Mirror Image (Capitol Chronicles Book 4)

by Shirley Hailstock

  “It doesn't come from the show. I'm not really Marsha Chambers. I am Rory, Aurora Alexander. I was on the show as a look-alike the day you tried to kidnap me. You made a mistake. I'm not Marsha Chambers."

  He laughed at her. "Good try."

  Aurora knew this wasn't working. She had to use another form of persuasion. Another method to get him to move her away from this house. No one knew she was here and there was no way she could get help unless she got back to a place where there were other people.

  "What is the plan you have for Duncan to come here? He doesn't know where we are."

  "He doesn't need to know. When they find you, they'll blame him. He'll be ruined."

  "No, he won't," she told him. "You left no clues, no note. Duncan will have an alibi. He's probably with his friend, a cop. He'll have a police officer swearing he was no-where near this place."

  She had his attention. He wasn't looking at her, but she recognized the taut features telling her he understood. She knew when she reached a person, when her words touched them. Years of training had taught her what to look for, to see stillness in eyes, arms, shoulders. Even when the change was small, almost imperceptible, she could see it.

  "You'll have killed me for nothing. And they'll find you. The police have all kinds of equipment. They can probably track you by smell alone."

  He snapped, raising his hand to strike her. Aurora instinctively moved back and closed her eyes, bracing herself for the blow to come. It didn't. She opened her eyes. He hovered over her, anger evident in his stance. She'd touched on the truth. He believed her. Now he had to do something. She hoped he wouldn't kill her first, then try to move her.

  "All right." He spoke softly—like an actor during a big scene played quietly to make the audience teeter on the edge of their seats, knowing the quietness was only a prelude to something more sinister. "We'll go to the studio. Right to Mr. Duncan's West's office."

  Aurora shook inside but kept her gaze steady. He pulled the roll of duct tape out. She tried to get away from him.

  "I don't need the tape," she said. "I won't cry out. I promise."

  "Liar," he snarled, then pinned her to the small cot as he taped her mouth.

  ***

  Duncan couldn't move when Marsha made her revelation. He stared at her as if he'd never seen her before. Seconds passed and no one spoke. The only sound in the office came from something going on outside the door.

  "I don't believe you," he finally said. She was hard to work with, always thought she knew the best way to do things, but this woman was no murderer.

  "We'd had a lot to drink. The car was full, four of us. I was driving. We'd been in Georgetown and decided to run over to Virginia and go to one of the clubs there. I missed the turn for Key Bridge and ended up on a road that only had trees and nowhere to turn around. I was driving too fast. The music was too loud. And everyone was talking, giving me directions, telling me what to do. I only took my eyes off the road for a second. Suddenly there was a man in front of me. He was carrying something. I couldn't stop. I hit him."

  Tears ran down her face. She reached for a tissue from the box on Coop's desk, checked them, and continued. "It was another student. I only knew him slightly. We'd had some classes together. I didn't even know his name. Then suddenly he was dead."

  Coop placed his elbows on the desk and folded his arms. "What happened then?"

  "There was a lot of screaming from the other girl in the car. The guys pushed us back and made us stay in the car. We couldn't get the other girl to stop crying. Finally, one of the guys told me to take her back. When I protested that I should stay there until the police arrived, they said no police. They would handle it.”

  "You left the scene of an accident? One in which someone had died?"

  "Don't glare at me," Marsha told Coop. "I was twenty years old. I was scared. I didn't know what to do. I figured they would handle it and I would be called to the police station. Every day I waited in fear for the police to knock on my door. I was frantic, jumpy. The longer nothing happened the more afraid I became.

  "After graduation I left for California. By the time I got there I'd changed my name and started a new life. The four of us never saw each other again."

  "One of them is blackmailing you?" Coop asked the question.

  "Charles Hagan. He was my date that night. Three years ago when the show went national and I was suddenly in the limelight, I got a program in the mail. It was our graduation program. A yellow marker had been used to highlight one name, the student I'd killed."

