The Single Twin

by Sean Little

  Kimberly’s eyes were hazy. She started out blankly at the water. “The doctor I was seeing, he tried to help me through the guilt, but it is always there. He taught me how to push it down deep and carry on, though. He told me that I would learn to love the new baby as much as I was supposed to love my real baby, but I don’t know that I ever did. I knew that I had a duty to my husband, though. I knew that I had to do what was right for him, and for all the people who depended on him to be a congressman, so I just smiled and worked. Pretending to be normal became my job.” She took a deep, shaky breath and blew it out slowly through pursed lips. “I did alright, didn’t I?” She dissolved into tears again.

  Abe moved toward her again, just a few more inches. “What happened to the baby, Kimberly?”

  She spoke through her sobs. “He laid in his bed for a day and a half. I couldn’t even bring myself to look in on him. The guilt was so terrible. I hated myself. I thought about ending it all. Uriah came and told me that he would help. Together, he and I dug a grave for the baby in the little copse of trees behind our house in Maryland. We carried the baby out there under the cover of darkness and said our prayers over him. We buried him together. We built a little stone cairn to mark the spot. We cried together. Then we promised we’d never tell. Uriah went to his grave keeping all his promises. He loved Marcus. He was so hurt by the baby’s death. He grew to love the new baby, too. He had such a big heart. He was such a good man. I did not deserve to have him as a brother.”

  “Did you know Tasker kept helping the woman whose baby you took?”

  Kimberly nodded. She pointed at her own chest several times as she gasped for air between sobs. “That was me. I insisted on it. I kept tabs on her. I helped her daughter when I could. I made sure they never starved, never needed money for new shoes. I had to funnel money. I had to be creative with the accounting, but I was an accountant. That’s what I did. Over the years I did what I could for them. Uriah was the go-between for us. He went over to help the woman frequently, although never when the little girl was around. The four of us kept it locked down. We formed such a tight little cadre there were times I thought we’d actually get away with it. Take it to our graves.” She gave a weak laugh. “I guess we almost did.”

  “But Mindy Jefferson started looking for her brother, didn’t she?”

  Kimberly nodded. “That was our mistake. We tried to silence her rather than bring her into the secret, I think. I wanted to tell her, but Uriah and Ron told me she’d have us over a barrel. She’d go to the press or blackmail us. It was too risky. Better to quiet her.” Kimberly used both hands to wipe away tears from her cheeks. She shook herself as though she were shedding all the bad feelings. In a moment, she was composed, a professional senator’s wife. “I guess that’s what happens when you do bad for too long. Eventually, you slip up. It all catches up to you in the end, doesn’t it?”

  There was a low rumble of thunder in the sky which seemed to last for thirty seconds. A cold front moved in and the wind picked up. It was a chilling breeze compared to the sauna of the past week. The storm had arrived.

  Abe moved closer. “Mrs. Stevens, you made a mistake. It’s not too late to correct that mistake.”

  “Oh, I aim to.” Kimberly plucked the gun from her lap. “They tell me one squeeze is quick and clean. I won’t even feel it.”

  Abe raised his hands to try to calm her. “Mrs. Stevens, there is so much good you could do. Put the gun down. Think about how much your story could help young women suffering as you did.”

  Kimberly Stevens thumbed off the safety of the gun. “No, no. I’ve done a crime, and I’ve gone without punishment for too long.” She put the barrel to her temple. “Where do you think we go when we die?”

  “Mrs. Stevens, please don’t! Put the gun down. I can help you.”

  Kimberly laughed. “You’re nobody, friend. Please don’t take that the wrong way. You can’t do anything.”

  There was a gunshot. Kimberly Stevens’s arm jerked, and Abe saw a spray of blood. She fell over and groaned loudly. She was still alive.

  Abe spun around and saw Diana Gates standing next to a tree in a shooter’s stance.

  The bullet had struck Kimberly Stevens’s elbow before she could pull the trigger. The senator’s wife lay in the mud and grass at the shore of the lagoon, her right elbow a wrecked, bloody mess, but the rest of her intact and alive.

