Robert Ellis - The Dead Room

Teddy nodded. “I don’t see Vega or Ellwood.”

“Our warrants came through. Vega’s over at Andrews’s house. We’ve got another team going through the Trisco’s estate in Radnor. Ellwood’s in the water with the camera. He dives.”

Teddy followed her eyes to a small TV lying in the snow. He hadn’t noticed it because the monitor was wrapped in a blue canvas tote case with a hood shading the screen from the stark, winter sun. The monitor was attached to a video recorder. A yellow cable ran from the back of the recorder into the water.

He knelt down with Powell and the others, gazing at what looked like a blank screen. His first thought was that he wished it had just been a bad dream. But as he glanced at the lake, he saw the indentation in the ice where his car broke through. His pulse quickened some and he turned back to the monitor sensing movement on the screen. Ellwood panned the camera through the murky water and the houses at the bottom began to take on definition. When the faces appeared in the windows, the models Trisco had used for his painting, the camera shook and Teddy noticed that no one on the dock was talking anymore. Other divers swam in and out of the shot, waving the fish away from the nets as they cut the corpses loose and began towing them back to shore. But the bodies weren’t just in the windows. Several women had been strapped down to chairs. Others were in the kitchens tied down to stoves, or laying out in the bathtub. Trisco had done more than merely dump his victims here. He’d populated the underwater setting, positioning the corpses as if they were dolls. Teddy imagined Trisco visiting his playground, swimming through the rooms as often as he could.

“How many are there?” Teddy said to Powell.

“Twenty-three,” she said with a look. “So far.”

Teddy did the math. Darlene Lewis had been the twelfth murder, Harris Carmichael, number thirteen. The previous eleven murders could be isolated from the list of missing persons because they shared a similar appearance. Trisco had chosen them as models because they looked like variations of his mother. But Eddie was also collecting tattoos and harvesting skin for his painting. Physical appearance wouldn’t have been a consideration with the second group. No trend would have been detected. Trisco could have hung out at any tattoo parlor, strip club, or in Darlene Lewis’s case, found her with a computer on the Web.

“Most tattoo artists keep records of their work,” Powell said. “Once we’ve had another look at missing persons, I think we’ll have a better idea of who they are. Maybe even a list of names.”

“What about Valerie Kram?” he said. “Why do you think he dumped her in the river instead of here?”

“We’re working on a time line,” she said. “The lake would freeze before the river. She hadn’t been in the water very long. Either he had a problem with ice, or he just got lazy and didn’t want to drive this far.”

Teddy turned back to the monitor and saw a diver swim into the shot and wave Ellwood forward. The nets vanished and his car appeared in the middle of what used to be a street. Teddy grimaced as he stared at the screen. The Corolla was lying upside down beside a streetlight and stop sign. The trunk was open. Pointing at the tires, the diver grabbed a hose and waved Ellwood closer. Then he made a slicing gesture as if he held a knife in his hand. It was the brake line. Someone had slashed it with a knife.

Teddy had seen enough and stood up. Powell followed him off the boat launch into the yard, her eyes on him.

“Vega called an hour ago,” she said in a voice that wouldn’t carry. “He’s found something at Andrews’s place.”

“The shot glass?”

She shook her head. “Papers. Records of payments in a notebook.”

“To who?”

“Michael Jackson,” she said. “The payments weren’t big, but they go way back and it adds up.”

Teddy took it in without saying anything. He was still thinking about Valerie Kram’s body in the river at the boathouse. The woman who called him and led him there. Dawn Bingle.

“Jackson’s not the only name on the list,” Powell said. “There’s another.”

It hung there. Dark and heavy like the sight of his car turned over on the lake bottom.

“Is it a woman?”

Powell nodded.

“Would I know her?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “But my guess is that Nash would. She works in the lab. She’s a forensic scientist. Her name’s Vera Handover.”

Something about the glint in Powell’s eyes told him all he needed to know. The five cases Nash had been working on when they first met. Each one of them was a death penalty case in which the district attorney may have gotten it wrong. He remembered Nash telling him about the lack of evidence. In some cases, it had been mishandled. In others, the evidence was lost or destroyed.

“Do you think she’s the one who called me?” Teddy asked.

“She’s already in custody. You’ll have to come in and listen to her voice.”

Teddy glanced at the lake and saw Ellwood emerge from the water with his camera. His dark cheeks had a blue tint to them. In spite of the cold, he looked all wound up from what he’d just seen. Teddy turned back to Powell.

“You realize what’s happening,” he said. “Andrews is gonna take the heat for everything Trisco did.”

Powell nodded. “I’d say he’s gonna need a good attorney.”

Teddy gave her a look and realized she wasn’t really thinking about Andrews’s attorney. Something in her face had changed. The warmth was gone, and Teddy figured that she had the brass ring on her mind. The needle . After she got through with Andrews, he probably wouldn’t need a lawyer anymore.

The steel door clanged shut behind them, and Oscar Holmes, formerly known as the Veggie Butcher, trudged into the prison lobby wearing his own clothes and clutching his sketches, along with several magazines and a stack of mail, close to his chest. His dead eyes flirted with the walls, then zeroed in on the entrance and parking lot outside. His ruined face remained blank, his emotions still in a trancelike sleep. What he’d seen and chosen to forget remained out of reach.

Teddy pushed the door open and they stepped outside. The sun had vanished. Oceans of dark gray clouds were tumbling in from the southwest. As he watched Holmes lumber across the parking lot in silence, he knew Nash had been right. Oscar Holmes wasn’t ready for the world just yet.

Teddy pointed to the Ford wagon and they climbed in. Holmes’s oversize figure dwarfed the car and the man slid the seat back without a word. Pulling out of the lot, Teddy noticed Holmes staring at the press lined up behind the guard shack outside the gate. Holmes didn’t even blink as the strobe lights started flashing. Instead, he turned in the seat, keeping an eye on them and watching the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility fade into the background.

Teddy made a left onto the entrance ramp and brought the car up to speed as he eased into heavy traffic on I-95. He wouldn’t be driving Holmes to his apartment. Arrangements had been made with his neighbor, the young mother who lived across the hall and had stood by Holmes with her daughter from the beginning. They would be spending the holidays at her parent’s home in Cape May at the shore. In a week or so, with a little luck, the press might take a step back and give Holmes the breathing room he needed.

At least it sounded good on paper….

Teddy glanced over at the man, still holding his possessions tight to his chest with his large hands. Tears were streaming down the man’s cheeks as he stared out the windshield.

“I don’t want to see my sister,” he whispered. “Don’t want to see Barnett either.”