“You know the cops have undoubtedly already figured out it was more than a robbery gone bad,” Lloyd replied as he dug into his omelet. “This is good. Gruyere?”
“Yep. From the specialty shop a couple of blocks from here. I debated between it and the smoked Gouda, but decided this was more versatile.”
“A good choice.”
Lloyd waited until they’d finished eating before saying, “Tell me about last night. I sat at the bar, bored out of my mind, wishing I was with you so I could watch.”
“I know what you mean. I feel the same when it’s your turn.” Blaine went on to describe exactly how he’d killed Ms. Hawthorne—in detail. “It was very satisfying,” he said in conclusion.
“I can imagine,” Lloyd replied—and he had, having pictured every move in his mind’s eye as Blaine talked. “Now, we wait.”
“We do. While I don’t think anyone knows who was with her last night, we don’t ever take chances. Not that I can’t deny it emphatically, if someone did see us and gives the cops my description. The waitress undoubtedly will if she figures out we were at the restaurant. If that happens, I have an ironclad alibi.” Blaine winked at Lloyd. “We’ll follow the case, as we always do, until the furor dies down.”
“I hope I can wait that long,” Lloyd said under his breath.
* * * *
It had been three years since they began their killing spree. Well, not a spree. Not as far apart as we’ve spaced them. I wonder, if we’d never met, if we’d both be killing to sate our…needs. Lloyd thought back to the night he’d first heard of the man who turned out to be his twin brother.
Blaine had graduated from college and was debating whether to remain with the company he was working for in Chicago or take a job offer with a life insurance firm in Denver—or so Lloyd had found out later.
Lloyd had been in the city to visit a friend from the university. They were eating dinner on a Friday evening at a downtown Chicago hotel when a couple had come over to their table.
“Blaine,” the woman had said. “I thought you were working late tonight, and here you are, dining at one of my favorite restaurants.”
Lloyd had looked blankly at her, replying, “I think you’re mistaken. My name is Lloyd. Lloyd Thomas.”
“Come on, quit teasing,” she’d said. “Or…” She’d eyed Lloyd’s friend. “Is there something you haven’t told us about yourself, Blaine? I promise I won’t tell a soul if you want to keep it a secret.”
“Honestly, ma’am, you have me mistaken for someone else. I’m not this Blaine person, I promise.”
“What’s the man’s full name?” Lloyd’s friend had asked, sounding intrigued.
“Blaine Ayers. He and I have worked together for the last six months so I should know what I’m talking about.” She had studied Lloyd, then said, “If you aren’t Blaine, you’re his doppelganger.”
Lloyd had chuckled, promising her he wasn’t her friend—even going so far as to show her his driver’s license to prove it. She and her husband had finally left, although it was obvious she didn’t know whether to believe him or not.
“So, you have a twin?” his friend had asked.
“Not that I know of, but…” Lloyd had wondered if it was possible. He’d been abandoned at a Safe Haven fire department in New York City when he was only days old and had spent the next eighteen years bouncing from foster home to foster home—some good, some not. Always, he’d felt like an outsider. A cash cow for the people who had fostered him.
He’d managed to save enough money working after school so that, with a scholarship, he’d been able to go to the college. He’d graduated with honors in Business Administration with an emphasis on marketing, and then had gotten a job directly out of school with a firm in Cleveland. He had been there for two years. When his friend had suggested he come to Chicago during his vacation to visit, Lloyd had taken him up on it.
His friend had laughed. “You should check the guy out, since you know his name. He probably looks about as much like you as I do, but hell, it could be fun if you find out he is a relative.”
“A long lost one,” Lloyd had muttered.
From there, they had moved onto other topics, but in the back of his mind Lloyd had wondered if it was possible that this Blaine was his brother, if not his twin.
* * * *
It hadn’t been hard for Lloyd to locate Blaine Ayers. His name and number were listed in an online phone directory and he had a LinkedIn profile. One with his picture.
No wonder she thought I was this Blaine guy. He’s the spitting image of me.
