The Other Side of the Mirror

by Lex H Jones

  Whilst his fellow officers took care of the crime scene, Carl left the pharmacy and went for a stroll out of Limbo and back onto the familiar territory of the East side. He’d spent too much time in the recesses of its brighter sister lately—it was comforting to feel the grime and cold of home. The sky above had finally released its hold on the heavy grey clouds that filled it, and a snowfall had started almost immediately after Carl had climbed down from the roof. It was almost symbolic, he thought, like a weight had been lifted now that the root of Amber’s death had been cut out. The sky could finally exhale. It wasn’t completely done, of course. Senator Petroni himself was still alive and living it up in Washington, his work done through his cronies in the City like everywhere else. Dice was a part of it too. If his treatment of his girls hadn’t made Amber so afraid of him, she never would have run to Big Dog’s arms when she got pregnant. Still, Carl hoped it would be enough. That she could rest now.

  Without realising it, Carl had strolled along the banks of the Styx, finding himself now stood at the very spot where he and Trent had first seen the body of the nineteen-year old girl who had been the start of the recent troubles. The detective’s mind had led him here without informing him, like it wanted him to see the place where it began as it all came to an end. The sound of heeled shoes coming to a stop at his side led Carl to the conclusion that he wasn’t the only one with such thoughts for the night.

  “Evening, Miss DuBois,” Carl nodded, turning his collar up against the snow.

  “Hello, Carl,” the stunning blonde smiled at him, her red lips giving off enough heat to melt any snowflakes that would dare to fall towards them. Her neck was covered by a black scarf, her hair hung down loose, and she wore a long scarlet coat that almost reached the floor.

  “Pope call you and tell you what went down?”

  “Yeah. He said you’d had a little altercation.”

  “I didn’t rough him up too much,” Carl shrugged.

  “Is it wrong that I’d get very excited watching the two of you throw down?”

  “Very much so.”

  “Oh. Guess I’m a little weird, then.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. The thought of you and another chick having a cat fight isn’t without its charm.”

  “I can arrange something like that if you like, but you gotta pay for my time and the other girl’s.” Felicity remarked with a coy smile.

  “I’ll pass. My paycheque doesn’t stretch that far.”

  “Charles knew I’d come to find you. He said to tell you he was sorry you lost a friend tonight.”

  “That’s rich, coming from the guy who shot him.”

  “Well... Charles is a complicated guy, Carl.”

  “No kidding,” Carl chuckled. “Kenny had it coming, I guess. Desperate or not, he’d gone over the line the moment people started dying. Amber probably wasn’t even the first, just the first we got to. So how’d you know I’d be here?”

  “I just knew you’d want to pay your respects, and this was where you first saw her, so...” Felicity smiled, wrapping herself around Carl’s arm and holding close to him. “Where else would you go?”

  “I hope she can rest now,” Carl said quietly, the words leaving his mouth in a cold grey whisper.

  “I remember when we were kids, it was anything I could do to get her away from me, you know?” Felicity commented with a soft smile and a shake of her head. “But now... God, I’d do anything to have her back.”

  “The Gods of Hindsight like nothing more than to point and laugh,” Carl agreed. “So what now for you, huh? You going to leave the City?”

  “Would you miss me if I did?” she smiled.

  “Yeah, but probably not the way you think. I mean let’s get it out in the open, you’re smoking hot, and if I live another four decades I wouldn’t get close to a woman half as fine as you,” Carl explained. “But what I’d miss about you is what’s beyond that. The passion you have for those you care about, the innate goodness that even this cesspool hasn’t managed to stamp out of you... you got a soul, and that’s rare. Even rarer to be wrapped up inside a broad that looks like you.”

  “That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Felicity said softly as she looked up at Carl through tired eyes. “I get complimented all the time by the guy’s I’m, you know, with, but... you sounded like you meant that.”

  “I answered your question, you didn’t answer mine. Are you leaving?”

  “I don’t have an answer to give you.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “It’s not that simple. I know how Dice would react if he lost me.”

  “Just leave in the night, what’s he gonna do?”

  “Kill some of the other girls in anger, probably. Or at least beat the hout of them.”

  “I fucking hate this place,” Carl sighed, spitting into the river with an almost symbolic gesture of his contempt for the waters that formed it.

  “I don’t even know how we ended up here, Amber and me. I mean, I heard there was easy money to be made, so I thought ‘what the hell’. I had no idea I’d get stuck here, and that Amber... God, I just feel like I failed her.”

  “I could come out with a load of therapeutic crap about how it ain’t your fault, how nothing could have changed what happened yadda yadda, but you know all that already. Me saying it isn’t gonna change the way you feel, so I won’t waste my breath. What I will say is that you should remember the good stuff about her, not just how she died.”

  “She was smart to choose you to be the one to find her. Anyone else… she might never have found her answers,” Felicity smiled.

  “Speaking of which, if you’re still pondering whether or not you should leave the City, I’d advise that you remind your boyfriend that the both of you are still in danger. Taylor’s boys might be dead and gone, for the most part, but Petroni’s got a lot more soldiers where they came from.”

