by David Archer
Sam nodded. “Just a precaution, but yes. I thought about what I would do if I were in C.J.’s position, and just found out I had a twin brother. I might decide to start poking around his life, so if he and I are really alike, I think he might do the same.”
“You’re a good man, Sam,” Kim said. “But Beauregard says you’re going up against someone who is totally evil and, except for that, exactly like you. Did you ever see that Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk got split into two parts? One side was good, but the other was evil. It’s going to be like that, with the good side fighting the evil side. And Sam? Beauregard says he doesn’t know who will win.”
“Then do me a favor,” Sam said, “and don’t tell Indie anything about that. Let’s keep that between us, shall we?”
Kim nodded, and Sam went out the door to where his mother was waiting in her car. He slid into the passenger seat and looked at her.
“You’re sure you’re up for this?” he asked.
“I’m sure,” Grace said. “What was all that about with Kim? Beauregard again?”
“Yeah. The old spook says fighting my evil twin may be pretty dangerous. He doesn’t know which one of us will win if it comes down to that.”
“You win,” Grace said with conviction. “You always do.”
She started the car, backed out of the driveway, and headed to the airport. Sam guided her to the charter gate and she parked in the small parking lot beside it. They took their bags and headed toward the Cessna jet waiting on the tarmac.
“Mr. Prichard?” A man in a pilot’s uniform got up from a bench beside the building. “I’m Lanny Davis, your pilot.” Another man and a woman got up from where they had been sitting beside him. “This is Mike Carriker, my copilot, and Julie Brenner, your flight attendant.”
“Sam Prichard,” Sam said, shaking hands with all of them. “This is my mother, Grace Prichard. Are we all set?”
“Absolutely,” Davis said. “They said you’re going to Jenksville, so I filed a flight plan for Lake City. It’s about half an hour away, but it’s the closest runway that can handle this plane.”
“That’ll be fine,” Sam said. “I can rent a car there, right?”
“I would think so.” Davis led the way to the airplane and they all climbed aboard. The engines fired up and they were in the air less than fifteen minutes later.
“I bet you get used to traveling like this,” Grace said. “I certainly could.”
“Ron has a deal with the charter company,” Sam said, “so he gets a discount, but this flight is probably still going to cost several thousand dollars. It’s nice, but not something I could afford on a regular basis.”
The flight would last four and a half hours, so Sam leaned his seat back and got comfortable. Grace followed suit a moment later, and the two of them dozed during the trip. The flight attendant checked on them periodically and offered them dinner at one point.
“What have you got?” Sam asked. “It is getting to be dinnertime.”
“You have a choice,” Julie said. “We have roast beef sandwiches with Swiss cheese and chips, or pepperoni pizza.”
“Pizza sounds good,” Grace said.
“I can go along with that,” Sam said. Julie returned a few minutes later with a pair of small pizzas and soft drinks, then left them to enjoy the meal.
It was almost midnight in Florida when they touched down at the Lake City airport, and the car rental counter was closed. There was a taxi service number on the bulletin board, so Sam called for a cab to take them to a hotel. They ended up at the Ramada Inn, and Sam got them each a room.
“I’ll meet you in the breakfast room at eight,” he said as they entered their rooms. “I’ll have a rental car brought to us in the morning. Bring your bag down, because we’re going to head home tomorrow. Might as well check out when we leave in the morning.”
“All right, Sam. See you in the morning, then.”
Sam went into his room and called Indie to let her know he and his mother arrived safely. He promised to call her after his meeting in the morning, then set an alarm and crawled into bed, and was quickly sound asleep.
The alarm woke him at seven, and he dragged himself off the bed. He went into the bathroom and took care of morning necessities, then stripped down and got into the shower. The water was hot and the pressure was great, so he let it run over him for half an hour as he mentally prepared himself for the day ahead.
