Mirror Image

by Michael Scott

  She saw movement, definite movement, a twisting shifting flicker reflected in the glass.

  Heart pounding she spun around, bringing the knife up again. She had glimpsed the movement behind her right shoulder, which would have put it there! Behind a sleek white bookcase still encased in its plastic wrap with a large sold sign attached. Behind it were three curved leather dining chairs. There was no place for anyone to hide. And yet she wasn’t alone in here, she knew that. She opened her mouth to call out … and then closed it again. She didn’t want them to know that she knew they were in the room with her. Maybe if she turned away, they would appear. Still clutching the long knife, she turned back to the mirror and looked into the glass.

  There!

  The temptation to turn was almost irresistible, but she continued staring at the mirror. She frowned, attempting to make sense out of what she was seeing, but the mirror was distorting the image. Transferring the knife to her left hand, she rubbed at the glass with the palm of her hand.

  And yelped!

  Something like a spark had leapt from the glass to her flesh. She rubbed her hand furiously against her thigh: static. She sometimes sparked when she touched metal, door handles, some cutlery, especially motorbikes, but never glass. Reaching out, she tentatively touched the glass again, but this time there was nothing. The surface of the glass felt unpleasant, slightly greasy, vaguely damp.

  The flickering was still perceptible over her left shoulder. A twisting, shimmering movement, like a heat haze on a summer’s day, but with some darker, deeper thread inside it, like coiling smoke.

  Diane glanced back over her shoulder, but there was nothing moving except the twisting dust motes. She turned back to the glass, frowning and looked again. And then she realized … the disturbance was within the glass!

  She drew back in shock, heart thumping. She leaned forward, forefinger touching the slick surface. With her finger still pressed to the glass she turned her head again: there was still movement within the glass, but nothing behind her. OK, so it was an imperfection in the glass, after all it was five hundred and more years old, some trick of the light, refraction or reflection or whatever it was called.

  She was about to turn away when the flickering seemed to intensify, becoming even more agitated, the twisting, coiling smoke seeming to speed up. Diane watched it, mesmerized by the movement, fascinated by the way the colors ran along its length, like oil on water.

  It was … it was the mirror, she thought, magnifying the whirling dust motes behind her …

  That’s …

  That’s …

  … all it was.

  She blinked, and then blinked again, realizing that she’d been daydreaming, watching the spiral dance. The shimmering was hypnotic.

  Diane straightened, attempting to pull her hand away. And couldn’t. Cold fire ran up the length of her arm, tingling into her shoulders, down into her breasts, deep into her stomach. Black spots danced before her eyes and her breath came in great labored gasps.

  She was asleep and she was dreaming and there were pins and needles in her arm and she was going to wake up.

  Except …

  Except that she was awake.

  Diane dropped the knife, gripped her right wrist with her left hand and pulled. But it was firmly stuck, fingers splayed … and yet she could only remember touching the glass with her forefinger.

  There was a rational explanation for this …

  There was …

  No rational …

  Her hand was becoming warm, pleasantly so. The warmth rushed up through her arm—she could actually feel the movement—across her shoulders, down into her chest, into her belly, through her groin, along her thighs and into the soles of her feet. She shuddered, abruptly conscious of the weight of her breasts, her nipples hard against the smooth fabric of her T-shirt, the buzzing tingle in her groin. Another shudder rippled through her, and she felt her legs grow tremulous. She dropped to her knees, her hand still stuck to the glass as another spasm rippled through her body, more intense than any orgasm. This was pleasure so intense it was almost painful.

  And then ice-cool flesh touched her hand.

  The scream caught in her throat as she attempted to stagger to her feet, hauling herself upright, using her trapped hand as leverage.

  There was flesh beneath that hand. Soft, rounded flesh, like … like a woman’s breast.

  She could barely catch her breath now, and her heart was pounding so hard her ribs were vibrating.

