the rules and they would’ve probably done the same thing. As they were leaving, Teddy asked them what they were going to do with Alan Andrews. Ellwood’s face lit up. Vega just smiled.

  Teddy glanced at the clock on the wall and fought back a yawn. It was after midnight, and he was having difficulty staying awake. Fearing that he might close his eyes, he cast his legs over the side of the bed. The images he’d confronted over the last week were still so vivid. Darlene Lewis’s body stretched out on a dining room table. The faces staring out at him from the houses at the bottom of the lake. Trisco’s skin painting.

  As he lowered his bare feet to the chilly linoleum floor, he realized there had been a scent to the painting. The same one he’d noticed at the morgue. It was the smell of death, leeching through the shellac. He could smell it now. See it as clearly as if he was still standing in the maniac’s studio. He didn’t want to dream about it. Didn’t want to be alone with it in the dark.

  Nash walked into the room.

  “I need to get out of here,” Teddy said.

  “Then let’s go.”