The Dead Room (47 page)

“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.

SEVENTY-FOUR

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.

“I didn’t shoot Eddie Trisco,” Andrews whispered in a shaky voice. “I need your help. You were there. I need people to understand what really happened.”

Teddy didn’t have any sympathy for Alan Andrews. His decision to meet with him was a result of the emptiness he’d been feeling deep inside himself ever since the night Trisco was found and killed. It was entirely a matter of confronting his demons. First with Barnett and now with the district attorney. Andrews was the kind of prosecutor who had taken his father away from him so many years ago. Teddy had come here today because he wanted to look the man in the eye. See him behind bars. Gain some degree of resolution, even if it was only secondhand and he’d never had the chance to meet the man who virtually sent his father to his death in a prison cell.

“I know the way it looks,” Andrews said. “But I didn’t do it.”

“How do you think it looks?” Teddy asked.

“Like I’m worse than Eddie Trisco. Like I was in it with him. They think I murdered Trisco to cover it up.”

“Trisco was sick,” Teddy said. “He couldn’t help what he was, but you could. You had a choice.”

“I didn’t shoot him,” Andrews said. “I didn’t go there to shoot him.”

“When did you know it was him?”

“I didn’t. Jesus Christ, kid. When I read the profile and realized you guys were looking for an artist, it scared the shit out of me. I hadn’t thought about Eddie Trisco for five years, and I was out on a limb with Holmes.”

“How could you have forgotten about Trisco when you were taking payoffs from his parents?”

“Stop calling them payoffs. They were legitimate political contributions. I’d helped them with their son. Five years ago Eddie was just another kid whacked out on drugs. He didn’t really hurt the girl, and I didn’t think the prison system would do him or anyone else any good. He belonged in a medical setting. A hospital where he could receive treatment. I didn’t have any contact with his parents. Their first contribution to my campaign was
after
I made my decision about Eddie. Not before.”

Teddy folded his arms over his chest, ignoring the pain in his shoulder from the gun Andrews had fired at him. “When did you know it was Trisco?” he repeated.

“When I read the profile. I could feel that something was wrong. But the evidence kept pointing at Holmes. We knew he was a painter as well, and your profile didn’t exactly rule Holmes out. When Jackson met you at his apartment the second time, all you wanted to do is see the paintings. I thought it deserved a closer look and had them moved to the art museum. The x-rays seemed to point back at Holmes. When I spoke with Barnett, I agreed to plea the case. But only if Holmes confessed so that I could be sure.”

“Why plea the case? It never made sense that you didn’t want to take it to trial.”

“Barnett wouldn’t let me speak with Holmes unless we had a deal. I had to give to get. That’s the way the world works.”

He was dancing around the issue. He’d need a better answer before his trial.

“When you met with Holmes,” Teddy said, “I’m surprised you didn’t sense that something was wrong with the man. It seemed obvious to me the moment I met him.”

“Holmes wasn’t coerced. I didn’t grill him, kid. The confession came quick, like what he’d done had been eating at him and he wanted to spit it out.”

“If you were so sure that it was Holmes, then why did you start looking for Eddie Trisco? And why did you do it in secret?”

“What choice did you give me? You went out to their house, intimating that their son was involved. They called me when you left. I needed to find him to make sure. I needed to see him and talk to him before I could straighten it all out.”

Teddy narrowed his eyes. “By demoting Carolyn Powell, you mean.”

Andrews didn’t respond, his hands trembling.

“You’re bullshitting me, Andrews. But it sounds good. With a little polish, maybe it’ll work for a jury.”

“I have a friend in the lab,” he whispered. “When the manager at the café was found, she told me what was going on. A hair sample matched Trisco to the body. His fingerprints were found, a partial anyway, on the frame of a painting at Darlene Lewis’s house.”

“It would seem that was the time to come forward,” Teddy said.

“But I’d fucked the thing up. I couldn’t admit it was true. I knew what it looked like when you opened the door.”

“But it’s the truth, Andrews. It really is. You knew it was Trisco and you didn’t say anything. Instead, you tracked him down and murdered him. What do you want to happen? What do you think should happen? People think you’re worse than Trisco because you are.”

“You’re not hearing me, kid. I didn’t shoot Eddie Trisco. The basement was like a maze. I heard the shot and opened the door. The gun was on the floor and he was still alive. At the time I thought I’d walked in on a suicide. But now I’m not so sure. Someone else could’ve been there. Someone else could’ve fired the gun.”

He was reaching at straws. Still playing Teddy for a fool. And he couldn’t explain why he’d pointed the gun at him and fired, then hid in a room and attacked him. Or even how the box of hollow-point shells ended up in the glove compartment of his car. As Teddy mulled it over, he realized that Andrews couldn’t explain anything at all. He’d say and do anything to save his skin. His record over the years proved as much.

“Think it over,” he said to Andrews as he stood up. “How many people’s lives have you wasted and ruined? And for what? Just so that you could climb onto the pile and stand on top.”

Teddy walked out of the visiting room. Glancing at his watch, he noticed the date. Even though it was Christmas Eve, he couldn’t turn the other cheek or dig any compassion out of an empty hole. He couldn’t help it. He hoped the motherfucker would burn.

