Robert Ellis - The Dead Room

Originally from Baltimore, Rosemary Gibb had moved to the city only one year ago and was a student at Drexel University. She didn’t have many friends, and called home to check-in on a regular basis. Her mother had been reading the papers and was aware of the Darlene Lewis murder. When she couldn’t reach her daughter, she panicked and called the police. Detective Ferarro seemed to have taken a special interest in finding Rosemary, perhaps because Valerie Kram’s body had just been found. Rosemary lived within a mile of Boathouse Row and only four blocks from the Central Detective Division. An examination of her apartment revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

Everything except for her picture. Her likeness.

Ferarro admitted to Teddy that he spotted the similarity between Rosemary, Valerie Kram and ten other young women he’d been trying to locate over the past year. He stepped up his investigation, and with the help of a partner and ten cops in uniform, scoured the neighborhood. Because Drexel and Penn were set side by side, they worked both campuses with the help of volunteers from the police academy. By day’s end, they’d narrowed their search to a health club just off Walnut Street downtown. A classmate, another young woman who worked out at the gym, remembered seeing Rosemary on the Stair Master that night. They checked every business around the club, including a cafe located directly across the street, but turned up nothing. Rosemary’s classmate had been the last person who remembered seeing her before she vanished.

The following day, Detective Ferarro was given an early heads-up on the DNA results linking Holmes to the murders of Darlene Lewis and Valerie Kram. Detectives Vega and Ellwood were asking him for his files on any related cases dated prior to Holmes’s arrest. That left Rosemary out, as Nash said it would. Ferarro was looking for her just the same as he was looking for thirty other people from all walks of life. But he was out of leads, and Teddy knew that Rosemary was in the wind.

Teddy made a right onto Scottsboro Road, didn’t see any cars or news vans outside the Lewis house, and pulled over to the curb. Breaking open the flap on a cup of take-out coffee, he took a sip and lit his second cigarette of the day while he waited for his escort. When a neighbor drove by in a Lincoln Navigator, a woman with two young children in the backseat, he caught the look in her eyes, the fear and suspicion. Darlene Lewis’s murder-that ominous feeling of death-pervaded more than just the Lewis house. It was part of the neighborhood now.

Teddy turned back to the house. He wasn’t interested in the dining room or even the plumbing. Three days ago he’d walked through the place thinking Holmes had been caught in the act. He wanted to get a feel for the house without all that baggage. He wanted a clean view.

A car hit its horn. Teddy watched the DeVille sweep by and pull to a fast stop before him. Michael Jackson got out, not the dancer but the detective with tired legs and an old gun who’d worked with the DA since Andrews got rolling. He had a manila envelope in his hand. As he approached, Teddy tried to remember the shape of the figure standing in the darkness who clubbed him over the head. His memory wasn’t clear enough to make a match, but Jackson had a big smile going, and Teddy wondered if the detective wasn’t overcompensating for what he’d done.

“I come bearing gifts,” Jackson said with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Just like Santy Klaus.”

Teddy took the envelope, pried it open and peered inside. Photographs from the crimes scenes and autopsy.

“You’re keeping an album, right?” Jackson said. “A murder book? Powell asked me to give them to you. She said she wants to keep you up to date.”

“She say anything else?”

“Yeah, kid. You can’t be trusted. We’ll have to stay close.”

Teddy tossed the envelope on the front seat and they walked to the house. As Jackson pulled out the keys, Teddy glanced at the letter box on the wall, then turned to the door. The curtain on the other side of the glass was opaque. He heard the lock click and watched Jackson swing open the door.

“Wait a minute,” Teddy said before the detective stepped inside. “I want to see something first.”

“What do you want to see, kid?”

“Stand out here a minute.”

Teddy walked inside and started to close the door.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Jackson shouted. “You heard the lady. We’re supposed to stay close.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I just want a look through the curtain.”

“Okay, but no tricks. I don’t like tricks, kid. I never have.”

Teddy closed the door. Taking a step back, he looked through the curtain. He could see Jackson’s form, but any details were masked by the cloth. Darlene Lewis could’ve opened the door for the killer, thinking it was someone else. She could’ve let the man in.

“You’re wearing me out, kid,” the detective barked through the door. “You seen it yet, or what?”

Teddy opened the door. Jackson gave him a look and stepped inside.

For the next hour, it worked the same way it had at Holmes’s apartment. Teddy would go through a room with Jackson standing behind his back chaining cigarettes and hacking on the smoke. When he walked outside for a look at the pool in the backyard, Teddy noticed the spent beer keg. He walked over and gave it a shake in the snow. To his surprise, the keg wasn’t empty, but full. Darlene Lewis had been planning a party before her death.

Teddy stepped back into the dining room. The place hadn’t been cleaned up yet. He glanced at the blood spatter on the walls as he passed through the room and headed for the stairs. It still bothered him, but not like it had. He could hear Jackson behind him in the hall, staying close but trying to keep out of his way as well. Teddy walked into the girl’s bedroom, and paused. His eyes went right to the computer. He noticed a photograph on the table of Darlene with someone he guessed was her boyfriend. He turned on the computer. As the machine booted up, he heard the words, “You’ve got mail.”

Teddy saw him walk out of the library with his head down. Long brown hair, medium height with a pack thrown over his shoulder, and skinny as a rail. Teddy glanced at the snapshot he’d lifted from Darlene Lewis’s bedroom when Jackson opened a window and flicked his smoke outside. They were a match. The kid exiting the library was Russell Moss-Darlene Lewis’s classmate at the Friends School and the boyfriend who’d sent her the e-mail.

He slipped the photo into his glove box, watching Moss stroll almost aimlessly away from the building. The campus had the feel of a small college, and Teddy guessed that tuition for the private school was just as steep. When Moss reached the sidewalk heading for Germantown Avenue, Teddy got out of the car and approached him.

Moss looked up from the ground. Teddy’s suit threw him a little, but Moss was eighteen and there wasn’t much difference in their age.

“I need to talk to you, Russell.”

“What about?”

“Darlene Lewis.”

The kid’s eyes fell to the ground. “Who are you?”

“A lawyer. Someone trying to help.”

The kid was nervous, shifting his weight and adjusting his book bag over his left shoulder, then switching it to his right.

“I’ll miss my bus,” the kid said.

“You’re girlfriend’s dead and you’re worried about catching a bus?”

The kid looked him in the eye. His nervousness wasn’t born of fear, but of sadness. Maybe even a measure of self-inflicted guilt.

“Drive me home,” he said. “What you want is there.”

They got in the car and made the short drive to the teenager’s house. Russell Moss was a latchkey kid. When he came home from school, there was no one there. The modest house was set on a heavily wooded half-acre lot three blocks south of Germantown Avenue a mile or so west of the school. Once they were inside Teddy noted the fresh paint on the walls, the polished hardwood floors, the comfortable furnishings. He glanced at the bookcases in a small room by the stairs as they headed up to the kid’s bedroom. Moss came from a family of readers.