Mirror Image (24 page)

“We've just had a call from the hospital…”

She came slowly to her feet, heart suddenly pounding. “The young officer, Martin Moore?” she began.

“It's the two men,” he said carefully, his voice suddenly husky. “José Pérez went around three this morning; and Officer Martin at four.”

“Both of them?” Margaret Haaren sank back into the chair, ashen faced. The reports before her eyes swam in unshed tears. “Thank … thank you Stuart.”

“I'm sorry,” he said lamely, backing from the room.

When she was alone she allowed the tears to fall. José Pérez had been a good friend for too many years; she was godmother to one of the girls. When a woman officer had been a curiosity, a rarity, something of a freak, he'd accepted her for what she was, and when she made Senior Detective in the Homicide Division, she'd requested him as her partner.

There was a knock on the door and Stuart Miller reappeared, a mug of coffee balanced precariously on top of a sheaf of reports. The detective accepted the coffee gratefully.

“He was a good man,” Stuart said respectfully.

“He was a fine detective and a good friend,” Margaret said slowly. “And now we can lay three deaths at this scarred man's door.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

When she looked up her green eyes were cold, implacable. “I want the man who did this. And Jonathan Frazer knows him!”

Silently Stuart Miller handed over the sheaf of brown folders.

“What's this?”

“List of possible suspects, cross referenced with José's old and present cases, further cross-referenced with Jonathan Frazer's friends and business associates. The latter list is by no means exhaustive, but it's the best we can do.”

“Any matches?”

“Nothing at the moment, ma'am.”

She looked up into Miller's brown eyes. “Frazer's dirty, I can feel it. I want an exhaustive check into his background. Bank accounts, tax records, everything. He's a material witness and possible suspect in a multiple murder case, we should have no problem getting the clearances.” She drank her now tepid coffee in one quick swallow. She knew what she was doing now, she had done it before: she was using work to ease the pain of her friend's death.

The detective leaned forward and took the mug from her desk. “We could also try leaning on him, ma'am,” he suggested quietly.

Margaret Haaren nodded slowly. “Trust me, I haven't ruled that out either.”

*   *   *

J
ONATHAN FRAZER WENT
through his wife's clothing with a fine tooth comb, and then proceeded to meticulously check through her chest of drawers, cabinets, on top of her closet, and the dressing table. He was looking for evidence of Celia's infidelity. He was aware that if he stopped to think about what he was doing, the madness of it would strike home, and he would begin to question his own sanity.

What was he doing?

Why was he doing it?

After an exhausting day, he had imagined he'd seen something in the mirror—a fantasy—and on the basis of that he had allowed all his repressed fears about his wife's fidelity to come flooding to the surface, and now here he was pawing through her things like some cheap private investigator.

But it had been so real. The image had been so real.

Was it true, or just some bad-minded wish?

Where was Edmund Talbott?

*   *   *

M
ANNY FELT LIKE
shit.

The only time she'd ever felt like this before was when she'd had a hit of bad hash in Paris. She dressed slowly, black T-shirt over black jeans, her every joint aching, her breasts heavy and painful, her stomach feeling bloated. On impulse she checked her calendar, but her period wasn't due for another two weeks, so it wasn't that … unless it was coming early, brought on by the trauma of the last few days. That was a possibility and she hadn't had sex in about six weeks so that was out of the question.

She stopped and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked ghastly, her face pale and wan, her eyes sunk back into her skull, dark-rimmed and bloodshot. She ran her fingers across her head. The stubble rasped loudly. She'd only had it cut a few weeks ago, and yet it seemed to be growing very quickly this time.

She had no clear memory of her nightmare the previous night. She remembered waking as her mother, drawn by her screams, had come running into the room and turning on the light. But even then, the horrors were fading and she'd been unable to remember anything from her nightmare. She had insisted that the light be left on, and it took her a long time before sleep finally claimed her.

She met her father in the hallway and he stopped, obviously surprised by her wretched appearance.

“I think you should go back to bed, sweetheart,” he murmured, kissing her forehead.

“I'm OK, Dad, just a bit whacked out after the last couple of days.” She attempted a smile. “You're not looking so hot yourself.”

“I didn't sleep so well. Nightmares,” he explained.

“So did I. Didn't Mom tell you?”

“I haven't seen your mother this morning. I haven't seen much of your mother since she came back from her surfing vacation, and when I did see her it was at your bedside at the hospital.”

Manny stopped. “Then she didn't tell you?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Tell me what?”

“Last night she told me she was going up to that skiing resort in Lake Tahoe first thing this morning.”

“She said nothing to me.” He shook his head slowly. “I didn't know it was snowing there already.”

Manny linked her arm through her father's as they walked slowly downstairs. “Do I get the impression that all isn't sweetness and light between the two of you?” She caught the blank look of dismay on his face, and continued ruefully, “I am eighteen, you know. I'm not a fool. And you don't need to be a genius to guess that you're both going your separate ways. And have been for a while.”

“It's true,” he admitted. “In the last couple of years, our differences and interests have become more and more pronounced. I'll be forty-six next birthday. It doesn't bother me, aging never has, maybe that's because I worked with old things all my life. But your mother … well your mother will be thirty-eight next birthday, and she dresses and acts as if she's ten years younger.”

“That's not so unusual. It's a last-ditch attempt at retaining her youth,” Manny said with all the seriousness of an eighteen-year-old.

“Thirty-eight is not over the hill,” Jonathan gently reminded her.

“No spring chicken either,” she laughed. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned to face her father. “But you still love her don't you, Dad?”

“Yes,” he said seriously, “yes I do.” He was surprised to find that he meant it.

“Well, if you still love one another, surely you can sort out your differences,” Manny said, looking into his troubled eyes.

