Robert Ellis - The Dead Room

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Teddy checked his watch. It was after eleven. When the day started, he was about to win his first ruling in civil court. Now he was helping Jim Barnett shepherd a maniac through the system who insisted on a trial. It would be prolonged. Loud and painful for everyone.

He spotted his car ahead, keeping his eyes on the ground and pretending to check the wet asphalt for ice. He knew Holmesburg Prison was on the other side of I-95, and didn’t want to look at it. He was afraid to look at it because he thought he might break. It had been a long day of keeping everything down. Turning off his memories, forgetting what was past-he hadn’t told anyone that this was the stuff of nightmares for over half of his short life. Having to meet Holmes had only been the hideous icing on a poisoned cake.

When the assistant warden told him about the Curran-Fromhold murders, Teddy had acted like he was hearing it for the first time, even though he wasn’t. His father had told him the same story when he was just fourteen. Teddy had heard the rumors at school and asked him about it while making a Saturday visit to the prison with his mother. His father admitted they were true, while trying to reassure his worried son that this kind of thing didn’t happen anymore.

Everything would be okay.

Teddy wiped the snow off the windshield. As he started the car his eyes went directly to the temperature gauge on the dash. Thirty-three degrees. The roads might be slippery, but they wouldn’t have turned to ice yet. He switched on the heat. While he waited for the car to warm up, he dug his cell phone out and checked his messages. There were three.

The first was from Brooke Jones, requesting his original files on that personal injury case. She said she couldn’t find them in the canvas tote bag she’d taken from his office, and tried to make it sound like what she was doing for him amounted to a big favor. She was a bitch from the word go, and he couldn’t stand the affected tone of her voice. Jones was one of those people you see so often on the road these days. In a hurry going nowhere. Teddy deleted the message before she was through.

The second message was from Jill Sykes, warning him that Brooke Jones was going to call. He smiled at her timing, listening to her urgent whisper with the sounds of the office in the background. As she hung up, he couldn’t help hoping that the firm would hire her once she got through her exams. He needed an ally. Someone who wasn’t always keeping score.

The third message would be from Barnett. Teddy switched on the interior lights and grabbed a pen in case he had to write something down. The phone beeped and the message started. Two seconds later, the phone beeped again. It had been a hang-up, probably from Jones. Barnett hadn’t called, and Teddy found it incredible. He punched Barnett’s cell number into his phone. When the message center kicked in, he swore. Obviously, Barnett had turned off his phone. Teddy flipped open his address book and found Barnett’s home number. He punched it in, trying keep cool. The phone rang four times and then Barnett’s service picked up.

Teddy slipped his cell phone into his pocket, wondering what the hell was wrong with Barnett. After a moment, he switched on the wipers and backed out of the parking space. As he pulled past the gate and out of the lot, the car made a sudden shift and slid. He couldn’t tell if the roads were slick or it was just his car. He knew all four tires needed to be replaced, but had been trying to put off the expense until after the holidays. His credit cards were maxed out, and when he applied for a new one last week, they had turned him down. Either way, he could feel the Corolla slipping on the pavement. Teddy backed off the gas, easing the car up to speed in short bursts. As he climbed the exit ramp onto I-95, the lights from an approaching truck hit the rearview mirror and Teddy looked away from the glare. His eyes swept through the darkness and stopped on the abandoned building hidden in the falling snow.

Holmesburg Prison.

The building was completely dark, the ancient prison silhouetted against the wrecked cityscape of North Philadelphia. He hadn’t wanted to look at it. He hadn’t wanted to see it, but there it was-rising out of the muck after being buried in his mind for so long.

His father had said it would be okay, but it really wasn’t.

Teddy tightened his grip on the wheel, knowing he was losing it. He checked the temperature gauge and watched the cold air drop six degrees below freezing as he reached the city, then left it behind, heading west on the expressway. The roads were covered in a black glaze, and the freezing rain had given way to heavy snow. Digging into his pocket, he fished out the pack of Marlboros and lit one. Then he cracked the window open and flipped on the radio, hoping that if he concentrated on the chatter, his mind wouldn’t slip from the surface the way his car was skidding down the road.

It would be okay. His father said it would. Teddy had been so young at the time, he believed him. Two weeks later, the phone rang and his mother got the big call….

Jonathan Mack had been an architect and builder of moderately priced homes in the suburbs fifteen miles west of the city known as the Main Line. He’d formed the business with a high school friend upon graduation from the School of Architecture at Yale, and after ten years of struggling, people began to notice their innovative designs. A few years after that, they couldn’t build houses fast enough. But Teddy’s father had been a visionary. He could see the sprawl eating up the countryside and had an idea he thought could save it. Instead of building one development of single-lot homes after the next, he’d been playing with the idea of designing a self-contained community. People needed a place to live, and the government wasn’t up to doing anything about the population, which was out of control. The choice seemed clear. Either you compacted the living space or you cut every tree down. Jonathan Mack’s goal was to save the land.

A site was found for the project, a team of architects commissioned to assist with his father’s design. Teddy could remember watching his father go over the drawings every night at the game table in his study. His father seemed so happy, and Teddy would sneak peeks at him, hiding behind the rail of the staircase in the living room. There were lots for hundreds of townhouses, a space for a shopping center so no one would have to drive very far and waste gas, and then just as much space for three corporate parks. It was like his dad was designing an entire city.

The amount of money required to develop the project was enormous. Yet his father secured the financing easier than anyone anticipated. It was in the genius of his plan. It made sense and it was by Jonathan Mack. Everyone wanted to be in on it, Teddy remembered-except for the environmentalists. One night he’d been allowed to attend a town meeting with his mother and younger sister. They sat in the back row and watched the presentation and the questions that followed. Some of the people seemed mean, Teddy thought at the time, and many of them were angry at his father. But Jonathan Mack never batted an eye. Instead, he told the environmentalists that he agreed with them. Then he turned the slide projector back on and showed them aerial photographs of what the area would look like in twenty years if it were developed as single-lot homes. They were caught up in the short-term view, he said, just as he had been less than two years ago. In spite of all the construction, his father pointed out that they were only using forty-five percent of the land. The rest of the property would remain untouched forever. By the time his father was done, the mood in the room changed and even the key environmentalists were on-board.

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