Doppleganger, original novel PG-13

[karrenia_rune]

For the 2012 Novel Big Bang Original Fic on Live Journal


“Doppelganger” by karrenia Mystery/Drama

Summary: A detective in an urban city has a pretty good life, a nice house, wife and children, but all of it gets put on the line when a bizarre string of murders rock his town. As he gets deeper into solving the crimes, the killer seems to be someone who insists that there has been an undeniable and irresistible force that will lead them both to an inevitable show-down.

The house they had just purchased was a two story rambler set on its own patch of land in the second tier suburbs just outside of Hackensack, New Jersey.

It was a quiet good-sized town with an even mixture of both residential and industrial complexes; although some of the citizens might have been inclined to argue that the community could use less of the latter and more of the former.

Alexander really did not know what to say in response to that argument, or even if he wanted to. And that was mainly because he simply did not have enough information to argue for either side of the issue.

He had not gotten to know the larger community as well as he might have liked, but they still had plenty of time to rectify that oversight.

His work as a police detective rarely gave him as much time as he might have liked to mingle in social circles but he had that inked on his to-do-list, one, because he had promised his wife that he would, and two, because he felt that he needed to get out and get to know the people.

He and his wife, Anna, had chosen it not just because it was in their price range but also because it fit the needs of their family more than adequately and it the offer had been accepted by the previous owner.

Anna had been very surprised at just how quickly their previous house had sold considering how long it had been on the market and the way the housing market had taken a definite down-turn in the past few years.

The asking price and the unexpectedly quick turn around on the closing had come as a relief to both of them because the cramped apartment that they had been renting was becoming rather crowded now that their two children were getting older, and much more active.

Even as these prosaic thoughts raced through his mind Detective Alexander Daniels could not help but mull over the events of the past few days at his precinct; it had been a hectic past few weeks and he was feeling a churning sensation deep within his gut of mingled anger and frustration and a need to do something anything about the recent string of murders that had rocked the metro area.

It was not the bizarre and bloody nature of the deaths that were getting to him; no it was always the randomness and the seeming illogic behind the selection of the victims.

His partner, Greg Menotti, had told him in no uncertain terms, to not to allow the case to become personal; and that he needed to take some time and clear his head. He had also said that taking it personally would only cloud his judgment; and above all else they need an objective look at the case at hand.

In fact, he vividly recalled Greg saying during one point into the investigation when he had felt like that for every step forward they had been forced to take four or five steps back.

“Well, if you want to go on a personal crusade to stop the son of bitch, fine and dandy. I’ll be there to support you every step of the way, but a little time to stop and smell the roses, wouldn’t hurt and it might keep you from burning out altogether, if you get my drift.”
Menotti, although he was usually rather droll and laid-back at the best of times, was correct at least at several points. However, he could not be insensible to the fact that everyone from the chief on down had to be feeling the pressure from the D.A’s office to solve the case as quickly as possible.

Alexander shoved the unpleasant facts of the investigation to a back corner of his mind when he saw that his wife and kids were gathered around the island in their kitchen when came into the house and had shed his coat on the stand near the foyer.

Despite the dreary thoughts which had accompanied from the time he had left the precinct and had continued through the parking lot, in his car, and during the drive home, he still managed a smile and a kiss for his wife, Anna, and his two little boys, Peter and Paul.

Peter, at four, had just begun attending a local pre-school two days a week.

Paul was not quite two years old, and although he had learned to walk he was still at the stage where he had begun to verbalize, but had not yet learned to talk, however, he was on the verge of doing so.

“Rough day?” Anna asked. Anna was second-generation Italian and her parents had emigrated from the old country around the time of the dictator-ship of Franco. He took her hands in his own and kissed her on the lips.

She pretended mock-outrage and affront for the few brief seconds and then kissed him back.
In the distance just beyond where they stood in the foyer of their house, he could see Peter setting the table for dinner.

Even as these prosaic and homely thoughts crossed his mind he glanced over at his wife, Anna, who was busy putting the finishing touches on dinner.

It was one of those odds coincidences that cropped up every so often that the woman who had become his wife had also been introduced to him by his partner, Greg Menotti, also a second-generation Italian.

“You could say that,” replied Alexander.

He had never been able to hide anything from Anna, and even had he been minded to do so, he could never do to that to her. At the same time he did not want to worry her unnecessarily and sometimes if they were going to discuss the more grisly details of his current investigation it would be best to do so after the kids were put to bed and they could do so, alone.

“Dinner is almost ready,” Anna replied, realizing in her own way that being the wife of a police officer, recently promoted to detective as much as by experience as her intuition.

Knowing her husband as well as she did what was going through his mind and that it made sense to discuss whatever it was that was bothering him later.

Instead, she stepped forward and kissed him and said. “It’s good to have you home, especially at a reasonable hour so we can all sit down and have dinner together as a family.”

“You, know,” Alexander. “I’ve missed this,” he replied as he went over and scooped up Paul in his arms and got him settled into his high-chair.

He then went about to arrange the tray so that it locked into place. Paul giggled and looked up at his father with his big brown eyes and his curly black hair that stuck up in bristly spikes, and smiled.

Peter sat down and then said. “I helped cook, I cut the tomatoes and carrots with Mommy.”

“Good work, Peter. I’m proud of you.”

“I missed you, Daddy,” Peter cried and then wrapped his arms around as his father’s torso as far as they could reach with a happy grin plastered on his face.

“We all do. It’s not often that you make it back in time to sit down to dinner with the whole family,” said Anna.

“I miss them, too,” Alexander replied. “Is that manicotti I smell?”

“It is. Go wash up, dinner will be on the table momentarily,” replied Anna.

Dinner was uneventful, if one did not count the small talk of the days’ activities and the older boy’s telling his father all about the arts and crafts projects he’d down in pre-school.

Both of his parents listened with smiles and even asked a question or two, but eventually the time came to put the kids to bed and to clean up.

As they went through the motions of cleaning up Anna finally could not help but notice that while he had been actively involved in the talk and had offered his compliments on the manicotti and steamed broccoli, and later on the peach cobbler that they had had for desert; there had been a noticeable emotional distance in his eyes and a tension in the set of his shoulders.

“What’s eating at you?” she asked.

“Everything, nothing, the case,” he replied. “I just can’t seem to pin down something definitive.”

“You work too hard,” she replied. She did not mean it to sound either like a rebuke or an insult but it had to be said.

“I know, I know. So I’ve been told, by you, by my partner, by most everyone, but I just can’t seem to stop. Would you want me to?”

“No, I guess not,” she replied. “But I wish there were something more I could do to help out. You know how I worry.”

“I know,” he replied. “And I’m sorry, the last thing I would want to do is put our family’s lives at risk in any capacity,” he replied and drew her into his embrace. “I’ll work this out, I promise.

“I know,” she whispered. “You always do. Just promise me that you’ll be careful.”

“I promise,” he replied.
****

The following day they were called in to yet another crime-scene,; this time the small playground located within walking distance of a tenement building complex.
It has been said that most everyone whether they choose to admit it or not is or becomes a creature of habit. All of which meant that it often much more difficult for someone who has become so entrenched in their own for them to venture outside of their comfort zones.

The way that Greg figured was as long as they’d been working in the homicide department it would often require them to think outside of that box because, often it was the only way in order to get the job done. Following closely on the heels of ‘that particular thought, another followed, that he’d seen far too often for comfort was that sometimes officers who took that
particular maxim too far would more often than not burn out.

In order to prevent that from happening, or the opposite, for the ones who were too inflexible, the ones who could only go by the book, and anything that was not found in the protocols could simply not exist, it would take a lot of effort to find a balance between the two.

One of his old instructors at the police academy had once told him that a balance was necessary, and that it would be better for everyone in the long run. Frankly, he had not being paying too much attention to the old man at the time, but apparently more than enough of what he’d being trying to teach them had managed to penetrate his thick skull.
Greg heaved a heavy sigh and figured that if he’d learned anything, that veteran officer at the academy had been right, it was hard work to find that balance in one’s work and in one’s personal life; but he also figured that he’d managed to do so in a way that worked for him.

So what? He may have had a reputation of being something of a jokester, but then, he got the job done and that was the important thing, right. After all, he and his partner, Alexander Daniels, made a good team and in point of fact, they complemented each other very well.

He crossed over to the tiny park, its worn and dusty playground equipment looking rather tiny and forlorn in the moonlight as clouds scudded by overhead.

In the distance, the commuter train that connected Hackensack with the capital loudly zipped by and Greg shoved the meandering thoughts to a back corner of his mind.
The sun was just on the verge of dropping below the tree line when they got the call to come over to the Parapet Bridge by the uniformed officers who were accompanied by the county coroner and the and EMT squad.

The area had been cordoned off from the curious and the general public by the ubiquitous bright yellow police tape.

It was nearing midnight and a stiff westerly breeze tugged at their hair, tracing subtle but meaningless patterns, but they ignored the wind and the chill in the air and got down to business.

