The Other Side of the Mirror

  KINDLE EDITION

  The Other Side

  Of

  The Mirror

  By

  Lex H Jones

  Chapter One;

  The Styx.

  “S he’s beautiful,” Detective Trent remarked as he stared down at the pale form of the young woman before him. Her blonde hair and dark clothes were soaked with dirty water, but her skin was still soft and white, her lips a pale blue giving her an even more ethereal quality. They were pouting slightly with the way the blood vessels had been swollen by the icy water.

  “They always are,” Detective Duggan sighed, watching Trent take one final drag on his cigarette before dropping it into the depths of the river before him. He was right, of course. They always looked beautiful when they were dead, because they weren’t really people anymore. You didn’t know them, know their sins, their crimes, their thoughts. The ice-cold waters of the river had baptised them, washed away the amassed sins of a life lived in the City, leaving them clean and innocent and beautiful. Always beautiful.

  The river ran straight through the middle of the City, separating the rich side from the poor. To see it on a map it looked like God had drawn a thick black line through the societal plan, keeping the dogs away from their masters. Up close there wasn’t much difference between one side of that line and the other, except that pimps and crack-whores were replaced with corrupt bankers and high class call-girls. Poor filth and rich filth, separated by an expanse of ebony water. You lived here long enough you learned that. If the filth from the East side made enough money to get across the river, then they joined the filth in the West side. No one ever left the City once they’d arrived. It wouldn’t let them.

  “Who do you think she was?” Trent asked as he looked down again at the frozen face of the dead girl.

  “She can’t be older than nineteen, and she’s wearing a designer bracelet...” Duggan remarked, crouching next to the body. “Only one place a girl on this side of the City gets money like that, and it’s the same place she’d get the bruise on her wrist.”

  “She’s a hooker.” Trent nodded.

  “She was.” Duggan sighed. “Now she’s just another one for the morgue.”

  “You think she was drowned?”

  “No, shot in the chest.” Duggan replied, opening the young girl’s sodden blouse slightly to reveal the bullet wound above her heart. The fact there was no blood or bullet hole in the blouse suggested a poor attempt to hide the wound. Someone was rushing.

  “That’s quite a shot to make.”

  “Unless you’re up close, which means there’s a good chance she knew the guy. Probably argued with him, pleaded and begged, and he shot her anyway.”

  “You think she forgot to pay her pimp?” Trent suggested.

  “I don’t know, seems unlikely.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Look at her clothes, the jewellery. Girl doesn’t make that kind of money her first year on the streets, Trent. She’s experienced, been in the game awhile. Forgetting to pay her boss isn’t something she’d suddenly start to do.”

  “Maybe she got overconfident, tried to leave town and he wouldn’t let her?”

  “Where would she go? Besides, classy or not she’s still dressed like a tramp. She wasn’t going anywhere nice tonight, just out to the streets.”

  “So we got a mystery on our hands, huh?”

  “When you’re a detective they call it a ‘case’, Trent.”

  “Hey, quit with the smart mouth, wise ass. I been on the force longer than you.”

  “Yeah, how could I forget that,” Duggan muttered, standing up from the body. “Wait for the meat wagon to pick her up, I’m calling it a night.”

  Trent took his tarnished silver hip flask and knocked it back, letting its contents hit his throat like ice water. He coughed a little and then relaxed as he swallowed it down. It wasn’t the body; he’d seen enough of them that nothing shocked him. Not kids, not women, nothing phased him now. It was the cold, the rain. The city never seemed to shake it off, whatever the season. Trent wasn’t even certain what season it was about now. He was sure that he’d seen some Christmas lights being set up, but they put the damn things out in September now, so who can tell? Winter would bring snow instead of rain, but the cold would stay. Trent resigned himself to this and brought up the collar on his grey coat, watching his breath as it drifted away into the night before his eyes.

  Duggan walked on down the banks of the Styx. The river had earned that name so long ago that no one could remember what it was actually called. It was a name that had been earned in the blood of everyone whose corpse had sank to the bottom of it. A debt paid a thousand times over, an account that would be forever in credit. Duggan could remember a body being dragged from it at least once every couple of months for as long as he’d been on the force, which was approaching two decades now. There were probably more down there, beneath the black mire that blocked any light from penetrating past three or four feet of water. Rotting bodies, food for whatever fish could survive down there, long past seeing the light and wondering if their families even knew they were gone.

  The girl who’d washed up on the shore tonight wasn’t even the youngest Duggan had seen. There had been two kids, each aged twelve, who had been strangled and tied together at the waist. They’d never found who did that, or why, and that haunted Duggan more than the dead faces of those damn kids. Not having an answer taunted him, he couldn’t let things go. To have the Devil standing right there in front of him, holding a piece of paper with the answer written in invisible ink; it ate away at his gut. Left a burning feeling of emptiness and rage inside that nothing would quell. Carl Duggan liked answers, to leave a question without one was a pain that wouldn’t die. The corpses still at the bottom of the Styx might never have their answers found: they didn’t even have names anymore. Duggan didn’t think about them, as that way madness lay. Tonight his focus was on the girl.

