A site was found for the project, a team of architects commissioned to assist with his father’s design. Teddy could remember watching his father go over the drawings every night at the game table in his study. His father seemed so happy, and Teddy would sneak peeks at him, hiding behind the rail of the staircase in the living room. There were lots for hundreds of townhouses, a space for a shopping center so no one would have to drive very far and waste gas, and then just as much space for three corporate parks. It was like his dad was designing an entire city.
The amount of money required to develop the project was enormous. Yet his father secured the financing easier than anyone anticipated. It was in the genius of his plan. It made sense and it was by Jonathan Mack. Everyone wanted to be in on it, Teddy remembered-except for the environmentalists. One night he’d been allowed to attend a town meeting with his mother and younger sister. They sat in the back row and watched the presentation and the questions that followed. Some of the people seemed mean, Teddy thought at the time, and many of them were angry at his father. But Jonathan Mack never batted an eye. Instead, he told the environmentalists that he agreed with them. Then he turned the slide projector back on and showed them aerial photographs of what the area would look like in twenty years if it were developed as single-lot homes. They were caught up in the short-term view, he said, just as he had been less than two years ago. In spite of all the construction, his father pointed out that they were only using forty-five percent of the land. The rest of the property would remain untouched forever. By the time his father was done, the mood in the room changed and even the key environmentalists were on-board.
Six months later, they broke ground. Everything seemed to be going according to schedule. Then one Saturday, Jonathan Mack’s friend and partner was found dead in the office by the cleaning staff. Teddy was too young to get details, but he heard his parents whispering and knew that the man had been shot to death with a gun. Several weeks passed with his parents going into the den every night after dinner and talking behind closed doors. The joy was gone, the house filled with a new kind of tension Teddy had never experienced before. He tried to compensate for the change by taking better care of his little sister, doing his chores before he was asked, and keeping his room neat-things he’d never been able to manage very well in the past. At night he went to sleep wishing everything would change back to the way things were. Who needed big building projects when a single house would do? Then one afternoon he was in the kitchen helping his mother get dinner ready when the doorbell rang. Teddy ran to answer it and saw four cops standing on the other side of the storm door.
They said all they wanted to do was talk, but as Teddy climbed the stairs with his sister, he knew they were lying. He watched from his bedroom window as his father was led out of the house in handcuffs. His mother was crying and he could see that his father was, too. She kept trying to touch him before he got into the car, hug him and give him a last kiss. But one of the cops grabbed her and pulled her away, yelling at her to stop.
Teddy raced downstairs and bolted out the front door. Before he knew it, he was hitting the cop, punching him, giving it everything he had. His body was still small, still a boy’s, but he’d spent most of his life lifting rocks out of streambeds in search of salamanders and climbing trees until he reached the highest branches. He was strong for his size and didn’t stop until one of the other cops pulled him off and threw him onto the ground. The cop held him down, asking him if he wanted to go to jail like his old man. Teddy looked him in the eye and told him that if his friend didn’t stop touching his mother, he’d kill him. The cop looked at him a moment without saying anything. Then he let go and got in the car, taking Teddy’s father away with his motherfucking cop friends….
Teddy’s idyllic childhood was over.
He lit another cigarette, thinking about how much he hated criminal law and the world that went with it. It hit hard and ran all the way to the bottom.
A report on road conditions came over the radio, jogging him back to the surface. The news was as good as his day had been. Apparently the snow was falling faster than it could be plowed. People were being warned to stay home. By the time he reached King of Prussia and exited onto Route 202, the snow was a foot deep and the four- lane road looked deserted. All except for one car a quarter mile up. Teddy kept his eyes on the car’s taillights, riding the tracks left behind as if a train. When he hit the Devon exit, the car ahead continued along the four-lane vanishing into the night, and Teddy was on his own.