  "You've been paying blackmail for three years?" Duncan asked.

  She nodded. Her face was dry now, but drawn. Duncan felt he understood a lot more about Marsha Chambers. She'd been going through hell while maintaining an on screen persona, keeping people employed and having her life hanging under a sword.

  "It stops now, Marsha," Coop told her.

  "How? If I don't pay him I lose everything."

  She isn't the only one, Coop thought. He was a law officer. His life was the law. He was in love with a woman who just admitted she'd killed someone, then driven away from the accident. She challenged all his convictions. He didn't like it. In fact, he hated it. He couldn't let it be true. There had to be something else. He wanted to marry Marsha Chambers. He couldn't marry her and be who he was.

  "What was the name of the student who died?"

  "Jeff Sherman." She looked at her hands, then across the desk at him. "He was from Michigan and majored in Chemistry."

  "Where does the child in the hospital fit into this?" Her eyes stared accusingly at him. "I followed you. I saw you there and at the studio."

  Embarrassment flooded her face as if he'd caught her naked feelings, as he had. "The child has nothing to do with any of this. I set that interview up from the mother's appealing letter. Her story reminded me of myself." She paused, moving her gaze from Coop to Duncan and back. Both of them waited for her to explain.

  "The accident that killed my parents also took my sister. My parents died immediately. My younger sister didn't. She hung on for hours. I'd run away that day and they were looking for me." She tried to swallow the sob in her voice. "If they had only found me. If I'd known, I could have gone to the hospital, given her my blood or my kidney or my arm...I don't know. Maybe she would still be alive." She stopped fighting tears that threatened to fall. "I didn't want that to happen to Gillie."

  "I never knew you had a sister," Duncan said.

  "You don't know my name isn't Marsha Chambers, either. I legally changed it and thought I could hide."

  When she stopped speaking the room was quiet, too quiet. Coop's throat was dry. He knew he should speak. It was his office, his investigation, his evidence. He hated it. He hated what she'd told him.

  "You know I can't ignore what you've told me," Coop stated.

  Marsha stood up. Coop envisioned a condemned prisoner standing before her judge, being sentenced to life in prison.

  "I know," she whispered.

  Chapter17

  The lights, the cameras, the set. He turned around, taking it all in. Even in the dark he could see. He knew where everything was, where it should be. It was different sitting onstage from being a member of the audience.

  He breathed in deeply. Show business had a smell to it—body heat, makeup, nervous energy. Each stage was different, personalized by the people who worked there. This one had Marsha Chambers at its core. He looked at her sitting across from him. This was her domain. It had her signature on it. Even with tape across her mouth and fear in her eyes, Aurora knew this was still her home.

  Hers and Duncan West's.

  His eyes swept the studio. It was dark, peered into the darkness. Everyone had left for the night. The guards never came into the studio. There was no need. The perimeter hadn't been breached. There was no need to check the inside. He could wait here for Duncan to arrive, but he didn't have to. He had other plans. Plans that would send Duncan West exactly where he'd sent him, into obliv
ion.

  Pulling a knife from his inside pocket he went toward Marsha Chambers.

  ***

  Duncan thought he should have gone into songwriting instead of producing. All the old clichés in songs were correct. All the lyrics about love and longing were true. Who would have thought he and Coop would end up like this? Both in love and both in jeopardy of losing the women who'd captured their hearts.

  Coop sent Marsha home with a policewoman. Duncan refused to leave. Aurora would try to reach him here or at the police station. He'd forwarded his phones—the office, his home, and his cellular—to Coop's office. Who could take Aurora? And where would they take her? Why was there no message, no note, no indication of what they wanted? The guards had been found tied up in one of the bedrooms. They'd been knocked out separately and had not seen anything that could help.

  The police had spent the better part of the night going over everything, asking questions and then asking them again and again, but so far nothing had happened. Megan stayed until everyone left. Then Duncan sent her home to sleep. He'd tried to do the same but only fitfully tossed and turned, imagining he heard the phone ringing. Finally he'd ended up here in time for Marsha's confession.

