The Dead Room (9 page)

“We need to do the right thing,” Teddy said. “We need to pass this on to a criminal attorney. Someone who has more experience than we do.”

“I wish we could, believe me.”

“Why can’t we?”

Barnett sighed, loosening his tie and unbuttoning his collar. “It’s not a favor for a client, Teddy. It’s a friend. One of my oldest friends. I’ve known the family since I was your age. Even younger than you. If their name were to get out, it would make the papers. TV cameras would be all over their front lawn. Their reputation in this city would be destroyed. I don’t want to see them go through that. It’s hard enough on them that it’s Holmes.”

“If they’re trying to avoid headlines, tell them to forget it. I saw what the girl looked like. What he did to her. Forget about the newspapers. Forget about TV news. This is what’s next on cable.”

He saw Barnett tense up. He saw the fear rush into his eyes.

“You really think so?” Barnett asked.

Teddy nodded, hoping he hadn’t hurt the man. Still, the reality seemed obvious. Darlene Lewis had been a beautiful young girl at an age when her hormones were on fire. She’d been taunting Holmes for at least six months with her body, maybe even longer. Holmes held on until his engines blew, then lashed out like an animal from another planet. The story had color and sex appeal. When the details got out, any hope of keeping the press away would be ludicrous.

“Well, we’re stuck with it,” Barnett said. “We’ll do the best we can.”

Teddy settled back in the chair, thinking that he was stuck with it, too, whether he wanted to be or not.

Barnett leaned over his desk. “When you met Holmes last night, was he still insisting on a trial?”

Teddy nodded.

Barnett frowned, thinking it over. “We’ve got plenty of time to talk to him before we make any decisions,” he said. “If we need help, we’ll get it.”

“Who?”

“I spoke with William Nash last night, but he refused. I was hoping you’d give it another shot this morning. You went to Penn. He may not be practicing law any more, but he’s still the best defense attorney in the city. I think it’s worth a try.”

Teddy thought it over. William S. Nash and his legal workshop at Penn Law had been responsible for proving that District Attorney Alan Andrews prosecuted an innocent man and sent him to his death. It was a good bet that Andrews hated Nash for it. If Nash agreed to help, there was a chance the DA might want to make a deal in order to get rid of Nash. The DA would hold out for a week or two, working the Darlene Lewis murder until the headlines changed in his favor and his mistake was old news, but then he might give in to the pressure. He might be willing to deal. Andrews could take credit for Holmes’s quick arrest and putting the man away forever. And Holmes would avoid the death penalty and get the psychiatric care his family was hoping for. Barnett’s idea to bring Nash in was actually brilliant, and probably the result of a night spent mulling over the case in every detail. Quietly, Teddy imagined, with the phones switched off and a drink in his hand.

Teddy looked up and caught Barnett staring at him. He’d been watching him think it through as if seated at a poker table with a winning hand.

“You see how we’re gonna play it,” Barnett said.

Teddy nodded, even smiled. Barnett had found a quick way out for everyone concerned. Once Nash was in, he guessed the only player in the mix who wouldn’t be willing was Oscar Holmes. But Barnett was probably right about that, too. They had plenty of time to work on Holmes. The longer he sat in a cell, the more pliable he’d be.

NINE

Teddy set the murder book down on his desk and looked at Jill sitting before the computer at the worktable by the window. She had a desk of her own with the rest of the clerks in an open room off the library. Although there were times after hours when they were both working late and she used the computer in Teddy’s office to study, this wasn’t one of them. He knew she’d been waiting for him to finish with Barnett and wanted to know what happened.

“You’re defending him, aren’t you?” she said. “Oscar Holmes.”

He nodded and took a deep breath, then sat down and opened the binder. The murder had occurred twenty-four hours ago, yet the paper on the homicide was already half an inch thick. Teddy thumbed through the pages and realized they were in chronological order. Half the reports were filed by Detective Vega. But the other half were authored by a Detective Nathan Ellwood. Teddy hadn’t met the second detective, but assumed he was Vega’s partner. Barnett had told him the investigation was on the fast-track, and Teddy checked the time and dates at the top of the detectives’ preliminary reports. They’d begun writing at four in the morning. Both detectives had worked through the night.

Jill gently cleared her throat. “How could you defend someone who did the kind of things they’re saying Holmes did on TV?”

“What are they saying on TV?”

“That he cut her up. That maybe he tortured her.”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I’ve never done this kind of thing before.”

She looked at him a moment, her light brown eyes searching his face. When she turned back to the computer, he checked the time and returned to the binder. He needed to get through the murder book before he faced William Nash. And he wanted to be on campus within the hour.

The early reports mirrored what the district attorney had told him yesterday. An elderly neighbor, Beatrice McGee, had seen Holmes running from the house covered in blood. When he raced off in his mail truck, she noticed that the front door was open and walked inside the house. She found Darlene’s body on the dining room table and called the police, then popped a nitroglycerin tablet because she had a bad heart. The officer who took her initial statement noted that she was upset, but appeared clear in mind and didn’t require any medical assistance. She knew Holmes by name, and said he’d been her mailman for many years.

Once they had a name, Ellwood left Vega in Chestnut Hill and took off for the city. Holmes hadn’t completed his mail route or returned his truck to the post office. Ellwood caught up with the man at his apartment at Twenty-third and Pine where he made the arrest. Holmes was driven downtown to the homicide division at police headquarters. Ellwood stayed at the apartment, supervising the investigation. They found Holmes’s clothing buried in the trash, the murder weapon stuffed in his mailbag on the front seat of his truck. After the crime scene was processed, Ellwood returned to headquarters and the interview began.

