Alter Ego

by David Archer

  C.J. had been right. Sam figured out instantly what was happening, and told Indie to tell them to come on over to the house. He said to drive normally, and try not to act like anything was out of the ordinary. When they got to his house, they were to come straight inside.

  And then Sam got up from his recliner and checked his pistol. He slipped it back into the holster and hurried through the house to slip out the back door. He hid beside his garage, where he could see up and down the street, and waited for their mothers to arrive.

  He didn’t have to wait very long. Fifteen minutes later, Grace’s car pulled in and the two women hurried up the steps and into the house. Indie was inside waiting for them, her own pistol in her hand. Harry was beside her, his own pistol cocked and ready.

  Another car had stopped down the street, and Sam watched carefully as a tall man got out of it. He was moving stealthily along the street, going from the shadow of one tree to the shadow of the next, until he finally stopped a few doors away.

  Sam moved into the deeper shadows beside the garage and hurried into the alley behind his neighbors’ homes. He made his way to the house with the big chestnut tree and then cut through the yard and came up behind where C.J. would have been standing. He looked around the side of the house and tried to spot his brother, but the shadows were too deep.

  Quickly, moving as fast as his bad hip allowed, Sam rushed toward the tree. He had his pistol in his hand and was hoping to take C.J. by surprise, but the surprise was for him. C.J. was gone, and as Sam looked up and down the street, he could see no sign of him.

  “He must be headed for the house,” Sam muttered to himself. He moved that direction himself, also sticking to the shadows the best he could, just in case C.J. were to look back. He thought he caught a glimpse of him as he dashed across the street at the intersection, but then the shadow that might have been C.J. vanished in the shadows of the trees in Sam’s yard.

  He was too close. Sam broke into his hobbling run and covered the distance as quickly as he could. As he crossed the street, he called out, “C.J.! Stop where you are!”

  The trouble was, Sam had no idea where his brother was hiding. Calling out had been a bluff, but C.J. didn’t fall for it. The response Sam was hoping for never came, so he headed straight for the front porch as quickly as he could and hurried up to the door.

  “Indie, open up,” Sam said. “It’s me.”

  Indie peeked through the curtain and looked closely at Sam. The porch light was off and she couldn’t see him clearly.

  “What’s my middle name?” she asked.

  “Katherine,” he said, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she opened the door for him.

  The impact caught them all off guard. Something hit Sam in the back, and he fell forward onto his wife, who ended up smashing into Harry. The breath was knocked out of both of them, and Sam forced himself to roll over as he scrambled for his gun, but it had skittered out of his hand when he fell. He felt around for it, but then a foot came down on his hand and he looked up into a twisted image of his own face.

  Grace and Kim were on the couch, and both of them screamed when they saw C.J. holding a pistol. He had it pointed at Sam’s face as he looked around the room, and then his eyes found those of his mother.

  “Well, hi there, Mom,” he said. “Bet you weren’t planning to see me tonight, were you?”

  “Young man,” Harry said, “this is not something you want to do.”

  “Shut up,” C. J. yelled at him. “I came to see my mother, not you. Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  Sam had looked over at Harry hopefully, but the collision with Indie had caused him to lose his own weapon. Sam looked around but didn’t see it anywhere, and his own was out of reach.

  Grace composed herself and carefully got to her feet. “Actually, I’m not all that surprised that you’re here,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t Sam who called me, so it had to be you. Why don’t you put that gun down, come on in and have a seat. I think we have a lot to catch up on.”

  C.J. looked at her and started laughing.

  “A lot to catch up on? Do you think?” He got himself under control and looked back at Sam, who was trying to figure out how to throw his brother off balance. “Don’t even think about it, Sam,” he said. “You know, you’ve done a pretty good number on my life the last few days. I just figured maybe I should return the favor. You want to keep everybody healthy, then you might want to avoid any sudden moves, you got that?” He looked over at Harry. “Same goes to you, old-timer. Just stay put and I won’t need to shoot you.”

  Sam looked at his brother for a second, then nodded. “I got it,” he said. “C.J., all I’m trying to do is help you.”

