The Dead Room

by Robert Ellis

  Not this time.

  Teddy knelt down and scooped the bloodstained snow into the bag. As he stood up, he spotted the glass he’d dropped before the struggle. A candy wrapper lay beside it in the snow. He moved toward it, carefully eyeing the wrapper without touching it. Flipping it over with a stick, he read the label. It was the wrapper from a grape-flavored Tootsie Pop. It looked like something was smeared on it and he moved closer. When it registered that he was staring at cum, he flinched. He looked at the window, playing the scene back in his head. Trisco had been spying on his mother with his dick out. The sick motherfucker had been jerking off.

  He shuddered, fighting off the urge to vomit. After he caught his breath, he flicked the wrapper inside a second plastic bag with the stick. Holding the bag to the light, he pressed the seal and double checked its grip. Then he glanced back at the house and saw his mother in the kitchen ready to go. She looked so innocent. Almost like an angel. He knew she hadn’t asked for this.

  As he stood up and crossed the lawn with two samples of the serial killer’s DNA, he thought about firing the shotgun. The feel of the kick, and the roaring sound it made. He could see the window exploding into the car. The wheels gripping the asphalt beneath the snow. The license plate fading into the gloom. The plate was issued in Pennsylvania. Teddy had always been good at remembering numbers. This was one he wouldn’t need to write down. D07-636.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Teddy stood over the jury table, cupping his hands around the coffee mug and soaking in its warmth. Nash was at his desk, on the phone with an agent from the FBI’s field office in Center City. He’d given the agent Trisco’s license plate number and was trying to explain why Teddy collected blood and semen samples on his own and fucked up the crime scene. It didn’t sound as if it was going very well. Nash sipped his drink undaunted. Not his usual coffee, but a glass of Skyy vodka poured over ice.

  Teddy shuddered. He could still hear Trisco laughing. Still see him in the snow giggling with the knife spiked through his leg like a lightning rod.

  His decision to touch the evidence had been made in the heat of the moment after firing a gun at another human being. He’d been worried about his mother, his own family and their past.

  He shook it off. What mattered was that he and Nash weren’t alone anymore. They were working with the FBI again, and had been the minute they returned from their meeting with Trisco’s psychiatrist that afternoon. They’d called Nash’s friend in Washington and given Dr. Westbrook a full report. The field office had been mobilized, and the FBI would be running their own stealth investigation in spite of Holmes’s bogus confession to the district attorney.

  Teddy looked at the stack of faxes on the jury table that had been coming in from the field office all night. Before his arrest five years ago, Edward Trisco III had been a promising artist of some talent. His name was mentioned in several art journals, and the reviews in most cases were better than good. But as his insanity burgeoned, Trisco seemed to lose his edge. His last one-man show had been a disaster, and the articles began to dwindle off. When he kidnapped the model, they stopped all together and his career was over.

  A copy of the model’s initial statement was here. The one she had made before Trisco’s parents choked her with fistfuls of cash. Teddy picked it up and began reading. When Trisco wasn’t painting the girl, he kept her in his bedroom closet, bound and gagged. He’d broken three of her fingers and managed to sprain her wrist. Bite marks were visible on her body and photographed by a police photographer after her escape. As Teddy studied the photos, it didn’t seem as if she and Trisco met at a party, got high, and had a falling out.

  He turned away and glanced out the window. The streets were empty, the hour late. He couldn’t shake the image of Trisco’s face. The one haunting Holmes in his dreams. There was something familiar about it. He’d seen him before, but couldn’t remember where. That off-center look in his eyes. His madness in full bloom. Teddy couldn’t believe that Andrews hadn’t seen some trace of his insanity five years ago. Even if he was blind, Teddy wondered how Andrews could give Trisco a pass after reading the victim’s statement. And what about Trisco’s family? What were they saying to Andrews as they handed him a check written in blood for his campaign?