  His shift was over, it was time to return home. But still his thoughts were on the latest victim of the City’s cruel will. A city where the young die and no one ever lived long enough to claim Social Security. It was like some form of purgatory, with a constant turnover of its residents. The only people who stayed here past a couple years were the cops and the career criminals. Everyone else died young. No one ever left, not once the City had marked you. It was like a disease, an infection of sin that rots you from the inside out. Once it’s in your soul it’s going nowhere, and neither are you. You’ll just take it with you, spread it wherever you go. The darkness, the soul crushing misery, the cold and the rain. Better to stay here, quarantined within the city limits. Let the darkness and the filth and the cold eat away at those who’ve chosen that fate—but keep it here. Where it belongs. Two halves of a dirt-covered coin separated by a river of blood.

  The walk home wasn’t a long one, but Carl took it slow. He liked to walk; it cleared his head, let him mull over his thoughts before he got home. Once he unlocked his front door and stepped inside, he liked to leave the city behind him. Turn the lights on, drink some coffee that didn’t taste like pig crap, and sit down in a chair that wasn’t forty-year-old hard plastic. An escape, a refuge, somewhere to leave the dark and the cold behind for a while. It never went completely away, of course, not with the neon sign whose pink glow taunted the gap between his bedroom curtains. It used to read ‘Jesus Saves,’ but now it simply said ‘Save’. The sign broke years back and was never fixed. Who would bother? Not like anyone in the City wants to read that message, nor that they ever did. Hope needed light and warmth to spread, and there was precious little to be found here. Maybe in the arms of a hooker for half an hour, but even that would cost you,
your cash and your soul. A heavy price to empty your sack into a stranger, but there was never a shortage of those who wanted to pay it. Everyone needs joy, wherever it’s to be found, whatever the cost. Line up for eternal damnation, smile at the Devil as he takes your picture.

  The third stair on the way up to Carl’s apartment creaked beneath his shoe, as it did whenever he walked on it. Every time he heard that noise he contemplated telling the superintendent, but decided against it. Surly men like that don’t care about creaking steps, they just want to change the light bulbs and go home. Maybe mop the floors if they’re feeling adventurous. If nothing else, the creaking step would always serve to alert the cheating wife in the flat above Carl’s every time her husband was on his way home. It was like a trip wire that might just give this week’s lover enough time to dress and make for the fire escape. She was a toothless crack whore who’d long since lost whatever looks she might have once had, but Carl had heard she’d take it in any hole you could fit it, so perhaps that explained her popularity.

  By the time his hand reached the doorknob, the thoughts of the creaking step had been forgotten, just as they did every day. Carl looked at his watch and noticed that it was past two in the morning. You get used to the night shift, adjust your eating and sleeping so that you don’t always feel tired and sick. It starts to grow on you, avoiding the noise and the hustle of the daytime world. But it’s easier when you live alone. Carl had lived alone since he’d moved out of home at age twenty, as soon as he graduated from the Academy. He’d never been married, not even wanted to. Women weren’t something that interested him, they never had been. They were a goddamn puzzle without an answer, the kind he hated. Sexual desire wasn’t even something he regularly succumbed to. If the need ever felt pressing, there was always channel ninety-three and a box of tissues, but that was rare for Carl. His mind just didn’t go to those places all that often, so his body didn’t either. He’d gotten used to the loneliness, the quiet, and again, it suited working the nightshift. But lately he wasn’t living alone, because Jimmy had moved in.

  Chapter Two;

  Jimmy Galante

  C arl Duggan had known Jimmy Galante since the two of them were six years old. It was one of those childhood friendships that they made crappy movies about. The kind where you can’t quite remember when or how it started, but as long as you had known, you’d been friends. You could remember every detail of playing together in the backyard, tossing a ball around, pretending to be soldiers, all the usual kid stuff. But you couldn’t remember the day you met, the day you introduced yourselves to each other. It’s the kind of thing that comes easy as kids, after all. Making introductions to a complete stranger as an adult is a foreign concept, not something easily done even for those who are the most confident. But for kids? No problem. Just walk over, join the game, and there you have it. Friends for life.

  Jimmy and Carl were inseparable from age six onwards. They would play together at home, at school, and wherever the weekends took them. To Carl, Jimmy was like the perfect friend. They liked most of the same things, and the stuff one of them liked but the other didn’t was happily left alone by both of them. It wasn’t until Carl got a little older that he was able to see past Jimmy’s supposed perfection and start to notice the bruises on his arms and face. His dad used to hit him, there was no question. Carl didn’t know why, and he never asked, as Jimmy didn’t choose to mention it. If he’d wanted to talk about it then he would have. Carl never wanted to be the one to bring it up and so the subject was left alone.

  After he’d first noticed the bruises, Carl would think about why Jimmy’s dad might want to hit him. There was never an answer in his own ten-year old head, so the questions wouldn’t die away. Carl even asked his mother once why someone would hit their child, but she didn’t really give him a response. Not really the sort of thing you’d discuss with your child, he supposed. Besides, she probably didn’t like Jimmy, just like everyone else. Even though Carl liked Jimmy, he always got the impression that everyone else was ignoring him. He didn’t remember any of the other kids at school ever offering to play ball with him, and even Carl’s mother would pay him little heed when he came around. Jimmy must have been lonely, but he always had Carl.

