Robert Ellis - The Dead Room

It was only seven-thirty, and the new day was off to a good start.

He leaned back in his chair, watching one of the kids from the mail room push the cart down the hall and wondering if the death threat he’d just received had anything to do with being led to the boathouse. His first thought was that the note had been written by an angry crank, but the words I’m watching you stood out. It seemed like a lot of people he didn’t know were watching him.

Jill walked through the door, wrapped up in a ski jacket with her face still glazed from the cold. Her briefcase was slung over her shoulder, and she held a cup of take-out coffee in her gloved hands.

“You’re in early,” she said.

Teddy nodded, even tried to smile. “I’ve got to leave in a half hour, but I’ll be back.”

He didn’t want her to worry by showing her the note or envelope. As she got out of her jacket, he slid them into the murder book with his pen, closed the binder and placed it in his briefcase.

“You got ten minutes?” he asked.

She nodded, prying the lid off the coffee and taking a tentative first sip.

“Valerie Kram,” he said. “I need to go up on the net and see what’s out there.”

“The woman they found in the river?”

He nodded. She paused a moment, taking it in like her day was off to a good start, too. Then she lowered her coffee to the table and sat down before the computer, ready and willing. As she typed in her password, Teddy rolled his desk chair over and took a seat beside her.

“Do you want a global search,” she asked. “Or should we just check the newspaper’s archives?”

“I want everything,” he said.

Jill typed Valerie Kram’s name into the search window and hit ENTER. After a moment, thirty or more listings appeared on the screen. Jill scrolled down the page, weeding out entries about another woman with the same name working as an environmentalist in Oregon. When she was done, only five listings remained. The first three links sent them to missing persons organizations, offering help and guidance to families trying to cope with their loss. But the fourth link led to a newspaper article from the Philadelphia Inquirer , dated October 29, three days after Valerie Kram’s disappearance. Teddy gazed at the girl’s picture, then read the story. Valerie Kram of Manayunk, twenty years old and a student at the Philadelphia College of Art, was officially missing. Kram shared an apartment with a roommate, who became alarmed when Kram didn’t return from her daily jog on the bike path along the Schuylkill River. The roommate called Kram’s parents, and the police were notified. End of story.

Jill printed the article, then clicked back to the search list. Teddy didn’t recognize the remaining entry and asked about it.

“It looks like a newsgroup,” Jill said. “Someone probably set it up under Valerie Kram’s name.”

“Let’s take a look,” he said.

Jill clicked on the link and several hundred entries appeared. Fifteen minutes later, they’d read them all. The entries amounted to notes sent back and forth between Kram’s mother and her daughter’s friends over the course of the past six weeks. As time passed, Teddy could sense the level of panic rising in the mother’s tone until just two weeks ago when the notes dwindled off and hopelessness set in.

Teddy found the whole thing disturbing as he mulled it over. Haunting and perhaps even ghoulish. The notes had been posted in the newsgroup before anyone knew the outcome. Before anyone knew that Valerie Kram was dead. From what he’d just read, it was apparent that she’d come from a tight knit family and had no reason to run away. The money in her savings account hadn’t been touched, and her car was found in the lot where she parked to go jogging. According to her roommate, Kram hadn’t discussed any personal problems with friends or given any indication she wanted to leave home. Although the police considered her missing and registered her name and photograph on the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database, they hadn’t been investigating her disappearance as a possible kidnapping or murder. Friends and family had been interviewed, the bike path scoured with the aid of cadaver dogs. A witness who saw her jogging had been located, but no evidence was found indicating foul play.

Teddy got out of the chair and into his coat. Jill turned toward him, her brown eyes gently searching his face.

“They stopped looking for her,” she said.

He shook it off and grabbed his briefcase, the frustration welling up into his chest. It came down to man power, he thought. And the lack of a single tangible lead, made all the worse by the fact that adults turn up missing every day. In Valerie Kram’s case, they’d found her after the war was over. They’d been too late.

Teddy walked in on Nash’s assistant. She was seated at her computer and concentrating on the screen, but didn’t seem to mind the interruption. They’d met in the hall yesterday, and when she recognized him, she flashed a genuine smile and shook his hand, introducing herself as Gail Emerson. Teddy thought she might be about fifty, but couldn’t really tell because her attractive appearance remained so youthful. Her hair was a mix of different shades of blond. Her eyes were blue and smart, but somehow easy and warm.

“He’s expecting you,” she said, glancing at the door. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

Teddy looked at the fresh pot sitting on the table by the window, thanked her but shook his head. He didn’t need any more caffeine right now. On the drive over, he’d stopped at the post office and bullied his way into an early morning meeting with Holmes’s supervisor. The clock was ticking. And Teddy was trying to determine what Holmes had been doing on the day Valerie Kram disappeared. October 26 had been a Wednesday. The supervisor could barely speak English but seemed to be able to read. Although the man wasn’t pleased with Teddy’s visit, he went through the employment records and verified that Holmes checked in at 6:00 a.m., worked his usual nine-hour shift and punched out at three that afternoon without incident. According to what Teddy had read, Valerie Kram vanished at dusk. Nothing he learned from Holmes’s supervisor even hinted at a possible alibi.

He stepped into the office. Nash was standing over the jury table puffing on an early morning cigar. When he looked up, his face seemed a little pale.

“It’s worse than we thought,” he said.

Teddy noted the concern in Nash’s voice. As he moved closer, Nash handed him a sheet of paper. It was a missing persons bulletin pulled off the national computer database. The same flyer on Valerie Kram that ADA Carolyn Powell had shown him yesterday at the boathouse. Below Kram’s picture was a complete physical description along with the date and place she was last seen. Teddy didn’t understand Nash’s concern until he glanced down at the jury table. There were two more flyers. The dates were different, and so were the names.

“After I pulled Kram’s sheet,” Nash said, “I broke down her physical description and went back a month. Then two months. This is what came up.”

Teddy set the flyer down beside the others, struck by the similarity of their faces. Though their individual features varied to some degree, there could be no doubt that they shared the same overall appearance and style. It was a certain kind of beauty, but not the brand manufactured on a model’s face in a fashion magazine. Instead, their radiance emanated from beneath their skin. Each one of them looked like they had something more to do in life than primp before a mirror or plan their next visit to a plastic surgeon. The word soul came to mind.