The Book of Mirrors

by E. O. Chirovici

  “I had one back in the 1970s.”

  “Well, I went there, quietly unlocked the front door, and went in. The lights were still on in the room, and when I walked in I saw him lying on the floor, blood everywhere. He looked real bad; his face was smashed, all swollen and bruised. The windows were wide open. I closed them and turned all the lights out. I’d brought a flashlight with me.”

  Derek turned toward me.

  “I was sure Flynn had done it. I thought they must have had an argument after I left, and got into a fight. When you beat up a guy that bad, it means you’re prepared to risk killing him, doesn’t it? One heavy blow, and pow! The end!

  “I didn’t know what the hell to do. It was one thing to hit the guy who’d made a fool of me and pretended to be my friend after he’d fucked my wife and put me in the crazy house, only to get me out of there so that he could be my jailer, but it was another thing to hit a guy lying on the floor, more dead than alive.

  “You know, I think I’d have split and left him there or I’d have called an ambulance, who knows . . . But just then, as I was leaning over him, with the flashlight lit beside me, he opened his eyes and looked up at me from the floor. And I saw his eyes, and I remembered how I’d followed him that evening when Anne went into the hotel room, how I climbed the stairs and put my ear to the door, like a moron. As if I didn’t already know what was going on inside, I had to go and listen to him screwing her. I remembered that bitch, who used to laugh at me and call me impotent, after I’d rescued her from a life on the street.

  “And that was that, man. I took out the blackjack and hit him once, hard.

  “I locked the door, I tossed the blackjack into the lake, and went home. Before I went to sleep, I thought of Wieder lying there, dead, covered in blood, and I have to tell you, I felt good. I didn’t feel at all sorry about what I’d done—or, rather, about finishing what some other guy had started. I went back to the house in the morning, and the rest you know. I didn’t find out that Flynn wasn’t the guy who beat him up until you came here a few days ago. Anyway, until that reporter came here, I hadn’t even thought about it too much. For me, the whole thing was dead and buried. And that’s everything, man.”

  “Wieder died two hours later; at least that’s what the medical examiner said. You could have saved him if you’d called an ambulance.”

  “I know what they said, but I’m still sure he’d died on the spot. Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Before leaving the house, did you open the drawers and scatter some papers on the floor, trying to suggest a robbery?”

  “No, man, I just left.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, I’m damn sure.”

  I wondered for a couple of moments if I should push him further.

  “You know, Derek, I’ve been thinking . . . You never found out who killed your wife that night . . .”

  “That’s right, I never found out.”

  “And that didn’t bother you?”

  “Maybe it did, so what?”

  “The love of your life was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, and the first thing you did was call her lover and ask him to save your ass. You called 911 eight minutes after your conversation with Wieder. Quite odd, don’t you think? Just curious: The professor really believed you? Did you talk with him, face-to-face, about the murder?”

  Derek took his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and saw that it was empty.

  “I’ve got another one in the workshop somewhere,” he said, pointing to the glassed-in porch.

  “I hope you’re not thinking of doing anything stupid,” I said, and he looked at me in surprise.

  “Oh, you mean—” He started to laugh. “Don’t you think we’re too old to be playing cowboys? There are no guns around here, don’t worry. I’ve never held a gun in my life.”

  As he went into the workshop, I put my right hand in my pocket and slowly released the safety with my thumb. Then I cocked it and kept it gripped in my hand. I’d been a cop for more than forty years, but I’d never had to shoot anybody.

  Through the grimy glass, I saw him rummaging around on the workbench, which was scattered with all kinds of objects. Then he bent down and rooted inside a box. He came back a few moments later holding a pack of Camels between the thumb and index finger of his right hand.

  “See? You can take your hand out of your pocket. You’ve got a gun in there, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He lit a cigarette, put the pack in his pocket, and gave me a questioning look.

  “Now what? I hope you realize that I wouldn’t repeat all this to a cop. I mean, a real one.”

  “I know you wouldn’t.”

  “But you think I killed Anne, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I think you killed her. At the time, the detectives searched her past, looking for potential leads. I read the report. She wasn’t a hooker, Derek. Before meeting you, she worked as a barmaid in Atlantic City for about two years, in a place called Ruby’s Café. She was described by everybody as a nice young lady, decent and intelligent. Probably everything was in your mind—the bad guys asking you for money, her troubled past, screwing around with lots of men and laughing at you behind your back. It wasn’t real, man—you made that all up. I’m not even sure that she was involved in a love affair with the professor. Maybe she’d just asked him for help. When you recovered your memory, you also got your nightmares back, didn’t you?”

  He looked me straight in the eye, running the tip of his tongue slowly over his lower lip.

  “I think you’d better get going, man. It’s not my damn business what you believe or not. I have to finish packing.”