Freshly showered and shaved, he got dressed in the clean suit he had brought and then called the car rental company to arrange for a car to be dropped off. The clerk assured him that it would be ready and waiting for him at the front desk by eight thirty, and Sam headed to the breakfast room.
The hotel offered a continental breakfast, and that was fine with Sam. He was particularly fond of the waffles such hotels always had available, and was surprised to find his mother already there.
“Sit down,” she said. “I knew you’d be here any minute, so I’ve got a waffle in the iron for you already. Get some coffee and have a seat and I’ll bring it to you when it’s done.”
“Thanks, Mom,” he said with a grin. “It’s been a long time since you made me breakfast.”
“Too long,” she replied. The waffle iron signaled that it was finished a moment later, and she flipped it over and popped it onto a plate. She brought it to him with a fork and the butter and syrup, then went back to make her own. Moments later, the two of them were sitting at a small table, eating their waffles.
“I got a car coming,” Sam said. “It should be here any time. They’re going to leave the keys and paperwork at the front desk for me.”
“Good,” Grace said. “Sam, I’m a little nervous. Yesterday I was all gung ho, ready to confront this woman, but what can I really say to her?”
“Just let me do the talking at first,” Sam said. “Once we get her to understand what happened, then you can talk to her about C.J. You said you wanted to know what he was like as a child, right? I plan to listen in, to see if maybe I can gain a little insight into how to deal with him.”
“Sam, do you think there’s any possibility that she knows—that she knows what he does?”
“I don’t know, Mom. I suppose it’s possible, but I’d like to think that it’s something he would keep from her.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
They finished eating a short time later and went to the front desk. Sam checked them out and collected the car keys and rental agreement, then they went outside to find the car in the parking lot. It was sitting close to the entrance to the building, and flashed its lights when Sam hit the button on the key fob. They climbed in and Sam put Mrs. Willis’s address into the nav app on his phone.
It was a thirty minute drive to her house, and Sam followed the directions carefully. It led them onto I-75, and they got off the interstate a short time later. There, it was only a few more minutes to their destination, and they pulled up in front of a two-story house on a small side street.
Sam and Grace got out of the car and walked toward the front door, Sam leaning on his cane. Flying always made his hip ache, but it wasn’t too bad. There was no doorbell, so he knocked on the front door and waited.
A tiny woman in her fifties, barely even five feet tall, opened the door with a smile, and almost threw her arms around Sam, but then she stopped.
“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “Oh, my, you look so much like my son…”
“Mrs. Willis,” Sam said, “my name is Sam Prichard. I’m afraid your son is what we’re here to talk to you about. Could we have a few minutes of your time?”
Vanessa Willis stared at him for a moment, then slowly nodded her head. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, come in.” Her eyes were darting back and forth between Sam and his mother as she stepped aside and let them enter.
“Mrs. Willis,” Sam said as he sat on the couch when she offered, “this is my mother, Grace Prichard. What I’m about to tell you is going to sound strange, so I’m afraid I need to ask you to keep an open mind.”
“It’s about C.J., you said,” Vanessa replied. “Is he all right?”
“As far as I know at the moment,” Sam said. He started to speak again, then stopped and licked his dry lips. “Mrs. Willis, your son C.J. and I were born the same day, in the same hospital in Denver. I was one of a set of twins, identical twins. You gave birth to a single baby boy.”
Vanessa stared at him. “Oh, my God,” she said. “You’re saying that—oh, God, how could this happen?”
“Mrs. Willis, we’ve spoken with one of the nurses who was on duty in the nursery the night we were born. This is going to be hard to tell you, but—Mrs. Willis, your son, your baby, died in the nursery of a heart problem. The nurse said that she had just realized what had happened, and was trying to perform CPR to revive him, when your husband came into the room. He saw what had happened, and told her that you had a bad heart and that he was afraid the shock of losing your baby might kill you.”
