Robert Ellis - The Dead Room

He looked at the roots and tried to focus, wishing he could find the lights because something about the image seemed wrong. After a moment, he felt a quick shot of adrenalin streaking through his chest and heard himself gasp.

Inside the roots of the tree was someone’s arm.

Teddy bolted into the water, charging across the room. The doors were latched in the center. Flipping the lock open, he grabbed hold of the recessed door and heaved it into the wall. When he stepped outside, he shuddered.

Her body was naked but for a black tube top clinging about her ribs. She was stretched out on the ramp beneath two feet of water, her blond hair encrusted in a thin layer of murky ice and discolored snow.

Teddy kicked through the crust with his heel, grabbing her by the shoulders. With brute force, he yanked her body up through the ice and into his arms. As he rushed inside, he shook her as if he could somehow bring her back to life. Spotting dry concrete, he laid her down on her back and almost choked.

A rope was tied to her ankles, the loose end frayed. Her pale gray skin was extremely wrinkled and littered with dark splotches. And she’d been cut down the middle of her chest. Lifting the tube top, he followed the course of the wound all the way down and knew she’d been split open with a knife. He looked at her swollen face. Her eyes were open, but missing. That’s when he screamed.

They wouldn’t be tenting this one. They wouldn’t be fumigating the corpse in a roaster bag with burned up super glue. What the river water hadn’t washed away from the girl’s body, time and schools of fish had….

Teddy sat on the floor of the boathouse, leaning against the wall and trying to compose himself. ADA Carolyn Powell was kneeling before him, overwrought with disbelief and suspicion, and holding a flyer that included the victim’s picture in her hand. Apparently, the girl’s name was Valerie Kram and she’d been missing since mid-October.

Powell narrowed her eyes and told him to say it again. Teddy had shown her where he found the body and recounted his story six or seven times over the last three hours. Every time Powell got off the phone, she wanted more.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “Until yesterday, I was working on a personal injury case. I had an appointment with someone. I came down here, but she didn’t show.”

“And what?” Powell shot back. “You walked into the boathouse and found another body. Valerie Kram. Just like that.”

Teddy gave her a look, knowing his story sounded preposterous. “Just like that,” he said.

The medical examiner was working on the body ten feet away and well within earshot. “We don’t know who this is yet,” he said.

Powell ignored him, her eyes still drilling Teddy. Everyone in the room seemed to know who it was.

“The missing persons unit has been looking for Valerie Kram for six weeks,” Powell said. “You found her in what, a half hour?”

Teddy remained quiet, his eyes drifting back to the body. It struck him that Valerie Kram looked remarkably similar to Darlene Lewis. They were roughly the same age. They shared the same coloring and overall style. The implications seemed ominous.

Powell stood up, clipping her cell phone to her belt. “The treasurer of the boat club is Fred Bingle,” she said. “But his wife doesn’t work for an insurance company and he doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Her name’s not Dawn, it’s Doris, and she’s a housewife. Capital Insurance Life has no record of an employee by that name either. The phone number you gave us isn’t even part of a cellular network. It belongs to a dot com company that hit the skids two months ago.”

He didn’t say anything. He knew that he’d been set up the moment he found the body. He knew that he’d been led here to find it, and that the Holmes murder case was no longer what it seemed.

“This is bullshit,” Powell said. “You’re gonna need a better story, Teddy.”

District Attorney Alan Andrews was standing with Detective Vega and his partner, Nathan Ellwood, watching the ME cut the tube top away from Valerie Kram’s body with a pair of scissors. But the district attorney was shifting his weight and fidgeting. Once Teddy had pulled himself together, he’d made the call to Powell on his cell phone. She notified Vega and Ellwood, but a dispatcher had made the mistake of using the radio to reach the ME rather than a land line. The press had overheard the conversation, and were waiting for Andrews outside in force. Andrews was still angry about it and looked edgy enough to snap.

“Forget about the kid,” he said to Powell. “He made a mistake. A big one. He’s trying to cover his tracks and it’s not working very well.”

“What are you talking about?” she said.

Andrews turned. He had a smile going now and appeared mean as his eyes locked on Teddy’s.

“There’s only one way he could’ve found the body,” Andrews said. “And that’s if Holmes told him where he’d left it. Nice work, Teddy Mack. You want a job with the prosecution team, just say the word. Either way your client’s a dead man.”

Powell moved closer. “Is that what happened, Teddy? Did Oscar Holmes tell you where the body was?”

Teddy lowered his eyes, trying to hide his anger and surprise and the feeling that the situation had a life of its own he couldn’t control. He hadn’t thought about the next step. He hadn’t considered what the scene might look like to others when he called for help. He heard Andrews snicker, then watched the man return to the corpse. The ME had removed the cloth and was examining the wound down the girl’s chest. It was long and deep, all the way through but still somewhat frozen. Unlike Darlene Lewis, none of her skin appeared to be missing.

“One thing’s certain,” the ME said. “You guys need to adjust your time line.”

“Why?” Andrews asked.

“If this is Valerie Kram, then she turned up missing in October.”

“It’s Valerie Kram,” Andrews said. “Her face matches the picture. She was last seen jogging on the bike path. So what?”

“This girl hasn’t been dead for more than a week or two.”

Andrews snapped to attention, then knelt down for a closer look at the body.

“The water would’ve been relatively warm in October,” the ME said to him. “Once she went into the river, she was part of the food chain. Fish. Turtles. You get the idea. And she’s swollen, but not bloated. Most of her hair’s intact. Her flesh is still clinging to her bones. If she’d been in the water for two months, she wouldn’t resemble that picture any more. Not by a long shot. What was left of her would look and feel like Jell-O.”

The ME pinched the dead girl’s skin, trying to make his point.

Teddy turned away, glancing at the crime scene techs roaming through the building as he thought it over. Not many women jogged in a tube top. And if he could trust what he’d just heard, then Valerie Kram probably hadn’t been murdered here or anywhere near Boathouse Row. The murderer had picked her up somewhere along the bike path. He’d taken her away and kept her for more than a month, then dumped her in the river when he was through with her. If the rope holding the corpse to the bottom had held, no one would’ve ever found her. But that didn’t seem very important right now. What stood out for Teddy was the time the murderer spent with the girl. The place he held her. The dread in his gut that Holmes might be responsible for a second young woman’s death.

“I’m gonna schedule of double autopsy,” the ME said. “Her and Darlene Lewis.”

“When?” Andrews asked sarcastically. “Next week?”

“Tomorrow,” the ME said, ignoring the spike and turning to his assistant. “Let’s bag this up and get her out of here.”