  “If you’ve exposed the case and the pharmacist guy is dead, then the whole operation’s bust, right? Nothing for him to gain by killing us now.”

  “They got this whole thing about honour and vengeance. Basically he’ll want us dead even more so now. Me included of course.”

  “Then why don’t you leave?”

  “I got nowhere to go and no one to go there with.”

  “You could come with us.”

  “Threesome with you and Pope? No thanks. Don’t relish the idea of having another punch up with him over who gets which end.”

  “If I weren’t scared my hands would fall off from the cold, I’d slap you something fierce,” Felicity teased with a playful scowl. “Seriously, though, if you wanted to get away—”

  “You gotta realise that Pope’s gone outside of his normal actions on this one, Miss DuBois. A little for me, but mostly for you. He’s done that because he cares about you in ways that are probably unfathomable to him. If you’re the same about him, you should do each other a favour and leave. There ain’t no room in there for me, and that’s the way it should be. Besides, I still got me a serial killer to catch.”

  “A serial killer?” asked Felicity.

  “Yeah, that’s what it looks like. Don’t worry though, his thing is gay guys.”

  “That’s one guy I don’t have to be watching my back for then.”

  “You shouldn’t be walking around on your own at night, though...” Carl said, and then stopped him and remarked, “Pope’s here, isn’t he?”

  “He’s close by,” she smiled.

  “Tell him it’s annoying as hell when he does his Batman thing.”

  “He probably knows, but I’ll tell him from you anyway.”

  “Goodnight, Miss DuBois,” said Carl, taking her leather-gloved hand and kissing the back of it gently.

  “Goodnight, Detective Duggan.”

  Carl watched as Felicity walked away into the ever increasing snowfall, and then looked once more into the dark waters of the Styx. Satisfied that he could no longer see Amber’s frozen face s
taring at him longingly, he nodded to himself and walked the rest of the way home.

  Chapter Thirty-Three;

  Dirty Game

  “W hat the fuck is this?” Carl yelled as he held up the newspaper. The other police officers in the station stopped in their tracks and stared at him. “Who was it? Which of you idiots is responsible for this?”

  “Duggan, cool it,” Trent insisted as he approached, still holding a mug of coffee.

  “You seen this, Trent? The rags got a story about a red-masked serial killer stalking the city. How’d they found that out, huh? We ain’t done a press release.”

  “Could have been any number of ways, Duggan. They—”

  “What about you, Dooley, huh?” Carl demanded as he angrily pointed the paper in the direction of a young officer. “Still trying to fund that coke habit of yours? Selling stories to the rags really helps keep your nose stocked up for winter, doesn’t it?”

  “It wasn’t me, I didn’t even know about that thing,” Dooley said defensively.

  “Bull...shit,” Carl retorted.

  “That guy who sold glow sticks, he could have told the papers what he knew,” Trent suggested as he took Carl to a quiet corner of the office.

  “All he knew is that one guy had been killed, Trent. You don’t get ‘Serial Killer’ from that, and that’s exactly what the headline reads.”

  “Okay, listen… it was me. I told them.”

  “You serious? Trent, you moron! Do you know what...”

  “I know what I’m doing, Carl, alright? Listen to me...” Trent said calmly. “We get something like this, the fewer people on the streets the better. If people think there’s a nutjob serial killer on the loose, then less of them will go out getting hammered; they’ll be more careful, not talk to strangers, stay in groups, play it safe. Makes it harder for this guy to get his next prey, which means he gets desperate, which means he gets careless...”

  “Which makes it easier for us to catch him when he slips up,” Carl nodded. “Maybe you’re not just an asshole looking for easy cash.”

  “I got paid for the story as well, but I agree with the ‘not being an asshole’ bit. You’re not the only cop out here who knows how to play the game, Duggan.”

  “Kind of a dirty game, Trent.”

  “True, but if it works, it works. And you’ve played far worse yourself.”

  “You’re right, I’m sorry. I just... I hate half the pricks in that office and that we have to work with ‘em. I see something like this and I think it’s gotta be one of them making a fast buck.”

  “They’re not all bad, you know,” Trent insisted. “Some of the newer recruits are quite promising.”

  “Yeah, this week. Until someone from the other side of the river flashes a shiny penny at them.”

  “Anyway, you come down here this afternoon just to yell at the boys? Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

  “I want to be asleep, I promise you that,” Carl sighed. “But Commissioner Grant called me, said he wanted to speak with me.

  “Good luck with that,” said Trent, backing up his words with a firm pat on Carl’s shoulder.

  Carl reminded himself where Grant’s office was and entered immediately after seeing that the Commissioner was alone inside. Grant was a huge black guy that wore braces instead of a belt, the reason being that a belt probably wouldn’t get around him. The braces weren’t much better of course, as they just gave him the appearance of bread baking around two pieces of twine. His appearance aside, Grant wasn’t really a bad guy. He looked like the kind of boss who’d tell you that you had forty-eight hours to get the job done or he’d take your badge, but the truth was he was much softer. Too soft, in fact, which was why so much crap happened under his shift. He was clean himself, but he did far too little to keep his officers that way. Carl had always thought the guy would have been better served as a school principal than a commissioner of police, but it wasn’t his place to suggest it.

