The Dead Room

by Robert Ellis

  Eddie didn’t know what to do. The manager at the café had obviously recognized him and said something. He could feel his life slipping away. Fame and fortune burning to the ground.

  He heard someone shout at him and looked up. It was a guard, staring at him from behind the front desk.

  “Can I help you, pal?” the man said.

  From the tone of the guard’s voice, Eddie could tell that the man didn’t really want to help him. He looked up and saw the cameras. The moment was being recorded on TV.

  “I was looking for a company,” Eddie said. “It looks like they’ve moved.”

  “Then maybe you should, too.”

  The guard jerked his hand up and pointed at the door. Eddie took the hint and exited the building. As he walked up the street, he dug his fingers into his pockets fishing for another Milky Way bar or even some leftover chocolate chip morsels. There weren’t any left. When he felt his pocket knife, he wrapped his hand around it and realized he was heading back to the café. He smiled beneath his scarf as he thought about the manager flirting with his female employees, even Rosemary. It was a vicious smile. The hidden smile of the world’s next genius. Eddie finally knew what he was supposed to do.

  FORTY-SIX

  Eddie walked into the 7-Eleven on the corner, perusing the aisles for just the right item. Something that would make the act stand out and give it panache. He was an artist. It was the only way he knew.

  His eyes stopped on the tubes of Crazy Glue hanging from a rack between the Frito Corn Chips and Ramsey rubber display. An idea formed as he put the two items together in his head. A montage of sorts.

  This was it, he decided. Crazy Glue.

  He crossed the aisle to the register, and the man behind the counter rang up the order. As Eddie dug into his pocket for his wallet, he noticed the Tootsie Pops stuffed into a jar beside a cigarette display. Even better, they weren’t out of grape pops. Eddie had read somewhere that grapes were good for the cardiovascular system. He tried to eat at least one grape flavored Tootsie Pop a day, but they were hard to find. The word must have gotten out, he figured. He sifted through the bowl and bought all ten pops, stuffing them into his pocket with the Crazy Glue. Then he legged it out of the store to the Honda Accord parked on the far side of the empty lot.

  The café manager was waiting for him in the backseat, bound and gagged and looking as if he’d just woken up. Eddie could hear him whimpering, trying to talk through the gag and making animal noises. His eyes were the size of silver dollars and particularly expressive, Eddie thought. Like the kind you see drawn in cartoons or the funny papers.

  “We’ll discuss it later,” he said to the man.

  Eddie pulled out of the lot. They needed a place to talk. A place to take a high-level meeting with some degree of privacy.

  As he turned down Spruce Street, he remembered a park by the river at the very end and checked the clock on the dashboard. It was after midnight, the temperature well below freezing. Not many people would be sitting on the benches enjoying the view of the South Street Bridge.

  He made a left on Twenty-fifth Street, pulled over and killed the lights. Then he sat back, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness and unwrapping his first grape Tootsie Pop in three days. The candy would’ve tasted better if he’d had a little peace and quiet. The grunts and groans coming from the backseat were hard to ignore. So was the smell inside the café manager’s car. At first he thought it was stale coffee. But when he turned and saw the man staring at him from the backseat, he realized it was urine. The idiot manager had wet his pants.

  Eddie checked the windows. No one was in the park or on the street. When he glanced about at the cars, everyone of them appeared empty. This end of the city looked as if it were asleep for the night and safely tucked away in dreamland.

  He got out and opened the back door. Yanking the man out of the car, he pushed him into the park. The man stumbled toward a bench, slipping and sliding across the snow.

  “Have a seat,” Eddie said, pushing him down.

  The man stared back at him, tugging on the belt holding his arms in place behind him.

  “We’re gonna have a little chat,” Eddie said. “Then we’re gonna have some fun. You’re doing the talking. When you’re done, I’ll decide on the fun. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  The man nodded, shivering in his bones.