  Edward’s a good boy at heart. He had a crush on the girl. He didn’t mean to sprain her wrist, break her fingers and bite her. He would’ve untied her and let her go. Edward’s a good boy and would have let her go....

  Nash hung up the phone and sipped his drink. He looked pale and subdued, more worried than Teddy had ever seen.

  “They want the DNA,” he said.

  “Are they pissed?”

  “They want it. Let’s leave it at that. Two agents in plain-clothes are driving out to your house. They’ll take a look and keep an eye on things.”

  “What about the license plate?”

  “They’re working on it,” Nash said. “But the results are in from earlier this evening and they aren’t good. They’ve run Trisco through their computers in Washington. They’ve checked telephone records and looked for a street address. Trisco doesn’t have a bank account or a single credit card issued in his name. He lives without health insurance or even an auto policy. According to the IRS, he hasn’t filed a tax return in five years. After his release from Haverhills, Edward Trisco dropped off the map.”

  “What did they say?”

  “That he fits the profile. And he’s living under another name.”

  Teddy felt the push of anger rising up his throat. If Andrews had done his job five years ago, none of this would be happening. When Teddy noticed that his hand was shaking, he hid it behind him as he leaned against the wall. He thought about Trisco wearing socks over his shoes in order to mask his footprints in the snow. Trisco’s brain damage might be measurable, but on what scale? Teddy guessed that the license plate number he’d seen on the back of his car was nothing more than another dead end.

  “What about the hospitals?” he said. “He’s wounded.”

  “Every agent is on the street.”

  There was a videotape on the desk, something Dr. Westbrook had sent them from Washington. As Nash slipped the tape into the VCR and hit PLAY, Teddy leaned against the jury table and looked at the image fading up on the screen.

  A twenty-year-old boy was on a stretcher, overdosing on Ecstasy outside a nightclub. Nash appeared deeply troubled as he watched, and for good reason. The boy’s body shuddered, then buckled like a fish pulled from the cool sea and thrown down on a hot frying pan. Twisting from side to side, he arched his back, fell down and bounced up again in a tortured flexing motion he couldn’t control. Instead of quietly passing away, the kid was making an extended run into the black.

  “He’s burning up from the inside out as if someone cooked him in a microwave,” Nash said in a somber voice. “He never made it to the hospital, Teddy. Eight hours after his death, his body temperature was still over a hundred and six degrees.”

  Teddy turned away, unable to watch. After a while, he heard Nash click off the TV, the sound of ice clinking as he picked up his glass.

  “Why do you think Trisco stepped out into the open tonight?” Nash asked.

  It was the right question. The one that changed everything.

  Teddy started pacing in frustration. “He knows we’re on to him.”

  “I agree,” he said. “But I find it troubling. Particularly when you consider what’s in one of those plastic bags.”

  Teddy followed Nash’s eyes to the semen sample on the jury table. He knew where Nash was headed. The thought had crossed his mind as well—the possibility that Trisco was tiring of Rosemary after only five days.

  “We need more help, don’t we,” Teddy said.

  “I think so, too.”

  “But what about Andrews?”

  Nash lowered his drink and pushed it aside. “I wasn’t suggesting that we turn to the district attorney,” he said. “I had ADA Powell in mind. I think you’ll find she’s re
ady to listen to you now.”

  Their eyes met. As Teddy grabbed his jacket and pulled his arms through the sleeves, he couldn’t help but agree.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  It was three-thirty in the morning. Teddy threw his briefcase into the car, got the engine started and the heat on. He didn’t have Powell’s home number, but knew she carried a cell. If she didn’t answer, he had her address.

  He flipped open the phone and noticed that it was switched off. When he turned it on, he saw the message icon blinking on the screen and entered his code. There was only one call, but it had been left by Powell at ten-thirty that night. After initiating the search for Harris Carmichael, the missing persons unit found out that Teddy had returned to Benny’s Café Blue with a photograph of someone. Powell wanted the name and sounded angry.

