The Dead Room (39 page)

He followed the sound up to the attic, felt the cold air tumbling down at him as he hobbled up the narrow steps.

Rosemary had found Mrs. Yap.

Curiously, his landlady’s frozen body was no longer in the trunk. The lid was open and she’d managed to crawl halfway out. Eddie had taken her for dead two hours before he dragged her upstairs.

The windows were open, keeping the room chilled down like a walk-in freezer. Rosemary had stopped screaming. She was staring at the corpse in disbelief and trying to catch her breath. Mrs. Yap appeared more than cold. Ice crystals had formed around her mouth and eyes, and it didn’t look as if she’d found any peace on her journey to the other side.

Eddie helped Rosemary up and led her downstairs. Closing the door behind them, he tried to think about what to do. She didn’t pull away. Not even once. Instead, she held herself in her arms and quietly wept. It occurred to him that this might be the right time for another trip on the love train. Rosemary looked like she needed it. And Eddie thought he could probably use the break, too.

As they entered the kitchen, he sat her down at the table and opened the drawer for his stash. He shook two pills out and dumped them into the mortar, then thought it over and added two more. Working the pestle into the marble cup, he pulverized the pills until they were a fine dust. Every so often, he turned back to check on Rosemary. She wasn’t even watching. Her eyes were pinned to the ground and looked dull.

He opened the refrigerator and found the orange juice. But as he reached into the cabinet for two glasses, he lost his balance and grabbed hold of the counter. Something was happening deep inside him. It felt like a slow wave rolling through his head. Maybe even an earthquake. After a moment, Eddie realized it was the morphine. The wave seemed to pass, along with the pain, and he stared at the
Love Drug
in his mortar. Mixing medications might not be a good idea, he decided. Rosemary would have to make the trip on her own.

He emptied the ground up pills into a single glass, filled it with orange juice, and gave the mix a good stir. Then he handed to her.

Rosemary’s eyes rose from the floor.

“Drink it,” he said. “You’ll feel better. Then I’ll fix you something to eat.”

“You’re really ugly, you know that.”

Eddie smiled, feeling the wounds on his face and thinking himself a phantom.

Then she took the glass, finishing it off in three quick gulps. Rosemary must have been thirsty. Twenty minutes later, she smiled. It was the first smile he’d seen from her in two days.

SIXTY-ONE

Vega pulled into the lot at the roundhouse, cruising past the row of black-and-whites until they found Teddy’s beat-up Corolla. Ellwood must have been waiting for them outside the lobby. Before Vega could get the keys out of the ignition, his partner snapped open the back door and slid in beside Teddy with his fuse burning.

“What took you so long?” Ellwood asked.

“They said they didn’t know where their son was,” Vega said. “We had to wait for their attorney to show up before they could tell us how much they wanted to help.”

Ellwood glanced at Powell, then back to his partner. “Andrews is protecting them. They’ve got him in their pocket.”

Vega turned, but didn’t say anything.

“He’s at their house,” Ellwood said. “They must’ve called him as soon as you left.”

“How do you know that?” Teddy asked.

“He checked a car out on his own. A car without a driver. But the fool wrote down the address when he left the office and logged out.”

Powell turned away. Teddy could tell she’d been hoping it might not be true. After all, she’d worked with Andrews and had known him for a long time. The truth had to be rippling through her memory of the man—who she thought he’d been and what he really was.

Ellwood must have noticed Powell as well and lowered his voice. “We’ll have a warrant to search their house within the hour. Phone records. Wiretaps. The whole thing.”

“How?” Vega asked.

“Trisco’s hair,” Ellwood said. “They took a sample after his arrest five years ago. A strand was found in the glue around Carmichael’s mouth. Looks like we’ve got a match. Trisco did Carmichael.” He glanced outside as the windows began to fog, then leaned forward no longer able to restrain himself. “And we’ve got fingerprints,” he said. “Five years ago they took his fingerprints, and a partial’s turned up.”

“Where?” Powell asked. “Teddy’s letter?”

Ellwood shook his head and his jaw tightened, his emotions jammed up into his face as he turned to his partner. “Darlene Lewis’s house.”

It hung there. It felt as if they were sitting in a vacuum. Like the air in the car had been sucked out onto the street and run over by a passing bus.

“Not enough to hold up in court,” Ellwood said to his partner. “But shit, Dennis, the motherfucker was there.”

“Where was the print found?” Vega asked.

“In the den across the hall from the living room. Three paintings hang on the wall. Trisco touched one of the frames.”

It settled in hard and fast. Teddy remembered entering the room and seeing the chair turned toward the wall. His hunch had proved out. Trisco had cut away Darlene’s tattoos and was waiting for her to bleed to death. He’d been sitting in the chair viewing the paintings when Holmes showed up with the mail.

It felt like vindication. It wasn’t a theory anymore. A best guess made after a series of long steps. Edward Trisco had murdered Darlene Lewis. And his client, Oscar Holmes, the odd-looking man who thrashed at his chains during the preliminary arraignment and was known all over the city as the Veggie Butcher, was innocent.

No one said anything. Vega lit a cigarette, cracked the window and gazed at police headquarters through the cloudy windshield for at least five minutes. The evidence had told one story, then discounted it and told another....

After a while, Ellwood handed Teddy his keys and they got out of the car. Teddy offered to drive Powell to her office. Vega and Ellwood looked pumped, even angry, and hurried across the lot to the building en route to another, more careful review of the evidence and working with the FBI to find Trisco and Rosemary.

