by Robert Ellis
Holmes gathered his sketches and paints and opened the door.
“Do you remember what happened?” Teddy said. “Is the day Darlene Lewis died any clearer?”
Holmes shook his head and lowered his voice. “Just his face. The one in the paper. It’s the same face I see in my dreams. He’s holding a knife and slicing open my hands.”
Holmes shivered and gave him a look. The story was rising to the surface in bits and pieces, Teddy thought, like an airline that had broken up and plummeted into the sea.
“You’ve got my address and phone number at the house, right?”
Holmes nodded.
“What about your medications?”
Holmes tapped his jacket pocket and nodded again. They shook hands. Then he shut the door with his knee and crossed the street. Teddy watched him climb into the Civic, hugging the woman and her daughter and kissing them. When they finally drove off, the girl glanced back at Teddy through the rear window, flashed a smile, and waved.
* * *
Teddy pushed open the door and found Nash’s assistant, Gail Emerson, working at her desk. The door to Nash’s office was closed, but voices could be heard from the other side. Gail checked the wall clock and smiled.
“He’s in a meeting,” she said. “It’ll probably go for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe into the night.”
“Who’s he with?”
“The district attorney’s office and three students from the workshop. They’re going over their work from last semester.”
The five death penalty cases Andrews had been involved in. The district attorney’s office had put the investigation on the fast track.
“Is Carolyn Powell in there?”
Gail shook her head. “It’s only a briefing. They want to know what we have.”
She gave him a knowing look and smiled again like they had the goods.
“Do you think he’d mind if I went in?”
“I don’t think you should, Teddy. But I’ll let him know that you stopped by.”
Teddy took the hint and walked out. As he stepped into the cold air and started down the sidewalk to his car, he was struck by a feeling of loneliness. He was out of the loop. His role had played out and given way to a kind of emptiness he hadn’t experienced since his years as a teenager. He thought a beer might help. Maybe after two or three the pain in his shoulder might fade into the background as well.
SEVENTY-THREE
He looked at the note left by his mother on the kitchen counter by the coffeepot. Apparently there had been a lot of calls to the house last night. So many that she decided to switch call-forwarding on and send them directly to his cell phone, not knowing that it was at the bottom of the lake.
As he poured a cup of coffee, Teddy checked the drive and noticed his mother’s car was gone. It was after nine and he’d managed to sleep in.
He sat down at the table and picked up the phone, dialing his cell number. Then he punched in his pass code and waited for the digital voice to count his messages and retrieve them. There were fifty-seven. Apparently, the digital voice didn’t know that the phone had drowned either.
Teddy leaned back and grabbed the pad and pen off the counter, sipping hot coffee and paging through the messages without listening to them for more than a second or two. Most of the calls were from people he didn’t know. Reporters wanting information and requesting interviews. Jill had called from the office and left two messages, once yesterday afternoon, and another this morning. Barnett had even called, announcing his release from the hospital. His voice had a certain perk to it. A fake vitality Teddy found so irritating, he skipped to the next message. But it was the last call that shook him up. He peered through the steam in his watch, fighting off his memory of the lake trapped inside the lens and realizing the message had been left just twenty minutes ago.
Alan Andrews had called. He wanted to meet as soon as possible and said they needed to talk. He was being held at Curran-Fromhold, and guessed that Teddy knew where the prison was.
Teddy thought it over as he gazed through the doorway at the greenhouse his father had built. The additions to the house had been made with precision and remained seamless. His father had been in his prime when he’d been knocked down by a man like Alan Andrews.
He lifted the handset and punched in the direct number to his desk at the office. To his surprise, the line hadn’t been changed and Jill picked up after the first ring.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“They’ve spent the morning tearing apart your office,” she said.
“What are they looking for?”
“Your termination notice. First Stokes, then Barnett on crutches. They’re looking for the envelope. Stokes put it on your desk and now it’s gone. They seem upset. Even frantic.”
Teddy detected a certain joy in her voice, but couldn’t keep up with her.
“Start at the beginning, Jill.”
“Have you seen the papers this morning?”
“No. Not yet.”
“You’re on the front page,” she said. “The story’s coming out. They’re saying you solved the crime. You saved the girl’s life. You’re the reason the E.T. Killer is dead, and an innocent man was set free.”
“Who’s they?”
“Nash, Carolyn Powell, the police and the FBI—everyone.”
Teddy took another sip of coffee without saying anything.
“Barnett and Stokes are looking for the termination notice because they want to tear it up. It makes them look bad that they fired you. Don’t you see, Teddy, you and Holmes are famous now.”
He thought about the business proposition offered to Holmes. A chain of restaurants opening around town called the Veggie Butcher. The circus was underway, American ingenuity, afoot.
“I haven’t been in,” he said. “I don’t have the letter.”
“Of course you don’t. Stokes changed the locks. Now he’s had them changed back again so you won’t notice.”
He shook his head. Stokes defied explanation.
“Then where’s the notice?” he asked.