The bodies of the two women lay on the ground in the stiffly awkward position in which they had been found, sprawled at an unnatural angle with their heads twisted to one side, and their hands tied behind their back. No matter how veteran an observer or even a participant in violent death one became, for him, at least, he could help but feel for the victims and their families.

Greg removed a pair of foam latex gloves from his suit pocket and snapped them on before crouching down to more closely examine the bodies.

From the pattern of the blows that had been inflicted it had obviously been done by somehow who had known exactly what they were doing.

The dried blood around the ear and necks had bloomed around the wounds like tiny red flowers on their skin. He pulled back the dangling silver earrings from the nearest victim, and examined the wounds, while his partner, Detective Alexander Daniels looked on.

In his own mind, Detective Greg Menotti sometimes wondered why those who did these types of things could be so damn methodical when it came to taking another human being’s life and what the world was coming to.

“You’d think it would get easier,” Greg remarked idly, more to himself than to anyone else.

“You would think that, yes. What do have?” asked Alexander quietly.

At that moment, the county coroner approached, clearing his throat to alert them to his presence. “I hate to interrupt, gentlemen, but could I have a word with you?” he asked.

“A couple of females, early twenties at least possibly younger, however, it is difficult to say for certain what with the bruising and the lacerations to their faces and upper arms.” He paused and took a deep breath before he added.

“One’s white, the other’s Asian and both appear to have been beaten repeatedly, before someone broke their necks.”

“Great, just great,” Alexander muttered under his breath. “Is there anything else we should know?”

Michelson paused and then nodded: “Speaking in a clinical fashion I’d say that whoever did it either was taking his time about it or he knew when and where to apply pressure to the joint between collar and spine.”


The coroner attached to their county within their jurisdiction answered as he approached the blue latex gloves already strapped on and his glasses tipped up onto the bridge of his nose.


The man looked up from his crouch over the bodies and glanced at Detective Daniels. “Did you have another theory? Because if so, I believe that you should share it with the rest of the class but at the moment I feel as if we’ve all been fumbling around in the dark looking for that proverbial needle in a haystack.”

“Mr. Michelson, I don’t understand… What makes you say that?” Daniels asked.

The older man shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat and shook his head. “Because if this were a rush job it would be simply be a lot messier and a lot bloodier. The beatings I don’t believe were administered to subdue them were done after they were dead.”

“So they put up a fight?” Greg mused. “I’m not so sure that I need to hear that.”

“I would agree with that, Detective Menotti,” replied Michelson answered in a subdued tone of voice in a gentler tone that than the clinical clipped tone of a moment earlier. He paused a moment and reached up with one finger that was not occupied in helping maintain his awkward position on the ground to adjust the fit of his glasses that were at the moment in precarious danger of slipping off entirely and heaved a sigh.

“I realize that my job is to provide a clinical and objective report of the cause of death, but,” and with that he heaved another sigh. “But it seems such a tragic waste. Our killer appears to be picking out his victims at random, a female here, and a male there. Old, young, it does not seem to matter to him. And I say him because up till now we’ve all assumed that we were dealing with a male.”

“Are you saying it could just as easily be a female killer?” Menotti asked.

“I hesitate to say so definitively, but an individual would have to be reasonably strong enough to not only subdue the victim, kill them and drag them to a dumping ground, and then make his or her getaway.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Greg added.

Michelson went on to say: “What puzzles me the most about any or all of this is the precision of the actual killing coupled with the apparent randomness of the selection of the actual victims?.”

“We could be dealing with a killer suffering from a split personality. Great, just great?” Menotti muttered under his breath. “I was reasonably certainly it was a he. Did you have to add that extra little wrinkle to the load we’re already carrying?”

“I realize your frustration, but as I mentioned, it would be more logical to assume that the individual that has perpetrated this heinous is male, and seriously unhinged. But then you’d have confirm my theory with an expert in criminal pathology for a definitive opinion on that,”
Michelson replied with a wry and conspiratorial grin twisting his mouth. “That’s just my unbiased and not so humble opinion.”

“Very good, Mr. Michelson, and we’ll take you at your word. I don’t suppose we could get that in writing when we present our report to the Chief, could we?” Daniels asked.

“Of course,” Michelson replied.

Alexander nodded and then asked. “Do you think they were killed near the bridge or did the killer choose this spot as his dumping ground?”

“I’d have to say they were killed elsewhere and they brought here,” Greg stated.

“What makes you say that?”

The ground is torn up and unless our girls here put up a struggle I’d say they were dragged and or dumped in this spot.”

Alexander swallowed. “Okay, let’s go with that. Have we been able to identify them? “

“Yes,” Michelson replied. “Both of the victims had their wallets on them when they were found.

The first is Victoria Nelson, the second is Jade Ishida.”
Alexander swallowed once more and took a deep breath before he asked: “Who found them?”


“It was a commuter, on his way to work and the way I hear it, he had been experiencing engine trouble. He pulled over and that’s when he found them. Hell of thing,” Greg muttered under his breath. “He called 911 almost immediately. He waited until someone showed up, gave his statement and took off. Not that I blame him.”

“You got his name and a number and a way to contact should we need to?”

“Yeah, Sven Peterson works at an investment firm in down Hackensack. He’s got a land line and a cell phone number just in case we need’em,” replied Greg.

“Get in touch with Mr. Peterson and inform him not to leave town because we will need to get his statement down in writing,” said Alexander.

Just at that moment a uniformed cop approached them and cleared his throat as if waiting to be recognized.

“Yes, go ahead,” said Alexander with an encouraging nod.

“According to the D.A’s office we’ve been authorized to call in the criminal behavioral experts. He also says they’ve been taking a closer look at what we’ve got so far and they found a pattern in all the randomness.”

“Good, we’ll just finish up here, unless there’s anything else you need?” Alexander replied.

“No. I’ll get the boys back to the station.” And with that the patrolman left.
Menotii nodded. “Hey, Alex,” he suddenly said, “Help me out here a moment, because my memory isn’t what it used to be, but on the bodies of the other victims, did any of them have a double-headed coin clutched in their fingers.”

”Let me see.” Alexander reached into the pockets of his trench-coat and pulled out his pocket flash-light and bend over to take a closer look at the shoulders of the bodies. “Get me a plastic baggie and we’ll bring them into Evidence. See if we can get a trace on either where these came from or who might have bought them or what not.”

“Do you think the might be stolen or something. I hear people collect and trade stuff all the time, and that there might even be a market for it, but if they had any value why leave them behind on the bodies? Unless,” he paused and reached up to scratch the side of his head. “I dunno, it could be his signature.”

“I agree, and after we get things cleaned up here you can check that angle and see what turns up. By the way, did you bring a camera?

“I’ve got one on my cell-phone,” Menotti replied. “

“That’ll do. It could very well mean that our killer is becoming over-confident. That he wants
us to know that we’re onto him and doesn’t think we can catch him,” Alexander said.

“We’ll catch him, damn the bastard,” Menotti replied and then took his cell phone out of his pocket and took the picture of the two-headed coins.

“Greg, you know I don’t mention this to you as often as I should, but I’m glad I have you for a partner. You’ve got confidence in spades.”

“Hey, you’re making me blush here, Alex. Stop it.”

“Not that I don’t appreciate an ego-boost as much as the next man,” Alexander replied and shrugged, turning the motion into a move that would help loosen tightly wound nerves and get at least a few of the kinks out of his back and shoulder muscles, ”I wish I could feel that I deserved it.”

“Trust me, bro,” Greg grinned and then offered. “You do. I get the strong impression that had anyone else been assigned to these homicides, I think they would have given up a long time ago, out of sheer inertia, if nothing else.”

Alexander chuckled and then gave Greg a firm but encouraging swat across his partner’s broad shoulders. “Okay, okay. Let’s wrap it up here, because I can see the bag and tag’em boys arriving now.”

“How many does this make?” Greg asked, much more sober tone than he had used just a few moments earlier.

“Four,” Alexander replied with his brow furrowed in mingled anger and frustration. “And if you ask me, it’s four too many.”

“Amen to that, partner,” Greg whispered back.

Elsewhere

The rattling and clanking of the daily commuter train that ran by on its rusty but still usable tracks nearly but not quite drowned out a blood-curdling scream. It was a high-pitched scream that could have easily been mistaken for the whistle of the engine but it had an edge which made it seem all too human and all too eerie.

For Jasper Hanson, the scream only served to drive him onward. In a distracted almost remote part of his mind he found that he could almost block out the screams of his victims by now, much the manner he had read that some people while undergoing extremes of either pain or interrogation could separate a part of their own consciousness and go to a mental place that was at a remove from whatever was happening to them.

If that was true than it certainly could explain how he could be one person while staking out the place of his former employment, the old automotive parts manufacturing plant, and another while identifying and then killing his victims.

