Mirror Image

by Dennis Palumbo

  “The Chief Community Liaison Officer.”

  “That’s right. She refers crime victims to me when there’s concern about the person’s mental well-being.”

  “And what were you and Kevin Merrick working on? I mean, what was the problem?”

  “Sorry. Villanova referred him, so that’s already in the record. Beyond that, I can’t talk about it.”

  “Patient confidentiality, eh?”

  “In a situation like this, it’s called privilege.”

  His voice hardened. “Yeah? Well, in a situation like this, a trial judge can revoke that privilege.”

  “Fine. Let me know when one does.”

  He swore under his breath and stopped the tape. “What the fuck’s up? This is a goddamn murder investigation.”

  “I know.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Look, I want to nail the bastard who did this more than you do. And there are things I can tell you that might help. But most of the content of Kevin’s work with me has no bearing here. Not that I can see. Family stuff, childhood stuff.”

  “The usual therapy bullshit, eh? No offense.”

  “None taken. But—”

  “Look, Doc.” Polk’s face flushed with anger. “I know a judge who’s a real night-owl. How ’bout I call him and get a phone authorization to revoke privilege? How ’bout I do that before I bust a blood vessel or some fuckin’ thing?”

  Before I could respond, the door swung open and a tall, well-built black woman in a gray suit entered. She was very pretty, with close-cropped hair and violet eyes. Without a glance in my direction, she slid into the empty seat next to Polk and handed him a file folder.

  As Polk flipped through the pages, the woman extended her hand across the table. Her handshake had a lot of muscle behind it.

  “I’m Detective Eleanor Lowrey,” she said, with a quick, business-like smile. Her lips and nails were painted the same shade of burnt red. “Sergeant Polk’s partner.”

  “Where you been?” Polk said to her, eyes scanning the folder’s contents. Papers, plastic pouches, clippings.

  “Forensics. The ME’s. Lieutenant Biegler’s office. Ya know, just screwin’ around.” She regarded him coolly. “It’s a slow night, murder-wise, so we caught a break. Fast turnover in the lab.”

  “Yeah, some break.” But Polk’s face had tightened. Slowly he closed the file and lay it next to the legal pad.

  “You’ve been holdin’ out on us, Doc.” He was smiling.

  “No shit. I think I told you why.” I was tired, and Polk’s attitude was wearing a little thin.

  He tapped the file. “Says here the victim was wearing eyeglasses, but the lenses were just clear glass. Crime scene photos show his beard looks kinda like yours. Same with his jacket. Funny, too, about the jacket. About three sizes too big. Lab also found this in his pocket—”

  He tossed a thin plastic envelope on the table between us. Inside was a monogrammed pen. The initials DR, in gilt-edged gold, were visible through the plastic.

  “Yours, I assume.” Polk was enjoying himself.

  “Yes. Kevin took it. During the session. He often…took things like that. Personal things of mine.”

  “Like the jacket?”

  “Maybe. His was hanging next to mine on the coat rack. Though he may have taken it by accident. I didn’t realize till I saw his body that the one I was carrying was his. In my rush to get out of the office, I just grabbed the jacket hanging on the rack and left. I assumed it was mine.”

  “Jesus,” Lowrey said, with such quiet intensity that Polk and I both turned to her. “You know what this means?”

  I knew only too well.

  “I was the killer’s target, not Kevin Merrick.”

  Polk shrugged. “The kid’s about your height, with a beard and glasses, wearin’ your jacket. He’s walking through a dark parking garage toward his car—”

  “Which is parked next to mine. So it looks as though Kevin is in fact me…”

  Lowrey cleared her throat. “The ME reports multiple stab wounds with a long, thin blade. Knife, ice pick, no way to tell. Brutal, vicious.”

  She looked at me.

  “What pathologists call a ‘pattern of rage,’” I said.

  “It’s just the preliminary autopsy report,” she went on. “Gonna take another couple days to get a drug panel, hair and fiber, the works.”

  Polk angled back in his chair. “So the killer jumps Merrick, starts slicin’ and dicin’. Even if he realizes by then that he’s got the wrong guy—”

  “He has to finish the job,” Lowrey said quietly.