“In my purse,” she said. “I picked it up for you the day Stokes put it on your desk.”
He smiled as he listened to her laugh. She’d spent the past few hours watching Barnett and Stokes squirm and probably savored every minute of it. Barnett and Stokes deserved to squirm and more. Much more. And Jill was a good friend.
“I’ll see you in an hour,” he said.
* * *
He crossed the garage and stepped into the elevator, carrying two boxes he’d picked up at the liquor store on his way into town. The law firm occupied the sixteenth and seventeenth floors. He could probably empty his desk and make it out the door before Barnett and Stokes received word that he was even in the building by simply entering the office on the lower level and using the stairs within the firm to avoid passing the receptionist’s desk. That’s if he cared. But he really didn’t.
The elevator stopped at the lobby and a woman entered. He knew her to be a seasoned attorney and partner at another firm on the fourteenth floor. In the past she had never spoken to him. Today she said hello, and even smiled as she got off. The doors closed again, the elevator starting up.
He could feel his heart beating in his chest and became angry at himself as he acknowledged his nervousness. He couldn’t work for a man like Barnett. No matter what his financial situation, or the hardships he might face, he couldn’t do it.
The elevator opened, and he breezed through the lobby ignoring the people staring at him. From the corner of his eye, he caught the receptionist reaching for her phone.
He legged it down the hallway and into his office, lowering the boxes to his desk. Jill turned from the computer, got up and gave him a long hug. He felt her lips press against his cheek, then move to his neck, burrowing in. He tightened his grip, holding her in his arms.
“I was so worried about you,” she whispered.
“It’s over, Jill. It’s done.”
>
She pulled away and looked at the boxes. “You’re leaving,” she said.
He nodded without saying anything, then moved around to his desk. He started with the top drawer, jerking it out and off the rollers and dumping the contents into the first box. As he pushed the drawer back into the desk and yanked out the second, he sensed someone in the doorway and looked up.
Jim Barnett was standing in the hall, dressed in one of his hand tailored suits from Milan and leaning on two aluminum crutches, his legs now set in plaster casts. He looked pathetic. And Teddy knew he was using it, milking it, but that it wouldn’t work.
Teddy dumped the contents of the second drawer into the box and grabbed the third.
“You’re being overly dramatic,” Barnett said. “If you want a raise, it’s done. If this is because of what I said about your father, then I apologize. I said things I didn’t mean.”
Teddy dumped the third drawer into the box and reached for another. “Who said anything about money?”
“I mention it because I know you need it. We all do. Some more than others.”
Barnett hobbled into the office, irritated when he noticed Jill in the room and realized that they weren’t alone. Teddy moved on to the next drawer. Unfortunately, nothing Barnett could say would change what the man had done. On the upside, until ten days ago Barnett had treated Teddy like a son. There was something to be said for what he’d suffered after being run over by his car as well. But in the end, Barnett had betrayed his own brother-in-law, selling him out to the district attorney in order to hide their relationship. He’d betrayed Teddy, making the deal with Andrews in secret and allowing Holmes to confess to a crime he’d only witnessed. As Teddy thought it over, he realized the position Barnett was in. Holmes had been innocent. Barnett had sold out a member of his own family in order to maintain his social standing. When the story appeared in the papers, no amount of work by a PR firm could balance the scale. Barnett would be dropped from consideration in Philadelphia Magazine’s Power 100 issue. He’d be bounced off the list. Cast to the side as nothing more than an overeager worm.
“For the sake of your career,” Barnett said, “I think you should take some time off and think this through.”
Their eyes met. Teddy noticed the man was sweating.
“Who’s career are we really talking about?” he said. “And I was fired, remember? I didn’t toe the line. You said it yourself, and Stokes did, too. That’s what we do here. We toe the line. Somewhere over the last week I realized I’m no good at that.”
Teddy finished with the desk and moved to the credenza, closing up photos and collecting bric-a-brac for the second box.
“You weren’t fired. Stokes doesn’t have the authority. He’s old and made a mistake. He was only thinking about the firm.”
Teddy shrugged. He closed the second box and lifted it onto the first, thinking about his afternoon meeting with the devil. In an hour, he would be sitting in a visiting room with Alan Andrews. As he stepped around the desk, he glanced at Jill and nodded.
Barnett grimaced. “I’d have to accept your resignation and I won’t. You’re not thinking clearly. You’re out of your mind.”
“That makes two of us,” Teddy said, passing the man on crutches and leaving him behind.
SEVENTY-FOUR
Teddy heard the chains beating against the linoleum tiled floor and turned to look through the window into the hall from visiting room two. Alan Andrews, the district attorney, stepped into the room dressed in an orange jumpsuit like any other member of the population at Curran-Fromhold. Only this one remained handcuffed, his ankles bound in leg irons. Two guards escorted Andrews to a chair and helped him sit down at the table across from Teddy, then left the room without closing the door.
They were waiting in the hall, staying close. They looked nervous.