  “And you’ve been doing a bang up job of it, dear brother,” C.J. said. “Let’s see. I doubt dear old mom Willis is ever going to speak to me again, and now the whole town I grew up in knows about my little hobby. One of the funniest things of all? I had forgotten all about Cynthia. Blocked it right out of my mind, put it away and never gave her another thought. Isn’t that a kick?”

  He lifted his foot off Sam’s wrist and motioned with his gun for Sam to move slowly and get to his feet. While Sam was managing to stand, C.J. looked at Indie.

  She had also lost her gun, and it was nowhere in sight. She was staring at C.J. with her eyes wide, though they flickered toward Sam once in a while. The resemblance was absolutely uncanny, especially when she couldn’t quite see C.J.’s broken nose.

  “You can get up, sister-in-law,” C.J. said. “Just don’t make any funny moves, okay? My brother might get upset if I had to shoot you, you know. We don’t need that, now, do we?”

  “I’m not going to give you any trouble,” Indie said. She moved slowly and cautiously, getting onto her hands and knees and then to her feet, standing beside Sam as Harry struggled to get up to his own feet.

  “Let’s all go sit down, shall we?” C.J. said. “All of you, on the couch. I think I’ll stand, though, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Sam and Indie moved to the sofa and all five of them sat. Indie sat next to her mother, with Harry on her other side, leaving Sam and Grace on the ends of the couch. Sam looked at his brother and forced himself to smile.

  “I was hoping I’d get to meet you,” he said. “I always wondered what you would be like, you know.”

  C.J. narrowed his eyes. “You mean you knew about me?”

  “Sort of,” Sam said. “I knew I had been born with a twin brother, but we were all told that he died. See, Mr. Willis, the man you thought was your father, he happened to be in the hospital nursery when the nurse discovered that the real C.J. Willis, the baby Mrs. Willis gave birth to, had died of a heart defect. He saw her trying to resuscitate the baby, and realized that it was too late, but then he saw the two of us, twins, laying in our own little beds. He suggested to the nurse that maybe she could switch one of us for his dead child, so that his wife would never know what had happened. The nurse went along with it, and…”

  “And I buried what I thought was my own child,” Grace said suddenly. “They told me you had died, that you had some kind of heart problem like my father had, so we did the only thing we could do. We buried the baby we thought was you, and then brought Sam home and loved him enough for both of you.”

  C.J. stared at her. As much as he wanted to hate her for not being in his life, the story they were telling was making sense. He thought back to when he had asked his mom whether he was adopted, and he was certain that she truly believed she was telling the truth when she said he was her child. Maybe she really didn’t know, and maybe Grace and Sam never knew he was out there…

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said suddenly. “None of it matters now. Sam, you’ve ruined my life, do you know that?”

  “Samuel didn’t ruin your life,” Grace said. “It was the man you thought was your father who did that. He was the one who suggested the switch to the nurse, and he was the one who knew all along that you weren’t really his child, an
d that’s probably why he was so mean to you. Your mom—Mrs. Willis, I mean, she said he was always hateful toward you, and she never understood why. All the time she was expecting, all he talked about was how wonderful it would be when his baby boy was born, but by the time you were a year old, she said he just didn’t seem to want anything to do with you. It wasn’t your fault, son, and it wasn’t Sam’s fault. If you have to blame anyone, you need to blame Charlie Willis.”

  C.J. stood quietly for a moment, thinking over what she had said. She was right, it made sense. If Charlie knew the truth, if he was aware all along that C.J. wasn’t really his son, that would explain the way he acted. There would be resentment, maybe even anger that a stranger’s child was getting all the love and attention that his child should have received.

  Well, not all of it. Charlie certainly never gave any.

  “Well, hell, now what do we do?” C.J. asked. “I had it in my head that you gave me away, that you didn’t want me, and I was all ready to hate you for that, Mother. How am I supposed to deal with this now?”

