Mirror Image (41 page)

Tommy gave a sigh of relief. He turned his attention back to the Haaren woman's apartment.

*   *   *

S
O HOW MANY
M. Haarens could there be in the Los Angeles Yellow Pages? And the very fact that it was an initial convinced him that it was the same woman.

Frazer was surprised to find she lived in an apartment; he'd have thought she'd have a house. But then he supposed that an apartment was ideal for a single woman, living alone.

He checked the address again, counting the apartments from left to right.
Yes
, there was a light on in the apartment he had assumed was hers.

The large glass double doors in front of him were locked. To the right was a metal box with the tenants' last names listed, a number beside each name, a metallic push button and a phone. He found
Haaren
on the second line down and pressed the bell. He heard a click and then crackling static. “Yes?”

“I have a delivery for Detective Haaren from Flora International.”

“Oh, thank you, come in. First floor, apartment number 2.” The door buzzed loudly.

As he pushed through the door he touched the comforting pressure of the knife strapped to his arm.

*   *   *

A
AAH, SHOWTIME.

Tommy Hinge smiled broadly as the woman, wearing a towel around her head and another wrapped around her body moved toward the door. She stopped, her head turned sideways as if she were asking a question and listening to the answer.

And then she was stepping back, opening the door …

Jesus Christ.

It was him. The man with the smell. He was moving into the apartment, a knife in his hand, pressing it against the woman's throat, his face so distorted with hate it was barely recognizable as human.

*   *   *

T
HE KNIFE HAD
been in his hand, and at the woman's throat before he realized it wasn't Margaret Haaren. It was a teenager, vaguely familiar, though he'd no conscious memory of ever having seen her before.

“The Haaren bitch, where is she?” he snarled.

The young woman looked at him wide-eyed, mouth open in shock.

He pressed the knife against the slender column of her throat, the razor sharp edge parting the skin, blood from the cut snaking down to stain the towel wrapped around her breasts. “Answer me!”

Her throat moved. “Working,” she whispered.

Frazer swore. He slashed at the beaded curtain that separated the kitchen from the rest of the apartment, wooden beads and shells scattering across the floor.

“When is she back?”

“I don't know. Later, maybe. Tomorrow, I'm not sure.”

All the energy seemed to drain out of Frazer, the knife dropped away from the young woman's throat and his head dipped.

“You're making a grave mistake. Margaret Haaren's a cop.”

“I know that,” he snarled. And then he suddenly looked up, his eyes bright, glittering. “I know you.”

She started to shake her head.

“I know you,” he repeated. “I saw you at the funeral.” He squeezed his eyes shut, remembering. He'd been talking to Margaret Haaren and this young woman had come up behind her, and called her “aunt” and Margaret Haaren had called her …

“Helen,” he said, his eyes snapping open.

“Yes,” she said, surprised he knew her name.

Jonathan Frazer smiled, lips drawing back from his teeth in an animal snarl. He moved the knife up before her face, allowing the light to reflect into her eyes. “Tell me Helen,” he whispered, very softly, “are you a virgin?”

“A what?” she whispered, horrified.

“A virgin.”

*   *   *

T
OMMY HINGE WINCED
as he watched the man speaking intently to the young woman. The hatred in his face was palpable and terrifying. Tommy saw him snatch the towel from the girl's head, exposing damp hair and then wrench the towel away from her body. The girl's head and shoulders were shaking as if she were crying. The man was nodding now, as if satisfied, and then he pointed away with the knife and walked behind her, his left hand on her shoulder, the knife resting against her right shoulder close to her neck.

The light in the bedroom snapped on.

Tommy's heart was pounding loudly. He was transfixed. He knew he should call the cops, but how would he explain his situation, what he was doing outside her apartment at this hour? But he couldn't stand back and allow her to be raped and maybe murdered. He was many things—thief and voyeur, yes—but he wasn't the sort of man to allow a girl to be abused and …

The young woman reappeared. She was dressed now, pulling on a T-shirt over pale blue jeans. She lifted a denim jacket off the back of a chair. The light went off in the bedroom. The couple moved through the apartment, and now they were at the door, and while the man's hand was still on her shoulder, the knife was no longer visible. The light went out.

