The Other Side of the Mirror

by Lex H Jones

  “Miss DuBois?” Carl asked gently as he approached her. “Are you OK?”

  “No... I didn’t...I thought he was okay, I...” Felicity stammered, Carl now noticing that her thick black eye makeup had run down her pale cheeks, her blonde hair sticking to her face with the cold sweat of fear.

  “Who? Who are you talking about?”

  In response, Felicity pointed at the area of open floor around the other side of the bed. A young man was laying face down on it, naked except for his blue boxer-shorts. Carl cursed himself again for not noticing the body the moment he had entered, but his attention had been diverted solely to Felicity. Taking care not to move the body, Carl gently touched his fingertips against the young man’s wrist, confirming what he already knew. There were numerous deep red marks across the young man’s back, and his wrists and ankles looked to have suffered some mild rope burn.

  “The marks on his back... they’re not... I mean, they’re...” Felicity stammered, her entire body visibly trembling even as she sat huddled in the corner of the room.

  “They were from the Dominatrix thing you had going on with him, I get it,” Carl assured her. “The way you’re dressed, the fact that he’s near enough naked... doesn’t take a genius. Or a Detective.”

  “I didn’t kill him. I swear, it wasn’t anything we were doing,” Felicity insisted, shaking her head over and over.

  “You weren’t playing at asphyxiation or anything like that? Didn’t get carried away with it?”

  “No, we didn’t do strangulation. He didn’t even like it. Just the whip and the ropes to restrain him. Nothing that could...”

  “How did he die?” Carl asked softly. “I’m going to need you to tell me what happened, Miss DuBois.”

  “Am I a suspect? I mean, do you think I...”

  “Right now, yes you’re a suspect. Technically. But it’s only me that knows about this so don’t worry about it. You said you needed my help, and I’m here. So I’m going to need you to tell me what happened.”

  “We were, well he was on his knees, and I was... hitting him. Not too hard, just the way he liked, and... I’ve been with him before, I know what he can take... and he started to shake, his eyes started blinking rapidly, like he was having a seizure. Then he fell over and just...”

  “If he had a seizure then he might have choked, or hit his head, or any number of things. I’m not a doctor but I’m fairly certain that exempts you from any wrongdoing.”

  “He took a pill, though. I saw him... before we started he took something... if it was a drug, they’re gonna blame me. They’ll say I gave it to him, that...”

  “Where’s his clothes?” Asked Carl.

  “On the bed,” said Felicity, standing up shakily and pointing to the pile of discarded clothing.

  Carl nodded and lifted the man’s jacket, routing around through the pockets until he found what he had been looking for. With a satisfied nod, he removed something from the inside pocket and held it up for Felicity to see.

  “He just took one of his meds for Epilepsy. If he was prone to seizures then it’d make sense he was on these things. You got nothing to worry about, I promise.”

  “If he took the pill then why did he still have a seizure?”

  “All kinds of things can stop a pill from working. Whatever it was, the seizure hit him hard. Probably harder than he’s used to if he hasn’t had one in awhile. That’s what killed him.”

  “So you don’t think this was anything that I did?”

  “No,” Carl assured her. “Besides, I saw this guy’s name on his pill bottle. He’s a big-shot lawyer. No way would his family want it getting out what he was into. Hell, if it even got to court then they’d pay you not to talk about what the two of you were doing in here.”

  “Oh thank God,” Felicity breathed an almost tangible sigh of relief back into the room. “I just couldn’t deal with that, going to jail. I feel bad for this guy, but he wasn’t exactly one of the good ones, you know? He had a wife and kid, can you believe that? Wife and kid and he still comes to me.”

  “You could have refused his service, Miss DuBois.”

  “No I couldn’t. Dice would have killed me. This guy was a paying customer. I’m not allowed to have moral objections.”

  “Damn, I hate that guy,” Carl grunted beneath his breath. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen; we’re going to get away from here and let you cool off, then I’m going to call this in and let the blue boys take care of it. You’ll give a statement like you just gave me, I’ll back it up with what I got from the immediate crime scene, and the whole thing will get covered up by the sleazy lawyer’s sleazier lawyers. Okay?”

  “I knew that calling you was a good idea,” Felicity said quietly, her lips curving into a half-smile. “You just seemed like a good guy, you know? Other cops might have helped me too, but not without wanting me to suck their dick first.”

  “Yeah, that’s not really the way I operate,” Carl shrugged. “Guess I’m kind of an idiot.”

  “Makes me feel bad for slapping you when we first met.”

  “If you’d dressed like that then maybe I’d have liked it,” Carl remarked, forcing a joke to try and lighten the dark air the room had taken on.

  “No you wouldn’t. There’s no way a guy like you would get into this kind of thing. You couldn’t give that much of yourself to anything or anyone.”

  “Got me all figured out, huh?”

  “Not quite, but I do know that when I buy you coffee in a few minutes you’ll take it black, straight up and simple.”

  “Some things ought to be simple, Miss DuBois. The things we got control over, at least.”

  “Seems like I have less and less on that list every day in my life.”

