by Robert Ellis
Ding, dong, the witch is dead.
Teddy looked away, trying to keep his mind busy until they reached Nash’s office. There was the promise of a glass of wine. Teddy expected it would take more than one glass to settle his nerves.
Nash pulled into his space in the lot behind the building. As they climbed the stairs and entered the office, Nash switched on the lights and headed straight for the cabinet beside his desk. His limp was less noticeable, but still there.
“I don’t think champagne’s necessarily appropriate tonight. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Nash searched through the bottles until he found one to his liking. Then he pulled two glasses out of the cabinet and fished through a drawer for the corkscrew. Teddy moved to the jury table, lit a cigarette and sat down. He’d quit smoking a few years ago, but bought a pack for the night.
“I’ve got something I think might cheer you up,” Nash said.
“If it’s the wine, I’m ready.”
Nash laughed. “It’s old. Let’s hope it hasn’t turned. But I wasn’t thinking about the wine.”
He pulled the cork and carried the glasses over, filling each glass to the brim as he often did if they were drinking alone. Teddy tapped Nash’s glass with his own and took a first sip. The wine tasted clean and rich, and he glanced at the label as he swallowed another large mouthful. It was a Chateau La Mission Haut Brion that had been bottled nineteen years ago.
His eyes moved to the window behind Nash’s desk. He could see the E.T. House lit up in the distance. The house had been given the name and title by the curious, who still drove by for a look at the place on weekends. Nash followed his gaze and smiled at the irony of Trisco living within view of the office, his own desk, and the window that often served as a looking-glass.
“I have something I want to show you,” he said.
Nash opened the doors to the library, and Teddy followed him inside. At the other end of the main aisle a new set of double doors had been installed. Nash sipped his wine and opened them. What had always been a storage room was now a second office as large as Nash’s and completely refinished. Teddy glanced at the desk and table, the view of the E.T. House outside this window as well.
“We have another case, Teddy. Something fascinating. It involves traveling to Dallas, Washington, maybe even L.A. It will require a great deal of investigation. I think it’s something we can both sink our teeth into.”
Teddy finished off his glass, overwhelmed by the prospect of sharing offices with Nash. He realized that his mentor had been guiding him to this point in his life. That his friend thought he was ready to make an important leap. The next big step. When he noticed that Nash’s glass was empty as well, he smiled and told him he’d get the bottle and his cigarettes so that they could celebrate.
Teddy bolted through the library into Nash’s office. His new partner’s office. Rushing over to the jury table, his foot knocked over a walking stick leaning against one of the chairs and he watched it skid across the hardwood floor. He set his glass on the table and reached for the cane, hoping he hadn’t broken the thing and worried about his friend’s limp. When the metal tip dropped away from the shaft, he picked it up feeling guilty and gave it a quick glance.
His chest tightened. Everything stopped.
Teddy stared at the tip of the cane in the palm of his hand for a long time. It was made of Sterling silver. He noted the etchings and recognized the tall ships and whales. The last time he’d set his eyes on it, he’d thought he was looking at an antique shot glass. But it had been dark that night. Blood was strewn all over the snow.
“It was my father’s,” Nash said in a quiet voice from behind his back. “I probably should’ve gotten rid of the thing, but it had sentimental value and time had passed. With the understanding you’ve gained over the years, I wonder if it’s relevant at all.”
Teddy was afraid to turn around. He grit his teeth and imagined himself fleeing across the ocean’s surface, the backs of sharks his only footing. He looked at the lithograph on the wall—the empty prison cell—pulling himself together as he turned to face his new partner. His mentor and friend.
Nash stood in the doorway, studying him with a faint grin on his face and those dilated eyes of his.
“You’re upset,” Nash said, glancing at the cane in Teddy’s hand. “Maybe we should talk it over.”
Nash crossed the room, taking the cane away from him and leaning it against the far wall. His movements were casual, even graceful as he refilled each glass. Teddy stood motionless, keeping his eyes on him as Nash finally slid a chair away from the jury table and sat down.
“You ran over Barnett,” he heard himself saying in a hollow voice.
“He’s a pimp, Teddy. He wanted Holmes to plead guilty to a crime he hadn’t even committed. Come on. You’ve thought about this yourself a hundred times. I find your attitude astonishing.”
“I didn’t try to kill him,” Teddy whispered.
“I didn’t either, but other people’s lives were at stake. All I wanted to do is get the fool out of the way so that we could get started. He slipped on the ice. He got hurt, but survived. In the end it all worked out. Holmes is free and Rosemary Gibb’s alive and well.”
Teddy shuddered, playing back Barnett’s accident in his head and realizing for the first time that what Andrews had told him in prison was probably true. Someone else had shot Eddie Trisco.