  No one spoke for a full minute. Meanwhile, Polk began spreading the crime scene photos before us. I forced myself to look. Kevin’s dead, sad eyes stared up at me from the blood-soaked asphalt.

  The two detectives seemed to fade from my field of vision. I picked up one of the photos, staring now myself, as though to burn the image of Kevin Merrick into my brain.

  “Arrogant…” Riley’s words echoed in my ears. There had been a real psychological risk in allowing Kevin to identify so intensely with me. He’d so hungered for a model, a paternal image to relate to. I’d reasoned that we’d work through the identification, give him the confidence to let go of needing to be like me. In time, he’d be able to claim a more authentic sense of himself.

  In time. Except that he’d run out of time. By becoming me, he’d intersected with a part of my life neither one of us knew about. By becoming me, he’d died the horrible death that was meant for me.

  Lowrey sensed my thoughts. Her hand touched my forearm. “Whoa, you can’t blame yourself for this.”

  I met her gaze. Then I pulled myself out of my chair, looked down at the two detectives.

  “Where you think you’re goin’?” Polk said.

  “Out. I need some air.”

  Chapter Six

  I stood in the precinct parking lot, unmindful of the cold and the continuing drizzle. Headlights twinkled in the night. A few pedestrians hurried by, heads ducked low in their coats or under umbrellas, hands jammed into pockets.

  A sudden smell of tobacco hit my nostrils. When I turned, I found Polk and Lowrey standing beside me. Polk’s unfiltered Camel glowed dully in the wet gloom.

  “Lieutenant says we can cut you loose for the night,” Lowrey announced. “But if you remember anything more—”

  “I wish I did. All I heard were footsteps running away. All I saw was a door closing.”

  The three of us stood there, listening to the sounds of the Steel City at night. Car horns, the splash of a rain puddle. A distant chorus of drunken laughter. Students, probably, coming out of a bar. Kids who couldn’t imagine that they wouldn’t live forever.

  “So this Merrick kid,” Polk said off-handedly. “He wanted to turn into you, or somethin’? Be like you?”

  “Not exactly.” I thought about saying more, somehow explaining myself. But no words came.

  Polk grunted. “Shrinks. Christ.”

  “Look,” I said, “why the hell are we just standing here, wasting time? Kevin’s killer is out there somewhere.”

  He bristled. “You tellin’ us how to do our jobs now?”

  “Yeah, if that’s what it takes.”

  Polk showed me a lot of teeth. “Geez, Doc, ain’t you done enough already?”

  I felt anger boil up in my throat.

  “Hey,” Lowrey said sharply, taking a step between us. Polk and I still glared at each other.

  Lowrey glanced at me. “Look, there’s not much we can do before we get the forensics, anyway. Maybe run a back-ground check on Kevin Merrick, his family, friends…”

  “You won’t find much,” I said.

  “I had that feeling,” she replied. “We’re havin’ a helluva time just finding any next-of-kin to notify.”

  “He’s got a father who could be anywhere. And a sister in Tucson. But I don’t know her married name.”

  “Poor kid.” Lowrey shivered in her coat. “Sounds like the proverbial little boy lost.�
�

  “Yeah,” said Polk, “only now he’s little boy dead.”

  ***

  I sat in the passenger seat as Harry Polk drove his blue Ford sedan up the winding streets toward Mount Washington, just south of the city. I had a trim two-story house near the Duquesne Incline, overlooking the Point. Sergeant Polk was driving me home.

  We’d sat in an awkward silence for five minutes, the only sound the slap-and-swish of the windshield wipers. The wet, gloomy streets were nearly deserted.

  “Must be nice havin’ all that juice downtown,” he said absently, lighting another cigarette from the butt of his last one. Acrid smoke drifted in the air between us.

  “What do you mean?” I watched the row of World War II-era brownstones and duplexes, gabled and weather-beaten, caravan past my window, against a backdrop of deep Pennsylvania woods.

  “Angela Villanova,” Polk said. “Community Liaison. I hear you and her are pretty tight. Paisans, eh?”

  I shrugged. “She knew me from years back, sent some people to me for help. Just started from there.”