  From the trees around the lagoon, Betts and Mindy emerged. Mindy and Gates ran to Kimberly’s side. Gates cleared the weapon while Mindy started first aid on the gunshot wound. Betts called for an ambulance and a supervisor on his phone. Abe fell back into the grass and felt like he was going to have a seizure. Sweat burst out all over his body.

  Kimberly Stevens covered her face with her left hand and wept.

  A cold rain began to fall.

  -19-

  DUFF’S LEG WAS wrapped in a cast from toe to thigh and covered with a gray plastic protective boot from the knee down. He used crutches when he walked. He was under strict orders to put no weight on his ankle for at least two weeks. Aside from that, he was in good spirits.

  Abe and Duff sat at a small table next to the railing of the third story of the large, open atrium at the mall nearest to Abe’s old house. Duff’s leg was propped up on a chair. He had a Cinnabon with extra icing in front of him. Abe had an Orange Julius. It was bitter. “I remember these things tasting better when I was a kid.”

  “Because they did.” Duff did not look up from the Tribune’s front-page story of the whole Kimberly Stevens debacle. “They used to have real cream and real orange juice. Now it’s all flavored water with fake-ass foam. Those things are to a real Orange Julius what McDonald’s cheeseburgers are to a real cheeseburger. It’s a travesty they cost so much.”

  “I used to love these. Now, I think I’d rather have a glass of Sunny Delight with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in it.”

  “Hey, that actually sounds pretty good. We should open our own Orange Julius shop, start making them the way they should be.” Duff folded the paper and tossed it into the empty chair next to him. “This whole thing is such a clusterfuck.”

  “I heard Lifetime is already moving on making a movie about it. I heard Angela Bassett is going to star as Kimberly Stevens.”

  Duff shook his head sadly. “Angela can do better. Who’s going to play us?”

  Abe snorted. “Oh, we’re not going to be in it. You notice our names were nowhere to be found in those articles?”

  “I did see a distinct lack of Allard and Duffy, yes. Typical. The C.P.D. gets all the credit and we get nothing. Who do you think will play Betts?”

  “Michael Rosenbaum.” Abe didn’t hesitate.

  “Lex Luthor from Smallville? Really?”

  “He’s not bald anymore.”

  “Ah, in that case, I could see it.” Duff dug into his cinnamon roll. “What will happen with Mrs. Stevens, you think?”

  “Last I heard, she’s catatonic. She’s not talking to anyone. The feds are digging up the backyard of the Stevens’ Maryland home now to look for the skeleton of the baby. If they find it she will likely be charged, but I’m betting she’ll end up with some sort of executive privilege deal. She’ll never see the inside of a cell.”

  “That whole political campaign is over, though.” Duff pointed to a side article on the front page issued by Robert Stevens’s staff which said Stevens was dropping out of the race immediately to focus on family issues. He was being portrayed as a victim by the liberal press and ridiculed as an incompetent husband by the conservative press.

  “Pretty much assures JoePo will get the vote, then,” said Abe.

  “Don’t be so sure. If anyone has magical ways of getting Democrats elected from nowhere, it’s Illinois. Who’s the second-in-line for the Dems in that spot?”

  Abe scratched his head trying to remember. He had heard someone talking about her on the radio. “Some woman from near Evanston, I think. Marcia-something.”

  “That’s ri
ght. Marcia Wright-Hinkler.”

  Abe shook his head. “Horrible name.”

  “Sounds like a weird sex act, doesn’t it? Hey, the wife came home drunk last night and gave me a Wright-Hinkler.”

  Abe finished his Orange Julius and set the cup on the table. “Remind me to never get one of those again.” He turned and looked down into the food court below them. Three stories down, hunched over a table for two, Tilda was sharing a basket of fries and chicken tenders with Magnus Veit. The boy was wearing a Notre Dame football jersey. He was very tall and broad-shouldered. He had a million-dollar smile and blond hair the color of corn silk. He looked like the descendant of a storybook Viking. Abe couldn’t help but smile when he saw his daughter. “She looks happy, doesn’t she?”