  The shimmering in the glass had become almost frantic in its intensity … and then Diane realized it was throbbing in time to the beating of her heart. As she watched, the coiling, throbbing threads coalesced into a face, smoky, intangible, the planes of jaw and forehead and cheeks moving, sliding together into a pale mask. A dark circle appeared for a mouth, two more for eyes. The mouth opened, smoke coiling from the maw, matching the wreathing steam that took the place of hair.

  Diane reached for the knife on the floor by her side, fingers sliding across the cold metal before catching the wooden handle. The figure in the glass copied her, holding a knife of its own. Mesmerized, Diane moved the knife from left to right in a slow sweeping movement. The figure copied her every move … and then with a sickening revelation, Diane discovered that her arm was mimicking the movement of the figure in the glass. She was no longer in control. Her arm was being dragged left and right, up and down …

  The image in the glass raised its knife and Diane’s arm jerked upwards. She attempted to scream, but her throat was clenched tight. Struggling to resist, she tried, and failed, to pull her arm away from her face.

  Diane felt the tip of the knife touch the soft flesh of her left cheek, lightly twisting and turning, tracing the length of her cheek bone, until it stopped abruptly. Then the tip pierced the skin. A ruby of blood gathered, trembled, then ran down her face. There was no pain. Not yet. Her fingers clenched around the knife’s wooden base, knuckles white, as she attempted to jerk the knife away. The blade dug deeper. Then the vaporous image in the glass pulled the knife downwards and the blade in her hand mimicked the movement. The blade slid down the side of her cheekbone parting the tender skin underneath.

  The pain was exquisite.

  And it brought release. Suddenly she found her voice. The scream that tore from her throat was audible even up at the house.

  And in the mirror, the mouth shape opened wider and wider … and then a second face appeared within the black gaping maw, smaller, the features sharper, clearer because of its tiny size.

  And it was Tony Farren.

  Tony: mouth and eyes wide in terror or pain.

  Tony: older than she had ever seen him, lines etched into his forehead, skin like parchment, eyes filled with blood …

  The knife in her hand sliced her throat open, slowly, carefully, deliberately moving from left to right cutting through muscle, nerves, the trachea, eventually severing the jugular vein. Dark crimson spurted onto the mirror, spraying across the glass with every pulsing heartbeat.

  There was no pain now.

  There was just an icy coolness seeping out from the glass, up along her arm and across her throat.

  She focused on the glass, trying to make sense of the shape within the mirror. She needed to know what—or who—was killing her. But there was nothing, other than the vague shape, the outline of eyes and mouth and gossamer hair. Diane gulped for air, her body jerking uncontrollably as she slumped, hand still stuck to the glass, cheek pressed to the mirror as she slid downwards. Her body continued to twitch and spasm until the last drops of blood leaked from her torn throat. Finally, when she had nothing left to give, her hand released from the glass and her lifeless body slid to the ground at the base of the mirror.

  12

  POWER.

  Raw coursing strength.

  Confusion, pain, anguish. It had felt these before, but these sensations were stronger, much stronger now. This was no animal. This was a human. A human soul in mortal agony.<
br />
  The colors in the Otherworld now were bright. Sharp, clear, clean colors slicing through the grayness.

  The quickening was upon it. The past was returning, memories of promises made, oaths sworn and broken.

  For ever and ever.

  This was a petty life, a female life, not a virgin, but responsive. It savored the life, a foretaste of the feast to come.

  Blood dripping.

  The tang of it in the dust of the Otherworld.

  Color and with the color came life and memories, sensations and emotions.

  The blood was the life.

  13

  ONE DEATH was messy, but two—and obviously connected—meant piles of paperwork. And she hadn’t joined the police force to be a secretary.

  Detective Margaret Haaren leaned forward, peering between the front seats, looking at the impressive facade of the Frazer house. In real estate terms she wondered what she was looking at: three and a half million, maybe four? Without knowing a thing about the Frazers, she guessed there’d be two cars, one child, probably with an exotic name, and a dog, the small fluffy kind. She knew the type.

  “Hmm, not dissimilar to my place,” José Pérez murmured, as they drove through the large ornate wrought iron gates and up the long graveled driveway.