  “I remember. I read about you in the Post-Gazette. ‘Shrink Turns Personal Tragedy Into Personal Mission.’ Somethin’ like that, right?”

  “You know reporters.” I said nothing more.

  “Fuckin’-A,” he replied. I thought he was going to lower his window and spit.

  I wanted to change the subject. “By the way, I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m a clinical psychologist.”

  “Who gives a shit?”

  “The AMA, for one. State licensing boards.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s real interesting. Listen, those people Villanova sent you…that was about the Handyman, right?”

  “Yeah. A couple people he grabbed got away. But even so, you’re looking at major trauma. Nightmares. Flashbacks. I worked with one of those survivors.”

  “Yeah, well I worked with the victims.” His voice grew bitter. “What was left of ’em.”

  “You were on the Task Force?”

  “Me and every other cop in town, plus the FBI, the ATF…Man, if it had initials, it was climbin’ up our ass, tellin’ us how to do our jobs.” He looked over at me. “It was a local cop who finally got him, ya know that? Kranksi. Another big dumb Polack, like me. Brought the guy in.”

  “I remember.”

  “Christ, what Dowd did to those poor people…Women, kids, he didn’t care. One truly sick fuck, that guy…”

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Hear who’s playin’ him in the movie? DeNiro. Can you believe they’re makin’ a movie about that piece o’ shit..?”

  “I heard. Serial killers are big box-office.”

  “Well, ain’t that nice.” He shook his head. “Tell that to the vics. And their families.”

  He gave a hacking cough, a sputtering of rage. Fished in his pocket for another Camel. Came up empty.

  I said nothing. If he wanted to say more, he would. I knew he wouldn’t. He was a cop. He’d have nightmares, an alcohol problem, a busted marriage, and an early death by colon cancer. But he wouldn’t talk.

  We made the turn onto my street, whose edge fell away onto a panoramic view of the Three Rivers and the glistening lights of contemporary Pittsburgh. Gone were the steel mills and factories; in their place stood razor-thin buildings of glass and chrome, of software and bond trading.

  The city had changed a lot since I was a kid, a shot-and-a-beer town colliding with the Information Age. Though sometimes, like tonight, I missed the Pittsburgh I grew up in. Forged by immigrants. Musty like the smell of damp wool. A mosaic of thick accents and old neighborhoods, clanging trolleys and cobblestone streets. Before mini-malls and decaf lattes. Before spaghetti became pasta.

  Polk slowed the car, as I pointed up ahead to my place, freshly painted a quiet yellow a few years back. I’d also added a rear deck that jutted over the edge of the hill. The houses on either side, my neighbors, were coal-dark, except for tiny porch-lights that made them seem somehow more vulnerable, not less.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said as he pulled over to the curb. “When can I get my car back?”

  “Tomorrow. Oh, and Biegler ordered some surveillance. No big deal. A unit drivin’ by your place every twenty minutes, somethin’ like that.”

  “Surveillance?”

  “Hell, yeah. Maybe the killer knows he got the wrong guy. Maybe he don’t. If not, he’ll find out soon enough. This’ll be all over the morning news.”

  “Jesus Christ,” was all I could say.

  “It’s just hittin’ you now?” He laughed. “You’re so busy feelin’ guilty, you forgot to worry about your real problem. Namely, some fucker’s out there lookin’ to kill you.”

  Chapter Seven

  I spent the next thirty minutes working out my frustrations on the heavy bag in the basement, throwing combinations under the cold glare of the track lights. The large, pine-paneled room is lined with boxes and old tools. Like the unconscious itself, a windowless vault below ground level, a hoarder of memory and regret.

  Barefoot, stripped to my shorts, I was covered in sweat. I had Chick Corea on the CD. Loud. It was three a.m.

  I worked it hard. Muscles aching, eyes stinging with briny sweat; fists going numb, long past pain. At the end, I clung to the bag, face pressed against the slick, damp leather, gasping for breath.

