Robert Ellis - The Dead Room

Teddy noticed a calendar on the table. “What are you doing with that?”

“Checking lunar cycles,” Nash said. “There aren’t any. The kidnappings are occurring at random. Four weeks apart, then two weeks. Darlene Lewis was murdered six weeks after that. It started last September.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Not yet,” Nash said. “I think we need to consider what’s in Oscar Holmes’s best interest. We need time to begin a profile of the killer and think this through.”

Teddy’s eyes moved back to the flyers on the table. He reached into his pocket and fished out his cigarettes. As he lit one, he tried not to let the shock he was feeling show. The victims were adding up. The horror.

“They could be twins,” Teddy said. “You mean to tell me that the police aren’t already aware that something’s wrong?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say they were, Teddy. But you need evidence that a crime’s been committed. You need something to go on. Darlene Lewis’s murder set this in motion. Until two days ago there was no sign of foul play or we would’ve heard about it. Finding Valerie Kram’s body indicates a trend and gives the investigation speed.”

“I want you to see something,” Teddy said.

He pulled the murder book from his briefcase and opened it on the table, pointing to the letter he received in the mail without touching it. Nash leaned closer and began reading. When he was finished, he examined the envelope and smiled at the return address. 45 Somebody Street .

“I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to these,” Nash said. “We both will.”

“What about fingerprints?”

“If it’d make you feel any better, you should turn it over to the detectives working the case. Did you touch it?”

“I didn’t know what it was at first.”

“Send it in anyway. I’ve received hundreds over the years, but it’s never gone anywhere. Some have prints and others don’t. The trouble comes in matching the ones that do to a name and a face. John Q. Public, or should I say Colt Forty-five. I keep mine in a file in the drawer.”

Nash was trying to make him feel better, but it wasn’t working. As he watched Nash open a cabinet, he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. Then Nash handed him a plastic bag along with a pair of tweezers from the top drawer of his desk. In a way he felt like he might be overreacting. Nash had made it sound like death threats went with the job and that there would be more to come. At the same time, he felt a certain degree of terror as he pinched the note with the tweezers and read the words I’m watching you for the second time that morning. He dropped the note into the bag, then the envelope. As he placed them in his briefcase, Gail walked into the room with a sheaf of papers. Nash’s eyes went glassy as he looked at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, passing them over. “They started last January. I went back two years. This is all there is.”

She left the room, closing the door behind her. Nash laid the sheets of paper out on the jury table, one after the next. It was another series of missing persons bulletins off the NCIC database. Teddy flinched as he saw the faces, counting them while Nash arranged them by date. There were eleven. Darlene Lewis’s murder made it twelve. Every one of them looked as if they’d been born of the same mother and father. As Teddy stared at them, it felt as though they were staring back.

He shivered, pulling a chair away from the table and sitting down before them. He tried to look away, but couldn’t.

“At least we know what we’re dealing with,” Nash whispered in a gravelly voice. “It’s a serial killer, Teddy. Holmes or somebody else. Either way, he’s been working the city without detection for the past year.”

Teddy entered visiting room three, resting his briefcase on the floor and taking a seat at the small table. His escort told him Holmes was on his way down, then closed the door and walked off.

He checked his watch. It was just after 9:00 a.m. He would have liked to use the free time to check in with the office, but his phone had been taken at the front desk when they searched his briefcase. The door opened, and he turned to watch Holmes enter from the hall in his orange jumpsuit and sneakers.

Holmes’s appearance seemed even worse than two nights ago. There was a certain edge to his face, as if the panic had taken root and wouldn’t let go. And he looked worn-out and ragged like he hadn’t been sleeping. Teddy slid a chair away from the table, but Holmes shook his head and grunted without looking at it. He seemed fixated on the larger meeting room on the other side of the second door where inmates were beginning to visit with their families.

“Not in here,” he said. “I wanna be out there with them.”

Holmes stepped through the doorway. Teddy grabbed his briefcase and followed his client into the meeting room. When Holmes passed an empty couch heading straight for the far wall, he knew Holmes wanted to look at the paintings. Teddy had wondered why fifty works of art were on display in the main meeting room at Curran-Fromhold Prison and asked the assistant warden about it on his way out the other night. They were part of the one percent rule maintained by the city. Teddy was already familiar with the requirement because of his interest in real estate, but hadn’t expected it to filter down to a prison. If you were planning to build within the city limits, then one percent of your construction budget had to be designated for public art no matter what the amount. The one percent rule had transformed the city. Apparently, there weren’t any exceptions.

Teddy kept his eyes on Holmes as the big man carefully examined the first canvas, then moved on to the next. Although the paintings were of varying quality, Holmes seemed to linger over them without distinction.

“How you holding up?” he asked.

“Nightmares,” Holmes said in a voice that wouldn’t carry. “Bad dreams. There’s a man in the cellblock who cries all night. I think he’s only a boy.”

“You want to talk about it?”

Holmes shook his head back and forth without saying anything, his eyes moving to the next painting.

“What about your sister? You talk to her yet?”

Holmes stirred a little and shook his head again. Teddy was surprised.

“You haven’t had any visitors?”

“No,” he said. “Just you.”

“What about your neighbors?”

Holmes paused a moment as if the question hurt. “Just you,” he repeated more quietly.

Teddy stepped back as Holmes moved down the row. He guessed it would take fifteen minutes before Holmes was through. He didn’t mind because it gave him a chance to review his first impression of the man. A lot had happened since the night Teddy met Holmes. His client had been a bona fide murderer then, fitting the part to a tee. He still looked menacing, his hands remained heavily bandaged from the knife wounds he’d received on the day of Darlene Lewis’s murder, and the fingerprints Teddy had seen with his own eyes on the girl’s body matched conclusively. As Teddy tried to imagine Holmes teaching the little girl who lived across the hall how to paint-picking her up from school and making her dinner the way a father would-he was struck by the same feeling he’d had last night. The idea that he was missing something and not seeing the whole. The possibility that even though the physical evidence added up to Holmes, somehow there might be another explanation.

Holmes finally reached the last canvas. When he turned away, they found a place to sit down where Holmes could keep an eye on the paintings. He was staring at them like he needed them, like he was trying to hang on to something meaningful from his former life.