  “I want to know what you said to them. I want to know what’s going on. You ready?”

  The man nodded again, eager to please. Eddie removed the gag.

  “Please don’t do this. Please don’t do this.”

  The guy was crying. Eddie checked the park. They were alone.

  “Stop whining, and tell me what you said to them.”

  “I’ll tell you everything. Anything. Just leave me alone.”

  “Start talking,” Eddie said, bearing his rotten teeth.

  And the man did. He told him everything from a worm’s point of view. His name was Harris Carmichael. He’d singled Eddie out and given them an accurate description. They knew he had Rosemary and they were looking for him. Searching him out. Eddie wondered if Carmichael wasn’t lying at times, or even using amateur psychology. Carmichael said that they didn’t know his name, but it was only a matter of time. He thought Eddie should leave him and the girl alone. If he had any brains, it was time to run.

  Eddie thought it over, sorting through the man’s message to the gist of the deal. But when he looked back, it was too late. Carmichael was snorting like a cornered bull, driving his head into Eddie’s stomach and knocking him down.

  The blow felt like he’d been hit by a freight train, and Eddie almost swallowed the Tootsie Pop. As he lay in the snow, the thought of accidently choking to death on his favorite candy brought on the rage. He struggled to catch his breath, watching the café manager scurry into the night with his arms bound behind his back.

  Eddie took a deep breath and sprung to his feet. He was fast and agile, and he grabbed Carmichael by the back of his neck and yanked him down on the ground. The man started screaming, yelping. Eddie pushed his face into the snow, holding him down with the weight of his body as he opened the tube of Crazy Glue and pierced the top with the sharp end of the cap. When Carmichael came up for air, Eddie squirted the glue into both nostrils and pinched the man’s nose.

  Carmichael didn’t know what was happening at first. He seemed confused, even stunned by Eddie’s creativity. He shook his head back and forth, broke out in a heavy sweat, even shit his fucking pants. As he turned back, he flashed a hard look into Eddie’s eyes as if he’d just met a fortune teller and his fate seemed to dawn on him. Eddie emptied the rest of tube all over Carmichael’s lips and pressed them together. Ten seconds passed, then twenty and thirty until he finally let go.

  It’s what you did to a talker, Eddie thought. You closed their mouth and let go.

  Carmichael appeared panic stricken. Eddie unwrapped the belt, releasing the man’s hands and watching him squirm in the snow. He was twisting and turning at Eddie’s feet, pulling at his mouth and struggling to rip it open. He was staring at Eddie with those big, cartoon eyes of his. They looked so swollen, they might pop or even explode right out of his head. But in the end, his lips were sealed. When Carmichael’s face turned blue and he finally stopped moving, Eddie couldn’t help but think of a balloon. He opened his pocket knife, knelt down and got started. It was a small knife, but it would have to do.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  It had been a strange request....

  Worried about Barnett’s condition, Teddy had called him last night at the hospital to see how he was making out. Barnett thanked him for the call, but kept it short saying that the pain was getting to him and he still felt like shit. After making a few more calls over a couple of beers, Teddy grabbed a third bottle and went upstairs, checking his voice mail before he closed out the night. Among the list of messages was one left by Alan Andrews himself. The district attorney wanted a meeting in the morning just as Ji
ll said he did. Teddy’s first thought had been that the FBI was off to an early start. Rather than wait until morning, agents had approached Andrews the moment Dr. Westbrook called to brief them on the case. But Andrews didn’t want to meet at his office. Instead, he’d given Teddy another address. The Museum of Art, he said. Nine sharp.

  Teddy entered the Conservation Department, spotting Andrews and Powell with a group of men and women from the museum. The room had the look and feel of a modern laboratory. As he approached them, he noticed several canvases leaning against the wall and recognized them.

  They were the work of Oscar Holmes. The paintings Teddy had seen in his client’s apartment with Detective Jackson standing over his shoulder. Obviously, Jackson had reported Teddy’s interest in the paintings to his boss when he reached his favorite watering hole.