Lloyd had written down the address and then, Saturday afternoon, had rented a car and gone to check it out. The address belonged to an apartment building in what appeared to be an upscale part of the city. Lloyd had parked across the street, and then spent fifteen minutes trying to get up the nerve to take the next step.
What have I got to lose? If it is just a coincidence that we look so much alike, we’ll have a good laugh and I’ll leave.
Steeling himself, he’d gotten out of the car, crossed the street, and gone into the building’s entryway. He’d picked up the phone receiver beside the bank of buttons, found the button tagged for B. Ayers, and pushed it.
“Yes?” a voice had said over the phone.
“This is going to sound strange,” Lloyd had replied. “But I think, maybe, you and I are related.”
“Oh, really? How, and why?” There had been a definite tone of disbelief in the man’s voice.
Lloyd had quickly explained about the woman the previous evening who had been certain he was Blaine Ayers.
After a long pause, the man had chortled. “This, I have to see. I’ll be right down.”
Lloyd had watched the lobby, and the elevators at the back of it. A couple of minutes later, one of the doors had opened and a man Lloyd knew had to be Blaine stepped out and came toward him. His lips had pursed in a whistle as he looked at Lloyd. Then, slowly, he’d smiled as he opened the lobby door to let Lloyd in.
“This is unbelievable,” Blaine had said after introducing himself. “What’s your name?”
“Lloyd Thomas.”
“Well, Lloyd Thomas, why don’t you come upstairs and we’ll talk?” Blaine had replied. “I have a feeling we’ve got a lot to discuss.”
* * * *
They had talked for hours. Lloyd had told Blaine about what it was like, growing up in foster homes. “Mostly, well sometimes, it wasn’t bad. It was…I was always the odd one out. It took a while for me to realize they just wanted the money from fostering me. That no one wanted me.” He’d pounded his fist to his chest. “If they had, someone would have adopted me. Right?”
“I suppose.”
“No one did,” Lloyd had said bitterly. “They’d keep me for a year or three, then it was hasta la vista and I’d be moved on to another foster home. It wasn’t that I did anything wrong, damn it. It was the fact they never cared about me.” He’d scowled when he’d said that.
“Easy there,” Blaine had replied. “You still managed to make something of yourself, from what you’ve said.”
“It was that or end up flipping burgers, and I did enough of that in high school.” He’d sighed, then asked, “What was your life like? A lot different than mine, I bet, with a real family.”
Blaine had shrugged. “Sort of. My mother died when I was born. Or…” He’d studied Lloyd again, for what seemed like the umpteenth time that evening. “Or maybe when we were born? Dad never talked about it. They’d lived in a small town, he said, although he never would tell me where. According to him, he couldn’t take living there, with all the memories, so he brought me home from the hospital, and couple of days after her funeral he packed up and moved us to a big city.” He’d grimaced. “New York.” He had leaned back, frowning as he tapped his lip, then said, “What if you are my brother? My twin? What if he didn’t want the responsibility of taking care of two kids, so he left you at the Safe Haven as soon as he got to New Yor
k?”
Lloyd sucked in a breath. “That’s where I grew up.”
“I didn’t. When I was three we moved down to Richmond.”
“So, maybe…?”
“There’s one way to find out. DNA testing.”
“If we are. Twins, I mean,” Lloyd had replied.
“We’ll finally have a real family.”
“You already do,” Lloyd had said, frowning.
Blaine had snorted. “Did, and it depends on your definition. Yeah, I had a father. He died of a heart attack right after I graduated from college. But I sure didn’t feel like we were a family. I’m the kid…I was the kid, who was always in the way when Dad decided he wanted a woman around. And damn but he went through a lot of them. I had more aunts—” he’d made finger quotes, “—than was humanly possible. He didn’t want a permanent woman in his life, but he did want one around to take care of his needs. He might as well of hired whores because as far as I’m concerned that’s what they were. Smug women with good jobs like his, who were certain they’d be the one who’d finally make him settle down and get married.” He’d scowled. “Of course they’d all have been happier if I wasn’t in the picture and most of them let me know it.”