  “There’s only one way, C.J.,” Sam said. “The police are closing in on you, you probably know that by now. If they find you, if you put up any resistance, they’re going to kill you.” He indicated Grace with his eyes. “Mom and I don’t want that to happen. You’re going to have to pay for the things you’ve done, but we don’t want you to die. If you let me take you in, you’ll be in custody in Colorado. They rarely give the death penalty here, and we can probably keep you from being taken somewhere that has it.”

  C.J. laughed. “So I can spend the rest of my life in prison? Maybe you won’t understand this, Sam, but I pretty much feel like I’ve already spent most of it there. I’ve been a prisoner of one kind or another my entire life, and the thought of it all coming to an end isn’t all that terrifying for me. No, I don’t think I’m ready to surrender just yet. I think I’d rather go out the other way, the old blaze of glory kind of thing.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way…” Sam said, but C.J. cut him off.

  “Just be quiet, Sam,” he said. “I got some questions, and I want some answers.” He looked at Grace. “So, tell me, Mother. What was my real name? I’m sure it wasn’t C.J., that was Charlie’s idea. Charlie Junior, he called me, can you believe that? Even when he knew I wasn’t really his kid?”

  Grace gave him a soft smile. “That may be, but it’s kind of ironic. Your real name is Cameron James Prichard, and we were all very surprised when we found out you were named C.J. That would’ve been your initials, you see.”

  C.J. blinked. “Really? I wonder if Charlie knew that. Maybe he saw the name on the chart, when I was a baby or something. You think that might be where he got the idea? He’s the one who always insisted on calling me C.J.”

  Grace shrugged, but she smiled. “I suppose it’s possible,” she said. “I really wouldn’t know for sure, of course.”

  C.J. nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Which one of us was born first? Me or Sam?”

  “Sam,” Grace said. “He’s your older brother by two minutes.”

  “And it was just pure chance that Charlie picked me, you think?”

  “I would assume so,” Grace replied. “I don’t think he could have known anything about either of you, to be honest.”

  “Unless maybe that nurse told him. She might’ve said he should take me, because I was the youngest one. You think that might have happened?”

  “C.J.,” Sam said, “does any of that really matter anymore?”

  “It matters to me!” C.J. yelled at him, pointing the gun at him again. “You just don’t get it, Sam. You had some kind of perfect little life, but I had to deal with getting beat all the time. I don’t think you’re in any position to judge what matters and what doesn’t, big brother.”

  “You think Sam had it better than you?” Grace asked. “Do you really? I don’t think he did, to be honest. I mean, he had to go home with me. I’m probably not the most stable woman you’ve ever met, and I actually got to sit down and talk with Vanessa Willis earlier today. She’s probably a lot more down to earth than I ever have been. Sam had to go home with me, and I spent the next several years trying to wrap him in bubblewrap. I tried everything I could to keep him from ever being hurt, and it finally dawned on me that all I was doing was keeping him from being who he was. I was so determined not to ever let him get hurt that he ended up depressed, and I had to take him to doctors for that. They tried different kinds of medications to cheer him up, but finally a doctor was honest enough to look me in the eye and tell me to stop trying to wrap him in Styrofoam. She told me to let him get out there and be a kid, let him get hurt, let him break a bone once in a while if he needed to, but to just let him be who he was.” She looked at Sam. “That was probably the best advice I ever got. But then, out of the clear blue sky, my husband—your father—was killed in the line of duty. It was one of the most terrible days of my life, but it was even worse for Sam. He not only lost his father, but then he had to deal with me. For the next couple of years, he had to force me to get out of bed, had to make me eat. He was the one who kept the house clean, he was the one who cooked our meals, because I couldn’t make myself get up and do it. No, I don’t think he had it better than you did. I think you both had it bad.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  C.J. was staring at her, but Sam was watching C.J. He was listening with part of his mind, and he was pretty sure his mother was making up the part about his depression, because he couldn’t remember any such thing, but he had to admit she was telling the truth about how badly she had fallen apart when his father had died. In any case, she was certainly keeping C.J.’s attention, and that’s what Sam was hoping for.