*****
Alexander stared down at the body lying on the ground, a young man wearing jeans and a hoodie the left sleeve rolled up to the elbow to reveal an elaborate tattoo. It was a snake entwined in such a way that it appeared as if it were eating its own tail, judging by the way it had been inked to wrap around the man’s arm.
“Gang-banger, if I did not know any better,” remarked Greg. “I’ll call it in.”
Alexander nodded and quickly thought, “Gang-banger or not, this is a rotten way to go.’
****
Meanwhile, standing out in front of his parked and rather run-down RV, having just sold off his moped in order to pay for the rental fee, Jasper Hanson realized that he had begun to keep count after the number to risen to four. He also reflected that it really did not make much of a difference to him if they had been male or female; it was the surge and the thrill of the hunt that drove him.

Jasper bent down next to the body, the young man’s head twisted at an odd angle and the expression in the now lifeless eyes one of feeling an unaccustomed surge of mingled anger and surprise well up inside of him.

The strangest thing about that anger and surprise was that he really did not recognize where it had come from. Whenever he took a life, he wanted to feel something that would make him feel more alive, more vital in some way; as much as that more than likely make him out to be some kind of homicidal maniac if had ever been given to the chance to explain it to anyone else.

The fact of the matter was there was no one else; unless you counted the voice that had begun speaking to him ever since he’d acquired a certain very expensive volume at a fire sale at an antiquarian bookseller that was going out of business.

Jasper had never believed himself to be superstitious, but he was having more and more difficult time, of late, of late pushing the thoughts and ideas that came into his head.

Standing over the latest in a long line of dead bodies, he fought it and fought for as long as he could. At this point he was uncertain exactly what it was that had made him so angry. The world, life? Maybe, because if he hadn’t lost his job and then his family perhaps none of this would ever have occurred and he could have just gone being his mediocre, meticulous of no- account self.

He hated the feeling that nothing and no one really mattered, and stood there with his hands clenched into fists at his sides and his brow dripping with sweat even though it was a cool fall evening.

He allowed the sensations and meandering thoughts to run their course and then dug into one of the pockets of his dark olive slacks he removed a small silver disk: one of a number in his own prized collection of coins: a double headed Roman coin with the picture of a man with two heads, one facing right, the other in the opposite direction.

Had he not been completely engrossed in his own affairs to be ignorant of the fact that the authorities were investigating the string of recent homicides and that were drawing the net in close.

In fact, he had come to realize that in way that even could not explain how he and a man he had never even met before, one Detective Alexander Daniels had a connection, almost a synchronicity.

Why that should be the case when their immediate life experiences were so very different from each other Jasper Hanson could not have explained, but there it was. It was as if fate was conspiring to draw them together, and sooner or later they would have to have a face-to-face meeting.

Jasper also considered even as the body of young gang-banger lay on the hard-packed ground covered by the late autumn leaves, with the double-headed coin pressed into his palm’ that he could sense rather than feel that coin growing warmer rather than cooler as he might have expected.

He shook, more from the sense of something big looming on the horizon than the crisp bite in the night air. He had not dressed for the weather and with only an argyle sweater vest on and a light rain jacket he could feel the wind pass right through him.

It was entirely possible that none of this would have happened to gawky, socially awkward factory worker who also happened to be an avid rare coin collector had not the factory been shut down and he just another of the hundreds who had been laid off in the aftermath.

Still, there was no going back and he could only move forward.

He stole one last glance at the still eerily glowing double-headed coin and shivered once more, believing that was only his own over-active imagination that made it appear as if the eyes of the heads were winking back at him. He turned on his heel his soles making ‘crunch crunch’ sounds on the leaves and ground cover and he disappeared into the shadows of the night.
***

At The Morgue

‘After a while’ Greg Menotti thought, ‘you kind of adopt a numbness to the mingled odors of sweat and formehldyde,” and for the life of me I think I’m actually learning to block it out.”

His partner glanced over at him and he had a puzzled expression on his face.
Greg offered him an encouraging nod and turned his attention back to what the forensic doctor, Amelia Barrows was telling them about the results for her autopsy.

“The injuries sustained are consistent from victim to victim; there are contusions and bruises to the upper arms and neck, as if the killer had to subdue them before he was able to kill them.”

“It could be that he’s a pathological in more ways than one,” Menotti remarked.

Doctor Barrows nodded and then added: “Not only that, as you may well be aware our killer sticks to the same modus operandi from one kill to the next. Whether his victim is male or female, young or old, no matter what the race: First he identifies them, draws them in, and then kills them.”

“Anything else?” Menotti asked.

“Great, just great, we’ve got a serial killer that does not discriminate,” Daniels remarked.

“Would you prefer that he did?” Detective Daniels?” Dr. Barrows asked quietly.

Greg shook his head and cleared his throat uncertain whether he should make some kind of response to that question or if Doctor Barrows had meant it to be a rhetorical question.

Greg swore and then exchanged a significant glance with Alexander, “Penny for your thoughts, partner?”

“I hate to interrupt, fellas,” Amelia began, “but there is something else here.”

“What is it?” Alexander asked.

“A note.” She plucked it out and cleaned it off and then held it up to the bright fluorescent lights in order to see it better. The note had been written on plain white notebook paper and its edges appeared to have been carefully torn so that the ragged perforated edges would show.

The hand that had written the note also showed evidence that whoever had written had taken great care with the form and spacing of his or her letters. The note was only two lines long and written using a black ball point pen.

“Let me see it.”

She handed it over the paper folded up into four squares and bisected in the middle but a distinct crease. The words on the page had been written in ball-point pen on relatively inexpensive stationary with a design of two-headed quarters in the upper left-hand corner.

“Coins, again?” Greg remarked, looking over his partner’s shoulder. “What’s it say?”

“To Whom It May Concern:

I cannot begin to explain why I feel as strongly as I do, but it would seem that fate is drawing us together. It would be in everyone’s best interest that we meet by the train tracks two nights hence. “

It was signed Mr. Jasper Hanson.

“He’s taunting us,” Alexander remarked under his breath.

He almost tore the sheet of paper in half in his anger and frustration but restrained himself because, for one thing it would not do to allow his anger to get the better of him, and also that they it was evidence.

Dr. Barrows remarked. “It could be a sign of remorse, drawing from your conclusion that we are dealing with a Jekyll and Hyde personality. It could be a sign that his ‘better’ half were getting stronger.”

“We’ll call this in, let the boys at the precinct know and coordinate the meeting. I don’t want to walk into any meeting blind or without adequate back-up,” Alexander stated.

“I don’t blame you, but do you really want to play it out that way?” asked Greg.
Alexander did not immediately reply as he pondered that question, seriously weigh the pros and cons and finally quietly replied. “No, not really.”

“It also seems that whenever he goes about disposing of the bodies,” Menotti added. “He seems to stick to the same two areas, one near the bridge where we found Ishida and Nelson. And this last one, Mr. Gomez was found near the train tracks in very similar state to that of the previous victims.”

“Has anyone ever noticed that all the victims come in pairs of twos? I wonder if there is any significance to that?” Alexander mused.

“That is odd,” Greg replied. “It’s definitely something that we should look into, I think.”

“I found this clutched in the hand of the most recent corpse,” Barrows continued. “It’s a coin, and forensics tells me that per carbon-dating it’s a very rare and valuable one.” One very few minted near or leading up to the fall of the Roman Empire.”

“What would a laid-off factory worker be doing with expensive coins?” Menotti asked.

“Perhaps it’s a hobby, or a fetish. You’d be surprised with the kinds of obsessions people have.” Barrow shook her head and placed the coin that she had found after the completion of her examination of young T.J Gomez’s dead body.

Amelia handed the coin over to Detective Daniels, who took it between the fore-fingers of his left hand feeling for the heft and weight of the small silver disk. He looked at from every conceivable angle, twisting and turning it and holding it up to the light.

It was a solid silver sphere, of good size and weight, unremarkable to his eye except for the fact that both of the stamped faces were double-headed.
He simply did not know enough about coinage, other than their prosaic monetary value to know if that were significant or not.

In the dim illumination, he could almost sense the coin becoming hotter rather than cooler. And the interior of the morgue was cool to begin with, more than likely that was merely his exhausted mind playing tricks on him.

The warmth may very well have been deceptive due to the warmth from his own palm after being stuffed into the pockets of this trench coat for so long. But even as he considered this he felt rather than saw the coin glint several times in succession and the eyes of the double-headed faces wink back at him.

Alexander had always considered himself a practical no-nonsense kind of man, and it had always served him well first in his career as an up and coming police officer and later as a detective.

He had held onto the belief that no matter how bizarre or eerie a case or a criminal may be that if you worked hard enough at cracking the case, examined all the evidence, a logical solution could always be found.

In the back of his mind, he thought that ‘Still, against all logic and common I think I can sense an uncanny eerie glow emanating from the eyes of the coin.’

