Jackson spotted Teddy’s eyes on the gun and smiled as he swung the door open. “Two times in one day,” he said. “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this, kid. People might get the wrong idea.”
“This won’t take long,” Teddy said.
“I hope not. I clocked out a half hour ago. I could charge them for this, but it’s on the way to my favorite watering hole.”
Teddy entered the apartment, heading straight for Holmes’s studio. He knew he couldn’t sleep tonight with the chance that they might be off track. He needed to see the man’s work and get a feel for it. He needed to know whether or not Holmes had any reason to study human anatomy first hand in a psychotic misinterpretation of Michelangelo’s dead room.
He turned the lock and yanked the door open. Switching on the lights, he crossed the room to the easel and flipped the dust cloth over for a look at Holmes’s work. It was a landscape without any people. But it wasn’t complete either.
He looked around and spotted the canvases leaning against the wall. There were five stacks, ten to twelve paintings deep. Teddy flipped through the paintings as quickly as he could. It was difficult because he realized Holmes’s talent was genuine. Holmes had a way of playing with color that drew out the viewer’s emotions. A hill might be black, the sky red. It was a singular view of seeing the world. A unique vision. There was a certain violence in the work, but it seemed to be a part of Holmes’s natural style. And there were people as well, but they lacked detail. They looked like shadows, silhouettes-almost as if you took an abstract photograph of a strange landscape with the sun behind your back, casting your shadow across the foreground in a field of deep blue grass.
The works of art were remarkable.
It suddenly occurred to him that there wasn’t a single painting by Holmes hanging in his sister’s house. Sally and Jim Barnett had shown him the renovation of their home in detail, and Teddy had walked through every room. He would have remembered the style if he’d seen it before. As he thought it over, he played back the words the Barnett’s had used to describe Oscar Holmes in his head. Odd. Different. Holmes never seemed to fit in and always had to do things his own way. Teddy looked back at the paintings. No wonder Holmes was having problems with depression. He wasn’t a mailman who painted on the side. Holmes was an artist forced to deliver the mail in order to make a living. He wasn’t odd, but special. While Van Gogh had his brother Theo behind him, all Holmes had were Sally and Jim Barnett. Two people who could have helped him, but didn’t get it and seemed obsessed with the idea of making him fit in. Two people, who on the day of his arrest, wouldn’t even take his phone call. Teddy felt sorry for them, for everyone involved, whether Holmes was guilty of the murders or not.
He looked up and saw Jackson standing in the doorway with an open flask.
“We came here tonight for a look at paintings?” the detective said.
Teddy stood up, his eyes on the flask. “Do you drink on duty, Jackson?”
The detective smiled. “I already told you I punched out. It’s been a long day, kid. You want a hit or what?”
The flask was fitted in a leather case. Inside the strap was a shot glass that covered the neck of the flask and the cap.
“No thanks,” Teddy said.
“Suit yourself. But a shot or two would keep you warm. It feels like they got the heat turned down in here. Like everybody but you knows the guy ain’t coming back.”
It wasn’t made of Sterling silver. Teddy’s eyes rose from the flask to the detective’s face. His bad-boy smile. He wondered if Jackson wasn’t toying with him. Taunting him.
Teddy moved to the worktable and quickly thumbed through a stack of sketchbooks. If Jackson had been the man who clubbed him on the head and ran over Barnett’s legs, then he would’ve known Teddy got a good look at the shot glass he found in the snow. The tall ships and whales etched into the silver. Jackson was smart enough to switch flasks. The fact that he was drinking and talking about keeping warm on a cold night seemed like a play though. Some sort of warning without details that hung over the night like Holmes’s shadow cast in a field of blue.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The strange looks and long stares began the moment Teddy stepped out of the elevator. The receptionist at the front desk skipped her usual banter and remained quiet. When he strode down the hall to the kitchenette, he could feel everyone turning away.
He poured a cup of coffee and walked down to his office wondering what was up. Dumping his briefcase on the couch, he threw the morning papers onto his desk and sat down. The coffee tasted stale, yet it was only 8:00 a.m. Still, the blast of hot caffeine felt soothing, and he sipped the brew trying to wake up. It had been another sleepless night. Between nightmares of a delusional artist dissecting his models with a razor-sharp knife and dreams of making love with Carolyn Powell, the idea of a decent night’s rest seemed ludicrous.
Teddy tossed the Inquirer aside and flipped over his copy of the Daily News. When he unfolded the newspaper and caught his first glimpse of the front page, he felt his pulse rocket upward and set the mug down.
Someone in the district attorney’s office had leaked details from the crime scenes to the press. Even worse, someone had gotten to Holmes.
Teddy’s eyes worked over the picture of Holmes filling out the entire front page-another distorted and particularly grizzly shot of Holmes as a monster. Instead of a headline, the editors had gone with the quote I DON’T EVEN EAT MEAT! attributing it to Holmes and tagging him as the Veggie Butcher.
It was done. Holmes was serial killer with a nickname. The Veggie Butcher.
Teddy’s heart almost stopped.
He turned the page, trying to remain calm as his eyes took in the headlines. Holmes was branded a cannibal for all the world to see. There was an old snapshot of Holmes behind the counter at his butcher shop, sharpening a long knife in front of three old ladies with big, wide-open eyes. Another of Darlene Lewis in a bikini by the pool. Then a third photo of the girl’s corpse inside a body bag as it was wheeled out the front door of her home.
Teddy began reading, the words zipping by at high speed. Holmes had cut Darlene Lewis up and eaten her, a source close to the investigation told the paper. When Valerie Kram’s body was fished out of the icy water along Boathouse Row, the medical examiner found the girl’s internal organs disturbed, another unnamed source said. In his own defense, Holmes confronted the charges with the apparent claim that he couldn’t have eaten their flesh because he was a vegetarian.
Teddy flipped the page, so nervous his hand was trembling. The words THE SKIN GAME leaped out at him. Beneath the headline was a photo of Jim Barnett. It was the same photo printed in Philadelphia Magazine’s Power 100 issue. A reporter had been digging into Holmes’s past and discovered that Barnett and Holmes were brothers-in-law. The secret was no longer a secret. Barnett wouldn’t achieve his dream of making the top ten list this year.
Teddy threw the newspaper in the trash, thinking he might be sick. He heard someone enter his office and turned as he stood. It was Larry Stokes, cofounder of the firm, glaring at him.
“What have you done?” Stokes shrieked.
Teddy froze, spotting Jill down the hall waving her hands in warning. He looked back at Stokes. The man was seething, his eyes filled with venom, but also a large measure of fear-Jill’s warning a moment too late.