  That makes two of us, Teddy thought.

  He punched her number into the phone. Powell picked up after five rings, sounding tired.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “Yes, we do.”

  “I met the man who followed Rosemary out of the café.”

  “Where?” she asked, her voice picking up speed.

  “My house,” he said. “He knows where I live.”

  A moment passed. A long silence followed by the sound of a police siren in the background, and Teddy wondered if she slept with the windows open even in winter.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “In the city. Outside Nash’s office.”

  “I’m working, Teddy. I’m not at home.”

  He lit a cigarette, the faint image of Powell in bed tumbling down the empty street with a gust of wind.

  “Is Andrews with you?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m with Detectives Vega and Ellwood. We found Harris Carmichael.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “Not much.”

  It hung there. Teddy cracked the window open, realizing Carmichael was dead. Nash had been right. Powell would finally be ready to listen.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “The west end of Spruce Street. There’s a park by the river.”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  He slipped the phone into his pocket, accelerating through the intersection in spite of the red light. Edward Trisco had murdered Harris Carmichael. He must have seen them together the other night at the café. They were sitting at the table by the window. The same table Trisco had used to sit and watch Rosemary work out at her gym. An image surfaced, along with a shiver, and Teddy suddenly remembered where he’d seen Trisco before. On the street as he and Powell had left the café. When they stopped at the corner, Trisco had been standing just a few feet behind them. He had a scarf over his mouth, but the zombie look in his eyes was the same. Trisco had followed them to his office that night and found out who he was.

  Teddy grimaced as he thought about the violation, Trisco’s invasion of his property and life. The idea that like Carmichael, Teddy or even his mother could have been the next milestone in the misinvestigation of Darlene Lewis’s murder, tagged and bagged and shipped off to the morgue. When he met with Powell, he’d have to control his impatience, reel his anger back a couple of notches, find a way to seize his composure and hold on.

  He looked at the speedometer and eased off the gas, keeping an eye out for ice patches and listening to the rock salt beat against the underside of his car. As he made a right onto Spruce Street, he saw the lights three blocks off. Police cars, crime scene techs, the medical examiner’s van. Finding a place to park would be impossible. When he reached a break in the cars and spotted a fire hydrant, he pulled over, grabbed his briefcase, and started hustling toward them on foot.

  The press had been pushed up Twenty-fifth Street, the park surrounded by bright yellow crime scene tape. Teddy could see Powell standing with Detectives Vega and Ellwood, watching the medical examiner bag the body. As Teddy dipped beneath the tape and a cop protested, Powell looked up and gave the okay. She was wearing a ski parka over a black skirt and tights. Her blond hair and blue-gray eyes were bright and shiny and more vivid than the moon. But the expression on her face matched the detectives. It wasn’t easy. Just grim and hard.

  Teddy’s eyes drifted down to the body bag, already set on the gurney. Vega yanked the zipper open and stretched the plastic apart. When Ellwood hit the corpse with a high-powered flashlight, Teddy tried not to flinch.

  Harris Carmichael had been mutilated. Puncture wounds littered every inch of his frozen body. His eyes were open but milky, and looked as if they’d popped out of his head. His mouth and nostrils were pressed shut and unnaturally crooked.

  “What’s wrong with his mouth and nose?” Teddy said.

  “They’re glued shut,” Vega said. “The rest was just for kicks.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “A neighborhood dog,” Powell said. “Carmichael was buried in the snow. Now let’s talk.”

  He followed them to an unmarked car idling by the curb. Vega and Powell took the front seat with plenty of attitude. Teddy climbed in back with Ellwood, opened his briefcase and pulled out the photograph Jill had printed off the Internet.

  “His name’s Edward Trisco, and he comes from money. He’s got a history with the district attorney. The Holmes confession and the evidence you collected at Darlene Lewis’s house is bullshit. Trisco’s the one you’re looking for.”

  They traded glances, which Teddy expected but ignored.