Tommy Hinge watched, desperately wondering what he was going to do. Then the main door opened and the pair stepped out into the night. They walked right past him, the man's grip so tight on the young woman's shoulder that he could see the whiteness of his knuckles. Tommy's nose wrinkled at the abattoir stench off the man and the sour stink of the woman's fear.

He waited until they had walked down the road and then he stepped out after them, abruptly glad of his black sweats and his rubber-soled trainers.

 

94

S
HE WAS
trapped in a crystal, in a huge block of ice. Everywhere she looked there were reflections.

But it was not her own reflection she was looking at.

She raised her arms and a dozen figures—no, a hundred, a thousand—male and female, and obscene combinations of both, raised their arms in silent mimicry. She hammered on the surface of the glass and a thousand arms hammered in perfect syncopation.

Now she was in a glass coffin, and it was growing smaller, constricting, shrinking, contracting. She began to scream, but there was a vacuum within the crystal cage, and there was no sound. She began to pound on the surface of the block of ice, ignoring the mimicking hands, ignoring the slack and gaping faces, beating, beating, beating against the glass, which suddenly …

Cracked
.

It tumbled down around her in huge razor sharp shards, the glass cutting into her body, slicing into her flesh, hammering into her legs. Dear God the pain in her legs.

Abruptly the pain vanished.

And she could no longer feel her legs.

Emmanuelle Frazer opened her mouth and screamed.

*   *   *

“W
HAT HAPPENED?” MARGARET
Haaren demanded, tucking the phone under her left ear, trapping it between cheek and shoulder as she locked her car, and hurried back into the hospital.

“She came awake about ten minutes after you left,” Morrow said, trying to remain as calm as possible. She could still hear the woman's terrified screams in her ears. She took a deep breath and continued. “She screamed for at least five minutes without a break. The heart machine was going crazy.”

“Then what?” She ignored the elevator and raced down a corridor.

“By then the doctors had injected her with a massive sedative. It should have knocked her out completely; it didn't. She grew calm. She looked around and spotted me. I said, ‘Hello Miss Frazer, how do you feel?'”

“And?” Haaren said through gritted teeth. Did she have to drag out every particular, word-by-word?

“She closed her eyes first and when she opened them again, she started to cry. She said, very quietly. ‘He's got a knife. He was going to kill me. That's not my father.' She started crying then. She's still crying.”

“Right.” The detective had put her hand on the handle of the door when it suddenly opened and a tall blond-haired, blue-eyed doctor stepped out. He looked about eighteen.

“I'm sorry, no visitors,” he said imperiously.

“Don't be ridiculous,” the detective said, ignoring him.

For a moment, it looked as if the doctor was going to protest, but the police officer on duty outside the door caught his arm and led him away. “I think we'll leave Detective Haaren alone for a moment.”

Manny Frazer had calmed down by the time Margaret Haaren stepped into the room. The young woman was still dreadfully confused, and she hadn't got a clue how she had ended up back in the hospital. She looked up into the detective's broad face and smiled in recognition.

“How do you feel?” Margaret Haaren asked gently. She took the girl's bandaged hand in hers, stroking it lightly with the fingers of her left hand. The girl was eighteen, the same age as her niece, she suddenly remembered, but right now, she looked a lot older than her years.

Manny's mouth worked, but no sound came out.

“Can you tell me what happened? It's important.” Haaren's voice fell to a whisper. “Manny, we need to know.”

“I'm hurt bad, aren't I? Am I going to die?” Manny's voice was cracked and raw.

“The doctors say you'll be fine,” the detective lied. “And no, you are not going to die. You were hit by a car when you ran out of your driveway. What made you run like that?”

Manny's large blue eyes, almost lost now behind the bruises, opened wide and her breathing began to quicken. The now silent heart monitor showed increased activity on its tiny square screen.