Nash set the wine bottle down. “If this is about me giving you that whack over the head, then please accept my apology. At the time, it couldn’t be helped.”
Teddy wasn’t thinking about being beaten unconscious. “I met Andrews in prison,” he said. “He told me that he thought someone else could’ve been in the house the night Trisco was killed.”
“You mean murdered, don’t you, Teddy? Alan Andrews was executed tonight for the murder of Edward Trisco the Third.”
Nash seemed amused. He took another sip of wine and lit a cigarette from Teddy’s pack. Teddy ignored the smirk, forcing himself to keep going.
“I met him two days after it happened,” Teddy said. “Andrews told me that he heard the shot and found Trisco on the floor when he entered the room. Someone else put the gun to Trisco’s head and pulled the trigger. Someone else planted the box of hollow-point shells in Andrews’s car.”
“Given what we know, Teddy, I’d say that’s entirely possible. I believe the defense attorney at his trial raised the same point. No one paid much attention to him though. Not after your testimony as an eyewitness.”
It hung there. Teddy’s role as the prosecution’s eyewitness.
“That person is you,” Teddy managed.
Nash seemed delighted by the news, casually wiping a fallen ash from his sleeve. It took Teddy’s breath away.
“You set Andrews up from the beginning. Ever since I met you.”
“I don’t hate the man,” Nash said in an even voice. “I loathe him. And I guess after what happened tonight I should get used to speaking about him in the past tense. When we left the prison this evening, the man looked quite dead. The world is a better place without Alan Andrews. I’ve been following his career for a long time. Long before you and I ever met. Why do you suppose he was the subject of my legal workshop? I never hid my distaste for Andrews. I did everything I could to make it public.”
“But he died tonight for something he didn’t do....”
“Oh, really? After all that’s happened, is that what you really think?” Nash tapped the ashtray with his cigarette and briefly watched the head burn. “You might have a hard time convincing the families of his victims, Teddy. They died for something they didn’t do as well. Something they never even asked for. What happened tonight seems more poetic than what you’re suggesting. Andrews got what he gave out. Nothing more and nothing less would really do.”
“What about the missing women? The murders? The bodies? That fake call from Dawn Bingle wanting to meet me at the boathouse?”
Nash stopped to
consider the sudden barrage of questions. “You’re thinking I used you,” he said after a moment.
Teddy nodded without saying anything. Playing it all back in his head, it seemed so clear now.
“It wasn’t planned, Teddy. Much of it happened as we went along. After you’ve had a chance to think it over, I’m sure you’ll agree that it was the only way. I found Valerie Kram’s body quite innocently a few days before Darlene Lewis’s murder while on a walk along the bike path by the river. There’s a bench on the other side of the boathouse I like to use. I saw her in the ice as I sat down.”
“Why didn’t you call it in?”
“She was frozen in the ice. She wasn’t going anywhere. And it would’ve been a distraction. I was thinking about the work my students had done. I didn’t come forward because I didn’t want it to interfere with the findings we were about to make public regarding the district attorney. It would have confused the issue if I’d called the police and used my name. But with the Lewis murder and Holmes’s arrest, everything changed. I was hoping someone at the club might find the girl’s body, but a day passed and no one did. Then you showed up at my office. You were following Barnett’s lead, ready to send Holmes off to prison for the rest of his life without even questioning what happened. I thought you needed a wake-up call. I asked a friend, and she was only too happy to oblige.”
“You say it wasn’t planned, but you knew about the body at the boathouse. You must have known it was a serial killing.”
“I suspected it when Darlene Lewis was murdered,” Nash said. “I was struck by their likeness, but wasn’t sure.”
“When you printed the bulletins on the missing girls, when you laid the flyers out on this table, it was a charade for my benefit. You already knew.”
Nash shrugged. “I wasn’t sure,” he repeated. “Not until then.”
“When did you know it was Trisco?” Teddy said.
“The same time you did. Actually a little later. You solved the riddle, Teddy, not me. When you told me that it was Trisco, that’s when I knew. You’ve got talent. An authentic gift. Instincts and an imagination most attorneys would die for. Let’s leave it at that.”
Teddy became silent, trying to slow his mind down. He was rushing over the details and missing them. He remembered the press leak detailing what the authorities thought Holmes had done to Darlene Lewis at the time of her murder. Teddy had always blamed Andrews for the leak, but now he realized it had come from Nash. The city was up in arms over the brutality of the girl’s death. Leaking the details stirred the pot, pushing Andrews farther out on the limb with his case against Holmes. Nash was pushing Andrews to the point of no return because he thought Holmes was innocent and knew how the district attorney would react. Nash had the man cornered. But still it wasn’t enough and the district attorney could have slipped through.
