“Here,” he said, offering her the ravioli.
“I’m tired of eating out of cans,” she said. “I hate ravioli.”
Eddie looked at the two cans on the floor and realized she hadn’t finished either one of them.
“People are starving, you know. When someone offers you food, you should be more grateful and not waste it.”
“Fuck you,” she said. “And fuck your stupid painting.”
She stood up on her bare feet. She was grinding her teeth and moving closer with her hands behind her back. Eddie had lost count and didn’t see it coming-a third can of Chef Boyardee beef ravioli flying through the air. Rosemary swung it forward and crashed it over his forehead. The blow knocked him against the doorjamb. He felt her pushing him aside, and saw her streak by and bolt out the door.
She wasn’t an angel. She was an ungrateful bitch.
He tried to shake the dizziness away and sprinted forward, catching up with her on the stairs. He was right behind her, grabbing at the dress with his fingers and pawing at her legs. Rosemary burst into the kitchen, swung the door back and forth, banging him on the head again. Then she yelped and fled away. Eddie chased her into the living room, pulling her off the front door as she fumbled with the locks. She was squirming in his arms, twisting out of his hands, driving her elbows into his stomach and searching for his balls. When she pulled away and raced up the steps to the second floor, Eddie decided he’d had it. He climbed the stairs, slower this time because of the pain in his leg. The wound had opened again. He could see the bloodstain blooming all over his clean pants. And then he heard her shriek.
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.