  Memory fragments flickered like heat lightning in my mind: nine years old, the house on Winebiddle Street, my old man in pajamas and robe, sparring bare-handed with me, bob and weave, tapping my cheek with his powerful left, reminding me to keep my guard up, always up, another slap on my face, stinging, another life lesson, always harder than it needed to be…

  I pulled off my gloves, went upstairs and hit the shower. Standing under the hot water, steam rising, I peeled the cracked, grimy training tape from my hands. Blood-caked skin came away with it.

  I ducked my head under the scalding water. I wanted it to burn, to sear off the day’s events, to scour me clean.

  ***

  An hour later, in jeans and sweatshirt, I stood at the window in the front room. In the storm’s wake, the purple sky looked like a bruise, splotchy and sore, stretching to the horizon.

  Then I saw the headlights. The patrol unit doing its regular pass by my house. I found myself nodding to them through the curtains, though I doubt they saw it. Or were even looking.

  It was bullshit, and I knew it. Whoever tried to kill me wouldn’t be stupid enough to try again. Not in the same night. Not with the cops alerted.

  I was wide awake and jangly. Going into the kitchen, I flicked on the overhead, flooding me in light about as warm and consoling as a solar flare.

  Christ, I thought, gotta put in that dimmer switch…

  Funny, the things you think about at four a.m. A brutal murder and household chores. Death and dimmer switches.

  I poured myself a Jack Daniels, pulled up a chair. Polk had suggested I come up with a list of enemies, people who might bear a grudge against me. People from my past. Ex-lovers. Colleagues. Even patients.

  A list of enemies? Right. God knows, I’d pissed-off my share of people over the years—in all the above-mentioned categories—but not enough to warrant homicide. At least, I didn’t think so.

  Instead, I kept replaying Kevin’s last words to me as he left my office. “I’ve got lots of secrets…”

  The look I’d seen on his face. Not guarded, or challenging. Something else. In his eyes. A warning?

  No, a promise.

  I sat up. I’d misread that last moment between us. It wasn’t the usual patient’s yearning to disclose something painful, terrifying, held back by fear or shame.

  I must have passed some test today, and Kevin was sending me a message. He wasn’t wanting to tell me something else, something important. He was going to tell me. Soon.

  But what?

  Chapter Eight

  Coffee in hand, I stood against the door to my back porch, watching the sun rise over the famed three rivers.
The arteries in the heart of the city.

  Even with the sparse river traffic nowadays. Not like years ago, when the riverfront below was flanked by seventeen miles of steel mills. When coal barges and tugboats clogged the Point and black smoke belched from furnaces and foundries, sprinkling the old buildings with soot.

  Now, as the sun pulled deep reds and oranges out of the morning sky, the rain-washed city shone like a scale model under glass. And what new steel there was, embedded in freshly-poured concrete, was imported from Japan.

  At six on the dot, I went back inside the house, poured another mug of black coffee, and turned on KDKA-TV.

  Kevin’s murder was the lead story on the news. The anchorman explained that the body had been found “by his therapist, Dr. Daniel Rinaldi, the noted trauma expert, who was later held for questioning by the police.”

  Jesus. I clicked it off, sat calmly with the mug on my knee, and waited for the phone to start ringing. It did.

  The first call was from my cousin Johnny. “Shit, man, now I know why you didn’t show up at the restaurant last night. You were busy gettin’ on the news.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  “Screw it. Not for nothin’, though, but you coulda called. Aren’t they supposed to allow you one phone call?”

  “That’s if you’re a suspect. I’m not.”

  Johnny laughed on the other end of the line. Ten years younger than me, he always tried to come off as cool and cynical, a player’s player. The Sammy Glick of CPAs.

  “Listen, Danny, if you think you ain’t a suspect, you’re nuttier than one of your patients. The cops don’t turn up some poor mook for this thing soon, you’re it!”

  “You’re a goddam ray of sunshine, you know that?” I yawned despite the coffee. I could feel the fatigue settling over me now. The bone-weariness of a sleepless night. The long hours of daylight ahead. Shit.

  Johnny’s voice hardened. “Trust me, man. You gotta move fast. Hang up with me and call a friggin’ lawyer.”

  “Good advice,” I said, hanging up. Almost immediately the phone rang again. I let the answering machine take it.