Vanessa began slowly shaking her head as tears started to run down her cheeks. “Oh, no,” she said. “He didn’t…”
“He only suggested the possibility of switching babies with one of the twins,” Sam said. “The nurse admitted that she made the decision to do so herself. She picked up my brother and switched the armbands, then laid him in your son’s crib and put your baby in my brother’s. Then she called the doctors and said that it was my brother who died suddenly.”
Vanessa, still shaking her head from side to side, focused her eyes on Grace. “I didn’t know,” she said. “I swear to you, I didn’t know.”
“I can see that,” Grace said softly. “We buried your baby, thinking he was ours.”
Vanessa sniffled, then wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater. “No wonder you look so much like C.J.,” she said. “You’re his twin brother. Oh, God, it explains so many things. C.J., he never looked like us, he never acted like anyone in our family. He was so different, but I just thought he was my son, so I accepted it.” She smiled sadly. “He asked me once if he was adopted, because he knew how different he was. I remember assuring him that he was my own flesh and blood. Oh, God, how could I have been so blind?”
“Mrs. Willis, I’m afraid there’s more,” Sam said. “You see, the reason we found out about C.J. is because—it’s because I was arrested a few days ago. There was a young girl who was murdered, and they found the killer’s DNA on her body, but when they ran it through the DNA database system like they do on the police shows, it came back to me. They thought I had actually killed this girl, but we know now that it—it was C.J. who did it.”
SEVENTEEN
C.J. stopped in Kansas City and got a room for the night, checking into a cheap hotel where he could pay cash and wouldn’t have to answer a lot of questions. His instincts were kicking in, telling him that the situation could easily blow up in his face. When he got into the room, his first thought was to get on his computer and start scanning for news about the case Sam had been arrested on, and later he was very glad he did.
While the judge had agreed to keep news of Sam’s release quiet, they had not reckoned with the stubbornness of reporters. A local newspaper reporter had seen Sam walking out of the courthouse and started asking questions. The clerk, unaware of the judge’s order, acknowledged that the charges against Sam had been dismissed, but said she didn’t know why.
The reporter rushed back and filed a story, but it had been late in the day and it only showed up on the newspaper’s website. It wouldn’t hit the streets until the following afternoon, but finding it on the website told C.J. that Sam probably knew about him. With DNA evidence, the only way he could have gotten the charges dismissed would be by coming up with proof that the DNA could not have been his own. Since there was only one other person it could belong to, C.J. knew that Sam must have learned about his existence.
Or maybe he had known all along. Maybe Sam had been told, as he was growing up, that he had a twin brother out there someplace who had been given away. Sam was supposed to be some sort of super professional investigator, according to all the articles C.J. found. Why did he never bother to look him up, to come find him? Maybe it could have made a difference.
In any case, it was time for C.J. to become someone else. The van was parked outside his room, and he went out to it immediately. There was an abandoned gas station up the street, and it took him only minutes to get the garage door open and put the van inside, out of sight. He dug out his stash of alternate identities, packed items he wanted to take with him and locked the door. With any luck, he’d be back to get the van in a few days, but some part of him felt like he was saying goodbye to it forever.
He went to the motel and got some sleep, then got up early the next morning and went looking for some new transportation. There was a used car lot a half mile down the road, and he walked all the way. He had money stashed in accounts for all of his identities, and it didn’t take him long to buy a five-year-old Mustang.
Luckily, one of his IDs had a Kansas address. It only took a few minutes to get license plates for the car, and then he went to the motel to pack the things he was taking with him. Afterward, he stopped for lunch and then got on the highway.
Denver was another eight hours away. He’d have to locate his mother’s house after he got there, but he was pretty good with the computer. He didn’t figure that would be too much trouble.
And speaking of mothers, he thought about calling his own—well, the woman he had thought was his own mother. He picked up his phone from the console, but changed his mind. He didn’t know what to say to her, and he wasn’t ready to handle that confrontation just yet.