  “We all do what we can to survive,” Carl nodded. “I told you before that I wasn’t judging you and I’m not gonna start now. Get dressed, I’ll wait outside.”

  “Wait... can you... stay here. Whilst I change?”

  “Um... I know you’re used to guys seeing you naked, but I...”

  “I just don’t want to be alone in here... with him. You know?”

  “Sure, I’ll stay,” Carl agreed, understanding that his experience at being around the dead was not likely to be shared by a woman who’d spent much of her adult life in rich men’s bedrooms.

  “Thank you,” Felicity smiled as she took her clothes from where they hung and started to change back to her normal attire. Carl turned away as she changed, causing her to remark, “You know, a lot of guys would love to watch me undress for them.”

  “Yeah well, I only got twenty bucks on me,” Carl replied, and then felt a shoe hit him on the back of the head. “Okay, I probably deserved that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three;

  He Ain’t Getting

  Any Deader

  “I hate these places,” Carl grunted as Felicity handed him a black coffee in a white mug, the logo of the coffee house emblazoned on the side.

  “Too commercial?” Felicity asked as she joined Carl at the table.

  “Too busy. I like the quiet.”

  “I’m guessing you have a lot of that, huh? You don’t strike me as the ‘married with kids’ type.”

  “Not so much.”

  “Out of choice?” asked the blonde, stirring her coffee as she looked at Carl across the table.

  “Never really thought about it,” Carl shrugged. “How’re you doing? You calmed down?”

  “I’m fine,” Felicity smiled, brushing a strand of blonde hair from her face.

  “No you’re not,” Carl shook his head. “Your hands are still shaking, you’ve been stirring your coffee constantly since you sat down and you’re talking about things that don’t matter.”

  “What do you want me to say? That I’m terrified? That I never saw a guy die before, and I just want to burst into tears?”

  “If you wanna do that then do it,” Carl said, his voice firm but carrying a warmth through its strength.

  “Everyone
in here would look at me.”

  “Anyone said anything I’d break ‘em in half,” Carl smiled.

  “What did you do? First time you saw someone die?” asked Felicity, carefully wiping a solitary tear from her eye so that it didn’t smear the makeup she’d only recently reapplied.

  “Well it was me that killed him, so that was a little different.”

  “How did you react? Did you cry?”

  “I’m not the crying type. I just threw up everything I’d eaten for last eighteen months.”

  “And now? How do you react now?”

  “I don’t,” Carl said flatly. “The guys I have to shoot deserve it, and I seen enough of the end result of their actions to stop myself feeling guilty. For every guy I put down, there’s a trail of girls just like your... just like Amber.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For taking care when you mentioned her. I thought you were just some hard-ass cop, stubble and a gun and a leather coat, you know? But you’re not. I mean, you are, but there’s more. You got a heart under there that’s bigger than your fists, but I got a feeling you don’t show it all that often.”

  “You learn to be hard in this place, Miss DuBois.”

  “I know, I’ve already done the homework on that one.”

  “No you haven’t. You’re still soft, still have some of that innocence in you. You’ve done crap, sure, but it’s not too late for you. Not yet,” said Carl, sitting forward as his words suddenly carried more energy than they had before. “You can leave, get the hell out of here whilst you still have that goodness in you.”

  “What makes you think I have any goodness left in me?” asked Felicity.

  “The fact that you cry when a sleazebag dies from a seizure in front of you. He doesn’t deserve your tears and you know it, but your makeup’s still running.”

  “Dammit,” Felicity whispered, taking out her pocket mirror and checking her eyes.

  “Drop it. Stop pretending you’re this shallow, hard bitch because you’re not. Not yet.”

  “Why do you even care? Why do you want to save me?” Asked Felicity, tilting her head to one side like a cat studying a mouse.

  “Because I couldn’t save Amber,” Carl said quietly, unable to meet her gaze as he spoke.

  “You didn’t even know who she was. You’d never met her.”

  “Maybe I had and didn’t know it. Maybe I’d walked past her a hundred times on the street,” said Carl. “It shouldn’t have mattered that I didn’t know her. Girls that young shouldn’t have their name on paperwork in my office, Miss DuBois.”

  “You carry the weight of the world on those shoulders, Detective Duggan,” Felicity smiled, taking Carl’s large hand and gently kissing the back of it, leaving a red imprint from her deep lipstick.

  “So... do you want to cry?”

  “Not anymore,” she smiled. “Are you going to call your boys to pick him up?”

  “No rush, he ain’t getting any deader,” Carl remarked as he sipped his coffee. “Jesus, that tastes like crap.”

  “You really don’t give a shit that there’s a dead guy laying up there, do you?”

  “I might if I didn’t know who he was,” said Carl, taking another sip despite himself. “Two years ago, he and three of his lawyer friends were financing a child prostitution ring that was shipping the kids to Thailand. Oldest one we rescued from the warehouse was twelve. All four of the lawyers walked, friends in high places and all that crap. Couldn’t lay anything on them. Took more willpower than I knew I had not to go ‘round to their office and put one between their eyes.”

  “Jesus,” Felicity gasped. “How can people do stuff like that?”

  “Leave the City, Miss DuBois,” Carl said suddenly.