Teddy read Holmes’s statement carefully. There was no mention of his prior relationship with Darlene Lewis. None of the sexual taunting and teasing. But Holmes seemed as confused as he’d been last night, admitting to Ellwood that he was there but saying he couldn’t remember what happened and wanted to talk to his lawyer. He gave the detective Jim Barnett’s name. Because he was so distraught, Ellwood made the call for him. Once Barnett arrived and they had a chance to speak, Holmes was photographed and fingerprinted. Blood and hair samples were taken with Barnett’s consent, along with two prints of Holmes’s lips.

Although the results from the rape kit weren’t in yet, the finger and lip prints were conclusive. Every print Teddy had seen on the girl’s body under the black lights belonged to Oscar Holmes. Additional prints had been found on the legs of the dining room table where the girl’s arms and legs had been tied down with rags. These prints matched Holmes as well.

Teddy flipped the page and felt a chill ripple up his spine. He was staring at a photograph of Holmes that must have been taken in his apartment at the time of his arrest. The face the police had seen when Holmes answered the door. Holmes may have had time to ditch his clothing in the trash, but he hadn’t washed up yet. And his face hadn’t been sprayed with the girl’s blood, but was entirely covered in it as if hit by a mud pie. The blood looked like it had dried and thickened, and Teddy could see it caked in the man’s hair and between his teeth. Behind the hideous blood mask, the look of insanity in Holmes’s wild eyes was something Teddy knew he would never forget. The man hadn’t just killed the girl. He’d burrowed his face in her wounds and gobbled up her skin.

He threw the binder on the desk and gasped. Jill turned from the computer, saw the murder book opened to Holmes’s picture and jumped to her feet.

“Jesus Christ,” she shouted.

Teddy grabbed the binder and slammed it closed. He was carrying enough of the horror inside his head for both of them.

“What do you know about William Nash?” he asked.

He was trying to distract her by raising a simple question, but her eyes were locked on the binder. From the look on her face, Teddy hadn’t closed the book fast enough.

“He teaches at Penn,” she said slowly.

“You ever take any of his classes?”

She nodded. “One. But only because I had to.”

“Are you okay, Jill?”

She nodded again, her eyes finally meeting his as she sat down. Teddy made a point of settling back in his chair.

“I’ve never met him,” he said after a moment. “But everybody says he’s good.”

“He gets people off for murder. I’m not sure I’d call that good.”

Jill was still preoccupied with the binder. Teddy threw it in his briefcase, then got up and moved over to the couch.

“That’s what defense attorneys are supposed to do,” he said.

“I don’t mean the innocent ones,” she said. “I mean the people where all the evidence is against them, and Nash finds a way to get them off on a technicality. The people who really did it. Remember in your first year when you had to take everything? Who’d you get for criminal law? Diliberto?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Nash was filling in for Diliberto, and I got stuck with him. He went through his past cases. The Hilltop Rapist. The Venice Beach Strangler. That man who killed seven women in Michigan and buried them in the sidewalk outside his house. Nash defended them and got them off. It was like he was happy about it. Proud of what he’d done.”

Teddy wasn’t sure about the first two cases, but thought he remembered reading something about the Sidewalk Murders in a news magazine. The man lived in a suburban neighborhood outside Detroit. He’d been retired for ten years and spent most of his days working on his lawn and various gardens. It was a quiet neighborhood, most of the middle-class homes owned by families with young children. The kind of place where kids still played in the street. And the little man who lived at the end of the block always seemed to take great pleasure in watching the children play on his section of the sidewalk. Then one day an underground water main burst open. When the utility company tore up the street and sidewalk, they found the bodies of seven women buried in the concrete.

“How’d Nash get the guy off?” Teddy asked.

“Everyone in the neighborhood liked the old man. No one could believe he did it. And he was small man with a bad back. The police couldn’t figure out how he tore up the concrete, put the bodies in, and then laid new concrete down. Neither could the jury. Nash got the man off and he was set free.”

Teddy laughed. He couldn’t help it. Jill seemed so intense.

“Maybe he didn’t do it,” he said.

She shrugged, brooding in silence.

“Then how’d he get the bodies in the concrete, Jill?”

“The bodies weren’t
in
the sidewalk,” she said. “They were under it. He could’ve dug the holes when he was gardening and slid them underneath.”

“I thought he was an old man with a bad back.”

“Maybe he had help. What does it matter? He did it, and Nash manipulated the jury and got him off.”

Teddy stood up, rubbing the back of his neck. His headache was gone, but not the tightness above his shoulders.

“Then why do you think Nash is so popular on campus?” he asked.

Jill shook her head. “Are you trying to recruit him? Are you trying to make the world a better place by getting Oscar Holmes off?”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”

He packed up his briefcase and got into his coat. As he headed for the door, he turned and gave her a look.

“If Jones stops by,” he said, “tell her the files she wants are right beside you on the windowsill.”

TEN

He scanned the building directory, unable to find Nash’s name among the list of faculty members. Although he’d graduated from the school, Teddy had been so absorbed in his own studies that he never had a reason to meet Nash or visit him in his office. It struck him that the legal workshop operated out of its own building on the edge of campus. Nash’s office would probably be there.

He looked around for someone to ask, but the lobby was deserted. With the holidays less than two weeks off and exams underway, students wouldn’t be in class. Teddy exited the building. Squinting at the bright sunlight reflecting off the snow, he turned down the path and headed for the library. He could have called Nash, of course, but the man had already refused Barnett. Giving him another easy chance to say no over the phone didn’t seem to make much sense.