Gritting his teeth in distaste, at both the turn that his mind had taken and the very idea of a glowing coin, he quickly stashed it back into the plastic bag, and then he stuffed the whole thing into a pocket of his coat.

“Let’s get back to the precinct, go over the evidence that we have so far with a fine-toothed comb and add to what we find here, and see what we’ve got,” advised Greg with a shrug of mingled frustration and forbearance.

“You think you might have been going about this the wrong way?” Dr. Barrows asked.

“Anything’s possible,” replied Greg as he shuffled his feet on the hard Formica tiles of the floor of the examination room. “At this point, hell, I’d be tempted to not rule out just about anything. What do you think, Alex?”

Even as he spoke to Dr. Barrows Greg could not help but notice that his partner of several years and someone he also considered a close personal friend seemed very distracted; it was almost as if a part of him had gone away somewhere without inviting the rest of his mind and body along for the ride.

“Hey, Earth to Alex? Is anyone home?” His mild concern had begun to quickly ratchet up more than a few notches when the other man did not immediately reply appearing so absorbed by the small silver disk in the palm of his hand to the point he had become oblivious of everything in his immediate vicinity, including those who were with him.

“Huh? What did you say, Greg?”

“I said, what do you think about all this?”

“I think we’re in for a confrontation with our ‘friend’, the serial killer. I hate to be played like this.”

“Ditto, partner,’” Greg replied. “So, as I was just mentioning to Amelia here while you were zoning out, we should get back to the precinct and take another crack at this.”

“Good idea.” Alexander sighed, and using a plastic bag from the supply table located near the exam table he put the coin inside of it and then whole thing, bag and coin into his pocket.

Turning back to face Dr. Amelia Barrows Alexander Daniels handed her a business card with his name and number printed on it. “If you need anything or discover anything please, do not hesitate myself or Detective Menotti immediately.”

Amelia took the card and placed it into a pocket of her white lab coat. “Of course,” Amelia replied. “I wish you both the best of luck. Please understand when I say this, that this coming from both a professional and personal slant, but I want this bastard caught and punished to the full extent of the law.”

“We understand, completely,” Alexander and Greg replied almost simultaneously.

Then grinned rather sheepish grins and sighed. “Won’t get anything done standing around here,” Greg said. “Let’s go.”

“Agreed.”
**
The following day following up on several leads that had accumulated in the course of their on-going investigation Daniels and Menotti drove to the home of the man listed on Hanson’s records as a direct line supervisor when he had been employed at the auto parts plant. One

Alfred Neuhasuer now retired. The man had been old enough to qualify for a severance package and had taken every advantage of it that he could.

The house was small with a screen-in two-season porch out front and that is where they found the man sitting on a deck chair and smoking a pack of cigarettes. He had a calico cat with wide and luminous green eyes curled up on a stack of newspapers.

Greg thought that he should have known better than to operate using assumptions because they had a bad habit of leading one to false conclusions at the best, or at the worse, you risked offending someone somewhere almost every time.

“When he used to work here,” began the former line supervisor remarked as he pulled at the cigarette dangling from his mouth. “He brought in comic books almost every day, he also, if given half the chance would go on and on about his rare coin collection.”

“Did Mr. Hanson happen to mention anything about double-sided or two-headed coins to you or anyone else?” Alexander asked.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact he did,” Alfred Neuhauser replied. “Old Jasper was always the type that was slow but methodical and he got the job done, nothing seemed to set a spark in him except those old coins of his.”

Alexander pulled out the Ziploc bag that contained the coin found on the body of T.J Gomez and without removing it from the plastic showed it to Neuhauser. “Did he ever show one that looked like this?”

“I should be able to recognize that one anywhere. It’s one of the old Roman Gods, Janus. Hell, that must be were we got the name January, like the month!”

At this point Detective Greg Menotti took another tack, “You said he was into comic books, anything in particular?””

“Yeah. DC mostly, but more golden age than the stuff you get nowadays. Never was much of a comic book reader myself, but you can never beat the classics, if you ask me. The fact of the matter that I think old Jasper would say that would say that the character he most identified with was Two_Face.”

“Who?” Alexander asked.

“Two-Face, the comic book super-villain (most famously as a member of Batman's rogues gallery), has a double-headed coin with one side defaced—a parallel to his actual character, because one side of his face is deformed—which he relies upon for all of his decisions,” Greg Menotti explained.

Alexander shook his head and reached up to finger-comb some but not all of the snarls in shoulder-length black hair. “So, let me see if I understand this, you’re saying this character is a kind of archetype for a Jekyll and Hyde personality?”

“Yeah, you could say that. He will do evil if it lands on the defaced side, and good on the other side. The coin is also representative of alter-ego Harvey Dent's obsession with dualism and the number 2. In the beginning the coin starts out clean, and Harvey Dent uses this trick coin to seemingly leave important decisions to chance ("Heads I go through with it" Greg explained.

“So does this guy think he’s emulating his favorite fictional super-villain, or what?”

Alexander exclaimed and threw up his hands in mingled frustration and anger. “Geez, that’s taking the whole obsession with coins way over the top.”

“I love ya like a brother from another mother, Alex,” Greg drawled and even I have to admit that it is a bit much. In fact it almost feels like a kind of over-compensation. He can be the good guy and then take another an entirely different and much more sinister persona when the Hyde personality takes over.”

“Weird.”

“In a word, yeah,” Greg agreed.

“So what are our options here?” Alex asked.

Greg nodded and then replied: “I think we should get that coin examined. It’s like the murder is using to mark his victims, put his stamp on them.”

“Also, it might be a good idea to go back over anyone who has ever had any contact with him or his victims,” Alexander said.

“I agree. If this is our guy, and I got a good feeling that is, this could very well be his way of saying that he knows that we’re on to him and he doesn’t seem to care.”

Alexander nodded. “I’d be inclined to leave that kind of psychological analysis to the experts from Langley, should they every consider sticking their noses into our business.

“So far the Captain has not seen fit to call in the Feds, but you know how she gets? Gomez I think is feeling the pressure from the media more than any of us.” Greg sighed.

“So far they’re spinning their broadcasts primarily about the victims and the memorial services for them and less so about the killer,” he added.

“Then let’s get to it.”
**



Later the following day they went to pay a visit the home of Hanson’s immediate relatives.
The super of his apartment complex kicked him out several weeks ago for not paying the rent.

“I know this will probably sound clichéd, but Jasper was always quiet, a hard-worker never one to rattle anyone’s cage if he could help it.”

The elderly woman sighed in fond reminisce. “To think that the little boy that I once dandled on my knee could have turned into a monster just saddens me no end.” She sat a bit straighter in the rocking chair the ball of yarn of her knitting lying almost forgotten in her lap while she appeared to the two detectives to be either lost in thought or zoning out.

Both had been on the beat and working homicide cases long enough by now to know when to push either a potential witness or those they interviewed in the course of an investigation and when not to push.

Mrs. McDermott, the grandmother of Jasper Hanson, was a redoubtable woman and had apparently been following the course of their investigation through both the printed newspapers and on-line.

“I’ll also tell you something, it’s always the quiet ones, is it not?” She had a gravelly but kindly voice and sighed once more. “I believe you asked me something about Jasper and his hobbies, especially the things he was into collecting?” Her Scottish heritage came through on the rising vowels and consonants and the ever so slightly accented words every now and again.

“Yes, was he always into coin-collecting?”

“My late husband was, and he passed,” Annie McDermott crisply replied. “God rest his Soul, his will explicitly indicated that his coin collection be given to Jasper. That reminds me, I still have some of Jasper’s things he asked me to store for him when he was evicted from his apartment.”

She stood up in a bustle of skirts and yarn disturbing the resting spot of a Siamese cat that had been sleeping underneath her chair. Scolding the cat and calling him Samson in a brisk if somewhat off-hand manner she turned her attention back to the two detectives saying as she did so.

“You’ll want to see this and I believe me it’s a doozy. If you believe it well help to crack the case, bring Jasper to stand trial for his crimes,” she paused and then reached up to daub at a trickle of moisture coming from her bright blue eyes, before adding.

“By all means, take the lot and use it as evidence. And I shudder to think that he could have turned a perfectly ordinary hobby into some kind of twisted signature of a serial killer? This way, please.”

“You’re aware that he’s leaving behind double-headed coins on the bodies?” Alex asked.

“Yes. Why do you sound so surprised?”

So saying she crossed the distance between her rocking chair in the main seating area of her parlor and towards a door in that led out and into the left side of the house where it connected to an attached garage.

It appeared more and more likely that in terms of assigning a psychological profile to their prime suspect that he was what one would refer to as an obsessive-compulsive type. Going by what they had learned about the man so far from both his work habits when he had still been able to hold down a job and now from his grandmother had said and also had not said, and the immaculate and pristine condition of the coin collection; Detective Daniels would bet good money on it; that is if her were the gambling type.

“Do you have any idea just how long he’s been collecting?”

