Read Online The Dead Room by Robert Ellis - Free Book Online

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