Teddy looked at the IVs in the man’s arm. He felt like pulling them out, watching Barnett squirm his way into the void where he belonged. He glanced at the chair, but didn’t sit down. For a moment he thought about his college loans, but only long enough to count up his debt. One hundred and ninety thousand dollars. Teddy didn’t care anymore.
“I closed the deal,” Barnett managed. “The death penalty’s off the table. Holmes will get the care he needs. He’ll live, for Christ’s sake.”
“Stop pretending that this is about helping Holmes,” Teddy said. “This is about you. It’s always been about you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your little secret,” Teddy said. “Your brother-in-law. The minute the story showed up in the papers, you folded. You don’t even care if he’s innocent or not. All you care about is you.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Are you afraid they’ll hear me? They already know. Everybody does. The Veggie Butcher and Jim Barnett are brothers.”
Barnett cringed. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
“I came here to ask you the same question. Who the hell do you think you are?”
“My name’s Jim Barnett,” he said through clinched teeth. “And I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”
“You sure do. That’s why you sold Holmes out from the beginning. You were embarrassed. You made the deal thinking you might contain the secret. Holmes never had a chance. Not with a brother like you.”
“Stop calling him my brother,” Barnett shouted. “He’s always been strange. He’s an oddball. He’s a freak.”
Teddy gave Barnett a long look, deciding that he’d let what was just said pass for now. “How did you convince Andrews to make the deal?” he asked.
“It was easy. They did the x-rays yesterday. When Andrews told me what they found underneath the paintings, I told him about the profile you and Nash put together. I think it caught Andrews by surprise. He seemed shocked by it and wanted to see it. He said he thought he needed a confession. We worked the deal out in five minutes. Holmes confessed in less than two.”
“Thanks for letting me know.”
Barnett looked away and seemed to shrink. “That was Andrews’s idea,” he said after a moment. “I needed to know that what he told me about the paintings was true.”
Teddy grimaced, burying the scope of the betrayal as deep as it would go. “So now you’re saved,” he said. “You can host another treasure hunt and gloat over your picture in the society pages. If I were you I’d hire someone who knows how to handle the press. They’ll need to turn you into a victim. Tell the whole story from your point of view. You can handle the interviews from here. A picture of Jim Barnett in his hospital bed should go a long way. Holmes hurt everyone. Even you.”
“Larry Stokes already has someone in mind,” Barnett said. “You should know better than me why I did everything I could to keep the story from getting out. Look what happened to you after your father’s arrest.”
It hung there. Teddy standing motionless.
“That’s right,” Barnett said. “I know all about your goddamn father. That’s why I asked you to help me with Holmes. You’re a loser, Teddy. You don’t get it. Wake up and smell the roses. Your father’s arrest for murder ruined you and the reputation of your family. No matter what the truth was, is, or will be, you will always be Teddy Mack, the son of the architect on the Main Line who murdered his business partner. I asked for your help not because I thought you might bring something to the case. How could you at your age? I asked for your help because I thought you’d toe the line just like every other asshole who’s running from the truth. But you didn’t. You couldn’t. Everything you did made things worse. Now get out and toe the line.”
The door burst open. Teddy was lunging for the bed when two security guards grabbed him from behind and tackled him down to the floor.
FIFTY
The aftermath. The done deal. It had been so ugly.
Teddy sat at the jury table and stared at the pictures of the missing look-alikes tacked to the wall. They seemed so far away. The confession changed things. Whether it was true or not, Holmes’s statement and signature on the document had a certain weight about it.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Nash asked from his desk.
“I’m okay.”
“What about something stronger?”
Teddy shook his head, then turned to the door as Gail Emerson, Nash’s assistant, entered the room with a cup of coffee. Her eyes were puffy and she appeared as upset as they were. She set the cup on the table before Teddy, wouldn’t take no for an answer, and gave Nash a worried look as she left the room. Teddy liked Gail, and sipped the coffee. It tasted fresh and hot, and he appreciated the kind gesture.
Nash cleared his throat. “Barnett shouldn’t have said those things to you, Teddy. I’m sorry. Did he fire you?”
“I don’t know yet. He’s still bedridden. They’ll need someone to do the paperwork and sit at the table with Holmes. I’m not sure anyone at the firm really wants their picture taken beside a serial killer.”
Nash flashed a warm smile. “I’d say you’re right about that.”
“What about Rosemary?” Teddy asked.
“As far as I’m concerned, nothing’s changed. We already knew something was going on between Holmes and Darlene Lewis. Now we know what it was. The confession, based on the man’s state of mind, isn’t even worth reading. But we’re alone. Westbrook called when the bureau got the news from the DA’s office. He’s upset. He said he’ll do anything he can to help, but it will have to remain unofficial now.”
“We know the profile’s accurate,” Teddy said. “From what the manager at the cafe told us, this guy with bad teeth followed Rosemary out the door the night she disappeared. Her gym bag wasn’t found in her apartment. We know she never made it home.”
Nash got up from his desk and sat down with Teddy at the jury table. He’d been collecting press clippings on Alan Andrews since he began researching the DA’s past. He laid several of them out on the table, one beside the next, then bummed a cigarette from Teddy’s pack. He’d never done that before.
“What do you think of this?” Nash asked. “What’s your opinion?”
Teddy counted six clippings. He scanned the copy long enough to get the gist.
“Andrews was an overzealous prosecutor,” he said. “Judges complained, but he ran a hard race and became the district attorney. He wasn’t liked much. Still, the office generated a lot of prosecutions and crime was down.”
“What else?”
Teddy thought it over. “It looks like the press tolerated him. Judges were relieved he wouldn’t be appearing in court as often, if ever, as long as he held the office.”
“Then what?”
“You hit Andrews for sending the wrong man to his death,” Teddy said. “All his faults were in the papers again. But it didn’t last because Holmes was arrested that very day. People got scared. The city was being terrorized by a maniac. As far as they were concerned, Alan Andrews saved them and any mistakes he made in his past were forgiven. So what if the wrong man got the needle. That’s the way people think. The guy was probably a lowlife and deserved to die for something else he’d done.”
Nash gazed at Andrews’s clippings, his eyes more dilated than usual, more sad. “You have to admit that it’s remarkable though. His resurrection, I mean. I thought he’d be booted out of office when my workshop made its findings public. Now it looks like he’ll be rewarded. He’ll become the city’s next mayor, then who knows, maybe even governor. Whether you like him or not, he’s a survivor. You have to give him credit for that.”
“What about your workshop next semester? What about the other cases you’re working on?”
“They’re old,” Nash said, lowering his voice. “Evidence is scarce. In some cases contaminated or even