“Not all of this is his, a good portion of it, oh; I’d say about sixty percent of his belonged to his late father.

“Speaking of his father,” Alexander began, “How would you describe their relationship?

Mrs. McDermott appeared to bristle a bit judging the by the narrowing of the skin around her bright blue eyes and the tensing in her shoulders but she recovered rapidly and said:

“Close, but in ways that my son, Matthew was the type that that keep his emotions bottled-up. Oh, I have no doubt that he loved the boy as best as he knew how. But after his wife passed away and times grew tougher around these parts he became more and more closed off. Jasper, I suspect, always felt that he was never good enough for his father.

“How did his wife pass?” Greg asked.

“Car accident, hit-and-run by a drunken driver,” she sighed and there was an ever so slight hitch in her voice. Derek was my son-in-law; Deidre was my daughter which is why Jasper chose to go with his father’s surname. He was never quite the same after his mother passed.

“Losing both parents, so suddenly, man, that must have been really tough, especially on a kid,” Alexander remarked.

“The court, in its infinite wisdom granted full custody of the boy to me, as his only living relative. At the time he was straddling the borderline between being a kid and being an adult.” She sighed and reached up to brush a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. “In a way, I feel somewhat responsible for the way in which he turned out. Maybe if I had done something different….” She trailed off.

“It’s not your fault, Mrs. McDermott,” Alexander Daniels hastened to reassure her.

“I know, I know,” she replied. “But it still, gets me, right here,” she replied, tapping herself on her breast-bone. “You bring him in, Detectives and set an old woman’s mind at ease.”

“We promise that we will do our very best, Mrs. McDermott.”

“Annie, call me Annie,” she replied with a tremulous but still somewhat confident smile.

“Very well, Annie, it is,” Alexander replied and quickly nodded in agreement.

With that they began to open up the cardboard boxes labeled in meticulous detail by a steady hand using a black felt-tip marker each box indicating the country of origin, type and denomination of the contents. “Well, I’ll say one thing for him, once we bring this stuff into Evidence it does make sifting through it all a bit easier,” Greg remarked at one point.

“I realize that you should we could haul it all away, Annie, are you still certain that’s what you want?”

“It is.” She said it so matter-of-factly and promptly that neither detective felt the need to press her on that point.

“Hey, Alex, do you mind if I call in some back-up here, we could always an extra pair of hands or so to help carry this stuff out,” Greg said.

“No, go ahead.

“Thank you, Annie, for both your time and your help. I can only imagine what this must be like for you, after everything that’s happened.”

“I’m a Scot, maybe second-generation but a Scot through and through, Alexander; may I call you Alexander? I have always thought of myself, what’s the term you young people use these days? Oh yes, I consider myself one tough broad. I may bend but I will never break.”

“That you are, Annie. I would hate to be the one to disappoint you,” Alexander replied.

“Bring this to an end, and you won’t,” Annie stated with a small smile to take the sting out of her determined words.

Greg came back into the room a moment later and announced that a couple of uniformed patrol-men were en route to help them carry out the half dozen or so cardboard boxes when a sudden thought occurred to him. “We might need to call in what’s the technical term for coin collectors, numinastic expert or something?”

“After all this, I still thing a coin is a coin, is a coin, never really thought about what makes them so special, or rare, or collectible, but that’s just me. Turning to face Mrs. McDermott. “I want to thank you, Ma’am, I mean, Annie. You’ve been a tremendous help.”

“You are welcome, young man, but if you will excuse me, I have to get back inside the house, and I will leave the disposal of those boxes in your capable hands.”
****
Captain Julia Mendoza had not been at all keen on bringing in a civilian expert at this late stage of the game but after a while had come around to it, providing she be kept apprised of his findings. Saying only that, that this had become more and more a high profile case and that press was on her case almost day and night to bring the killer to justice.
“Do you think he’s likely to get a fair trial once we do catch him?” Menotti asked. “I’m no expert on the subject, but folks around these parts are bad angry, if you know what I mean?”

“I don’t know,” Alexander replied. “But it’s going to be a tough one, I’ll tell you that much.”

“At the moment they’re still spinning the story about the victims and their families, which gives me a little bit of leeway, but not for much longer. Do what you can here, but Daniels, we’ll discuss later whether or not I think you should keep this rendezvous. Do you understand me?”

“Absolutely, Ma’am?”

“Menotti?”

“Ditto.”

“Good, just so we’re clear on that matter. In the meantime, let me handle the press. You handle things here.”
**

The Press Conference

Chief Mendoza had been born to a family of second-generation Puerto Rican immigrants and knew the if she wanted to rise to the top any profession that she might one day choose to go into she would have to not only have to work harder and longer than any of her peers it would mean a great deal of sacrifice on her parent’s part.

Even from a very young age many people, supposedly older and wiser than she; had remarked of her that she had a certain look in her agate-brown eyes, a steely determination, or whatever it might have been but the general consensus boiled down to one thing: There went a girl who would go places in this world.

Even though her father had returned to San Juan and her mother had retired from working as a seamstress and part-time nanny Julia Mendoza had never forgotten those early lessons of hard work, determination and the mantra that one could do anything if you just put your mind to it and plowed forward.

That very same stubbornness had gotten her into trouble in the past and not just with people outside of her own family. When she had made the decision to go into law enforcement, she was told that one it was no place for a girl and two: that it was no place especially for a Latina girl.

There had been hard words, and tears and recriminations and set-backs; and not all the tears and hard words had been her mother’s. Eventually, they had reconciled, and she had applied to the Police Academy, working her way up the chain of command and paying her dues until she had become chief of police.

The job was tough, with long hours and more arguments than one could shake the proverbial stick at,; added to the stress of juggling so many different personalities, and so many different sources of contention in a district that was known for is warring factions. It was a high-stress job; however Julia had discovered that she had begun to thrive in high-stress situations.

The case in question had gone on longer than it had any right to should and everyone up the rung in the chain of command had to have been feeling the pressure by now, but so far, it had not become an outright fracas, but it could very well do so at a moment, and she, perhaps than anyone realize that the responsibility for closing the case and capturing the murder rested squarely on her shoulders.

With that thought in mind she squared her shoulders and took several deep breaths, glancing at her aide if he placed the mini-microphone to the lapel of her uniform and receiving a hand-signal and a go-ahead cue from the coordinator in charge of the press conference she stepped out of the open door of the precinct and into the front of the building where a lectern had been set up and walked up to it.”

The crowd was packed, not so much that they were packed cheek to jowl but it came awfully close. The thing of it was also present were civilians, families and friends of the victims and the idly curious spectators that seemed to collect around such events.
**

”Ladies, and gentlemen,” Mendoza began. “This has been a trying time for all of us, but rest assured that I want to let you that the Hackensack Police Department is doing everything in our power to bring this heinous killer to justice. In fact we now have several good leads that will lead his capture and arrest.”

A reporter raised a hand and pitched his voice to carry over the noise of the crowed, like the hum of an angry and very noisy bee-hive. “How many have to die before this is over?”

“You realize that that isn’t a question I can answer, not realistically. In an ideal world that answer would be no more. I understand your pain, your anger, your grief for those we’ve already lost.”

“This has always been a close-knit community. We look out for each other. I want each and every one of you to continue doing so; not only for because it makes too much damned common sense to do so, she added with a tight-lipped grim smile and then continued.

“But also because these types of bastards tend to thrive on using their murders to spread panic, fear and confusion, tools they can use to their own advantage.”

“Seems to be working for the bastard so far,” another voice in the crowd cried out smugly.

In the back of the crowd someone else shoved and elbowed his way through to the loud protests of those who had gathered around, a mixed bag of both reporters and civilians and assorted hangers-on and pedestrian and made his way to the front of the security cordon, a rolled up newspaper tucked underneath one arm and in his other hand clutched a small silver pendant that had once belonged to his daughter Victoria Nelson.

“Are you investigating these murders or not, because my daughter had just graduated from high school. She had her whole future ahead of her, and the bastard ended all hope of that from ever happening!”

He had tears in his eyes, even as the sharp edges of the silver pendant cut into his skin, but he ignored the pain and focused his attention of Chief Mendoza. “Vicky and Jade were friends, they were going to be to room together, the Ishidas feel the same way I do, as all of you would have you lost a son or a daughter, so what I want to know is are you really any close to bringing this S.O.B to justice?”

A reporter immediately elbowed her camera-man who began to video-tape the distraught man.

“Yes,” she replied. “I understand your pain, and your anger, and rest assured we feel and understand we’re you’re coming from, but cooler heads must prevail, Mr. Nelson.”
Nelson, at that moment, seemed to lose the full head of steam that he brought him this far and his shoulders slumped and heaved a heavy but resigned sigh. “I understand,” Mr. Nelson replied.

“No more.” Any other questions?” She said as calmly as she could under the circumstances, aware that she had for a brief moment allowed a single heckler in the anxious and milling crowd to get in under her skin and rattle her. She took several more deep breaths and waited.

