Robert Ellis - The Dead Room

“You don’t have to, Holmes. You can do anything you want. You’re free.”

“But they’ve been calling.”

Holmes wiped his cheeks and turned away. Teddy followed his gaze to Holms burg Prison in the distance. Black smoke could be seen rising from one of the chimneys. Unwilling to face his own demons, Teddy tightened his grip on the wheel and looked away.

“And then there’s this,” Holmes said.

Teddy felt an envelope drop onto his lap but didn’t pick it up. Exiting off the interstate, he wound through a construction zone until he reached Third Street, and found a place to park beneath the Ben Franklin Bridge. Holmes’s neighbor hadn’t arrived yet. He left the motor running, easing the heat back as he opened the envelope and withdrew the letter. Noting yesterday’s date at the top, he started reading. It was a business offer, and a large sum of money was on the table. Someone wanted to open a chain of restaurants in the city using Holmes’s nickname as the Veggie Butcher . When Teddy glanced over at Holmes, the man actually smiled at the irony.

“I’m gonna need someone to oversee my affairs,” Holmes said.

“I’ll do whatever you want.”

Holmes glanced at the business offer. “I don’t want to do that.”

Teddy nodded, slipping the letter into his jacket pocket and reaching into the backseat for a paper bag. He handed it to Holmes, who seemed surprised. After a moment, Holmes lowered his sketches and magazines and dug into the package. Teddy had stopped by an art supply house on his way to the prison and bought a variety of paints and brushes. Holmes stared at the gift and appeared overwhelmed.

“Darlene Lewis modeled for you, didn’t she?” Teddy said.

Holmes remained quiet, flicking his thumb over a brush.

“I saw your paintings,” Teddy said. “The x-rays. You knew about the tattoos. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I used to take my time sorting the mail and peeking in the front window. Darlene thought I was looking at her, and sometimes I was. Who wouldn’t? Most of the time I was just looking at what they had hanging on the walls.”

“But she modeled for you, right?”

“No,” he said slowly. “She didn’t believe I painted. She teased me about it and called me a fool.”

“Then how did you know about the tattoos?”

“On the computer. She told me where the pictures were.”

“Why did you end up painting over them?” Teddy asked.

“They didn’t come out right. They looked so sad.”

Holmes turned away, his eyes lighting up as he noticed a metallic-blue Honda Civic pulling up to a parking meter across the street. Teddy recognized the young girl in the backseat as Holmes’s neighbor and looked at the woman behind the wheel. The gray sky was reflecting off the glass and blocking most of his view, but he caught the blond hair, her high cheek bones, a hint of blue in her eyes lost in the clouds. She looked young, gentle, somehow familiar. After a moment, it dawned on Teddy that she had modeled for Holmes as well. The first two paintings Andrews had shown him at the art museum had been her. Only now, all the melancholy was gone.

Holmes gathered his sketches and paints and opened the door.

“Do you remember what happened?” Teddy said. “Is the day Darlene Lewis died any clearer?”

Holmes shook his head and lowered his voice. “Just his face. The one in the paper. It’s the same face I see in my dreams. He’s holding a knife and slicing open my hands.”

Holmes shivered and gave him a look. The story was rising to the surface in bits and pieces, Teddy thought, like an airline that had broken up and plummeted into the sea.

“You’ve got my address and phone number at the house, right?”

Holmes nodded.

“What about your medications?”

Holmes tapped his jacket pocket and nodded again. They shook hands. Then he shut the door with his knee and crossed the street. Teddy watched him climb into the Civic, hugging the woman and her daughter and kissing them. When they finally drove off, the girl glanced back at Teddy through the rear window, flashed a smile, and waved.

Teddy pushed open the door and found Nash’s assistant, Gail Emerson, working at her desk. The door to Nash’s office was closed, but voices could be heard from the other side. Gail checked the wall clock and smiled.

“He’s in a meeting,” she said. “It’ll probably go for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe into the night.”

“Who’s he with?”

“The district attorney’s office and three students from the workshop. They’re going over their work from last semester.”

The five death penalty cases Andrews had been involved in. The district attorney’s office had put the investigation on the fast track.

“Is Carolyn Powell in there?”

Gail shook her head. “It’s only a briefing. They want to know what we have.”

She gave him a knowing look and smiled again like they had the goods.

“Do you think he’d mind if I went in?”

“I don’t think you should, Teddy. But I’ll let him know that you stopped by.”

Teddy took the hint and walked out. As he stepped into the cold air and started down the sidewalk to his car, he was struck by a feeling of loneliness. He was out of the loop. His role had played out and given way to a kind of emptiness he hadn’t experienced since his years as a teenager. He thought a beer might help. Maybe after two or three the pain in his shoulder might fade into the background as well.

He looked at the note left by his mother on the kitchen counter by the coffeepot. Apparently there had been a lot of calls to the house last night. So many that she decided to switch call-forwarding on and send them directly to his cell phone, not knowing that it was at the bottom of the lake.

As he poured a cup of coffee, Teddy checked the drive and noticed his mother’s car was gone. It was after nine and he’d managed to sleep in.

He sat down at the table and picked up the phone, dialing his cell number. Then he punched in his pass code and waited for the digital voice to count his messages and retrieve them. There were fifty-seven. Apparently, the digital voice didn’t know that the phone had drowned either.

Teddy leaned back and grabbed the pad and pen off the counter, sipping hot coffee and paging through the messages without listening to them for more than a second or two. Most of the calls were from people he didn’t know. Reporters wanting information and requesting interviews. Jill had called from the office and left two messages, once yesterday afternoon, and another this morning. Barnett had even called, announcing his release from the hospital. His voice had a certain perk to it. A fake vitality Teddy found so irritating, he skipped to the next message. But it was the last call that shook him up. He peered through the steam in his watch, fighting off his memory of the lake trapped inside the lens and realizing the message had been left just twenty minutes ago.

Alan Andrews had called. He wanted to meet as soon as possible and said they needed to talk. He was being held at Curran-Fromhold, and guessed that Teddy knew where the prison was.

Teddy thought it over as he gazed through the doorway at the greenhouse his father had built. The additions to the house had been made with precision and remained seamless. His father had been in his prime when he’d been knocked down by a man like Alan Andrews.

He lifted the handset and punched in the direct number to his desk at the office. To his surprise, the line hadn’t been changed and Jill picked up after the first ring.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“They’ve spent the morning tearing apart your office,” she said.