The Dead Room (17 page)

Barnett yanked his desk drawer open. When he found the pill bottle he was looking for, Teddy noted that it wasn’t Tylenol anymore, but a prescription.

“I gave you a simple task,” Barnett was saying as he threw a pill into his mouth and gulped it down. “You knew how we were gonna play this thing. Bring Nash in to scare the district attorney, then do the deal. That’s all I asked of you. That’s all you were supposed to do.”

Teddy closed the door. “Things have changed.”

“What change?” Barnett said, spitting out the words.

“It’s possible that Holmes is innocent.”

Barnett spun around, staring at him as if Teddy was insane. “Innocent? Yesterday Oscar Holmes was a guy with a history of mental illness who went off his rocker and was charged with a single count of murder. Today he’s a serial killer and the whole fucking city’s up in arms. Don’t you get it? Don’t you see what’s going on?”

Teddy grabbed the newspaper and sat down on the couch, stunned by Barnett’s attitude but keeping it to himself. As he thumbed through the first three pages, he realized that the headline may have been tongue-in-cheek, but what the articles implied were anything but. Holmes’s connection to the two murders was now in print. He glanced at Barnett slumped in his desk chair, then got started reading.

The connection hadn’t been made by new evidence or even a leak. It had been made by Andrews at his press conference last night just as Teddy feared it would. Both women had been cut. That, along with their age and appearance, was enough to bind the two cases together. Getting to Holmes without confirming anything alleged was even easier. While one reporter detailed the events leading to Holmes’s arrest for the murder of Darlene Lewis, another writer spent yesterday afternoon at Holmes’s former butcher shop, interviewing old ladies from the neighborhood who remembered Holmes, and getting photographs of them buying flank steak and pork sausages. The women recounted stories of Holmes’s talent with a knife, mixed with excited laughter and occasional squeals over what he’d done. Most of the women seemed to be saying that, for the love of God, they could’ve been next. Teddy glanced back at their photos, fighting off an urge to smile as he noted their age and weighty figures. None of them looked quite like Darlene Lewis or Valerie Kram, and he imagined they were safe for now.

He closed the paper, concluding none of it was real. The district attorney may have gotten the headlines he wanted. Oscar Holmes was tagged a serial killer without really saying it, and the case was the talk of the town. But the ground had been fertilized by innuendo. Not a single fact had been leaked and the word
cannibalism
hadn’t appeared in print. They’d gotten off lucky, Teddy thought. When the details were brought out in court, the headlines would be far worse.

Barnett swiveled his chair around from the window. The pill must have kicked in because his anger had subsided and an almost eerie state of calm had set in.

“Do you understand why headlines are never going to work in our favor?” he said in an unusually quiet voice.

Teddy nodded. “They’ll spoil the jury pool.”

Barnett grimaced and blinked, trying to rein his emotions back in. “No, goddamn it. Because every new headline makes Andrews stronger and moves him farther away from making a deal. I’ve spoken with Nash, and he agrees.”

“When did you talk to him?”

“I hung up the phone when you walked in.”

“What did you say?”

“Just what I’m saying to you. This case is about avoiding the press and getting Holmes to plead guilty. This case is about making sure someone who needs medical attention gets the psychiatric care he so obviously needs.”

While Barnett may have spoken with Nash, Teddy didn’t believe that Nash agreed to capitulate. Particularly now, when they’d just isolated ten more victims, and Holmes’s guilt remained up in the air. It didn’t make sense.

“What did Nash say?” Teddy asked.

“At first he didn’t see it that way. When I brought him back to reality, he did.”

“What’s the reality?”

Barnett gave him a look. “That in a civilized world, we don’t execute the mentally impaired.”

Teddy had to hand it to Barnett. The man had an uncanny ability to dig up a bottom line and make it sound good even if it might be the wrong one.