“That must have been awful.”
“Yeah, it was. All I wanted was his love. All I got was a, ‘Go find something to keep you busy.’ Or, ‘Why don’t you see if you can spend the night, the weekend, with one of your friends from school.’ I hated that!”
Lloyd had nodded. “So, in some ways, your life was like mine, being bounced around. Except for you it was to keep you out of sight.”
“Yeah, so his upstanding women wouldn’t have to deal with me. Bitches.” Blaine had shaken his head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be laying all this on you when we hardly know each other.”
“Hey, it’s what brothers do,” Lloyd had replied, praying that they really were. Then I’ll have a real family, even if it is only the two of us. That is if we’re right and his father did get rid of me. God, I could kill him if that’s so.
“Are you up for DNA testing?” Blaine had asked at that point. “We might find out we’re way off base.”
“Come on, look at us.” Lloyd had gotten up, walking over to the mirror above Blaine’s fireplace. When Blaine joined him, they’d studied their reflections. “Same noses, same eyes, same hair color, even our ears are almost the same.”
“And we’re the same height, although you’re skinnier than me,” Blaine had replied.
“That’s not hereditary, I don’t think.”
“Yeah, I know. So, are you game?”
“You better believe it. Will we need your father’s DNA, too? Never mind, you said he’s dead.”
“Yeah,” Blaine had replied. “Besides, if we match, that’s what counts.”
“True.”
They did get tested, buying the test kits from a national drug store chain and then sending the swabs to the lab as the kit instructed. It would take a week for them to get the results, which would come to Blaine. Because he had a job he had to return to, Lloyd had left Chicago late Sunday evening, with Blaine’s promise he’d call the moment he heard anything.
* * * *
The first words out of Blaine’s mouth when Lloyd had answered his phone the following Saturday afternoon were, “Hello, twin.”
Lloyd had cheered, unbelievably happy to know he now had a real family. They’d talked for over an hour, with Blaine trying to convince Lloyd to quit his job and move to Chicago. In the end, Lloyd had agreed, as long as he could find a new one and a place to live there.
“You’ve seen my apartment,” Blaine had said. “It’s way large enough for two people. The guest bedroom, which I never use, can be yours. I promise I’m not hard to live with.” He’d chuckled. “You can ask my last girlfriend for a reference.”
Lloyd hadn’t, of course, but he did start looking for work in Chicago—and was hired by a small marketing firm two weeks later. By the end of the month he was happily ensconced in Blaine’s apartment. A year later, Blaine had accepted the job in Denver and they’d moved into the condo he’d purchased—and begun their killing spree.
* * * *
“Have you picked someone?” Blaine asked Lloyd one night, two weeks after the murder of Ms. Hawthorne. His twin had come home well after eleven, telling Blaine he’d had to work late. Blaine had the feeling there was more to it than that. He was well aware his twin was restless as his need to kill again began to overtake him.
“I think so,” Lloyd replied. “There’s a man I saw on the bus when I was on my way home from work tonight who reminds me very much of our father, from the photos you’ve shown me of him. I followed him home. He lives in an older house a few blocks east of Colorado.”
Despite the fact that, to all intents and purposes Blaine was the only one who lived in the condo, they both had jobs. Lloyd’s was downtown, while Blaine’s was at the Tech Center on the west side of the city. Blaine would leave every morning at seven-thirty to get to work. Then, after checking to be sure no one was in the hallway, Lloyd would take the fire stairs next to their condo down to the ground floor. Again, he’d make certain no one was around before leaving by the building’s back door. It was tricky, and annoying at times, but so far, in the last three years, it had worked. It had to, if they were going to maintain the illusion that they were one person. The only real danger was the walk to the bus stop, but since Blaine made it a policy never to go anywhere on foot in the neighborhood, they had managed to pull it off. There had been a few times when one of the building’s tenants had seen Lloyd waiting for the bus. When that had happened he, or Blaine if they asked when they saw him that evening, explained that he’d taken his car in for a check-up at the local garage. No one had ever questioned their reply.