On the drive uptown, Powell remained quiet as Teddy called Nash at his office and filled him in. It was hard to think, everything going by so fast. When Nash heard the news, he couldn’t seem to find his voice right away. After he did, he sounded delighted but still overwhelmed. Holmes was truly innocent and would be a free man. Every once in a while Teddy would look over at Powell. She was slumped in the seat—staring out the windshield with a blank expression on her face—going over something in her head, or maybe just stuck in neutral. When he saw her building a few blocks up the street, he ended the call with Nash and made a left into a parking structure so that she wouldn’t be seen getting out of his car. He found a place to park, deciding he’d stop for coffee and get something to eat after he dropped her off. But as he reached for the door handle, Powell didn’t move.

“I can see why Nash has taken you under his wing,” she whispered after a moment.

She was still staring out the windshield with her hands in her jacket pockets. Beyond the concrete barrier was a view of South Philadelphia. In a way, it felt like they were parked on a hill overlooking the city. He could see the Walt Whitman Bridge, jets lined up in a row dipping into their final turn as they approached the airport.

“Your instincts, Teddy. You found the mistake and figured it out.”

“You have, too,” he said.

She gave him a look, then turned back to the view. He tried not to think of her as a woman. Tried not to acknowledge the smell of her hair. Her skin. He looked at her face, her gorgeous profile. Tried not to feel the sting of her gentleness and overwhelming beauty. Her legs were spread apart. His eyes ran down her black tights to her shoes. It was good to be alive, he thought.

“I want to apologize,” she said.

“For what?”

“For not believing you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re in this together now.”

Her eyes sharpened. “When we met for breakfast and you told me someone had hit you over the head, no matter how outrageous your claims, I should’ve listened. You could have been killed last night.”

His mind wasn’t on Trisco, and he couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t reel it all back in. He kissed her.

She opened her mouth, kissing him back softly. He sensed a light smile in the kiss, felt her hands moving from her pockets, touching him and pulling him closer.

“It was that shot glass,” she whispered.

“The one with ships and whales.”

“Your story sounded so preposterous, Teddy.”

“I know it did,” he said.

They laughed and held each other, eye to eye. When her cell phone rang, he gave her a kiss and a look and leaned back in his seat. Powell dug into her pocket for the phone and flipped it open. Once she heard the caller’s voice, she pulled the phone away from her ear and turned up the volume so Teddy could listen as well.

It was Andrews, driving back to town from the Trisco estate and in a foul mood.

“How dare you redirect an investigation without my knowledge,” he said, spitting the words into the phone.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“You and Vega and that asshole kid went out to the Triscos this morning. You told them you were investigating a new missing persons case, but implied that their son was involved in something different. Something more.”

“But he is,” she said. “Edward Trisco is wanted for the murder of Harris Carmichael.”

The phone went dead, followed by digital break up as Andrews began screaming. Teddy noted that she didn’t mention the young women or the link pointing to Trisco as the serial killer. But in the end, Andrews was a step ahead.

“Do you really think that I’m that stupid?” Andrews shouted over the phone. “I know exactly what you’re doing. And believe me, you’re gonna pay for it. I’ll be in my office in twenty minutes. You better be there, too.”

Andrews fumbled with his phone, swearing in the background before he could find the right button and end the call. With any luck, he’d veer off the road and slam into a telephone pole.

*          *          *

Teddy entered the Wawa minimarket, poured a large cup of coffee, grabbed a poppy-seed bagel with lox-flavored cream cheese, and moved to the counter. Oscar Holmes’s picture was on the front page of both papers, but the
Daily News
said it best. Stamped over Holmes’s face in four-inch-high text were the words: VEGGIE BUTCHER SAYS, “I CONFESS!”

Teddy picked up copies of both papers, asked the woman behind the register for a pack of Marlboro reds, and walked out.

JKF Plaza was less than a block away from the district attorney’s office. It was another unusually warm day for December. He’d told Powell he would wait for her there until things shook out.

He crossed the street, found a seat with a view of the building and sat down. Tearing into the pack of cigarettes, he lit one and took a sip of coffee. He’d been up for more than twenty-four hours and was beginning to feel punchy. Fighting off a yawn, he checked his watch and figured that Andrews should’ve arrived by now. As he scanned the street and looked at the skyline, his eyes fell on a high-rise building a block south from where he’d parked. He knew that the Trisco Corporation owned the building, that they were the sole occupants and had commissioned the structure to be their flagship and national headquarters. The architecture seemed to fit its owners like a glove. The building was nondescript. Another boring flattop with mirrored glass.

Teddy turned away, sipping his coffee and letting his mind wander as he looked at the newspapers on the bench. The district attorney was in a bad place. Every good word written about the man over the last week would come back as a nail in his political coffin. He’d made another mistake. Arrested the wrong man after reassuring the public that they were safe. No one would forgive him this time. No one would forget.

His cell phone rang. As he flipped it open, he heard Powell’s voice.

“I’ve been transferred out of homicide,” she said.

“Where?”

“The juvenile division. Habitual offenders....”

It sounded like a move to Siberia. Andrews had struck back and knocked her all the way down the food chain. Teddy wasn’t sure if he felt guilty, or just inept.

“It’s not your fault, Teddy.”

“Did you tell him about the fingerprint?”

“Yes,” she said.

“How did he react?”

“It didn’t seem to faze him. He took it in stride.”

“You wanna meet somewhere?” he asked.

“He only gave me an hour to move my office,” she said. “After that I think I’d rather go home, take a shower and change. We were up all night, remember?”

“Yeah,” he said. “What about Vega and Ellwood?”