  Cooper Dean was in love but he couldn't let the admission of murder, even by the woman he loved, go unresolved. It was unbelievable. Coop refused to believe it. Duncan couldn't imagine it, either. Marsha's stage presence had too much compassion, even if her off-screen personality didn't. He understood why now.

  She'd fought to allow the appeal show against his wishes. The Marsha Chambers Show didn't do appeals. It wasn't a fund-raiser, telethon, or tearjerker. Their format included soft news items, human interest, celebrities, and nostalgia pieces. They could tackle the subject of teenage runaways, catastrophic illness, or mothers wanting reunions with their children, but they did not do appeals. Marsha had fought hard for this one child, and finally Duncan had given in.

  Now he prowled. While Coop showed all the signs of an angry bear, punching keys and barking orders into the phone and at the officers who ran interference for him, Duncan paced the room, trying to think of something he could do. He needed to feel useful. He needed to find her, help her, save her.

  "I'm leaving," he said abruptly.

  "Where are you going?"

  "To see Aurora's mother. She might be of some help."

  He headed for the door. The phone rang. Duncan stopped.

  Coop snatched it from its cradle with such force he wondered that it didn't break in two. Duncan's stomach clenched. He could feel the acid churning. Was it Aurora?

  "What?" Coop asked.

  Duncan listened.

  "You're sure?" Coop's face split into a smile as he listened. "There's no mistake? You're sure? Positive?" Coop scribbled something on a pad. Duncan tried to read upside down. "Get a warrant. I want that bastard in custody within the hour."

  He hung up. "What's happened?" Duncan asked.

  "He's not dead. He's alive."

  Coop stood up and like a quarterback about to be sacked, he rushed from the room. Duncan had no idea where he was going. He grabbed the paper. "Michigan Home for the Blind" was written on it in Coop's slanted handwriting.

  He caught up with Coop just as he got into his car. "Who was that?"

  "An officer I'd asked to check on Sherman. The kid was never reported dead in D.C. Never even appeared in a hospital during the entire four years he spent in college."

  "Then what did Marsha—"

  "She hit him all right. He saw the car in time and jumped out of the way. She hit his backpack. It ricocheted into him and knocked him cold, but he wasn't hurt. He didn't go to graduation because he had a headache and some bruises."

  "All this time the other kid knew this?"

  "Yeah, two of them, Charles Hagan and Alfred Lloyd, an insulin diabetic. Three years ago when Marsha's show topped the scales, Lloyd suddenly died of insulin shock. No one could determine why he hadn't taken his shots."

  "Leaving Hagan as the only living person who knew Sherman was alive."

  "It was an opportunity he couldn't pass up, and for three years he's been banking on Marsha's fear that he'd expose something which never happened."

  "You're going to see her?"

  Coop nodded. "I have to tell her she didn't kill anyone. The man is alive and well, working in Michigan teaching the blind and visually impaired."

  Duncan smiled and stuck his hand out. "Congratulations," he said.

  As Coop's tires squealed against the pavement Duncan turned to his own car. He'd been on his way to see Cassandra Alexander. He'd go on. He didn't hold out any definite hope that she could help him, but it made him feel that he was doing something.

  The nurses at the home hadn't seen Aurora when he inquired. Her mother stared into space, alone with her thoughts, her memory, and her own world. He was glad Aurora wasn't here. Seeing her mother like this made him sad, and he had no relational connection. For Aurora it was devastating.

  Duncan tried, anyway. "Mrs. Alexander, I'm looking for Rory. Your daughter, Aurora."

  She didn't move, didn't respond. Neither name seemed to have any connection with her.

  "She brings you the cookies and bread."

  Mrs. Alexander continued to look through the window into the darkness. The only indication that she understood anything he'd said was a gentle rocking. Duncan had seen Aurora holding her and rocking this same way.