  Andrews smiled like a snake and shook Teddy’s hand. He had a twinkle in his eye. Powell stood beside him and seemed unusually subdued. Something had happened and Teddy could hear the telltale rattle. Andrews was ready to strike.

  “Thanks for fitting us into your busy schedule,” Andrews said. “You’re five minutes late.”

  Teddy ignored the hit. Then Andrews introduced him to the curator of the Modern Contemporary Department, two conservators and the conservation photographer. From the looks on their faces, it was clear to Teddy that he was the odd man out. Everyone there knew something he didn’t.

  He glanced about the lab, taking in the room in quick bites. He noticed one of Holmes’s paintings on an easel set before a high-resolution video camera. Behind Andrews he saw a long row of light tables covered with sheets of X-ray film.

  “Why don’t we get started,” Andrews said to the curator.

  They were standing beside a computer. One of the conservators sat down at the keyboard and clicked open a window. As everyone moved in for a closer look at the monitor, the curator filled them in on what they had done over the last two days.

  “X-rays were taken of each of the paintings and scanned into the computer,” she said. “What you’re looking at is a negative image of the surface of the canvas.”

  Teddy studied the black-and-white image on the monitor, realizing it was the same painting he’d seen on the easel. A peaceful landscape. A view of rolling hills with the shadows of a man and woman stretching over a field.

  “But there’s an image underneath,” the curator said.

  As if on cue, the conservator at the keyboard clicked an option on the menu. Teddy watched as the peaceful landscape began to fade and a second image gradually appeared. In spite of the curator’s gentle voice and easy manner, Teddy felt a whip of fear snap against his spine right between the should blades. It was a nude. A young woman with blond hair who looked as if she was being consumed by her emotions. There was a sadness to the work. An oppressive stillness.

  Teddy didn’t recognize the model’s face. As he thought about the missing persons bulletins tacked to the wall in Nash’s office, he noticed a resemblance but wrote it off as a coincidence and matter of style.

  “Let’s see another,” Andrews said.

  Teddy eyed the district attorney, then looked back at the monitor. The snake was still rattling its tail. It hadn’t struck yet.

  A second black and white image appeared on the screen. Within a few moments, another pastoral setting gave way to a second nude. Teddy noted the blond hair, the common bone structure, and realized it was the same model. She was wilted on the floor, the melancholy as overwhelming as the first painting they’d seen. But the work was also beautiful, like the warmth of a fire burning under the mantel on a string of rainy-day afternoons.

  “I believe there’s a third,” Andrews said. “This one in particular caught my eye.”

  Teddy winced at the district attorney’s smooth delivery. Andrews was enjoying the moment, his slickness coming off like grease. Teddy tried to get a grip on himself, but it didn’t work. As an image of a slow moving river painted in moonlight began to fade, he recognized the face, the body, even the tattoos rising to the surface.

  It was another nude. But this time he knew the model. It was Darlene Lewis.

  Teddy staggered back as if he’d been hit, and everyone turned. He looked away, moved to the light tables, took in the sheets of X-ray film as he caught his breath. He tried to remember what Holmes had said the first night they met. Darlene Lewis used to let him look at her. But it hadn’t been about sex. Holmes had been studying her body for his painting.

  “I’d like to thank you,” Andrews said in a quiet voice.

  Teddy could feel the district attorney standing right behind him now. He held a file in his hand. He opened it and tossed it on the light table.

  “I spoke with your client last night,” Andrews said. “He confessed to the murders of Darlene Lewis, Valerie Kram, and ten other women. This is a copy of his statement. You’ll notice his signature on page ten.”

  Teddy felt the snake’s teeth pierce his skin, the venom freely entering his bloodstream. “You can’t talk to Holmes without permission from his attorney,” he said. “You broke the law, Andrews. This paper isn’t worth shit.”