It took three tries to make it up the mile long hill on Devon State Road-the third attempt a nail-biter at fifty miles an hour. The car slipped and skidded, requiring both sides of the two-lane road, but he made it over the hill with enough momentum and didn’t veer off into the trees. Once he glided over the other side, he crossed Lancaster Pike and headed south on Waterloo Road. Two miles down, he pulled into the driveway and noticed Quint Adler’s car parked beside his mother’s. The lights were on in the barn out back. Even with the doors closed he could smell the oak burning from the wood stove and knew they were still working.
Teddy was grateful that Quint was here. He was grateful to Quint for a lot of things, but tonight it was just because he wanted to be alone.
He got out of the car and looked at the house in the snow. It was an elegant colonial farmhouse built in 1820 and set on four acres of wooded land. A long way off from Holmesburg Prison. His father had bought the property before Teddy could remember, remodeling the stone house and building a greenhouse off the den for his mother. Once the renovations were complete, his father got started on the barn, converting the space into an art studio for her as well.
A car ambled down the road. Teddy watched it pass the house, listening to its engine tick and marveling at the way snow muffled the sound. He looked across the street where the open fields had been eaten up by one housing development after the next just as his father said they would. The big houses were set down in haphazard clusters as if the result of a tornado, the architecture cheap and grotesque. Even worse, none of the people who lived in these homes believed in planting trees. Instead they preferred the open look, marring the once pastoral setting with a show of money and turning the rolling hills into a garish eyesore. To Teddy, the layout reminded him of a graveyard.
Teddy flicked his cigarette into the street, grabbed his briefcase from the car and walked around back to the kitchen door. Kicking the snow off his shoes, he stepped inside and got out of his jacket. He needed a drink. Not his usual beer, but something stronger. He decided on vodka, pulling the blue bottle out of the freezer and filling a large glass loaded with ice to the brim. He took a first sip, letting the smooth liquid coat his throat and warm his stomach. Then he headed up the back staircase to his room, hoping the medicine would quiet him down.
He switched on the light and closed the door, taking another sip of vodka before setting the glass on the table beside the bed. Opening his cell phone, he thought he’d give Barnett another try and punched in his number at home. After two rings, Barnett’s service picked up again.
Teddy was trapped and he knew it. He couldn’t leave the firm because his debt after four years of college and three more years at law school amounted to one-hundred-and-ninety-thousand dollars. The interest on his loans was costing him another eighteen-thousand a year. After making loan and credit card payments each month, his check barely covered food and clothes. He needed this job, but he couldn’t continue helping Barnett either. Not with Oscar Holmes.
He grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. It was after midnight. A football game or movie must have delayed the schedule because the local news was still on. Teddy sat on the bed, watching the broadcast as he sipped his drink. The news readers had cut to a live shot of Darlene Lewis’s house in the snow storm. The reporter was a woman who looked more like a model. She had big hair and capped teeth, wore too much makeup and jewelry, and in spite of the harsh weather conditions, left her jacket open so everyone could see her Armani suit underneath. The death house was dark and haunting and provided just the right backdrop for the story, the police long gone. The model stood on the front steps, explaining what happened that day in broad strokes and pretending that she was afraid. But she wasn’t a very good actress, and her half smile seemed out of place. Teddy wondered if she wasn’t really happy about what had happened to Darlene Lewis this morning. Ratings would be up. Murder paid for the Armani suit and the car and house and mutual funds that went with it. The model had a big story and everyone would be watching her tonight in spite of the hour.
Mirror, mirror on the wall…
The live shot cut to footage recorded earlier in the night, but it wasn’t much of a relief. Teddy watched as the people from the medical examiner’s office wheeled Darlene Lewis’s corpse out the front door on a gurney and rolled it into their van. The sight of the body bag brought it all back, and Teddy could see the girl still tied down to the dining room table, screaming through her gag. The friendly neighborhood mailman was standing over her. Holmes had been teased once too often, he imagined. Pulling out his knife, he’d cut her flesh away and eaten it.
Teddy switched off the TV and killed the lights, lying back on the bed and considering his options as he
