Holmes grunted, approaching the phone and dialing a number. He gave the operator his name. As he waited for the call to go through, he turned away, shielding the phone from the guards and staring at the concrete wall in search of some degree of privacy. After several moments, he began whimpering into the handset. Teddy could barely make out what he was saying, but it sounded like Holmes was pleading with someone other than the operator to accept the call.
“But I need to talk to her,” Holmes said in a louder voice. “I really need to talk to her.”
Holmes sighed and then hung up. They wouldn’t accept the call. No one wanted to talk to him, his plea falling on deaf ears. When he finally turned around, he looked ten years older, like the hopelessness of what was ahead for him had begun to sink in.
He lowered his eyes. Then the guards led him down the hall and placed him into an empty holding cell. There were no bars on the door, just glass. Teddy waited with the assistant warden as Holmes showered and was issued an orange jumpsuit. When the prison doctor arrived, he was given a physical, questioned about his general health, and samples of his blood were taken. Once the doctor had completed his required tasks, he removed the tape wrapped around Holmes’s hands and examined the wounds. Teddy approached the holding cell for a closer look. Holmes had been cut by the knife. Somehow his palms had been slashed in the struggle with the eighteen-year-old girl.
The doctor dressed the wounds, saying the cuts were deep but didn’t require stitches. Still, Holmes never looked at him. Since that aborted phone call, Holmes’s eyes never rose from the floor.
Teddy stepped back, following the assistant warden out of the holding area. He was on autopilot, observing the process and keeping everything as far away as he could.
“We’ll screen his blood,” Dean was saying. “For the next five days, Holmes will be in quarantine. After that, we’ll determine the risks and he’ll be transferred to another pod for permanent housing. He’s on suicide watch tonight. We’ll see how things go.”
They stopped at a door. Dean glanced at the camera mounted on the wall and nodded. After a moment, the lock clicked and the door opened revealing a hallway flanked by conference rooms. There were fourteen of them, seven per side-each with a sign beside the door designating them as OFFICIAL VISITING ROOMS.
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.