  “There’s blood on your jacket,” Ellwood said, eyeing him carefully.

  The detective switched on his flashlight, following the splatter down the front of Teddy’s coat until he reached the tear just above the pocket. He poked his finger through the hole, examining the shape of the cut while Powell and Vega watched. The material was slashed open and shredded. Trisco’s knife had been sharp.

  For the next half hour, Teddy told them everything he knew about Edward Trisco III. Seeing him on the street the night he and Powell spoke with Carmichael at the café. The assistant manager’s positive ID of his photograph. Trisco’s history with the model five years ago, along with an off the record summary of what Teddy and Nash had learned from his psychiatrist. Vega spent most of the time drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup and shaking his head. Ellwood remained silent, leaning against the door for distance and studying Teddy’s demeanor. Powell wanted to see evidence of the money Andrews had received from the Trisco family. When he showed her the papers and pointed out the dates, her eyes sharpened and she passed them over to Ellwood, who switched his flashlight back on.

  It was the first time Teddy had gone through the case from beginning to end. Vega and Ellwood were particularly interested in Holmes’s nightmares. Both detectives had been present when Holmes confessed to Andrews, and heard Holmes talk about his dreams in detail. What Teddy had just told them did not discount the physical evidence against Holmes, or even his confession that he murdered Darlene Lewis, Valerie Kram, and ten others. But Teddy could see the troubled look on their faces, the disappointment and worry. There was the chance that they’d made a mistake, the veil suddenly lifted. Everyone knew that with enough work, confessions could be made to happen whether they were true or not. Teddy felt certain that at the very least, he had their attention. When he was through, he dug back into his briefcase and handed Vega the death threat he’d received in the mail, sealed in a plastic bag.

  The medical examiner tapped on the driver’s side window. Vega turned and lowered the glass.

  “Some asshole’s got a camera on the roof,” the ME said. “I wanna get the body out of here. You got a problem with that?”

  They looked out the windshield, scanning the roof lines and spotting the video camera on top of a townhouse on the corner. One of the local TV stations must have paid off the owner in spite of the hour. The camera operator had a bird’s-eye view of the entire crime scene.

  Vega nodded at the ME, then raised the window slightly and lit a cigarette. He leaned against the do
or, examining the letter and envelope Teddy had received from Colt 45 on Somebody Street. After a moment, he passed it over to Powell without showing any emotion. He was mulling it all over, the glint in his eyes moving like the runner lights on a plane sweeping across a midnight sky.

  Teddy’s cell phone rang. It was Nash, calling from his office with news from the FBI. When Teddy hung up, he pushed his briefcase aside and sat back in the seat.

  “The plate on Trisco’s car was stolen from the long-term parking lot at the airport.”

  “So what else is new,” Ellwood said.

  Teddy shot a look at Powell and held it.

  “The car they found parked beside it,” he said. “It belongs to Rosemary Gibb.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  As they swept up the long drive, the Trisco estate came into view through the leafless oak and maple trees. It was a large Tudor-styled mansion in Radnor, just a few miles from Teddy’s house, and he remembered reading about the place in the magazine section of the Sunday Inquirer as a boy. It was more of a building than a house, set on fifty acres of undeveloped land in the woods. In spite of all the cars parked before the entrance, the place looked closed.

  It was six-thirty in the morning. Vega had picked the time wanting to cause as much disruption as he could. Ellwood had stayed behind at the crime scene, asking for the keys to Teddy’s car. The detective wanted to shepherd the evidence back to the lab at the roundhouse, coordinate their effort to find Trisco with the FBI, and review the evidence against Holmes in light of Teddy’s story. Everything would be done on the QT, and Vega agreed. Apparently both detectives had a thing for Andrews that began with their inherent distrust of Michael Jackson, the detective assigned to the DA’s office. Still, they were a long way off from reaching a conclusion on Alan Andrews, or even thinking about their approach to the problem if what Teddy said was true.