  “You sick of talking to me?” she smiled.

  “That right there is what I’m talking about. You still express shock that human beings can do things like that. I see it so goddamn often that I expect it. The day I don’t hear about a kid being killed or a woman being raped is the day I’m surprised. You need to leave before you’ve sunk down to where I am.”

  “Where would I go, Detective?”

  “Anywhere you want. World’s not as big a place as it used to be. Case in point; I arrested a guy last week that came from Saudi Arabia. Can you believe that? Comes halfway across the world to sell guns for a gang in this shit hole. Idiot.”

  “What point are you trying to make by telling me that?” Felicity asked, raising an eyebrow playfully.

  “That wasn’t part of my point, it’s just something that pissed me off,” Carl replied. “What I mean is that you can go, anytime you want. You stay here long enough and that stops being the case, so you’re on a clock.”

  “And what about you? You’re just going to grow old and die here?”

  “In my line of work, the second will probably come before the first, Miss DuBois.”

  “Well, I can promise you that I’ll think about it,” the blonde smiled, finishing her small coffee with a final tip of her cup. “Are you done with your coffee?”

  “Good God, yes,” Carl replied with a sigh of relief, his cup still half full. “I better call this in, then I’ll walk you home,”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Yeah I do, and don’t argue with me,”

  “You’re a weird kind of gentleman,” Felicity smiled as Carl held open the door of the coffee shop for her.

  “Damn straight.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four;

  Tiny Red Death-Warrant

  F elicity wrapped her dark red coat tightly around herself as she and Carl walked down the street, the night air biting against her flesh. The snow had held off for another night, but the sky was growing heavier with gathering weight every hour. When it came, it would come strong and blanket the entire city. All the dirt and blood would be buried beneath a covering of white, masking it in feint innocence. It wouldn’t last, of course. Before long the grime would seep through and even the snow would be dirty and red.

  Carl walked close beside Felicity and was surprised when she linked her arm with his. There was nothing romantic about the gesture, just the need she evidently had to be close to another human being this evening. Given that any physical human interaction she endured was usually paid for by a stranger, something as simple as linking your arm with that of friend would be welcome. Carl had called the meat-wagon to collect the body and informed the blue boys that the witness statement had already been taken. The further away he could keep Felicity from the whole mess, the better. He’d seen hope in her, a light that was rare in the City. The further into the mire she was dragged, the more that light would be extinguished until nothing remained.

  The two of them walked on down the street, Carl welcoming the fact that Limbo was lacking the oppressive neon glow of the West side at its core. His head didn’t hurt, he wasn’t forced to squint as he glanced ahead. Still, the lights did provide some benefits that the dank, grim nature of Limbo couldn’t supplement. Such as the fact that they effectively illuminated every street and passage. Had Carl and Felicity been walking beneath the neon hum of the West Side, they would have immediately seen the black van approaching on the road behind them. The fact that’s its own lights were turned off wouldn’t have mattered with a thousand others reflecting from its paint-work. In the dark of Limbo, however, approaching silently as it was, the van remained unnoticed until it screeched to a stop alongside Carl and Felicity. At this point the doors slid open and a dozen men clambered out of it. Each one of them was dressed as a pirate in one manner or another, decorated with neon pink, yellow and green makeup as Skye had been when Carl encountered her in the Diamond Heights hotel.

  “Stay behind me, Miss DuBois,” Carl warned, placing a protecting arm in front of the blonde.

  “Hey there, feller, I be wanting a word with ye,” said a dread-locked pirate, his face painted over with a glowing green skull. His voice had a heavy Irish accent, but it seemed unnat
ural and forced, to the point that Carl wondered if it was fake or at least exaggerated. In his right hand he held a large Cutlass.

  “What do you idiots want?” Carl asked firmly, keeping himself positioned between the group and Felicity.

  “Me and the boys here, we’re the Jolly Rogers. Perhaps ye’ve heard of us?”

  “Yeah I have, but that’s not what I asked.”

  “Oh, come on now. No need to be rude, is there? We can all be mates, can’t we?” the lead Pirate asked, putting his arm around the smaller man to his left and laughing hysterically. “We’re here on a wee bit of work and need yer help with it, ye see. I’m hoping you’ll be cooperative.”

  “You got a name?”

  “Ye can call me Willy.”

  “All right, Willy, I’m gonna ask you politely one more time... what do you want?”

  “Yer in no position to be threatening me, matey, but I’ll be nice anyway because I like to be helpful. Now, me and the boys here are under instruction from the Captain hisself, he gave us a few marching orders for the night’s wee excursion, ye know?” Willy explained, reaching into his tattered grey coat and pulling a brown envelope from within. He opened it and took out two photographs, which he then held up. “Now here I have me some things that I’d like yer help with, if ye’d be so kind. I got me some targets for the evening, some chosen specimens, if ye like. Only thing is, I left me glasses at home and I can’t quite tell who I’m looking fer. The picture is all blurry to me.”

  “That might be something to do with whatever cocktail of crap you got running through you right now,” Carl suggested.

  “Aye, it probably is at that,” Willy shrugged. “Still, if ye’d be so kind as to help me out?”