Robert Ellis - The Dead Room

The connection hadn’t been made by new evidence or even a leak. It had been made by Andrews at his press conference last night just as Teddy feared it would. Both women had been cut. That, along with their age and appearance, was enough to bind the two cases together. Getting to Holmes without confirming anything alleged was even easier. While one reporter detailed the events leading to Holmes’s arrest for the murder of Darlene Lewis, another writer spent yesterday afternoon at Holmes’s former butcher shop, interviewing old ladies from the neighborhood who remembered Holmes, and getting photographs of them buying flank steak and pork sausages. The women recounted stories of Holmes’s talent with a knife, mixed with excited laughter and occasional squeals over what he’d done. Most of the women seemed to be saying that, for the love of God, they could’ve been next. Teddy glanced back at their photos, fighting off an urge to smile as he noted their age and weighty figures. None of them looked quite like Darlene Lewis or Valerie Kram, and he imagined they were safe for now.

He closed the paper, concluding none of it was real. The district attorney may have gotten the headlines he wanted. Oscar Holmes was tagged a serial killer without really saying it, and the case was the talk of the town. But the ground had been fertilized by innuendo. Not a single fact had been leaked and the word cannibalism hadn’t appeared in print. They’d gotten off lucky, Teddy thought. When the details were brought out in court, the headlines would be far worse.

Barnett swiveled his chair around from the window. The pill must have kicked in because his anger had subsided and an almost eerie state of calm had set in.

“Do you understand why headlines are never going to work in our favor?” he said in an unusually quiet voice.

Teddy nodded. “They’ll spoil the jury pool.”

Barnett grimaced and blinked, trying to rein his emotions back in. “No, goddamn it. Because every new headline makes Andrews stronger and moves him farther away from making a deal. I’ve spoken with Nash, and he agrees.”

“When did you talk to him?”

“I hung up the phone when you walked in.”

“What did you say?”

“Just what I’m saying to you. This case is about avoiding the press and getting Holmes to plead guilty. This case is about making sure someone who needs medical attention gets the psychiatric care he so obviously needs.”

While Barnett may have spoken with Nash, Teddy didn’t believe that Nash agreed to capitulate. Particularly now, when they’d just isolated ten more victims, and Holmes’s guilt remained up in the air. It didn’t make sense.

“What did Nash say?” Teddy asked.

“At first he didn’t see it that way. When I brought him back to reality, he did.”

“What’s the reality?”

Barnett gave him a look. “That in a civilized world, we don’t execute the mentally impaired.”

Teddy had to hand it to Barnett. The man had an uncanny ability to dig up a bottom line and make it sound good even if it might be the wrong one.

Holmes stood out. There was no question that he was different, maybe even odd. And he was distraught, confused, teetering on the edge. But he had a right to be, Teddy thought. For two days he’d been told he murdered someone, and like everyone else, he didn’t appear to know what actually happened. He was alone. All he had were glimpses of the murder scene, the dead body, a young girl’s blood on his clothes. Who wouldn’t be having nightmares? Given the circumstances, the gore, who wouldn’t lose faith in themselves? The man needed help, but nothing Teddy had seen in his two visits indicated he was mentally ill.

“How’d you leave it with Nash?” Teddy asked.

“What’s with the twenty questions?”

“How did you leave it?” he repeated.

Barnett adjusted his cufflink, his eyes glazed. “The way you did last night. He’s still on board. What’s with you?”

Teddy didn’t say anything. As he looked at Barnett, he became overwhelmed with worry for him. He liked Barnett and admired him, but didn’t understand his reasoning. It was obvious enough that Barnett still wanted to sweep Holmes under the rug and make the case go away as quickly as possible. How the truth might play out seemed lost in Barnett’s frayed emotional state. Maybe it was to protect Holmes’s family. Barnett had mentioned that they’d been friends for a long time. Perhaps Barnett looked at what happened to Darlene Lewis and guessed that no crime so horrible could be a killer’s first step into the gloom. Given the circumstances, there had to be more. Teddy wished he could help Barnett. He wished he could understand and do something for him.

“What time’s the autopsy?” Barnett asked.

“In another hour.”

“You okay about going?”

In spite of his doubts, Teddy nodded.

It would be another afternoon spent with dead bodies. He was glad Powell was bringing Holmes’s checkbook. He’d called her on the drive into town from prison. Although she still appeared distant, she confirmed that the police had the checkbook and agreed to bring it with her to the medical examiner’s office. Any distraction would help him get through it.

“We need this to end,” Barnett said quietly, “so that we can both get back to work. I’ll make this up to you. I swear I will.”

Teddy laid the newspaper on his desk. Barnett gazed at Holmes’s photo, then turned the paper over and shook his head.

“In another week or two the evidence will be in,” Barnett said. “By then Holmes will have gotten tired of living in a jail cell. We’ll go out together, Teddy. We’ll show him what they have and talk to him. I’m sure he’ll agree that a plea is his only way out.”

Teddy didn’t say anything. Instead, he nodded like he thought Nash would and hoped Barnett would come to his senses. But as he left the office, he thought about what Holmes had admitted to him just an hour and a half ago. That he didn’t want to know what happened because he thought he might be the one. If Barnett wanted the man to plead guilty, Oscar Holmes was just about there.

Teddy hadn’t prepared himself for the smell….

It rolled toward him in waves, growing more oppressive as he moved deeper into the medical examiner’s building and finally reached the examining rooms. The smell of death was so thick Teddy thought it might knock him down. As a boy, he’d once found a deer lying by the side of the road. As a student, he remembered opening a refrigerator that had been switched off for a week or two. But nothing he’d experienced in his past even came close to this.

They stopped before what looked like a prep room. Teddy followed Andrews, Powell, and Detective Vega inside. As two medical examiners passed out jumpsuits, Teddy caught Andrews staring at him. The man was laughing at him, and must have been waiting for Teddy’s reaction to the foul odor.

“You get used to it,” Detective Vega said.

“How long’s it take?”

“A couple of years,” Andrews shot back.

Teddy ignored Andrews, stepping into the jumpsuit carefully because it was made of paper. In the corner of the room he saw several jumpsuits in the trash and realized the protective clothing was meant to be thrown away once the autopsies were completed. He glanced at Powell, noticing her long legs as she slipped the paper suit over her short black skirt. She hadn’t mentioned Holmes’s checkbook. She hadn’t said a word to him since they entered the building. He knew she was still angry with him, still didn’t believe his story about how he’d found Valerie Kram’s body at the boathouse. Even worse for her, it was over now. It had ended the moment Andrews took credit for finding the body. She looked frustrated-trying to balance her job in the face of Andrews’s political career. As he watched the two of them interact, they seemed as different as night and day, and he wondered if they got along.