  Duff glanced down. “Very. At least until she glances up and catches her old man and his weird friend spying on her.”

  “I think she already knows we’re here. I think she expected us.”

  Duff waved at Tilda. If she saw, she did not respond. “Maybe.” Duff picked up Abe’s phone from the table. He texted Tilda. Having fun?

  A second later, Tilda’s brand-new cell phone lit up, but she only glanced at the screen. She did not bother to text back. She did turn her head slightly toward them, the smile disappearing from her face for a brief moment before she turned her attentions back to Magnus.

  Duff chuckled. “Yeah, she knows we’re here. She’s doing her best to be a good date, though. Very attentive. That poor boy thinks he’s the center of the universe right now, doesn’t he?”

  Abe was quiet for a moment. “Katherine had postpartum depression after Tildy was born. Did I ever tell you?”

  “I think I knew.” Duff used the plastic knife to carve off another hunk of Cinnabon before forking it into his mouth.

  “We got her help right away. Doctor put her on drugs. I made sure to get home early for a couple of weeks. I made sure all the dishes were done, housework was done, and I even made extra meals so she could just microwave them. It was not easy, though. It was touch-and-go for a little while.”

  “I remember that, vaguely.”

  Abe had felt so helpless during that period. Katherine, who rarely showed emotion, wept constantly. Her eyes were red-rimmed and glassy for weeks. She could barely function. “I can’t imagine being in Kimberly Stevens’s situation, though. She must have felt so alone, so isolated. There’s something about being in that spotlight that must have made her feel trapped.”

  “I wanted to be able to say bad things about her, but I really couldn’t. She was young. She made a mistake. It was a horrible mistake, unforgivable, but it was still a mistake.”

  Abe’s phone buzzed. A text message from Betts landed. Ballistics confirm match to Lafferty’s gun for Davis murder.

  Abe did not respond to Betts’s message. “Lafferty killed Davis.”

  “Figures. Tell Betts he owes me a hundred bucks.” Duff finished the cinnamon roll and used the plastic fork to scrape out the remainder of frosting from the little plastic serving cup with all the concentration of a Swiss watchmaker. “Tasker and Lafferty found a kid desperate to make easy money, maybe get into a political family who could get him a boost up in the world after his football career went nowhere and jobs weren’t materializing for him. Shame they were trying to tie up loose ends then. Kid didn’t deserve it, even if he’d screwed up a few times.”

  “No one deserves to die for a mistake.”

  “What’s Mindy Jefferson going to do now?”

  Abe shrugged. “She said she’d be in touch. She wants to move away from Chicago now that she knows the truth. She wants to find a new job, something not related to the government. I know Marcus Stevens invited her to lunch so they could get to know each other. I’m sure Marcus will want to know about his birth mother. After that, who knows? It’s got to be a weird new world for all of them.”

  “Anyone heard from the Senator since this went down?”

  “Only perfunctory statements from his P.R. people.”

  Three stories down, Tilda and her beau finished their lunch. They bussed their own tray. After tossing the papers into the garbage, the two teens snuck a quick kiss. It was short, but the ease with which they did it told Abe it was not the first time they’d done it. Their hands found each other, and they strolled off walking shoulder-to-shoulder, Tilda’s head leaned into Magnus’s shoulder.

  “You want me to go kill him?” Duff had watched the whole scene.

  Abe shook his head. “No one deserves to die for teenage kisses, either.”

  Duff watched Tilda disappear into a little novelty shop with Magnus. “Our little girl is growing up, buddy.”

  Abe thought about the poor little baby in Maryland who never got a chance to grow up. He was suddenly at ease with the idea of Tilda having a boyfriend, with experiencing everything life had to offer her. Too many babies never got to this sort of moment. “Good.” Abe felt a tear prick at the corner of his eye, and he wiped it away hastily. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  The End

  Acknowledgements

  I can’t even begin to tell you how long I’ve wanted to write this novel. Probably as long as I can remember reading mysteries. Thank you for reading this one. I truly appreciate the time you took to read it, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed it.