  “But I did have permission from his attorney,” Andrews said. “Not you, Teddy Mack. Holmes’s lead attorney. Barnett offered his advice and consent. He listened to the confession over the telephone.”

  It felt like a knockout punch. Like he’d been tossed from a moving car and dragged over the concrete at high speed. Teddy paged through Holmes’s statement, unable to read it. When he turned the statement over, he froze. On the bottom of the file was a copy of their profile. The profile he’d sent to Barnett in his hospital room. Teddy’s note to the man was still attached.

  “Apparently you thought the killer was an artist,” Andrews said. “Thanks for making my case.”

  “He is an artist, Andrews. He’s just not this artist. You’ve bungled another one. You’ve got the wrong man.”

  The district attorney chuckled. “You’re young, Teddy Mack. You’ve got a lot to learn. Better luck next time. Barnett needs verification that the x-rays exist. Next time you talk to him, tell him what you’ve seen.”

  Teddy felt the poison enter his heart and shoot through his body. He flashed a hard look at Andrews, hoping he had enough inner strength not to strike the man. The district attorney couldn’t hold his gaze and stepped back. Teddy shook his head, still stunned. He thought of Holmes’s fragile mental state and knew his client would’ve agreed to anything if he was told it might stop his nightmares. He thought of Barnett selling them out and betraying them in order to make the deal. When he glanced at Powell, he saw her wipe something away from beneath her eye and turn away.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Teddy sat in the museum coffee shop, mulling over the aftermath of the explosion and filled with self-doubt. Andrews had a complete case now. He had the physical evidence linking Holmes to two murders. A witness who saw Holmes running away from the Lewis house. A painting of Darlene Lewis in the nude. And now he had a confession. Alan Andrews was a slime bag, but he had everything he needed to put Holmes away for the rest of the man’s life.

  Barnett’s betrayal was a different story.

  Teddy still couldn’t believe what Barnett had done. He thought he knew the man. He thought he’d been a good judge of character his entire life. Yet there it was in Holmes’s statement. Teddy looked away from the file Andrews had given him, wondering what kind of man would sell out his own brother-in-law. A member of his family who needed him.

  He felt sick.

  Powell entered the coffee shop and gazed at him from the doorway. After a moment, she stepped up to the counter, ordered a cup of decaf, and sat down on the other side of the table.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  Teddy nodded even though he wasn’t. He wasn’t sure who was worse, Andrews or Barnett.

  “I didn’t know about this, Teddy. Not until this morning. Alan wanted to keep it a surprise.”

  He gave her a look. He believed her.


  Still, the implications of the deal between Andrews and Barnett stabbed at his soul. The confession meant that the FBI would be out before they even got in. He could see Rosemary Gibb modeling for the painter with bad teeth who liked to order caffe lattes. The girl trying to hold on with no one looking for her. Time running out, and Rosemary not making it. The killer having his way with her, doing things to her with the knife, her lifeless body submerged in water when he was through.

  “What about the manager at the coffee house?” he said. “He wasn’t describing Holmes.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” she said. “But Holmes was in prison when Rosemary turned up missing.”

  “Did you mention that to Andrews?”

  She nodded. “He doesn’t think they’re related. People turn up missing every day. Besides, the confession changes everything.”

  Teddy lowered his eyes.

  “I know it’s hard,” she said. “You gave it a good shot. I’ve gotta get back to the office. But think it over, Teddy. The evidence is overwhelming. Read your client’s statement. I’ll give you a call this afternoon. Maybe we can meet somewhere and talk.”

  She hadn’t touched her coffee. She started to get up, then sat down again.

  “I did a little checking on my own,” she said. “The night Barnett was run over, Andrews attended a fund-raiser.”

  Teddy came up for air. “What about Michael Jackson?”

  “He went with him,” she said. “He likes free food.”

  FORTY-NINE