Robert Ellis: The Dead Room

Teddy nodded without saying anything. Playing it all back in his head, it seemed so clear now.

“It wasn’t planned, Teddy. Much of it happened as we went along. After you’ve had a chance to think it over, I’m sure you’ll agree that it was the only way. I found Valerie Kram’s body quite innocently a few days before Darlene Lewis’s murder while on a walk along the bike path by the river. There’s a bench on the other side of the boathouse I like to use. I saw her in the ice as I sat down.”

“Why didn’t you call it in?”

“She was frozen in the ice. She wasn’t going anywhere. And it would’ve been a distraction. I was thinking about the work my students had done. I didn’t come forward because I didn’t want it to interfere with the findings we were about to make public regarding the district attorney. It would have confused the issue if I’d called the police and used my name. But with the Lewis murder and Holmes’s arrest, everything changed. I was hoping someone at the club might find the girl’s body, but a day passed and no one did. Then you showed up at my office. You were following Barnett’s lead, ready to send Holmes off to prison for the rest of his life without even questioning what happened. I thought you needed a wake-up call. I asked a friend, and she was only too happy to oblige.”

“You say it wasn’t planned, but you knew about the body at the boathouse. You must have known it was a serial killing.”

“I suspected it when Darlene Lewis was murdered,” Nash said. “I was struck by their likeness, but wasn’t sure.”

“When you printed the bulletins on the missing girls, when you laid the flyers out on this table, it was a charade for my benefit. You already knew.”

Nash shrugged. “I wasn’t sure,” he repeated. “Not until then.”

“When did you know it was Trisco?” Teddy said.

“The same time you did. Actually a little later. You solved the riddle, Teddy, not me. When you told me that it was Trisco, that’s when I knew. You’ve got talent. An authentic gift. Instincts and an imagination most attorneys would die for. Let’s leave it at that.”

Teddy became silent, trying to slow his mind down. He was rushing over the details and missing them. He remembered the press leak detailing what the authorities thought Holmes had done to Darlene Lewis at the time of her murder. Teddy had always blamed Andrews for the leak, but now he realized it had come from Nash. The city was up in arms over the brutality of the girl’s death. Leaking the details stirred the pot, pushing Andrews farther out on the limb with his case against Holmes. Nash was pushing Andrews to the point of no return because he thought Holmes was innocent and knew how the district attorney would react. Nash had the man cornered. But still it wasn’t enough and the district attorney could have slipped through.

Teddy remembered what Andrews had told him in prison. After reading their profile, Andrews had been stunned. He had the evidence against Holmes, but wasn’t certain. He’d gone to Trisco’s house trying to verify his mistake, gone in secret because he’d been afraid to admit that he had the wrong man. In the end, Nash pulled the trigger and killed Trisco because he knew it would change everything. Nash knew what it would look like before anyone else did.

“I’m surprised at you, Teddy. Maybe a better word would be concerned. You don’t seem to understand that society has great difficulty in dealing with a man like Alan Andrews. The powers that be can barely handle someone as obvious as Eddie Trisco. How could anyone become that ill without someone noticing and doing something about it? But the former district attorney, the late Alan Andrews, is an entirely different matter. There are lots of Alan Andrews in the world, more than you think. People who will destroy evidence, suppress it, or even make it up in order to win their verdict because in their head they know . Or what about the prosecutor who makes an honest mistake, but doesn’t have the strength or integrity or conscience to correct it. Society doesn’t punish people like this because it doesn’t want to admit that they even exist. I can assure you that what I may or may not have done would’ve been performed only as a last resort. What Alan Andrews did is far worse than what Eddie Trisco did because of his intent. Had Andrews been on top of things when Trisco was first arrested, not one woman would’ve been murdered. The idea of watching society reward the man by making him mayor of the city-well, thank goodness neither one of us has to sit on the sidelines and watch that. You should know all this better than most. You’ve had a firsthand view. Your experience with your father. His arrest and untimely death.”

It was the way he said it that shook Teddy to the bone. Mentioning his father so easily and the way he spoke about Andrews’s demise as if he suffered no guilt or regret. Nash had acted as judge and jury, sentencing Andrews to death as if it was a calling from a higher order. And while much of what Nash was saying seemed familiar to Teddy, even true in the cosmic sense, the implications of his behavior were impossible to deal with.

Teddy’s eyes rose from the floor. Nash was looking him over carefully.

“What’s happened since we met was never about catching a serial killer like Eddie Trisco,” Nash said after a long moment. “Or even about hunting down a district attorney who lost his way and put innocent people to their deaths. It was about us, Teddy. I came back for you. I came back to help you get past your father, shed your demons, and show you the way out.”

Teddy steadied himself against the wall, riding on the train through the tunnel into the black.

“What way is that?” he asked.

“When you walked into my office with the Holmes case, I knew who you were. And it was obvious that you were still running. Your father was falsely accused of murdering his business partner. Your father was murdered in his cell as he awaited trial. Your father’s murder changed a lot of people’s lives in this city. Not just yours.”

Teddy wiped his eyes, no longer trying to hide the fact that his hands were shaking. “What do you know about my father? Who are you talking about? Whose life was changed?”

“Mine,” Nash said. He stubbed out the cigarette, then leaned back in the chair and gave Teddy a hard look. “You see, I was responsible for his death.”

Teddy’s mind blurred and almost faded. “The prosecutor’s name was Stephen Faulk,” he said. “The man’s dead. He committed suicide.”

“I was an ADA at the time,” Nash said, gazing into the past. “It was Faulk’s case, but he was young and didn’t make the decision on his own. He came to me with what he had. I reviewed the case with the district attorney, but still had a lot to learn. I didn’t see it and made a mistake. When the county jail was faced with overcrowding, I made arrangements with the city and had your father transferred to Holmesburg Prison. Don’t you see, I’m the one who put him in that cell.”

It hit like napalm, the flames stretching out in a fiery wash that clung to Teddy’s flesh and burned his soul.

“That mistake changed everything for me,” Nash whispered. “Words can’t describe how sorry I am. I’ve spent my entire life trying to right that wrong. And now we’re together, and I’m hoping you won’t burn down. You won’t be a victim of your past. Instead, I’m hoping you’ll learn from it, Teddy, fight back and join the cause. We’ve got work to do. Enough to keep us going for a long time.”

Nash eased Teddy’s wine glass across the table as an offering to their partnership. Teddy spotted his cigarettes beside the glass. They seemed so far away. He wasn’t sure he could move, really. He wasn’t sure he could reach them….