“Gently, gently now,” the detective murmured. “You were being chased. Who was chasing you?”

The bloodshot eyes opened wide. Her voice was a ragged whisper. “He's got a knife. He was going to kill me. That's not my father.”

“Who's not your father? Who is chasing you, Manny? Who is after you?”

“He's got a knife. He's going to kill me.”

“You're safe now, Manny. There's no one after you now. Tell me who it was. You know who it was, don't you?” she demanded. “Tell me.”

Manny's eyes opened wide. “It was my father.”

“So, it
was
your father.”

“But it wasn't.”

“The man looked like your father,” she said patiently.

Manny attempted to shake her head and then stopped, realizing she was restrained. “No. It was my father. But he was different.”

“Different? How?”

“Different. Changed. Not the dad I knew.”

“He had a knife, Manny. What did he want to do with the knife?”

“He wanted … wanted to kill me … no…” Her breath died away to a ghostly whisper, and Margaret lowered her head to catch the words. The heart monitor began to trip wildly.

“What did he want?” Haaren snapped, and the young woman flinched.

“He said he wanted to sacrifice me. To feed it my blood, to make it whole.”

“Feed what, Manny? What did he want to feed?”

“Mother!” Manny's voice rose to a hoarse shout. “My mother. He said she was dead!”

Margaret Haaren stopped, her own heartbeat beginning to trip along in rhythm to the girls'. There was no way Manny could know about the death of her mother. “What did he say about your mother?”

“He said he'd killed her. Said he'd cut her from crotch to sternum, that's what he'd said. Said she was with someone.” Her fingers tightened convulsively around Haaren's fingers, blood beginning to seep through the bandages. “Is it true? Is it?”

“Yes, I'm sorry Manny, your mother is dead,” the detective said slowly.

“Did … did Dad do it?”

“I believe he did,” Margaret said quietly. Although she had no idea how he did it.

Manny lay back on the pillows, eyes closed.

“It's not his fault, Manny. He's not well. He needs our help, yours and mine. Now, tell me, who did your father want to feed?”

“Not who—what!”

“What?”

“The mirror.”

Haaren frowned. “The mirror?”

“Yes, the mirror. It has possessed him. Talbott said it was evil, and then it killed him. And it would have killed me,” she added wonderingly. “He was going to kill me and feed my blood to the mirror.”

“Where is he, Manny?” Margaret Haaren said loudly. “Where is Jonathan Frazer?”

“He can hear it, he can feel its hunger. It's making him kill to feed it.”

“Where is he, dammit!”

“In the guesthouse. He's in the guesthouse, and he's going to feed the mirror. He's going to kill tonight!”

Margaret Haaren was already moving towards the door when it snapped open and Officer Morrow's pale face looked in. She handed the detective a radio. “Emergency feed, patched through from the station.”

“Haaren,” she said crisply, turning in the doorway to look back into the room, but Manny Frazer was sleeping again, only the rapid movement behind her closed eyelids evidence that her sleep wasn't peaceful.

“What's wrong?” she murmured, stepping outside the room, closing the door behind her. Carole Morrow stared anxiously at her, until Margaret jerked her thumb and the young officer stepped back into the room.

“We got a report from a member of the public about half an hour ago that a man roughly answering to Frazer's description was seen to kidnap a young woman at knifepoint. The citizen followed them to Frazer's house in the Hollywood Hills, where he was picked up by our men for loitering. Our guys didn't believe his story so we sent a car around to the address where he said the young woman had been taken from.”

“And?”

“I've verified this myself, ma'am. Everything checks out. I'm so sorry,” he added, and in that moment, Margaret Haaren knew that whatever she was going to hear now would not be good. “Frazer's got your niece, Helen.”

“And do we have Frazer?”

“We've searched the house again. It's empty.”

“And the guesthouse?”

“Sealed shut.”

She was just about to ask the officers to check inside, but something made her stop. “I'm on the way.”