Robert Ellis - The Dead Room

“What are they looking for?”

“Your termination notice. First Stokes, then Barnett on crutches. They’re looking for the envelope. Stokes put it on your desk and now it’s gone. They seem upset. Even frantic.”

Teddy detected a certain joy in her voice, but couldn’t keep up with her.

“Start at the beginning, Jill.”

“Have you seen the papers this morning?”

“No. Not yet.”

“You’re on the front page,” she said. “The story’s coming out. They’re saying you solved the crime. You saved the girl’s life. You’re the reason the E.T. Killer is dead, and an innocent man was set free.”

“Who’s they?”

“Nash, Carolyn Powell, the police and the FBI-everyone.”

Teddy took another sip of coffee without saying anything.

“Barnett and Stokes are looking for the termination notice because they want to tear it up. It makes them look bad that they fired you. Don’t you see, Teddy, you and Holmes are famous now.”

He thought about the business proposition offered to Holmes. A chain of restaurants opening around town called the Veggie Butcher . The circus was underway, American ingenuity, afoot.

“I haven’t been in,” he said. “I don’t have the letter.”

“Of course you don’t. Stokes changed the locks. Now he’s had them changed back again so you won’t notice.”

He shook his head. Stokes defied explanation.

“Then where’s the notice?” he asked.

“In my purse,” she said. “I picked it up for you the day Stokes put it on your desk.”

He smiled as he listened to her laugh. She’d spent the past few hours watching Barnett and Stokes squirm and probably savored every minute of it. Barnett and Stokes deserved to squirm and more. Much more. And Jill was a good friend.

“I’ll see you in an hour,” he said.

He crossed the garage and stepped into the elevator, carrying two boxes he’d picked up at the liquor store on his way into town. The law firm occupied the sixteenth and seventeenth floors. He could probably empty his desk and make it out the door before Barnett and Stokes received word that he was even in the building by simply entering the office on the lower level and using the stairs within the firm to avoid passing the receptionist’s desk. That’s if he cared. But he really didn’t.

The elevator stopped at the lobby and a woman entered. He knew her to be a seasoned attorney and partner at another firm on the fourteenth floor. In the past she had never spoken to him. Today she said hello, and even smiled as she got off. The doors closed again, the elevator starting up.

He could feel his heart beating in his chest and became angry at himself as he acknowledged his nervousness. He couldn’t work for a man like Barnett. No matter what his financial situation, or the hardships he might face, he couldn’t do it.

The elevator opened, and he breezed through the lobby ignoring the people staring at him. From the corner of his eye, he caught the receptionist reaching for her phone.

He legged it down the hallway and into his office, lowering the boxes to his desk. Jill turned from the computer, got up and gave him a long hug. He felt her lips press against his cheek, then move to his neck, burrowing in. He tightened his grip, holding her in his arms.

“I was so worried about you,” she whispered.

“It’s over, Jill. It’s done.”

She pulled away and looked at the boxes. “You’re leaving,” she said.

He nodded without saying anything, then moved around to his desk. He started with the top drawer, jerking it out and off the rollers and dumping the contents into the first box. As he pushed the drawer back into the desk and yanked out the second, he sensed someone in the doorway and looked up.

Jim Barnett was standing in the hall, dressed in one of his hand tailored suits from Milan and leaning on two aluminum crutches, his legs now set in plaster casts. He looked pathetic. And Teddy knew he was using it, milking it, but that it wouldn’t work.

Teddy dumped the contents of the second drawer into the box and grabbed the third.

“You’re being overly dramatic,” Barnett said. “If you want a raise, it’s done. If this is because of what I said about your father, then I apologize. I said things I didn’t mean.”

Teddy dumped the third drawer into the box and reached for another. “Who said anything about money?”

“I mention it because I know you need it. We all do. Some more than others.”

Barnett hobbled into the office, irritated when he noticed Jill in the room and realized that they weren’t alone. Teddy moved on to the next drawer. Unfortunately, nothing Barnett could say would change what the man had done. On the upside, until ten days ago Barnett had treated Teddy like a son. There was something to be said for what he’d suffered after being run over by his car as well. But in the end, Barnett had betrayed his own brother-in-law, selling him out to the district attorney in order to hide their relationship. He’d betrayed Teddy, making the deal with Andrews in secret and allowing Holmes to confess to a crime he’d only witnessed. As Teddy thought it over, he realized the position Barnett was in. Holmes had been innocent. Barnett had sold out a member of his own family in order to maintain his social standing. When the story appeared in the papers, no amount of work by a PR firm could balance the scale. Barnett would be dropped from consideration in Philadelphia Magazine’s Power 100 issue. He’d be bounced off the list. Cast to the side as nothing more than an overeager worm.

“For the sake of your career,” Barnett said, “I think you should take some time off and think this through.”

Their eyes met. Teddy noticed the man was sweating.

“Who’s career are we really talking about?” he said. “And I was fired, remember? I didn’t toe the line. You said it yourself, and Stokes did, too. That’s what we do here. We toe the line. Somewhere over the last week I realized I’m no good at that.”

Teddy finished with the desk and moved to the credenza, closing up photos and collecting bric-a-brac for the second box.

“You weren’t fired. Stokes doesn’t have the authority. He’s old and made a mistake. He was only thinking about the firm.”

Teddy shrugged. He closed the second box and lifted it onto the first, thinking about his afternoon meeting with the devil. In an hour, he would be sitting in a visiting room with Alan Andrews. As he stepped around the desk, he glanced at Jill and nodded.

Barnett grimaced. “I’d have to accept your resignation and I won’t. You’re not thinking clearly. You’re out of your mind.”

“That makes two of us,” Teddy said, passing the man on crutches and leaving him behind.

Teddy heard the chains beating against the linoleum tiled floor and turned to look through the window into the hall from visiting room two. Alan Andrews, the district attorney, stepped into the room dressed in an orange jumpsuit like any other member of the population at Curran-Fromhold. Only this one remained handcuffed, his ankles bound in leg irons. Two guards escorted Andrews to a chair and helped him sit down at the table across from Teddy, then left the room without closing the door.

They were waiting in the hall, staying close. They looked nervous.

Teddy picked up on the sound of people jeering and looked through the glass at the inmates with their families staring at Andrews outside the booths in the main visiting room. Some appeared angry, others, astonished. When he turned back to Andrews, he realized the man’s attitude had been confiscated along with his street clothes. He was fidgeting in the seat. His left eye twitched. It had only taken two days in prison to beat the devil down.