  I fell in love with mysteries when I was in first grade. Scooby-Doo was my favorite TV show, and that laid the groundwork. My dad started me on the Hardy Boys adventures that year. He was a fan of them when he was young, and I took them with all due gusto. It helped that there was a Hardy Boys TV series at the time, and Shaun Cassidy and I shared the same first name (even if they were not spelled the same—when you’re six, you take what you can get). I remember being entranced by the cover of The Twisted Claw (number thirteen in the series, if you’re keeping count). It had a suit of plate armor on the cover and that linked directly to my other favorite thing: fantasy novels. Frankly, when I was six I think my ideal occupation would have been solving mysteries in a medieval fantasy realm with a talking Great Dane.

  Hell, that’s still my ideal occupation.

  From there, I progressed to all the other mystery books that kids my age eventually discover: Cam Jansen, Encyclopedia Brown, Trixie Belden, The Boxcar Children, and Sherlock Holmes. As I got older, I branched into Christie and Poe. I found the hard-boiled stuff like Hammett and Spillane. I read my dad’s police procedurals written by Joseph Wambaugh and my mom’s cozy mystery collection (I liked Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax series the best). I used to look forward to Thursday nights because Mystery! would be on PBS and I knew that if the episode was Holmes or Rumpole or Poirot or Brother Cadfael, I might get to stay up past my bedtime to watch. The Edward Gorey title credits are still my favorite part.

  I have continued to read mystery novels at a voracious rate. Craig Johnson, CJ Box, Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben—you name it, if I haven’t read it, I’ve probably glanced at the cover at the very least. My stack of to-be-read mystery novels expands every time I go to my local indie bookshop and start perusing the shelves. There are so many great books and great authors out there just waiting for readers to find them.

  There’s something about the idea of righting wrongs and making criminals pay for their crimes that I think we need as a human race. We don’t like to see bad guys go unpunished. We want the puzzles to be solved and the good guys to win in the end.

  I have always wanted to lend my take to a mystery novel. I’ve been trying to write something that I felt might be worth reading by other people since college. I hope this book is the one.

  The characters have been in my mind for years. I don’t personally identify with the typical tough-guy detectives. I like them, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not one them no matter how much I desperately wish I was. I don’t know many people who are.

  I also don’t really like prototypical leading men in Hollywood. I like the characters actors who live in the background and get a few moments to sh
ine here and there. Guys like Bob Clendenin or Harve Presnell, guys who you recognize but can’t necessary remember what films you’ve seen them in. That’s who these two characters are. They’re the type of guys who are the background actors in their own life stories. They need to show they can handle the limelight, too.

  I have a lot of people to thank for this soft-boiled detective book. Particularly, my intrepid team of hard-boiled beta readers and feedback-givers: John “Mugsy” Dean, Jerry “Knuckles” Peterson, Maddy “The Knife” Hunter, Jack “Big Toe” Quincey, Dusty “Boss” Miller, Ann “Probably Guilty” Hayes, and Jena “Most Definitely Guilty” Skalisky.

  I want to thank the writers I admire who helped inspire this book: Craig Johnson, Matt Goldman, Kathleen Ernst, Allen Eskens, Donald J. Sobol, David A. Adler, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and all the myriad authors who wrote under the names Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene.

  A big tip of the fedora to the usual gang at Mystery to Me in Madison. It’s good to have a bookstore where people know you by name. Thanks for letting me pretend I’m a writer.

  I have to thank my parents for getting me started on mysteries forty years ago. Even now, mystery novels and TV shows are a favorite topic of conversation between us. Thanks to my wife and daughter for putting up with me, even if they don’t really read my books. And lastly, thanks to my sister Erin, who demands to be acknowledged. Actually, being acknowledged for things despite a profound lack of contribution to them is probably her favorite thing.