  “I thought you lived in a box on Skid Row, José,” Margaret Haaren murmured.

  “It’s a very expensive box.”

  Both detectives laughed, and Haaren caught the startled look from the rookie in the passenger seat. Her smile faded: she hated babysitting rookies. Although Carole Morrow had done her obligatory four years as a patrol officer when she graduated the Police Academy, this was her first murder investigation. And it didn’t help that she was clearly in awe of Detective Margaret Haaren, whose reputation was fearsome and terrifying.

  “OK, so what do we have, Detective Pérez?” Margaret asked, sitting back into the seat, picking up the report again.

  José Pérez had spent twenty-five years on the force starting as a patrol officer, then working in some of the LAPD’s toughest precincts before joining homicide. While much had changed over the years: the types of crime, the frequency, the violence, the sort of people committing them, there were still some things—like motive—which remained satisfyingly the same.

  “I think we’ve got a case of money problems.”

  Margaret Haaren sat forward, listening intently. She had known José Pérez since she had joined the force a lifetime ago, and when she moved to homicide, eight years previously, she had requested him as her partner. She respected his advice and intuition.

  “Talk to me,” she said quietly. She tapped Carole on the shoulder. “Listen. You’ll learn something.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And don’t call me ma’am.”

  “First we have the accidental death of one Anthony Farren, employee of Jonathan Frazer. Mr. Frazer then reports a break-in to the same property, and we have the savage killing of one of our K-9 dogs. Next, Mr. Frazer reports the appearance of a scarred man, followed, almost immediately by the death of another of the employees, Diane Williams.” He smiled ruefully, looking into the mirror, catching the eyes of the woman in the back seat. “Assuming that Mr. Frazer is not lying to us. And I do not think he is,” he added, “then someone is leaning on our man.”

  Haaren nodded. “Makes sense.”

  Detective Pérez caught the look of puzzlement on the rookie’s face, and explained patiently. “Mister Frazer is obviously very wealthy. Now let’s say someone wanted to make him pay a little insurance, a little protection, and he refused, then what better way of gaining his attention than by knocking off two of his employees, terrorizing him in this way.”

  “But two people are dead,” Carole Morrow said, horrified. In her disgust, she forgot her fear of the detective and half turned in the seat to look at her. “No one would kill for that reason—just to threaten someone. Would they?” she asked plaintively.

  “You’re assuming that other people place the same value on life that you do, like most normal people do,” Margaret Haaren said gently. “I think you’ll find that’s not always the case. I’ve seen people killed for the price of a packet of cigarettes.”

  “Yes … yes … err … thank you, ma’am. Detective Haaren.”

  There were two police cars neatly parked in the graveled driveway, and a BMW rather more sloppily parked closer to the door. As they pulled up, the front door opened and a short stout man, who looked like a doctor even if he hadn’t been carrying a bag, walked out onto the step. He was talking to a slender blond woman sporting a deep golden tan that looked too good to have come from a tanning salon. The doctor reached over and patted the woman’s hand reassuringly, then walked down the steps to the BMW.

  Haaren leaned forward and tapped officer Morrow on the shoulder. “Stop him. Find out what’s wrong. He’s probably sedated someone, if so find out how long it’ll be before I can ask questions.”

  “Yes, ma’am.

  Detective Pérez stood on the brakes, scattering stones, but effectively blocking in the BMW, allowing the young woman time to hop out of the car and hurry across to the doctor. Margaret Haaren popped the back door and strode up the steps to where the woman remained standing in the open doorway. Their dislike was instinctive and almost palpable.

  “Detective Margaret Haaren, LAPD Homicide.” She flashed her gold shield. She heard gravel crunching behind her and without turning around, she said, “My partner, Detective José Pérez. And that’s Officer Morrow.” She looked at the younger woman, waiting for her to introduce herself.

  “Celia Frazer,” the woman said eventually. “We have some police officers here already,” she added impatiently.