“Chief Mendoza, you said you were narrowing on a suspect, how close are you really to doing so?” another reporter asked.

“A good margin, but you are aware that this is an on-going investigation and that I am not at liberty to disclose the full details, suffice it to say that within the next forty eight hours we’ll have him.”

“Him?” one person asked. “What makes you so certain that it’s a he? I mean, isn’t that being a little gender-biased in this day and age, it could just as easily be a woman, right?”
“At this stage of an on-going investigation that’s as much as I can tell you, but we are reasonably certain that our killer is both a male and Caucasian and in his early thirties,” replied Julia evenly.

The coordinator of the press conference stepped forward at that moment he crossed between her and the snapping of flash bulbs and the crowd of reporters all jostling each other for the choicest vantage points and the juiciest tidbit.

In the back of her mind, Julia Mendoza felt that perhaps the comparison to a bunch of over-eager puppies or like sharks circling around a life-boat because they could smell blood in the matter; she could very well being uncharitable towards them, because she believed in the first amend and the rule of law and order and that they had a duty to get the truth out to the people; but at the moment she was too damn angry and exhausted to do so.

“That’s all the time we have, Thank you all for coming and the moment we have additional information to share, rest assured it will be made public,” she stated and turned on her heels and strode the distanced between the podium and the open front door of the precinct every second conscious of the eye-tracks tracking her every step.

The crowd of reporters, camera-operators milled around in a tightly packed bunch as if by some kind of unspoken accord they were more than a little reluctant to accept at face value their dismissal.

The uniformed officers working crowd-control had to issue more than a few verbal warnings to for them to leave the premises before the last of them got the message, but the underlying current of anger and feeling that they were not getting the whole story from the police was unmistakable.

Several stole significant glances back at her departing back and Julia felt that it was more than just her over-stressed nerves which made her feel that like they tiny sharp needles digging into her flesh.

Once the door slammed shut behind her, she glanced at her aide and remarked. “Well, that went as well as could be expected.”

“Julia,” her aide replied. “Sorry to break protocol, but you did fine. You shouldn’t beat yourself up so much.”

“Pride goeth before a fall and all that, huh?” Thanks, David, for everything and for the reminder that we can’t do everything by ourselves sometimes. Now, I will go to my office and if you would be a dear, and bring a steaming mug of coffee, black, no sugar, I will love you forever.”

“No problem, Ma’am, David replied. “I’ll bring the coffee right away, but I would hold you to that last part.”

“It was an expression,” sighed Julia. “Sometimes, David Archon, that you know me a bit too well.”

She got her feet moving once more nodding in passing acknowledgement to the other officers and sundry as she went by, noticing that Detective Daniels and Menotti the two lead officers in charge of the case in question were not so much watching her but waiting to deliver their report from their most round of interviews and the admittedly rather sketchy details of the anticipated rendezvous requested by the killer, but knowing that she would want a moment to unwind before doing so.

She snorted and thought to herself, ‘Well, bully for you.’ Have I become so damn predictable in my old age?”

She opened the door to her office and then walked in and slumped down in her chair in front of her desk. David came in a moment later with her hot coffee and a thick folder, the reports.

She took both from her aide and thanked him, then told him he was dismissed. Once he had left she took the reports down and swallowed several sips of her coffee before addressing herself to reading the reports. As the old saying went there was a hell of a lot of work to be done and no rest this side of heaven.

***

Once Annie McDermott set her mind to any given task was not the type to allow the proverbial grass to grow under her feet, so with that in mind she set to cleaning out the garage with her sleeves rolled up and a pair of gardening gloves over her hands. It had to be done anyway because winter was coming soon on the heels of a brisk autumn and if she planned on parking her car inside instead out in in the open she really could not afford to put it off for much longer. Also, she now had added incentive. She had to wonder just how much of the accumulated property that her grandson, Jasper Hanson, had stashed here could possibly have a bearing on both the murder investigation and later on whenever he went to trial?

She swept into the garage with her skirts swinging and a determined look on her face, even as she started in on the first layer of boxes and bags, she grimaced and reflected that a daunting task was made slightly less difficult by the meticulous labeling that had gone into the collection in the first place.

In the back of her mind she thought, “Where did we go wrong? Where were the signs that he had become so unhinged? Oh, Jasper, I can’t help but feel somewhat responsible for what’s happened to you and to all those poor unfortunate souls.’

She set aside the coins and the comic books and the price guides, knowing without being able to fully articulate even to herself that this was not what she was looking for; and she was definitely looking for something definitive, something that would bring a kind of closure to events that felt that were spiraling out her control.
Stubborn pushing had seen her through more than a few scrapes in her life, and mostly for the goo; it had also led to more than a few estrangements in her long life; but somehow it had all balanced out in the end.

Annie did not like the feeling of losing control whatsoever. All her life she had prided herself on being the one with all the answers, always holding it together, even when the going was difficult, she had lost her son and his daughter-in law in a car crash and had been responsible for their only surviving child, Jasper until he came of age, but had lost touch with him over the years when he felt that he did not need her anymore. He only came to see her every once in a while, mostly when he needed money, or a place to store his assorted collections or what not.

The visits had become more frequent when he’d been solvent and had managed to hold down a steady job at the factory as an assembly line worker, but had noticeably fallen off when he’d been laid off, and then had come few and far between when the murders begun.

She heaved a heavy sigh and ruffled a hand through her heavy gray hair not so much because it was necessary as because she required an outlet for the churning emotions that roiled within her.

Annie opened one last box labeled ‘books, and began to idly sift through, scanning the titles until she came upon one especially elegantly bound in burgundy letter with gold leaf lettering on the spine.

She took it out and hefted in her hands, realizing with a gasp that this was one that Jasper had especially held dear, one that he had vowed he would never sell no matter how hard money was to come by. She instantly knew, that this, this was what she had been looking for. She set it down for a moment and went over to a shelving unit on the wall to grab some plastic wrapping from a box and then went back over to the book and wrapped it up.

With that done she left the garage and went back inside to her living room in order to better examine the book.

It book was titled “A Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde. He was an author that she had never much cared for, given that she felt that he was a bit over-rated but nevertheless, she began to examine the book, noting that while the book was quite expensive, if she knew anything about the value of rare books, the value of this one would have dropped appreciably, given the sheer amount of notes that Jasper had written in the margins.

She had thought she was beyond shock by now, but she would be mistaken in that regard, at least.

“My God!” Annie pulled her fingers away from a segment about three fourths of the way into the book as if she had been burned, rubbing at her eyelids as if by doing so she could erase the ideas and images evoked by the notes and subject matter that he’d scribbled in red ink on the white pages of the book.

“Well, old woman,” she muttered aloud, “There’s no use sitting around here, maundering, this is evidence and the best thing to do is to bring it to the attention of Detective Daniels and Menotti immediately.”

She wrapped up the book again and put in her over-sized tote bag that she kept by easy-chair, grabbed it and walked briskly to the door and to her car, being the type to suit thought to action and headed directly for the police precinct.

**

Ken Phillips was considered something of the leading expert in Numinastics, the study of coins and coin collecting. He was dressed in green dress shirt and an argyle sweater vest and wore khakis and wire-rim glasses. He had been asked to sign a non-disclosure wavier and the leather satchel that he had brought with him had been inspected and given a go-ahead.

His reaction when asked if he was aware that the serial killer was using silver double-head coins behind clutched in the dead hands of his victims was met with a shudder, a widening of the hazel eyes and a narrow tight-lipped reaction.

“I have been following the course of the investigation in the papers, Detective Daniels and Menotti, I must say that it is a terrible thing, most terrible. But we have work to do and I understand very little time in which to do it. Shall we?”

They led the way to a currently unused room near the rear of the precinct but through the door they could all hear the distinct hustle and bustle of the precinct as the other officers and cops went about their duties, the hum activity making the place feel much akin to a bee hive.

“We are working with a least four to five cardboard boxes of the stuff, “Menotti remarked, however the boys and girls down in Evidence managed to go through it enough to isolate all the silver ones with the two heads.”

“Actually, in point of fact while the actual number of double-headed coins in the United States alone is rather staggering most of these are not actually rare or valuable, but rather the product of an error during minting, those that are mainly for their origin, age, gradient and metallurgical content."

Alexander and Greg exchanged significant glances but did not at first respond.

“So, you’re saying is that our boy is a pack-rat?” Greg remarked.

“We prefer the term hoarder; it has a much more positive connotation than pack-rat because the latter implies a certain sense of untidiness and compulsion.

“Okay, I’ll bite. What else?” Alexander nodded encouragingly, intrigued in spite of himself.

“Also, there a several types of collectors and judging from what I’ve seen here, my guess would be that we are dealing with a hoarder and also a period collector. It does puzzle how could have managed to obtain such a diverse collection, many of these are European in origin. Many of these should actually belong in a museum; however most are just general grade that one could find online or at your local trader or what not.”