  If she could keep it just a little longer, the way C.J. was pacing around, he might get within reach. Sam had his feet pulled back against the couch, ready to throw his weight forward and lunge, and he knew that Indie was almost as ready to spring as he was. The kids were upstairs in bed, but C.J. was making a lot of noise. The last thing they needed was for Kenzie to wake up and come down to see what was happening.

  “Maybe we did,” C.J. said suddenly. “They say twins do everything alike, maybe we both had a rough life. Still, sure looks to me like Sam came out ahead. A beautiful wife, a nice house, the whole damn world thinks he’s a hero. What do you reckon they’re going to think of me, now that all this has come out?”

  “I’m sure nobody is happy about the things you’ve done,” Grace said. “Still, you have a chance to take some of the tarnish off your image. If you give up now, that’ll mean you want to stop what you’ve been doing. That would be a step in the right direction, don’t you think?”

  C.J. kept his eyes on her, but he was shaking his head and chuckling. “Can’t say I really agree with that, Mother. To be perfectly honest, I’m not seeing a whole lot of hope for any kind of happy ending for your youngest boy. That being the case, maybe I should make sure there aren’t any for any of us.”

  “So you want to kill us all?” Grace asked. “Cameron, do you really think that’s going to give you any kind of peace?”

  C.J. stared at her. “Cameron,” he said. “That’s really my name, is it? Cameron, that’s my name.”

  “Yes, Cameron, that’s your name. It’s the name your father and I chose for you. You were Cameron, and your brother was Samuel. Sam and Cam, that’s what we were going to call you.”

  C.J. stood speechless for a moment. He looked at Sam and grinned, then shrugged. “Sam and Cam,” he said. “How does that sound to you, brother?”

  “Would’ve sounded fine, if things had turned out that way. It could even sound good now, if you would let it. Cameron, you can take a step in the right direction. If you give up that gun, if you surrender, I promise you I won’t abandon you. I’ll stick by you, and maybe we can really get to know each other.”

  “I’ll stick by you as well,” Grace said. “You’re my son, Cameron. You’re my child. Hell, you’re my baby that I never got to know. D
on’t you think I want this chance? Yes, it may be rough with all you’ve done, but we can still have some kind of a relationship together. Don’t you want that?”

  “I don’t know!” C.J. shouted. “I don’t know what I want at this moment. What I do know is that any hope I ever had of living out my life is gone, and it’s all thanks to you, Sam.”

  “How is it Sam’s fault?” Grace asked. “You are the one who was murdering people, how is it Sam’s fault?”

  “Because he got arrested for it! Because he took some stupid DNA test somewhere along the line, and they were able to find him. If he hadn’t come up as a DNA match, none of you ever would have known about me.”

  “Sam,” Kim said softly. “This is about to have a very unhappy ending.”

  C.J. looked at her. “What in the world are you talking about?” he asked. “What was that supposed to mean?”

  Sam knew what she was saying. She was trying to tell him that Beauregard saw something bad coming and Sam needed to act. He tore his eyes away from his mother-in-law and looked at his brother, trying to gauge the distance and decide whether he had a chance of taking C.J. down before he could bring the gun to bear and fire.

  “Daddy?” Kenzie asked, standing in the living room doorway and staring at C.J. “Daddy, what are you doing?”

  C.J.’s mouth fell open as he turned toward the little girl, and the gun instinctively pointed in her direction. Sam leapt at that moment, throwing himself forward as hard as he could, screaming loudly to try to catch C.J.’s attention. It almost worked, as C.J. turned back his direction, but he was a little too fast. He skipped backward and Sam barely caught hold of him, and then Sam’s bad hip chose the worst possible moment to go out. He fell hard to the floor, and C.J. brought the gun down, pointed straight at Sam’s head…

  The gunshots echoed through the house, two of them sounding almost as one. Everyone screamed at once, and then Sam managed to roll over and look up at his brother. C.J. was standing there, staring down at him, but the gun was held loosely in his hand and wasn’t pointed at Sam. As Sam watched, C.J.’s grip relaxed and the gun dropped to the floor.