Dean pointed to room eleven. “You can wait in here,” he said. “After you meet with Holmes, I’ll show you the way back to the lobby. It’s not far.”
Teddy watched the assistant warden vanish down the hallway. After a moment, he entered room eleven. It was about the size of a cell, with windows and doors cut into the cinder block walls on both sides of the room. A small table stood in the center of the space, along with three plastic chairs. Teddy had thought that if someone wanted to speak with an inmate, they’d be separated by thick plate glass and limited by the constraints of a telephone. The idea of sitting at a table like this, face-to-face with Holmes, never entered his mind.
As he considered meeting the man, he sat down and turned to the second door. On the other side of the glass was a large meeting room where inmates could visit with their families. The way the couches and chairs filled out the room reminded him of a hotel lobby minus the frills. Curiously, fifty oil paintings hung on the far wall as if the space doubled as an art gallery. The condition of the room matched what he’d seen throughout the prison. Teddy had read the sign by the entrance as he entered the lobby. He knew the building had been opened seven years ago, yet everything about the place still appeared waxed and polished and brand-new. The only graffiti he’d seen was on the inside wall of the holding tank.
He heard the door close. When he turned, he saw Oscar Holmes walk into the room and sit at the table less than a foot away. His eyes raced over the man’s body-no handcuffs or leg irons, just the orange jumpsuit. Teddy looked through the glass for the guards who escorted him here and saw them down the hall, talking to another man seated at a desk with their backs turned. Then Darlene Lewis’s dead body flashed into his head. He looked at the new bandages on Holmes’s hands, but all he could see were the man’s fingerprints on the girl’s skin jumping out at him under the black lights. His lips and the cuts left behind from his teeth. He thought Holmes might be fixed on the same image because the man lifted his elbows to the table, covering his eyes with his oversized hands.
“Who’d you try to call?” Teddy heard himself saying in a calm voice. The question had come out of nowhere.
Holmes remained silent.
“The collect call you made an hour ago,” Teddy said. “They wouldn’t accept the charges. Who was it?”
A moment passed, Holmes still burying his face in his hands. “My sister,” he said finally. “She wouldn’t talk to me.”
Holmes peeked through his fingers. His eyes were the color of a faded pair of jeans and looked just as ragged. Teddy pushed his chair back slightly and made a point of crossing his legs, trying to get some distance without Holmes noticing or becoming upset.
“No one will talk to me,” Holmes said, closing his fingers and hiding in the dark again. “Everyone’s afraid. Even you.”
“What happened to your hands?”
“They got cut. You saw ’em. What kind of question is that? You trying to figure out if I really did it or not?”
Teddy grimaced. “How’d they get cut?”
“I don’t remember,” he said, jumping to his feet. “They’re gonna kill me for this, aren’t they? They’re gonna stick the needle in and watch me go to sleep. All those people watching me sleep. They want to get rid of me. They always have.”
Teddy wasn’t sure how to react. Holmes was working himself into a frenzy, pacing back and forth in the small room and slamming his fists into the cinder block walls as he made the turns. Teddy checked his watch. Ten-thirty. It’d been a long day on shit duty, and he decided he’d finally had enough.
“Fuck you, Holmes.”
The man stopped pacing like he’d been slapped in the face. Teddy lowered his leg, ready to spring for the door if he had to.
“That’s right,” Teddy said, staring at him. “I’m not gonna sit here and listen to you feel sorry for yourself. The girl’s dead. Her body’s all fucked up. Her parents are probably at the morgue looking at it right now. Merry Christmas, Holmes. If you want to sit down and talk, I’ll listen. But if you’re gonna rant and rave and get all worked up, then I’m out of here.”
Holmes was staring back at him with those ragged eyes.
“What’s your name?”
“Teddy Mack.”
“You work for Barnett, not the police?”
Teddy nodded.
Holmes took it in, then seemed to relax some and sat down. Teddy thought about what he’d just done and couldn’t believe it. Scared shitless, he cleared his throat and moved on.
“Tell me what you remember,” he said.
“I want a trial. Even dogs get their day in court. Doesn’t matter what they’ve done. If you’re a person, you get a trial and go to court.”
“Tell me what you remember.”
“I can’t remember anything,” Holmes shouted in frustration.
Teddy looked through the glass and saw the guards staring at them, then turn away.
“I must’ve blacked out,” Holmes said. “I know I was there. I’m not saying I wasn’t because I woke up and saw the blood. It was all over the place. All over me and my clothes. It was like I was sleepwalking or something. I remember running to my truck. Next thing I know I’m in my own house, and I don’t even know how I got there.”
Holmes covered his face with his hands again and started weeping.
“What about Darlene Lewis? Did you know her very well?”
Holmes nodded behind his hands.
“How well did you know her?”
“I don’t want to get her into any trouble. She’s just a girl.”
“Not anymore, Holmes. Now tell me how you knew her.”
Holmes peeked through his fingers again. “She used to tease me,” he said.
Teddy shuddered, getting his first glimpse at a possible motive. “How did she tease you?”
“Sometimes it really got to me,” Holmes whispered. “In the summer when she was out at the pool with her friends, she’d make fun of me. I could hear them whispering and laughing at me. But when Darlene was alone, she treated me different.”
“How did she treat you different?”
“She used to let me look at her.”
Teddy sat up, trying not to show any emotion. “What do you mean look at her?”
“She’d stand there in her bathing suit and let me look at her. She’d say something like, ‘Okay, you’ve got two minutes.’ Then she’d just stand there and let me look at her.”
“Was she always in her bathing suit?”
“A couple of times she was in her bra and panties.”
Teddy thought about the pair of panties he’d found in Darlene’s bedroom closet. They were almost transparent.
“Was she always wearing clothes?” he asked. “In her bathing suit or in her underwear?”
Holmes nodded.
“Did you ever touch her?”
Holmes hesitated, but eventually shook his head. “I used to think about doing things to her though. I couldn’t help it. When I started thinking, sometimes I couldn’t stop.”
“What kind of things?”
“… Just things.”
“Did you tell any of this to the police?”
“I don’t remember,” Holmes said, lowering his hands. “I’m tired. I want you to go away now. I wanna go home.”
SEVEN
He used to think about doing things to her. He couldn’t help it and couldn’t stop….
Teddy walked out of the lobby into the parking lot, looking for his car in the freezing rain and wet snow.
Things…
The things Holmes had done to Darlene Lewis were so brutal, the slob blacked out and couldn’t even remember driving home. What Holmes had said didn’t amount to a confession, but the motive was clear enough.
Teddy checked his watch. It was after eleven. When the day started, he was about to win his first ruling in civil court. Now he was helping Jim Barnett shepherd a maniac through the system who insisted on a trial. It would be prolonged. Loud and painful for everyone.
He spotted his car ahead, keeping his eyes on the ground and pretending to check the wet asphalt for ice. He knew Holmesburg Prison was on the other side of I-95, and didn’t want to look at it. He was afraid to look at it because he thought he might break. It had been a long day of keeping everything down. Turning off his memories, forgetting what was past-he hadn’t told anyone that this was the stuff of nightmares for over half of his short life. Having to meet Holmes had only been the hideous icing on a poisoned cake.