“Does he live alone?” Blaine said to what Lloyd had told him.
“That’s yet to be determined. I didn’t see any evidence of kids, like toys in the front yard, or a swing set in back, and I did go down the alley. There’s a picket fence around the back yard.” He got up from the sofa and began pacing. Then he swung around to face Blaine. “We should get a house of our own.”
It was something Lloyd had been lobbying for, for the last year. Until today, Blaine had been dead set against it. He knew how people were, wanting to know all about their neighbors, no matter how secluded a house might be.
“I agree,” Blaine replied, much to Lloyd’s obvious surprise. Then he handed his twin a note that the manager had put under their door.
“Oh shit! Fuck.” Lloyd balled it up, tossing it into the waste basket.
“I thought you’d be happy. You’ll get your wish.”
“Yeah, but do you know how long it takes to find a house and all that crap?”
Blaine lifted his eyebrows. “Yes and yes. I also know you’ve already been looking online. Planning ahead in case I gave in.”
“Well…”
“Come on. Show me your finds and we can pick a few and go look at them. We’ve got a month until they install the cameras. That should be enough time, as long as we’re not too picky.”
“Here’s a house with nineteen bedrooms,” Blaire said a few minutes later, snickering as he pointed to one on the website, listed next to one of the homes Lloyd had thought might work for them.
“Who the hell has that big a family?” Lloyd responded, shaking his head.
They narrowed their choices down to six that looked as if they’d work for them. Ones without neighbors living cheek-by-jowl. Two even had cedar privacy fences surrounding the yards and a third had trees and tall bushes which looked as if they would keep the house safe from prying eyes. A definite plus as far as they were concerned. As Lloyd pointed out, it wouldn’t make the people in the area wonder why someone would buy a nice home only to hide it from view by immediately fencing it in. “The work had already been done for us.”
“Now comes fun time…for the realtor,” Blaine said after setting up an appointment with her to look a
t the houses. “She’s going to have to deal with a very picky man who wants to go back at least twice to see each of them so he can make a decision.”
“Well, not all of them, I hope. Eliminate the ones that absolutely won’t work for us.”
“Will do.”
Blaine did, so there were only three that he told the realtor he wanted to look at again. He filled Lloyd in on as much as he remembered of what he’d discussed with the realtor about each house.
“You…I was harried and in a hurry and forgot something she said,” Lloyd replied. “At least that’s what I’ll tell her if she seems put off by some question I ask.”
Lloyd didn’t like one of them. “Too damned modern,” was the reason he gave his twin. Blaine had to agree—it was.
That left the one with the trees, and one with a tall cedar fence. The fenced one was definitely older, having been built in nineteen-fourteen. According to the realtor, the same family had owned it through the years, passing it down from father to son. The most recent inheritor had decided he didn’t want to be saddled with a relic and had put it on the market six months previously. Blaine was the first person who had shown any real interest in buying it.
“I vote for the old place,” Blaine said after returning from his second walk-through—or the third as far as the realtor was concerned. “It’ll need some work as far as doing something about the walls. The wallpaper…” He shuddered.
“I liked it the best, despite the previous owner’s decorating choices,” Lloyd replied. “It has the added advantage of being well outside the city proper, and a lot closer to your work. Mine, not so much so, but we’ll figure that out after we’ve moved. So get back in touch with the realtor to start the paperwork to buy it, and then sell the condo.”
Blaine did, making an offer that was ten percent above the asking price on the house in order to facilitate purchasing it as soon as possible. Even at that, Lloyd ended up spending four days in a motel before they could take possession of the house, because of the security cameras which had been installed in the condo building.
Then, they were in their new home. Blaine hired a moving company that promised to handle everything in one day—which they did. Lloyd came in under the cover of darkness that evening and they made quick work of emptying the boxes of kitchen, bathroom, and other items. Easily done, as Blaine had made certain the moving men put every piece of furniture where he wanted it, not piled in the middle of the various rooms.
Murderous Twins Page 2