Teddy remembered what Andrews had told him in prison. After reading their profile, Andrews had been stunned. He had the evidence against Holmes, but wasn’t certain. He’d gone to Trisco’s house trying to verify his mistake, gone in secret because he’d been afraid to admit that he had the wrong man. In the end, Nash pulled the trigger and killed Trisco because he knew it would change everything. Nash knew what it would look like before anyone else did.
“I’m surprised at you, Teddy. Maybe a better word would be concerned. You don’t seem to understand that society has great difficulty in dealing with a man like Alan Andrews. The powers that be can barely handle someone as obvious as Eddie Trisco. How could anyone become that ill without someone noticing and doing something about it? But the former district attorney, the late Alan Andrews, is an entirely different matter. There are lots of Alan Andrews in the world, more than you think. People who will destroy evidence, suppress it, or even make it up in order to win their verdict because in their head they know. Or what about the prosecutor who makes an honest mistake, but doesn’t have the strength or integrity or conscience to correct it. Society doesn’t punish people like this because it doesn’t want to admit that they even exist. I can assure you that what I may or may not have done would’ve been performed only as a last resort. What Alan Andrews did is far worse than what Eddie Trisco did because of his intent. Had Andrews been on top of things when Trisco was first arrested, not one woman would’ve been murdered. The idea of watching society reward the man by making him mayor of the city—well, thank goodness neither one of us has to sit on the sidelines and watch that. You should know all this better than most. You’ve had a firsthand view. Your experience with your father. His arrest and untimely death.”
It was the way he said it that shook Teddy to the bone. Mentioning his father so easily and the way he spoke about Andrews’s demise as if he suffered no guilt or regret. Nash had acted as judge and jury, sentencing Andrews to death as if it was a calling from a higher order. And while much of what Nash was saying seemed familiar to Teddy, even true in the cosmic sense, the implications of his behavior were impossible to deal with.
Teddy’s eyes rose from the floor. Nash was looking him over carefully.
“What’s happened since we met was never about catching a serial killer like Eddie Trisco,” Nash said after a long moment. “Or even about hunting down a district attorney who lost his way and put innocent people to their deaths. It was about us, Teddy. I came back for you. I came back to help you get past your father, shed your demons, and show you the way out.”
Teddy steadied himself against the wall, riding on the train through the tunnel into the black.
“What way is that?” he asked.
“When you walked into my office with the Holmes case, I knew who you were. And it was obvious that you were still running. Your father was falsely accused of murdering his business partner. Your father was murdered in his cell as he awaited trial. Your father’s murder changed a lot of people’s lives in this city. Not just yours.”
Teddy wiped his eyes, no longer trying to hide the fact that his hands were shaking. “What do you know about my father? Who are you talking about? Whose life was changed?”
“Mine,” Nash said. He stubbed out the cigarette, then leaned back in the chair and gave Teddy a hard look. “You see, I was responsible for his death.”
Teddy’s mind blurred and almost faded. “The prosecutor’s name was Stephen Faulk,” he said. “The man’s dead. He committed suicide.”
“I was an ADA at the time,” Nash said, gazing into the past. “It was Faulk’s case, but he was young and didn’t make the decision on his own. He came to me with what he had. I reviewed the case with the district attorney, but still had a lot to learn. I didn’t see it and made a mistake. When the county jail was faced with overcrowding, I made arrangements with the city and had your father transferred to Holmesburg Prison. Don’t you see, I’m the one who put him in that cell.”
It hit like napalm, the flames stretching out in a fiery wash that clung to Teddy’s flesh and burned his soul.
“That mistake changed everything for me,” Nash whispered. “Words can’t describe how sorry I am. I’ve spent my entire life trying to right that wrong. And now we’re together, and I’m hoping you won’t burn down. You won’t be a victim of your past. Instead, I’m hoping you’ll learn from it, Teddy, fight back and join the cause. We’ve got work to do. Enough to keep us going for a long time.”
Nash eased Teddy’s wine glass across the table as an offering to their partnership. Teddy spotted his cigarettes beside the glass. They seemed so far away. He wasn’t sure he could move, really. He wasn’t sure he could reach them....
About the Author
ROBERT ELLIS is the national bestselling author of Access to Power, The Dead Room, City of Fire, The Lost Witness, and Murder Season. His books have been translated into more than ten languages and are available in all formats. Born in Philadelphia, Robert moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a writer, producer, and director in film, television, and advertising. Visit him online at www.robertellis.net.
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Robert Ellis, The Dead Room