  When Carl reached twelve, Jimmy moved away. He didn’t say why, or even announce that it was happening. A few days passed by without Jimmy calling round, and it was only then that it occurred to Carl that he didn’t even know where his friend lived. They’d always played at Carl’s house or out in the streets to avoid Jimmy’s dad, which had seemed like a smart move. After a week of not seeing his friend, Carl asked his mother what might have happened to him, and it was then that she said Jimmy had moved away, that Carl wouldn’t be seeing him anymore and that he’d have to make new friends. Carl hated the idea, but he did it anyway. What choice did he have?

  It wasn’t until thirty years later, just two weeks ago, that Carl saw Jimmy again for the first time since they had been kids. Carl was sitting in his small apartment, listening to the rats in the walls and trying to count how many of the dirty bastards there were from the sounds of their scuttling, when there came a knock at the door. When he answered it, he saw a forty-year old man wearing eyeliner and a purple shirt, with a smile that he recognised immediately. It was Jimmy Galante.

  Jimmy had always been gay, Carl had never doubted it. They’d never known each other as adolescents, when the desire for closer companionship would really kick in, but still the signs had been there. Jimmy was always more interested in Carl’s mother’s shoe closet than in the toy chest, for one thing. Carl didn’t care, he hadn’t as a kid and he didn’t now. When Jimmy turned up on his doorstep, all grown up and queer as they come, he didn’t care at all. He was just glad to see him.

  The two had been living together for the past two weeks, getting reacquainted amidst much drinking and laughter. Carl didn’t laugh much these days, living in this city didn’t make it easy. It was like a strict mistress waiting to slap you across the face every time she saw a smile. Better not to laugh, not to smile, to give up on happiness. Carl wasn’t gay, he’d even had his share of women, few and far between as they came, but Jimmy’s sexuality wasn’t an issue for him. He knew what the neighbours might think, having an obviously gay man living with Carl all of a sudden, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass about that either. Jimmy was probably the only friend he’d ever made that he actually missed when they’d been forced to part.

  Like most of the people living on the East Side, Jimmy was out of work. Unlike most of the East Side, though, he didn’t turn to crime to pay his way. He just took some workman’s compensation for a while and looked for bar work. Not too many queer bars in the East Side—they were all on the West side, where people were more open. It was okay to be queer on the West Side of the river, one of the few good points of the place. People didn’t care, long as you had the green. Over in the East Side it was different. Everybody hated everybody else anyway and the last thing you wanted to do was give them one more reason. Still, Jimmy had come to the City as much to meet his old friend as for work. He wasn’t planning on staying indefinitely, so work could wait.

  Carl worked the night shift, so he only really saw Jimmy in the hours before going to bed for the day. Jimmy warned him against night-time working, but he ignored it as he’d ignored it from the pharmacist and everyone else that had decided to give their two cents’ worth. It altered your sleeping patterns, meant you’d be tired all the time, make you age prematurely. Blah goddamn blah, that’s all Carl heard. What was the point working the day shift as a cop, when the slime mostly came out of the cracks at night? Other cops had families and lived outside the station house. Let them work the day shift, their focus was divided anyway. Men like Carl did the real work, the nasty stuff. The night shift was theirs.

  When Carl got back from work this particular morning after finding the whore on the banks of the Styx, Jimmy was sat in the living room watching the old black and white TV set that Carl had boug
ht years ago.

  “You really need to buy some new shit,” Jimmy remarked with an effeminate sigh. “You’re a detective, that’s gotta earn you some good dough.”

  “I put it away, no use spending for the sake of it,” Carl shrugged as he took off his three-quarter length leather jacket and tossed it over the arm of his chair.

  “See, I just think you like living in a dump. That coat you just threw over here? Four feet from the closet, Carl.”

  “Get off my ass, I’ve been at work hours,” Carl replied, as he took a white bottle of pills from a drawer, popped off the cap and swallowed a single tablet without the benefit of a drink.

  “Well I’m gonna clean this place up. Do something nice for you, least I can do for taking me in,” Jimmy insisted.

  “Knock yerself out,” Carl agreed, before walking into his bedroom and closing the door.

  Chapter Three;

  Mirror, Mirror

  T he sound of his phone ringing woke Carl long before his alarm did. His eyes opened slowly, his lids refusing to break apart the dried yellow crust that had taken up residence between them. Once opened they were greeted with the pink buzzing of the sign outside his window. Inside his room, the glowing red numbers on his radio clock told him it was only a half hour before the time when his alarm went off anyway, but his body told him otherwise. No way that had been eight hours; he felt like he hadn’t even slept. Maybe the health Nazis were right? Maybe sleeping during the day didn’t provide the same benefits as sleeping at night? Let them worry about it, a job was a job. Carl closed his eyes for one final time and then forced himself to sit up and reach for his phone.

  “Duggan,” he groaned as his hand found the phone and brought it to his cheek.

  “Hey, it’s Glass,” came the voice of the city’s principal Coroner. “You awake yet?”