  ***

  A light rain splashed against the car window as Duncan drove back to Princeton. He'd gotten nowhere with Aurora's mother. Calling the police station from the car proved a waste of time. Nothing further had been discovered. Wherever she was, she was on her own. Duncan didn't like the tightness that squeezed his heart at the thought.

  He pulled into his yard and waited for the garage door to lift. Then he drove inside. Mechanically, he walked about the house turning on lights, starting the coffeemaker, looking in the refrigerator. Something grated at him, but he couldn't figure what it was. He stared at the bottle of wine he and Coop has opened. He could use a drink, but he wanted his mind clear. He made a sandwich and waited for the coffee. Taking the cup, he went into his office. Without thinking he turned on the cameras and his computer. It was an automatic reaction to entering the room. He didn't think anything of it, didn't even know he'd done it until the soft hum of the equipment began.

  Remembering he'd left the sandwich in the kitchen, he returned there. Why? he wondered. Why would someone who was blackmailing Marsha want to hurt her? The question irritated him. Half an hour later and seven checks of his cell phone looking for a call or message, he was still trying to find an answer. No scenario he worked out made any sense.

  "It can't be him," Duncan said. It had to be someone else. It had to be someone with something to gain by getting rid of Marsha. Hagan would be cutting off his money supply.

  He grabbed the phone and dialed Marsha's number. It went to the forth ring before the answering machine clicked in. He waited impatiently for Joyce's voice to complete the message.

  "Coop, if you're there, pick up. I need to talk to you."

  "This better be good," Coop said, obviously irritated.

  "Coop, it's not Hagan. He wouldn't jeopardize Marsha's ability to support him. It's got to be someone else."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "About Aurora, and whoever has her. It can't be Hagan. Think about it, Coop. Hagan wants to keep Marsha working. She's his meal ticket, his livelihood. He waited for her to get to the top to begin his scam. No way will he kill his goose now."

  Coop didn't say anything, but Duncan heard him sigh heavily into the phone. "Where are you?"

  "Home."

  "I'll be right there."

  ***

  "Don't get any fancy ideas about screaming or trying to run away," he told her.

  Aurora had no voice. Her heart beat so fast. When he'd drawn the knife she'd known her life was over. She'd thought of her mother and who would care for her. She th
ought of Duncan, and that she'd never told him she loved him. She'd thought of her brother in law school, and her father in Japan.

  Then he'd cut the tape at her hands and feet. She tore the tape from her mouth but said nothing. She couldn't speak. She was so glad to be alive for a few more minutes that speech failed her.

  She had to find a way of signaling someone. The guard was at the gate. He'd been on rounds when they arrived. Aurora thought this man had studied the studio as well as any medical student studying the internal organs of the human body. He knew about everything and everyone. He had the frequency for the automatic fence. It had opened and closed, silently passing them through. He'd hidden the van inside the huge doors used by tractor trailers to deliver everything from elephants to baby diapers. They were effectively encased inside the building.

  "You've got time," he told her. "Duncan was always an early riser. He'll be the first to arrive in the morning." The laugh he delivered was malicious. "I don't think it will be one of his best days. Then he'll never have a good day again."

  "You haven't told me who you are, or why you're doing this." Her toes tingled since he cut the tape bonding her legs together. Needles and pins stabbed them. She stood up anyway. Her life was hanging here. He had no reason to remain. He'd gotten in. He could kill her and leave. He could frame Duncan for it. But he wanted to make sure. Otherwise, he'd have already killed her. He wanted to make sure Duncan knew.

  She felt he was using her. He'd cut her loose like some character in a movie would. He wanted to taunt her, play cat with a mouse since he held the power. He'd let her move around while he kept her in sight. She moved tentatively.

  "What are you doing?" He pointed the gun at her. "Testing my legs. The tape cut the circulation." She completed a small circle. Then a wider one. He stood up, letting her know he had control. He had the gun. "Know anything about these cameras?"