SEVENTY-FIVE

Teddy could see the judge pounding his gavel on the bench, the jury pronouncing their verdict, the turmoil that followed in the press, six years of appeals in a case too bizarre not to be real. District Attorney Alan Andrews had been convicted of the murder of Edward Trisco III, a serial killer whom authorities estimated had tortured and brutally murdered more than two dozen people.

It defied the imagination. Ate at a person’s soul, leaving the gristle behind. At a certain point, Andrews withdrew from the courts and finally gave up.

Teddy glanced at Nash sitting beside the pilot, then gazed out the window at the ground, watching the world sweep by in the darkness. They were making the short flight from West Chester to State College. Teddy had made arrangements for the twin-engine plane. Once they landed, a car and driver would be waiting to take them to the execution complex at Rockview Prison. Alan Andrews was due to make his exit by lethal injection in less than two hours and they were running late.

It had been a tumultuous six years.

Andrews had also been convicted for two separate attempts on Teddy’s life. When Detective Michael Jackson was confronted with both the payments he’d received from Andrews and his shoe prints found in the snow out at the lake, he copped a deal and admitted cutting the brake lines on Teddy’s car. He’d been following orders from Andrews, he said. Although Andrews denied it, and there were suspicions Jackson might be lying to save his own skin, the detective had enough experience in court to appear like a reliable witness and sell his side of the story to the jury. When confronted with hitting Teddy over the head and running Barnett over with his car, Jackson swore he knew nothing about it, took a lie detector test, and passed.

On the second count, not even Andrews denied that he’d pointed a gun at Teddy and fired. His fingerprints were found on the weapon. Gunshot residue had been detected on his right hand. His story that he considered Teddy frightening, that Teddy was armed with a shotgun and wouldn’t put the weapon down, that under the circumstances he’d panicked—just didn’t gel.

Unlike Michael Jackson, the forensic scientist working in the police lab, Vera Handover, wasn’t offered a deal at all. Although Teddy was disappointed that Handover’s voice didn’t match his memory of Dawn Bingle’s, and how he was led to the boathouse remained in question to this day, the investigators didn’t need her to talk in order to figure out exactly what she had done. Nash and his students participating in his legal workshop pointed the way with their research. What they couldn’t resolve, Detective Jackson did as part of his agreement. The forensic scientist had taken payments from Andrews which had been recorded in the notebook found in his townhouse. In return for those payments she’d manufactured evidence and given false testimony in some of his most high-profile cases. She’d acted as part of the team responsible for sending a total of six innocent men to their deaths. In her defense, she said that she thought they were guilty, and at the time, thought she’d been doing the right thing by putting them away. The money amounted to gifts and bonuses from Andrews for a job well done. She hadn’t lied in court, she said. Her opinions, particularly in fingerprint analysis, were open to interpretation and she’d done the best she could. As the investigation against her deepened, twelve more bogus cases turned up. Nine men and three women were pulled off death row and set free, while Vera Handover went to jail.

Alan Andrews was about to be executed for a single murder. But everyone knew his death was a result of his professional life in toto. The decisions he’d made along the way. His knack for setting aside the truth in favor of a winning record. Terrorizing a city so that he could score points and look like a hero.

The plane landed smoothly, the drive to Rockview taking less than twenty minutes. Teddy spotted the line of protestors waving hand-painted signs in the air and chanting outside the prison walls. As the driver pulled through the gate, Teddy’s eyes stopped on a strange-looking man who stood off to the side. He was holding a flashlight to his Bible and reading the words aloud to anyone who might be listening. It didn’t appear that anyone was.

The car pulled to a stop and they got out, following their escort toward the execution complex. As they climbed the steps, Teddy noticed that Nash was walking with a slight limp. When he asked about it, Nash told him he’d slipped on the floor at his gym.

“It’s nothing, Teddy. Nothing that won’t heal with a little time.”

Their escort showed them into the building. After they checked in, they were taken down the hall to the witness room on the first floor. As they entered, only a few seats remained. Although the seats were together, they were in the front row, and Teddy hesitated a moment before following Nash down the aisle and taking his seat.

The witness room was fairly small. Enough seats to keep twenty-five people on edge for the rest of their lives. He turned and looked at the faces. Some he recognized as members of Andrews’s family. His mother and sister sitting beside their spiritual advisor. Andrews had never married and wasn’t leaving any children behind. Others he’d seen in the paper from the families of Andrews’s victims. Wives mostly, who claimed on the news on a nightly basis that they needed to see the man die just the way their husbands did. The rest of the audience was filled out with official witnesses and reporters. The young woman dressed in an Armani suit with big hair was a new face on one of the local TV stations. She’d replaced the woman before her who wore the same clothing, even the same hair, but refused to get a face lift when she began to look experienced and slightly middle-aged. As Teddy looked at the young replacement, he noticed her eyes were a little wider than usual tonight. Maybe she’d stepped into more than she could handle. Maybe life was more important than reading what she was told to read before the cameras just for the money.