  “Good afternoon, Detective Duggan. Thanks for waking up to come down here,” Grant smiled as he offered Carl a seat across the other side of his desk.

  “It’s fine, I don’t sleep that good lately anyway,” Carl replied as he sat down.

  “Sorry to hear that. You eating okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s nothing,” Carl forced a smile, having been given a full-force reminder of the fact that this guy was too damned friendly to be of any use in this City.

  “So you’re probably wondering why you’re here, right?”

  “It did occur to me.”

  “Well... it’s about this guy,” said Grant, taking a photograph from the file in front of him and sliding it across the desk towards Carl. As the Detective looked at it, he saw a photograph of Charles Pope leaving St. Michael’s Church.

  “Huh. Didn’t think he’d show up on camera,” Carl remarked.

  “So you know who it is, right?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Then you’re probably aware that he’s been rather active lately, am I right? More so than usual, given his past work.”

  “Maybe lots of people got beefs with folks they don’t like these days.”

  “I know you don’t believe that’s what this is, Carl,” Grant said with a soft sigh, using Carl’s forename as a way of softening the fact that he had to call him up on the fact.

  “Okay, let’s cut the crap, shall we? This is about the fact that he killed Taylor, who probably owns half your damn police force, and now you’re getting heat from whoever’s pockets that jackass was lining.”

  “I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Taylor or his crew, and if some of my men have to go back to one paycheque per month, I won’t lose sleep over it,” said Grant, his honesty gaining him a little respect in Carl’s eyes. “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m touched, but really, I’m fine.”

  “Carl... you were involved with Pope once before, weren’t you? A few years back.”

  “Yeah but he never called so I broke it off,” Carl said sarcastically.

  “Help me out here, Carl. I don’t want to have to be a bear about this.”

  “Okay,” Carl conceded. “Yes, I was involved with Pope before now. You were there at the time, you gotta remember how that went down, so why don’t you tell me? This is obviously leading to something.”

  “We heard that Pope had been hired to kill my Chief of Police, and you were tasked with stopping him. You got close, closer than anyone had ever gotten to Pope before, and then you let him by. The Chief still bought it and you didn’t lift a finger to stop it. I found out later it was because of what our guy was involved in, child prostitution and worse. You let him die, Carl.”

  “To use your own words, I didn’t lose any sleep over it,” Carl said flatly.

  “I’m not saying that you should have, but the fact is you let a hit-man take out one of our own because you had moral issues with what he was doing,” Grant explained. “And now Pope has been wading into gangsters like there’s no tomorrow, following the disappearance of a girl who you yourself took to the hospital.”

  “How do you know about that?” Carl asked, his attention suddenly captured.

  “The hospital called us to say that there’d been something of a scene following a homeless girl being discharged. After what ‘a large man in a leather coat’ had to say on his visit, they were worried that there may have been something suspicious regarding the girl leaving their care. The receptionist who called told us who had discharged the girl, and the rest kind of fit together after that.”

  “You’re better than I thought you were,” Carl admitted.

  “I wasn’t always a fat ass who sits behind a big desk, Carl,” Grant smiled. “I used to be a fat ass walking the beat.”

  “So where are we going with this, Grant? You know that I had something to do with Pope getting to Taylor, and that’s so far out of the rule book that you probably don’t even have a disciplinary code for it.”

  “I’m not writing any of this down, y
ou may have noticed,” Grant remarked. “This isn’t a disciplinary hearing or anything, Carl. I just need to get this clear in my head so I know I can trust you.”

  “Are you asking me why I let Pope kill Taylor?”

  “Who was the girl?”

  “Just a girl I got out of Taylor’s gang. She needed my help and she got it. In return Taylor dragged her back to his world and had her gang-raped and killed for the insult.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Grant sighed. “And what’s this with the pharmacist? Guy on a roof taking someone down with a single bullet? That’s got Pope written all over it.”

  “That was something else, personal stuff for Pope. It also has to do with the fact that I have a hit out on me right now.”

  “You do?”

  “Apparently. Taylor was supposed to be working on it but obviously that’s not going to happen. I’m just waiting for the next hammer to fall right now, but what are you gonna do?”

  “Who was paying him to kill you?”

  “Carlito Petroni, he was in on the whole thing with the Pharmacist. I was getting too close for his liking, apparently, and it pissed him off. How dare I do my damn job, right?”

  “Senator Petroni? I’ve heard the rumours that he’s Mafia-connected, but...”

  “They’re not rumours, Grant,” said Carl, shaking his head.

  “We can get you some cops on your door, keep you covered and...”

  “I’d feel safer alone. I don't trust more than half the guys you got out there. Most of ‘em are probably in Petroni’s pocket anyway.”

  “You don’t seem particularly concerned right now.”

  “Why worry about it? If I get all paranoid and nuts then I’m less likely to see it coming. Better to stay sharp and focused, concentrate on the job. Like this serial killer with the mask, for instance.”