He nodded. “If we both still loved one another,” he agreed.

“But you're not so sure if she still loves you?” Manny asked.

“I'd like to think she still loves me,” he said.

Father and daughter looked at one another. They both knew it was a lie.

 

54

“D
ON'T TURN
around, Mr. Frazer.”

Jonathan froze, his hands locked onto the wheel of the Volvo Estate. He had just climbed into the car and the garage door behind him was humming upwards, flooding the garage with morning light. He recognized the voice immediately. “I was wondering when you'd get in touch,” he said, glancing into the rearview mirror. Edmund Talbott's coal-black eyes regarded him unblinkingly.

“Things have become very difficult, Mr. Frazer,” the scarred man said quietly.

“I know. It was all over the news this morning. Both officers you struck died,” Frazer said coldly.

“I will not be taken into custody,” Talbott said simply.

“Why not?”

“Mr. Frazer, perhaps I have not explained myself fully. My family have been the guardians of the mirror for generations. It was our task to keep it inert, to keep it safe from the world, not to allow it to feed its hunger for souls and blood and human emotions. It needs those for nourishment, it needs those to survive. Eventually it would have
died—
if you can apply that term to it—of hunger. And we were so close, so close. It wouldn't have happened in my lifetime, but in the next generation perhaps. It was weak, so weak.”

“What happened?” Frazer asked, without turning around, watching the man's eyes in the mirror.

“It was my fault. I had to go away to a site meeting in Saudi. It should have taken no more than forty-eight hours, but it took the best part of a week. When I returned to Oxford, England, I discovered that the house had been burgled and that the mirror and a few other antiques were gone. The burglars were local lads, who knew that the house was empty. One of them did odd jobs around the garden and knew there were some antiques inside the home. That's the official story.”

“And unofficially?”

“I am inclined to think that the mirror exerted its influence on the youths; paradoxically it can most easily influence the strong-willed and the weak. Ordinary people, with ordinary lives and ordinary worries crowding their ordinary minds are quite safe from its extraordinary powers. The rest of the story, I think you know.”

“Tell me.”

“The thieves took the mirror, wrenching the heavy cloth covering from it, exposing the glass. Once uncovered it began to feed. It took the life of your male assistant first, and then the female, and since then it has been feeding on the blood and energy of those all around it, growing stronger with every soul it takes.”

“The police say the auctioneers have no record of having sold the mirror to me, nor is there any record with the shipping company.”

“The records are probably computerized. The mirror probably deleted the records,” Talbott said simply.

“That's impossible…” Jonathan started to say and then realized how stupid that sounded. “But I did have a printed-out record, a copy of the receipt and shipping details.”

“And what happened to them?”

“They … disappeared.” He found himself wondering if Beaumont had stolen them. “But what about the people who sold me the mirror? The assistant I was dealing with; the auctioneer, the truck driver who delivered it? Surely they must remember it?”

“You have no conception of the power of the object you're dealing with,” Talbott said quietly.

“But what you're suggesting is impossible…” Frazer said again.

“Everything is possible. Do you know anything about astral projection, Mr. Frazer,” Talbott asked suddenly, “or the astral plane?”

Jonathan shook his head.

“When a body sleeps, the spirit—the astral body—leaves the physical body and moves onto the astral plane. This plane may be a ‘physical' place or it may be a state of mind, I don't know. I merely accept its existence, and use it. There are various levels on this astral plane, and with skill and practice and determination, it is possible to move from plane to plane, to move one's physical body through space—as I did when I visited you in the hospital room. You weren't dreaming, Mr. Frazer, I really was there.

“On another level, a higher level, it is possible to see the souls of the newly dead leave their bodies. Some hover uncertainly about the corpse, others fly away to freedom, others are trapped.

“The astral plane is disturbed at the moment, Mr. Frazer. There is a presence, a force rippling through the usually placid domain. It is like a giant whirlpool, sucking everything around it into its circle. I have stood on the very edge of the plane and watched this
thing
. It is the non-physical manifestation of the mirror, Mr. Frazer, a whirlpool of all the emotions, the energies, the blood and sweat and semen, the pain and anger, that has fed the glass down through the ages. It is enormous, ravenous and ravening.

“And it is moving.

“People died around you last night, Mr. Frazer. Innocents. A woman in Beverly Hills with the same house number as yours cut her throat to be with her husband who had been dead ten years. Fooled by the image.

“A young boy, his face shredded by the glass from an exploding computer screen. Entranced by the image on the screen.

“A vagrant drowned in a small park just off Sunset. Beguiled by the image.

“And do you know what else I saw last night, Mr. Frazer? I saw the mirror feed. I saw it drink the blood of sacrifice. I saw it accept the emotion of passion.”

“Does the mirror only show the truth?” Jonathan wondered.

“Invariably. It rarely needs to lie. It counts on the fact that truth, like most things, is addictive. And the images on its surface are the ultimate narcotic; people return to them again and again.”

“Do you want me to destroy the mirror?” Frazer asked, not sure if he could.

“NO!” Talbott shouted. “Break it, and you have a thousand mirrors, each one complete and whole in itself. Anyway,” he chuckled, “I doubt if you'd get within a dozen yards of it with evil intent. The last person who even thought about that paid a terrible price…”

Frazer suddenly knew he was talking about himself.

“I cannot come and take the mirror from you now,” Talbott said, suddenly sounding distant and tired, “but cover it, for God's sake, cover its surface with a heavy black blanket and turn it away from the moonlight. It will begin to weaken almost immediately, although it will take it a long time to return to some sort of quiescence. But when all the police activity has died down, then I'll arrange to take the mirror from you and have it shipped back to England.”

“And then?”

“Then?” Talbott asked, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“What happens when you take it back to England?”