  “It’s time to play ball, Derek, right?”

  He pointed the index finger of his left hand at me, curling his thumb to make the shape of a pistol.

  “You were real smart with that, I mean it.”

  He showed me to the front door.

  “Derek, when did Leonora go to Louisiana?”

  “About two weeks ago. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason. Take care.”

  I felt his eyes on my back all the way to the corner, where I turned, getting out of his sight. Derek didn’t seem to know that things were done without wires nowadays. All it takes is a special pencil in the breast pocket of your jacket.

  A couple of minutes later, as I was pulling off Witherspoon Street in my car, I could hear the police sirens. Somewhere, in a document about Simmons, I remembered, it was claimed that his dad had moved to another state years ago and disappeared. I wondered whether anybody had checked that story out at the time. He’d told me that Wieder had hypnotized him at one point. Had the professor found out what his patient was truly capable of? How the hell could he have given the keys to his house to a creep like that? Or was he certain that his amnesia was irreversible and that Simmons would permanently remain a bomb without a detonator? But the detonator had been there all the time.

  On the way to the airport, I remembered the title of Flynn’s book and the maze of distorting mirrors I used to find at carnivals when I was a kid—everything you saw when you went inside was both true and false at the same time.

  It was getting dark when I merged onto the turnpike. I started to think about seeing Diana again and what would come of it in the end. I was as nervous as if I were going on my first date. I remembered the gun—I took it out of my pocket, engaged the safety, and hid it in the glove box. In the end, I’d finished my life as a cop without having to use a gun on anyone, and I told myself that it was a good thing it had turned out like that.

  I knew that I’d forget all about this case, just like I’d forget the other stories that made up my life, stories probably neither better nor worse than anybody else’s. I thought that if I had to choose just one of my memories, a story that I’d remember to the very end, a memory that Mr. A would never be able to take away from me, then I’d like to remember this calm, quiet, hopeful ride on my way to the airport, when
I knew I was going to see Diana again, and maybe she’d decide to stay.

  I saw her coming through the exit and noticed that she was carrying only one small bag, the kind of hand luggage you take on a very short trip. I waved at her, and she waved back. A couple of seconds later, we met by a bookstand and I kissed her on the cheek. The color of her hair was different, she wore a new perfume and a coat I’d never seen before, but the way she smiled at me was the same as ever.

  “Is that all you’ve brought?” I asked her, taking her bag.

  “I’ve hired a van to bring my other things out next week. I’m going to stay for a while, so you’d better tell that young lady of yours to hit the road, and fast.”

  “Are you talking about Minnie Mouse? She left me, Dee. I think she’s still in love with that guy Mickey.”

  We walked to the parking lot holding hands, got into the car, and left the airport. She told me about our son and his wife and our granddaughter. And listening to her voice as I drove, I felt all my memories of the crime story that had been obsessing me for the past few months peeling away one after another, fluttering out of sight down the highway, like the pages of an old manuscript carried away by the wind.

  EPILOGUE

  Derek’s story caused enough of a splash for the ripples to reach all the way to a small town in Alabama. Danna Olsen called me a few days later, while I was on my way to Los Angeles to meet a TV producer. I also had a meeting with John Keller, who’d recently moved to California and had rented a house in Orange County.

  “Hello, Peter,” she said, “I’m Danna Olsen. Remember me?”

  I told her I did, and we exchanged a few words before she got to the point.

  “I lied to you back then, Peter. I knew where the rest of the manuscript was, I’d read it before Richard’s death, but I didn’t want to give it to you or anybody else. I was angry. Reading it, I realized how much Richard had loved that woman, Laura Baines. Even if he seemed angry at her, there was no doubt in my mind that he died loving her. It wasn’t honest for him to do that. I felt like an old horse that he kept around just because he didn’t know what else to do. I’d taken care of him and put up with all his eccentricities, and believe me, there were a lot of them. He’d used up the last months of his life writing that book, while I was right there beside him. I felt betrayed.”

  I was somewhere on Rosewood Avenue, in West Hollywood, in front of the restaurant where I was supposed to meet the guy.

  “Ms. Olsen,” I said, “given the recent circumstances, I mean the arrest of Simmons, I don’t think that—”

  “I’m not calling you with a business proposition,” she said, making things clear from the outset. “I expected that the manuscript would no longer be of much interest to you as an agent. But all the same, Richard’s last wish was that his manuscript be published. Apart from the story with Baines, you know how much he wanted to be a writer, and I think he’d have been overjoyed if you’d accepted his project. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see that. But I now realize that it’d be a good thing to send it to you all the same.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It was clear that I wasn’t going to be dealing with a true-crime story, as the premise, Flynn’s entire theory, had just been blow apart by the latest events, which proved that the author’s imagination had embellished on real events. John Keller had had a long phone conversation with Roy Freeman, the retired detective who’d become a media star—“Ex-Detective Solves Twenty-Eight-Year-Old Murder Mystery”—and had temporarily moved to his ex-wife’s house in Seattle to get away from reporters. John had sent me an e-mail in which he’d explained briefly that there was no mystery left to the story at all.