“To answer your earlier question, Mr. Phillips we interviewed the suspect nearest living relative she told us that he was given the collection but his late father.”

“Which explains the diversity in the time periods.”

“Have you seen the Xerox copies of the coins we discovered on the bodies? I believe the sergeant provided you with them on the way in?” Greg asked.

“Yes. And while I could give you a much more accurate determination of their value I don’t think that’s what you wanted my expertise for. There is indeed Roman Janus silver coinage.”

“Janus?”

“The Roman god Janus appears on some of the earliest coins of the Roman Republic, appearing about 240 B.C. during the Pyrrhic War. Theaes grave, some of the earliest cast Roman coins, often featured the two-headed visage of Janus. Theaes grave were the first coins minted in Rome before the familiar denarius which were to become the most used and well-known coins of the Roman republic."

“Theaes grave were the successors to the aes crude, irregularly shaped lumps of metal that were used as a medium of monetary exchange. The aes crude was unwieldy and inconvenient because each had to be weighed every time they were exchanged. The introduction of theaes grave introduced a degree of standardization.”

“The earliest taes grave appeared in southeastern Italy around 289 B.C., and weighed about 320 grams (3/4ths of a pound). They were round, made of bronze, and featured the two-headed Janus on one side, and a ship's prow on the reverse. The taes became the basic unit of exchange for the next 75 years or so."

"Interestingly, the denarius of the Roman Republic featured some of the most diverse themes and designs found on coinage in nearly any other period in history. The minting system clearly defined weight and purity of metal, but left the moneymakers a great deal of leeway in choosing specific designs to feature on their coins. Thus, rare silver denarius coins depicting the head of Janus do exist.”

Phillips glanced up from the documents and stack of glinting metal spread out on the table in front of him and pushed up his glasses with his left fore-finger and sighed. “I am coin expert not an expert in psychology, but whoever is doing this must have either a split personality much like our two-headed friend Janus himself; again, terrible thing, just terrible.”

“This last bit I must preface by saying that I myself do not lend much if any credence to the paranormal or the supernatural,” stated Phillips. “However, after a while in any niche hobby there are those who come up with stuff that any rational person would have a difficult time disproving.”

“Wait, did you say paranormal?” Alexander asked.

“Yes, it would seem that over the centuries a legend grew up around the Roman Janus coins, something along the lines that those who possessed the coins and used them to obtain influence and/or power over others at the expense of their lives would live to regret it. Supposedly once that occurred said individual would come to feel an undeniable and inexplicable connection to another person regardless if they had ever had contact with that person ever before.

In the back of his mind, Alexander Daniels thought over the sensation of heat he had felt holding the silver coin found in the hand of the late T.J Gomez several days earlier and the sense of a connection that he had been unable or perhaps unwilling to lend any credence to.

He had also been so busy and focused that he had believed it worth mentioning to anyone, not his partner, not his boss; and not even his wife. But now that Phillips had mentioned, even in passing a possible paranormal connection, well the locks that had held shut the possibility of a supernatural connection were turning once more.

Phillips voice, in the next moment, broke him out of his meandering thoughts. “You must understand that I consider myself a rational man, and do not let any credence to such theories.”

“Thank you for your help, Mr. Phillips.”

“You’re welcome, Detective Daniels. “I do hope that it will lead to the capture and arrest of the murderer.”

"So do we, Mr. Phillips, so do we,” Menotti replied.

“You‘re free to go, and we appreciate your help and expertise with the matter at hand,” Daniels replied.

“You’re quite welcome,” the older man replied as he began to collect his satchel and equipment and methodically place them back inside.

At that moment David Archon came into the interrogation room that they were using for Mr. Phillips to examine the coins and cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s someone here to see you and she insist that it’s most urgent,” he said.

“Who is it?” Menotti asked.

“Mrs. McDermott and I can speak for myself quite well, thank you, young man.”

“Annie, nice to see you again,” Greg greeted her as she tapped Archon on the shoulder and smiled at him. “its okay, David, we’ll vouch for Mrs. McDermott.”

“If you say so, Sir,” Archon replied dubiously and then added. “I’d best get back to work, frankly I’m actually surprised that the press conference went off better than expected but we still have a lot of behind-the-scenes work to do, so if you’ll excuse me.” With that he turned and departed the room.

“Nice, kid, but sometimes I think he tries too hard,” Greg remarked.

“Better than not at all,” Annie McDermott added. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything but I found something among Jasper’s things that I thought would be relevant to your investigation.”

“What have you got there?” Greg asked.

“It’s a book, and well-read and dog-eared copy at that, but it would seem that coins and comic books were not the only things my grandson collected.”

“Please, fill us in,” Alexander encouraged with a nod of his head.

“Have you ever heard of Oscar Wilde, or the novel, A Picture of Dorian Gray?”

“English chap wasn’t he?” Alexander replied.

“One of the recurring themes in that book aside from its dubious moral properties was the idea of a doppelganger, or literally double-goer if you loosely translate from the German.” Annie paused and then took the crucifix that she wore at her throat and crossed herself before she added: “Very frightening and extremely intriguing, is the legend of doppelgangers, which prey on their human counterpart.”

“I do hold much credence when it comes to urban legends, but what you’re saying makes a certain kind of sense given what we’ve learned so far about his mental state,” Alexander added.

Annie nodded. “Although there is no evidence or solid proof, there are many theories. One theory is that everybody has a body double. Of each, one is good and one is exceptionally evil. Assuming you are the good one, the other one is probably evil, and can be just an apparition trapped in another time or dimension.”

“I understand, I think,” Greg added.

“Yes, “ Annie said and with a small sigh and with a catch in her throat she pulled out a leather-bound copy of the book in question with several purple ribbons that had been slotted into the parts where the last reader had left off. With a smooth motion but unhurried motion

Annie placed the book onto the surface of the now cleared off table in the center of the room and flipped the book open to one of the pages. Inside the margins of the text itself had been written a series of notes, as if the person who had owned the book were using it as a supplement or as some kind of study guide.

Alexander was no expert in the study of handwriting, they had experts within the department for that sort of thing and he made a mental note to have them do so at the earliest opportunity, but sitting down and studying the notes in further detail, he discovered that the notes were not done all in the same hand or with the same type of writing material.

About a dozen pages had been so marked and indicated, half were in blue ball-point pen with a felt tip, the letters having started out regular and evenly spaced and clearly legible, but as the pages went on it was as if whoever had written them either was drunk or in some other way incapacitated, for the blue letters began to run off of the page in a barely legible scrawl.

What he could read was, in a word, disturbing. In the last half dozen of pages nearing the end of the book the notes were no longer illegible in fact, they had been written in red ink and the message in them were quite revealing. “You were correct to bring this to our attention, Mrs. McDermott.”

“I’m happy to help, but I still can’t rest entirely easily until Jasper is brought to justice, but when you do bring him in,” Annie began but then trailed off in order to wipe the tears that had begun to streak down her face. “I can’t believe that despite the hardships he’s suffered in
his life and God knows he’s had them that he’d turn out this way; it’s a terrible thing.”

Alexander reached out a comforting hand and placed it on the old woman’s shoulder. “I understand, and I know how difficult this has been for you.”

She sniffed and took a few moments to take several ragged but deep breaths, which seemed to complete the calming procedure but she soon regained the considerable poise and confidence that she had exhibited upon their initial meeting; a poise that both he and Greg admired.

Annie said. “I’ve gone to the liberty of doing research into the topic and I’ve discovered that this is not a new concept, it’s been used before in both literature and pyscho analysis.”

“What did you learn?” Greg asked.

“That there have been several famous cases of someone encountering such a ghostly manifestation, from Goethe to Abraham Lincoln, although in the latter’s case it could be said that it was merely a premonition that he would not live to see his second term in office.”

“Hmm, has anyone done any studies into what the underlying causes of such manifestations are?” Greg asked. “I didn’t know that old Abe was prone to believing in the supernatural, or signs and omens.”

“Greg, you never really have been much of a student of history,” remarked Alexander wryly.

“And you have?” Greg retorted.

“As much as possible, yes,” his partner replied.

Annie waited and then said. “To answer your earlier question, Detective Menotti. Yes, but they’ve been inconclusive. According to Shahar Arzy and colleagues of the University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland the left temporoparietal junction of the brain evokes the sensation of self image—body location, position, posture etc. When the left temporoparietal junction is disturbed, the sensation of self-attribution is broken and may be replaced by the sensation of a foreign presence or copy of oneself displaced nearby. This copy mirrors the real person's body posture, location and position.

He went on to add “Arzy and his colleagues suggest that the phenomenon they created is seen in certain mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, particularly when accompanied by paranoia, delusions of persecution and of alien control. Nevertheless, the effects reported are highly reminiscent of the doppelgänger phenomenon. I just thought you should know.”

“Your help has been invaluable, Annie,” Alexander replied.