Holmes stood out. There was no question that he was different, maybe even odd. And he was distraught, confused, teetering on the edge. But he had a right to be, Teddy thought. For two days he’d been told he murdered someone, and like everyone else, he didn’t appear to know what actually happened. He was alone. All he had were glimpses of the murder scene, the dead body, a young girl’s blood on his clothes. Who wouldn’t be having nightmares? Given the circumstances, the gore, who wouldn’t lose faith in themselves? The man needed help, but nothing Teddy had seen in his two visits indicated he was mentally ill.

“How’d you leave it with Nash?” Teddy asked.

“What’s with the twenty questions?”

“How did you leave it?” he repeated.

Barnett adjusted his cufflink, his eyes glazed. “The way you did last night. He’s still on board. What’s with you?”

Teddy didn’t say anything. As he looked at Barnett, he became overwhelmed with worry for him. He liked Barnett and admired him, but didn’t understand his reasoning. It was obvious enough that Barnett still wanted to sweep Holmes under the rug and make the case go away as quickly as possible. How the truth might play out seemed lost in Barnett’s frayed emotional state. Maybe it was to protect Holmes’s family. Barnett had mentioned that they’d been friends for a long time. Perhaps Barnett looked at what happened to Darlene Lewis and guessed that no crime so horrible could be a killer’s first step into the gloom. Given the circumstances, there had to be more. Teddy wished he could help Barnett. He wished he could understand and do something for him.

“What time’s the autopsy?” Barnett asked.

“In another hour.”

“You okay about going?”

In spite of his doubts, Teddy nodded.

It would be another afternoon spent with dead bodies. He was glad Powell was bringing Holmes’s checkbook. He’d called her on the drive into town from prison. Although she still appeared distant, she confirmed that the police had the checkbook and agreed to bring it with her to the medical examiner’s office. Any distraction would help him get through it.

“We need this to end,” Barnett said quietly, “so that we can both get back to work. I’ll make this up to you. I swear I will.”

Teddy laid the newspaper on his desk. Barnett gazed at Holmes’s photo, then turned the paper over and shook his head.

“In another week or two the evidence will be in,” Barnett said. “By then Holmes will have gotten tired of living in a jail cell. We’ll go out together, Teddy. We’ll show him what they have and talk to him. I’m sure he’ll agree that a plea is his only way out.”

Teddy didn’t say anything. Instead, he nodded like he thought Nash would and hoped Barnett would come to his senses. But as he left the office, he thought about what Holmes had admitted to him just an hour and a half ago. That he didn’t want to know what happened because he thought he might be the one. If Barnett wanted the man to plead guilty, Oscar Holmes was just about there.

TWENTY-ONE

Teddy hadn’t prepared himself for the smell....

It rolled toward him in waves, growing more oppressive as he moved deeper into the medical examiner’s building and finally reached the examining rooms. The smell of death was so thick Teddy thought it might knock him down. As a boy, he’d once found a deer lying by the side of the road. As a student, he remembered opening a refrigerator that had been switched off for a week or two. But nothing he’d experienced in his past even came close to this.

They stopped before what looked like a prep room. Teddy followed Andrews, Powell, and Detective Vega inside. As two medical examiners passed out jumpsuits, Teddy caught Andrews staring at him. The man was laughing at him, and must have been waiting for Teddy’s reaction to the foul odor.

“You get used to it,” Detective Vega said.

“How long’s it take?”

“A couple of years,” Andrews shot back.

Teddy ignored Andrews, stepping into the jumpsuit carefully because it was made of paper. In the corner of the room he saw several jumpsuits in the trash and realized the protective clothing was meant to be thrown away once the autopsies were completed. He glanced at Powell, noticing her long legs as she slipped the paper suit over her short black skirt. She hadn’t mentioned Holmes’s checkbook. She hadn’t said a word to him since they entered the building. He knew she was still angry with him, still didn’t believe his story about how he’d found Valerie Kram’s body at the boathouse. Even worse for her, it was over now. It had ended the moment Andrews took credit for finding the body. She looked frustrated—trying to balance her job in the face of Andrews’s political career. As he watched the two of them interact, they seemed as different as night and day, and he wondered if they got along.