  “I know and I am here to take charge.” She walked past Celia Frazer into the tall, wide hallway. “May I come in?”

  Margaret Haaren had turned forty-eight last birthday, and looked older. A tall broad woman, with a square mannish face, emphasized by hair cut straight across over her eyes, curling around by her cheeks. There were strands of gray in her brown hair which she didn’t bother disguising, but her strength and determination showed most clearly in her startlingly bright green eyes. She was dressed in a black two-piece suit that seemed almost a size too small for her large framed body. A white shirt with frilled collar softened the suit’s rather severe line. Her nickname in the force was Mata Hari, for no real reason that anyone could remember. The last officer who had used it in her hearing had ended up with a desk job for the best part of a year. There was some talk that she might even be in the running to become the first female Chief of Police.

  “You will not be able to speak to my husband for some time I’m afraid,” the woman said curtly, obviously resenting the intrusion. “He was quite distressed by the death of Diane and the doctor had to sedate him.”

  “When can we speak to him?” the detective asked, glancing up the broad curved stairway.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” Haaren repeated slowly. “Tomorrow’s too late. He might have seen something which might be of immediate use.”

  “He saw nothing,” Celia Frazer said quickly.

  “So you were with him when he discovered the body?”

  “Well no, but…”

  “We’ll take your statement shortly, Mrs. Frazer.” Haaren turned to Carole Morrow who had stepped into the hallway, and raised her eyebrows in a silent question.

  “A mild sedative, valium in liquid form to relax him, the doctor said. You should be able to talk to him for the next thirty minutes before it kicks in and makes him drowsy.”

  “Thank you. Is your husband up here, Mrs. Frazer?” Margaret Haaren started up the stairs.

  “Yes, but I don’t think he’d want to be disturbed. In any case shouldn’t you have a search warrant?” Celia demanded.

  “Mrs. Frazer, we are here to ask your husband a few questions, that’s all, we do not need a search warrant.” Margaret Haaren smiled sweetly. “And I’m sure he won�
��t mind.”

  “Shouldn’t he have a lawyer present?”

  “Any time he wishes.”

  “I’ll call one.”

  “Do that. And I’ll talk to your husband.”

  * * *

  MARGARET HAAREN FOUND Jonathan Frazer lying on an enormous bed in a room that her entire apartment could have been squeezed into. He was fully dressed, except for his shoes, and appeared to be dozing.

  She tapped on the open door. “Mr. Frazer, Jonathan Frazer?”

  He opened his eyes, blinking sleepily at her. “Hello?” he murmured.

  “Detective Margaret Haaren, LAPD Homicide.” She stepped into the room and showed her badge again. She quickly crossed the room to the bed. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Frazer, if you don’t mind. I know you’re tired, and you’ve had a terrible shock, but I want to speak to you now while the memories are still fresh.”

  “Of course … of course…” He started to sit up and swing his legs out of bed.

  “No, no, please stay where you are.” She wanted Frazer in the bed; it gave her a certain psychological advantage, and the fact that he’d been sedated meant that his defenses would be down. She pulled over a high-backed plain wooden chair and sat down on it. “Now Mr. Frazer … may I call you Jonathan?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “In your own words, Jonathan, try and remember everything that happened, no matter how trivial.”

  * * *

  “EITHER HE’S NOT telling us everything or he knows nothing,” Margaret Haaren said to Jose Pérez thirty minutes later, as they approached the guesthouse.

  The detective nodded. “From what I can gather from the gardener and the housekeeper, the wife’s a cool enough bitch. They all like him, he’s a gentle sort apparently, but she’s one of these rich Beverly Hills wives, likes to think she’s above the rest.”

  Haaren stopped at a bend in the path and turned to look back at the house. She could make out the kitchen door and part of the bedroom, so that part of Frazer’s story was borne out. “Anything else?”

  “There’s a daughter, Emmanuelle, Manny for short. She’s been staying with friends. She just got back from some fashionable school in Paris. Last year it was Rome and undoubtedly next year it’ll be New York.”