First, he wanted to meet the woman who had given birth to him. He wanted to look her in the eyes when he asked her how she could stand to give up one of her children, how she could sleep at night knowing that she had cast him out into the world.
Once he had her answer, he would decide what to do next.
* * * * *
“Oh my God,” Vanessa wailed. “No, no, that’s not true, that can’t be true. C.J., he’s a gentle soul, he would never hurt anybody. He’s never even…” Her voice trailed off. “Are you sure? Is there any doubt?”
Sam shook his head. “I’m afraid not. The DNA came back as a perfect match for me, because it came from him. We were able to find several other cases from the past, girls who were killed by the same person, and that DNA also matched mine. That we know of so far, he’s killed at least seven young girls, and probably more.”
Vanessa started crying harder, shaking her head vigorously. “I should’ve known, I should have known,” she said. “He was always on the road, he hasn’t been home in years. Oh, my God, how could he do this?”
“It’s probably something that happened once maybe by accident,” Sam said. “For some people, once you’ve done something like that, you feel a need to do it again. We think maybe that’s what happened with C.J.” He looked into her eyes. “Has there ever been any other evidence of violence in his life? You seemed like something occurred to you a few minutes ago.”
Vanessa made a valiant effort and got herself under control. “Well,” she said, “there was something that happened when he was in the army. He had a girlfriend, and he caught her with somebody else. I guess they got in a big fight, and C.J.—C.J. tried to shoot him.” She chewed her bottom lip for a couple of seconds, then closed her eyes. “And some people,” she said, “some people think maybe the accident that killed his dad—that killed my husband, I mean, they think maybe it wasn’t really an accident after all. Charlie was always kind of mean to C.J., and sometimes he was mean to me. I never understood why, but—maybe it’s because he knew the truth. Maybe he was mad because C.J. wasn’t really his son. Maybe he was mad at me because our baby died.” She broke down and started sobbing.
“Are you saying that you think C.J. killed your husband?” Sam asked.
“I never thought so before,” she said, “not before what happened in the army. But some people, they heard about that and
started saying maybe it wasn’t an accident after all. I guess a lot of people knew that C.J. didn’t really get along with Charlie all that well, that Charlie was pretty mean to him. I mean, things really did get a lot better after Charlie…”
Grace, sitting on the end of the couch closest to Vanessa’s chair, reached over and laid a hand on her arm.
“This isn’t your fault, you know,” she said softly. “All we can do is love our children, we can’t really control who they are or who they become.”
Vanessa looked at her and tried to smile. “But he wasn’t my child, after all. I should’ve known. A mother should know those things, don’t you think?”
“We can only know what we’re told,” Grace said. “You were told he was your son, and I was told that one of my boys had died.”
“I should’ve known,” Vanessa said again. “I just should have known.”
“Mrs. Willis,” Sam said, “when was the last time you heard from C.J.?”
She looked up at him sharply. “Yesterday,” she said. “He called me yesterday, and said he’s going to come down and see me next week.”
“He called you? Do you have his phone number?”
Vanessa shook her head. “No,” she said. “He says they keep giving him a different phone, and it’s always a different number. It’s some company he works for that does it, so that’s why he always calls me. He knows I can’t get hold of him.”
“Did he say where he was at when he called?”
“Oh, he said—he said he was in Illinois.” She looked at Sam. “Is that important?”
Sam closed his eyes for a second. “His last two victims were in Illinois,” he said. “They were a pair of sisters. One of them was eighteen, but the other was only eleven.”
“Oh, my God,” Vanessa wailed again. The tears were streaming down her face as she resumed shaking her head side to side. She wrapped her arms around herself and was rocking back and forth on the chair.
“Mrs. Willis,” Sam said, “is there anything you can think of about C.J. that might help us to find him? We have to stop him before he hurts anybody else. I don’t want to hurt him, I just need to stop him from hurting any other girls.”