Teddy buttoned himself up. An ME handed him a shower cap and a pair of goggles, pointing to the face masks and a box of latex gloves on the table while he warned him about the dangers of tuberculosis and HIV. When everyone was suited up, they entered the examining room.

The walls were tiled. The stainless steel gurneys tilted forward slightly with the naked bodies of Darlene Lewis and Valerie Kram lying side by side like dead twins.

Teddy shuddered at the hideous sight and looked away. When he caught Andrews staring at him again, even smiling behind his mask, he knew the man had been waiting for this moment, too.

The ME gave Teddy a nudge and pointed out the rails on the gurney. They looked more like gutters on the roof of a house. He saw the holes at the foot of the gurney and now understood why they were tilted forward slightly. In a few minutes, body fluids would be streaming down the rails venting through the holes like rain onto the floor.

“If you begin to feel faint,” the ME said, “then leave the room. Believe me, you want to limit your contact with the floor.”

Andrews was smiling again; Carolyn Powell and Detective Vega gazing at him evenly. Teddy grit his teeth behind his mask, determined to hang on. But it was tough. He glanced at Valerie Kram’s body on the far table, her chest already open like a jacket. Then back at Darlene Lewis’s face with her eyes bulging out of her head. As his gaze moved down her body, taking in her bruised neck and the missing patches of skin, the ME made his first cut.

It was a long, deep slice, as if Darlene Lewis was a piece of meat. Even more horrific, the incision looked identical to the wound the murderer had already inflicted on Valerie Kram. The cut formed the letter Y, running from the girl’s shoulders across her upper chest, then straight down to the missing skin just above her vagina. When the ME pulled out the gardening shears and began clipping the girl’s ribs away, Teddy realized he’d seen enough and kept his eyes on the ME’s face the rest of the way.

They worked for hours. The ME showing no emotion, just an ample supply of curiosity and professionalism. With each step, he recorded his observations into an audio recorder and often stopped to wipe off his hands and write something down. Sometimes he would confer with the ME working on Valerie Kram at the next gurney. Occasionally, Teddy’s eyes would wander down to one of the bodies. But as the autopsies proceeded, the view became progressively worse and his eyes popped back up again. Every time he glanced at Andrews, he found the man staring at him. It was almost as if the DA was using the horror of the autopsy as some sort of initiation or dare. Almost as if Andrews was taunting him and hoping he might faint.

But the gruesome ordeal bore fruit. It had been worth it because they were learning something. When the ME examined Darlene Lewis’s neck, he found torn cartilage and a broken bone which indicated she died from strangulation. And it had been quick, the ME noted, the murder performed by someone with powerful hands. Teddy tried not to think about the size of Holmes’s massive hands, or his client’s fingerprints that glowed about the girl’s neck like a string of pearls under the black lights at the crime scene. As he glanced about the room, it was obvious that everyone else was thinking the same thing, but wouldn’t be letting the thought go.

Although the end came quickly for Darlene Lewis, the ME concluded she had been tortured by the murderer for perhaps as long as two hours before her death. The ME pointed to the missing skin. He likened it to foreplay, and said it had probably been removed while she was still alive. Detective Vega seemed to have already guessed as much, saying this would account for the amount of blood at the crime scene. The ME agreed, and told them the killer probably removed the skin and waited for her to bleed out. Then for some reason, he changed his mind and strangled her to death. Holmes’s name was mentioned freely, as was a lengthy discussion on what he’d done with the skin. All conclusions were preliminary, and Teddy listened without saying anything. At some point he began to wonder if they’d forgotten he was in the room. But when the ME offered his own theory—that Holmes ate the girl’s flesh before her eyes, then killed her when she passed out—the room suddenly quieted.