Teddy picked up on the sound of people jeering and looked through the glass at the inmates with their families staring at Andrews outside the booths in the main visiting room. Some appeared angry, others, astonished. When he turned back to Andrews, he realized the man’s attitude had been confiscated along with his street clothes. He was fidgeting in the seat. His left eye twitched. It had only taken two days in prison to beat the devil down.
“I didn’t shoot Eddie Trisco,” Andrews whispered in a shaky voice. “I need your help. You were there. I need people to understand what really happened.”
Teddy didn’t have any sympathy for Alan Andrews. His decision to meet with him was a result of the emptiness he’d been feeling deep inside himself ever since the night Trisco was found and killed. It was entirely a matter of confronting his demons. First with Barnett and now with the district attorney. Andrews was the kind of prosecutor who had taken his father away from him so many years ago. Teddy had come here today because he wanted to look the man in the eye. See him behind bars. Gain some degree of resolution, even if it was only secondhand and he’d never had the chance to meet the man who virtually sent his father to his death in a prison cell.
“I know the way it looks,” Andrews said. “But I didn’t do it.”
“How do you think it looks?” Teddy asked.
“Like I’m worse than Eddie Trisco. Like I was in it with him. They think I murdered Trisco to cover it up.”
“Trisco was sick,” Teddy said. “He couldn’t help what he was, but you could. You had a choice.”
“I didn’t shoot him,” Andrews said. “I didn’t go there to shoot him.”
“When did you know it was him?”
“I didn’t. Jesus Christ, kid. When I read the profile and realized you guys were looking for an artist, it scared the shit out of me. I hadn’t thought about Eddie Trisco for five years, and I was out on a limb with Holmes.”
“How could you have forgotten about Trisco when you were taking payoffs from his parents?”
“Stop calling them payoffs. They were legitimate political contributions. I’d helped them with their son. Five years ago Eddie was just another kid whacked out on drugs. He didn’t really hurt the girl, and I didn’t think the prison system would do him or anyone else any good. He belonged in a medical setting. A hospital where he could receive treatment. I didn’t have any contact with his parents. Their first contribution to my campaign was after I made my decision about Eddie. Not before.”
Teddy folded his arms over his chest, ignoring the pain in his shoulder from the gun Andrews had fired at him. “When did you know it was Trisco?” he repeated.
“When I read the profile. I could feel that something was wrong. But the evidence kept pointing at Holmes. We knew he was a painter as well, and your profile didn’t exactly rule Holmes out. When Jackson met you at his apartment the second time, all you wanted to do is see the paintings. I thought it deserved a closer look and had them moved to the art museum. The x-rays seemed to point back at Holmes. When I spoke with Barnett, I agreed to plea the case. But only if Holmes confessed so that I could be sure.”
“Why plea the case? It never made sense that you didn’t want to take it to trial.”
“Barnett wouldn’t let me speak with Holmes unless we had a deal. I had to give to get. That’s the way the world works.”
He was dancing around the issue. He’d need a better answer before his trial.
“When you met with Holmes,” Teddy said, “I’m surprised you didn’t sense that something was wrong with the man. It seemed obvious to me the moment I met him.”
“Holmes wasn’t coerced. I didn’t grill him, kid. The confession came quick, like what he’d done had been eating at him and he wanted to spit it out.”
“If you were so sure that it was Holmes, then why did you start looking for Eddie Trisco? And why did you do it in secret?”
“What choice did you give me? You went out to their house, intimating that their son was involved. They called me when you left. I needed to find him to make sure. I needed to see him and talk to him before I could straighten it all out.”
Teddy narrowed his e
yes. “By demoting Carolyn Powell, you mean.”
Andrews didn’t respond, his hands trembling.
“You’re bullshitting me, Andrews. But it sounds good. With a little polish, maybe it’ll work for a jury.”
“I have a friend in the lab,” he whispered. “When the manager at the café was found, she told me what was going on. A hair sample matched Trisco to the body. His fingerprints were found, a partial anyway, on the frame of a painting at Darlene Lewis’s house.”
“It would seem that was the time to come forward,” Teddy said.
“But I’d fucked the thing up. I couldn’t admit it was true. I knew what it looked like when you opened the door.”
“But it’s the truth, Andrews. It really is. You knew it was Trisco and you didn’t say anything. Instead, you tracked him down and murdered him. What do you want to happen? What do you think should happen? People think you’re worse than Trisco because you are.”
“You’re not hearing me, kid. I didn’t shoot Eddie Trisco. The basement was like a maze. I heard the shot and opened the door. The gun was on the floor and he was still alive. At the time I thought I’d walked in on a suicide. But now I’m not so sure. Someone else could’ve been there. Someone else could’ve fired the gun.”
He was reaching at straws. Still playing Teddy for a fool. And he couldn’t explain why he’d pointed the gun at him and fired, then hid in a room and attacked him. Or even how the box of hollow-point shells ended up in the glove compartment of his car. As Teddy mulled it over, he realized that Andrews couldn’t explain anything at all. He’d say and do anything to save his skin. His record over the years proved as much.