  But I couldn’t say this to her, because she knew it all too well.

  “It would be great if I could take a look at it,” I said, waving at the producer, who was walking toward the restaurant, his face almost entirely hidden by a pair of immense green sunglasses that made him look like a giant cricket. “You still have my e-mail address, don’t you? I’ll be back home tomorrow, and I’ll find the time to read it.”

  The producer spotted me, but he didn’t bother to lengthen his stride or wave back. He looked calm, indifferent, an attitude meant to underline his importance.

  Ms. Olsen assured me that she had my e-mail address and that she’d send me the manuscript straightaway.

  “The last few weeks were hard on him, Peter, and I think that it shows in the final chapters of the manuscript. There are things in there which . . . But anyway, you’ll see what it’s all about.”

  That evening I met John Keller, who picked me up outside my hotel. He was tanned and had a two-weeks’ beard, which suited him.

  We had dinner together at a Japanese restaurant called Sugarfish on West Seventh Street, which John told me was the latest trendy spot; he’d booked us a table The waiters kept coming every five minutes, bringing us different dishes, none of whose contents I was able to identify.

  “How about that!” he exclaimed when I told him about my conversation with Danna Olsen. “Think about it! If she’d given you the manuscript at the time, you wouldn’t have gotten me hooked on the story, I wouldn’t have looked up Freeman, and he wouldn’t have dug up those old files. And we probably would have never found out the truth about the murder.”

  “On the other hand, I’d have a book to sell,” I said.

  “A book that wouldn’t have been true.”

  “Who’d have cared about that? Do you know something? Richard Flynn was unlucky right up to the end. Even after his death, he missed out on his chance to publish a book.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” he said, raising his small cup of sake. “To Richard Flynn, the unlucky guy.”

  We toasted Flynn’s memory, and then John enthusiastically told me about his new life and how happy he was to be working in television. The pilot of the series he’d been roped into cowriting had gotten a good rating, so he was looking forward to breezing through at least another season. I felt happy for him.

  I haven’t read the manuscript yet. I found it in my in-box after I got back to New York. I printed out all 248 pages, in twelve-point Times New Roman, double-spaced, and put them in a file on top of my desk. I’ve been keeping it there, like those monks in the Middle Ages used to keep human skulls as a reminder that life is short and transient, and after death the judgment comes.

  Most likely, Richard Flynn had been wrong to the very end. Laura Baines had probably stolen the professor’s manuscript and left him to die on the floor, but she hadn’t been his mistress. Derek Simmons had been mistaken when he thought that Richard Flynn had fled through the glass door after beating Wieder. Joseph Wieder had been wrong about Laura Baines and Richard Flynn having a relationship. They’d all been wrong and had seen nothing but their own obsessions in the windows they’d tried to gaze through, which, in fact, turned out to have been mirrors all along.

  A great French writer once said that the remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of those things as they were. I guess he was right.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to express my gratitude to everybody who helped me with this book.

  My literary agent, Marilia Savvides of Peters, Fraser and Dunlop, not only fished my story out of the slush pile in no time but also helped me polish the manuscript once again, doing a great job. Thanks for everything, Marilia.

  Francesca Pathak of Century and Megan Reid of Emily Bestler Books edited the text, a process that couldn’t have gone more smoothly or more pleasantly. Working with them was a privilege. I’m also very grateful to the wonderful teams at Penguin Random House U.K. and Simon & Schuster U.S. Francesca and Megan, I also thank you for all your wise suggestions—they enriched the manuscript and made it shine.

  Rachel Mills, Alexandra Cliff, and Rebecca Wearmouth sold the book all over the world within the space of just a couple of weeks—and what an unforgettable feast that period was for all of us! Thanks, ladies.

  My g
ood friend Alistair Ian Blyth helped me set sail on the stormy waters of the English language without drowning myself, and it was no easy task. Thanks, man.

  I’ve kept the most important person till last: my wife, Mihaela, to whom this book is dedicated, in fact. If it hadn’t been for her trust in me, I’d probably have abandoned literature a long time ago. She’s always reminded me who I really am and to which realm I truly belong.

  My final thanks go to you, the reader, who picked this book from among so many others. Nowadays, as Cicero said, children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

  E. O. CHIROVICI was born in Transylvania, Romania, to a Romanian-Hungarian-German family. He spent years as a journalist, first running a prestigious newspaper and later a major TV station. He has been writing full-time since 2013 and currently lives in Brussels.

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