“When, not if, Jasper is brought to trail, this will all come out, will it not?” she asked.

“It will, Ma’m,” Greg replied.

“Good, as difficult as this is for me to either forgive or forget, I will be there if you need me to testify,” Annie remarked.

“Let it be said, Annie, you really are one tough broad,” Greg offered with a big grin plastered on his face.


“I told you I was, did I not?” she replied and then offered a grin of her own in return.

“Agreed, but back to matters at hand,” Alexander remarked, “Greg, take a look at this.”

“You’re saying that Hanson was writing his manifesto in the margins of this book?” Greg asked, rather dubiously but not entirely astonished by this revelation, in his experience more than a few serial killers and megalomaniac mad man took it upon themselves to write manifestos or some of that nature.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Alexander Daniels replied. “And it goes far towards confirming our original supposition that we’re dealing with a serial killer with a split personality, one apparently calm and rational and the secondary personality is cold and sadistic.”

“What makes you say that?” Greg asked.

“Because the notes written in red are instructions, detailed ones at that at how to go about not only selecting his victims but covering up the crime and getting away with it.” Alexander shook his head and slammed his fist onto the surface of the table with a resounding thud that sounded much louder than it should in the small room and then looked up into the startled gazes of the other people, muttering a quite apology. “I guess, I’m just frustrated, but have a look for yourself.”

“Let me see that,” Greg remarked.

Alexander nodded and handed over the book.

Greg took it from his partner and thumbed through the pages , his eyes widening at the more explicit and vehement instructions that Hanson had written to himself; and almost gagging on the more lurid details of what had happened to the various victims, he restrained himself and put it back on the table.

“My god!” he exclaimed. “What in hell’s name, happened to this guy?”

“I don’t know, but I suspect that we’ll find out very soon,” Alexander replied.
**
Jasper Hanson prepping in his RV in a trailer park for the face-off with the cops and his expected rendezvous with Detective Alexander Daniels

With the same deliberation he had displayed on the assembly line Hanson rummaged through his closet for a pair of sweat pants and a hooded sweat shirt with deep pockets. After taking off the khaki slacks and yellow sport shirt that he had been wearing for almost two days straight he changed into the new outfit and crossed over to the trunk in which he kept his collection of coins.

For a brief moment, a moment in which he could have had plenty of time to indulge in second-thoughts and doubts about the plan he put into motion Jasper Hanson was tempted to run his fingers through the glittering pile of silver metal disks, but forced the temptation down. ‘No’ he thought. ‘I am set on my course and I will not allow myself to be distracted or dissuaded from it.’

He shoved the pile to one side and dug down into the bottom of the trunk and came up with a short-handled knife which he quickly stuffed into one of the deep pockets of his sweat pants. He did not look at it or hold it up to the dim lighting of his bed room.

Jasper took a moment to study his appearance in the full-length mirror that hung on the wall near the door and it may have been a trick of the light or his own over-worked imagination, but he could have sworn that the reflection wore a cold and calculating smirk on its face.

He winced and realized with the force of a sucker punch to the gut that the only other time he could recall seeing that expression was when he’d had the volume of an collector’s edition of a “A Picture of Dorian Gray, a volume he’d inherited from his father upon the latter’s death.

A nicely bound edition in burgundy leather with gold gilt letters on the spine and the cover.
He’d treasured that volume in some ways more than his cherished collection of rare and collectible coins, reading it over but careful not to damage its end papers or pages, but when he’d lost his job and his main source of income and had sold off or pawned every other article of value that he could; at the very last he’d stashed it at his grandmother’s garage, unable to completely part with it.

Jasper had made numerous notes in the margins, but in this last moment, he could not recall if they had been him or the double in the mirror that came to visit, cajole and alternately threaten him, and he’d could not control his thoughts or behaviors whenever the other took over, The intervals were had come quite frequently when he’d been out and committing murders. When it was over, he collapsed onto the sofa in his trailer and sobbed himself to sleep, but then the cycle would start all over again.

Something had to be done, and, something had to give, and he felt that with the act of getting rid of the book and denying the urgings of the double in the mirror, he would do just that.

He heaved a sigh and squared his shoulder and felt that he was committed to this course of action no matter what happened.

Instead he turned around and went out through the door and into the narrow corridor and from there to the door which led out and into the RV parking lot.

It was now a little after seven and if we wanted to make the rendezvous with Detective Daniels on time he had to leave now because it was good hike from the RV parking lot to the park located underneath the commuter overhead railway.

**
**

“I want to see Detective Daniels,” stated Jasper Hanson.

Alexander stepped forward from the bunched up formation of uniformed officers, ignoring his partner’s frantic ‘no’ signals. Even as he stepped out into the open his hand going instinctively to the side-arm that he wore at his hip he was peripherally aware that Menotti and Chief Mendoza having a heated argument in hushed under-tones, but he dismissed that from his mind and concentrated on the man who stood about ten feet from him.

Daniels was aware that he had to play the situation as cool as he possibly could, conscious of all eyes on him and the unseen spotters up on the roof tops of the nearby buildings, with orders to open fire upon the first sign of a hostile move by Hanson.

To say that the tension in the air could cut have slice through bread like a knife was an understatement. He realized that under no circumstances could he afford to make a miscalculation for the slightest slip-up could mean turning the very first face-to-face meeting with Hanson into a blood-bath and who would profit by that? The answer, was a resounding, no one.

Maybe it’s what a socio-path like Hanson wanted but Alexander Daniels would be dammed before he allowed that to happen.

“You wanted to see me, so here I am.”

Hanson appeared nervous, spasmodically clenching and unclenching his hands but his face was a mask, “I knew you would come, the coins would lead you here eventually. You know, Alexander, I had this big speech planned out. I’ve always prided myself on my meticulous planning and attention to detail. I think it’s what made such a good man on the assembly line, back when the manufacturing industry was still going strong in this town.”

“Yeah, I get where you’re coming from, and believe me, as much as I hate to admit this, you certainly gave us all a run for our money. Is that what you wanted to see me about, to rub my face in it your meticulous planning?”

“No, no, not at all. Believe me; I regret everything I’ve done, to all of those people and their families. I’ve had time to repent the error of my ways,” Hanson cried desperately.

“Why the sudden change of heart?” Daniels asked, thinking as he did so that he was damned tired of hearing about those blasted coins, but every instinct that he had and which had made him so good at his job was screaming at him that the man, despite his sordid past and horrific crimes that he had perpetrated on his fellow human beings appeared to be sincere.

Just at the moment the sound of the commuter train going by sounded as loud as someone shouting very loudly in a very empty room. The interruption came very near to sparking off exactly what they were trying to prevent as everyone startled and it took a while to realize that nothing of the sort was in the offing.

“Everyone, calm down!” Chief Mendoza shouted to be heard over the clamor. “That’s an order.”

Hanson shook his head and shuffled his feet on the ground of the park, looking up for a moment and then around as if he were looking for an escape that had simply eluded him entirely.

“Because I’m not that kind of person any more, and like I stated in the notes I wrote to you, we’re linked not by anything obvious or as normal as commonalities in our lives, or professions, but something more, something undefinable and the double-headed coins were the key.”

From behind were he stood he heard rather than saw Chief Mendoza advise that he keep the man talking, she too was feeling the pressure, not just because of the situation and knowing that at one wrong move or one word from her or Detective Daniels the snipers or the cops would shoot the man and they would lose the opportunity to take him in alive.
She was also well aware of how many families and friends of this serial murder’s victims wanted to see him punished to the full extent of the law.

A stirring and a rustling and the sound of booted feet scrapping on the loose ground cover of the small park took a few minutes as everyone resumed their positions.

“So, what do you want then, Hanson? To turn yourself in? To make a deal?” Daniels asked.

“Don’t you get it? It all so mathematically precise,” Hanson heaved a sigh and then tilted his head to one side as if thinking something through before, “I guess if I couldn’t see it coming then how could I have expected you to have done so?”

“See what?”

“The symmetry of our meeting that it was inevitable, that it was even fated to come to pass…” Hanson trailed off. “You know,” he mused. “It’s happened before, have you ever read the

“Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. If you haven’t the key is the theme of the doppelganger or translated from the German, “double-goer.”
“Actually, I’ve heard of it, although I haven’t actually read the entire novel but it did mention something about doppelgangers, but please, feel free to enlighten me,” Alexander replied.

Hanson appeared to be slightly startled at that, but continued in a much calmer and reasonable voice than the one he had used upon their first encounter.

“In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger (German "double walker") (pronounced [ˈdɔpəlˌɡɛŋɐ] is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune. In modern vernacular, the word has come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person.”

“Go on,” Alexander prompted, unexpectedly intrigued in spite of both feeling the attendant pressures of time and the situation and the eyes of all upon him.

“The word also is used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. Doppelgängers often are perceived as a sinister form of bilocation and are regarded by some to be harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death.”

“Whose death?” Alexander asked, despite the situation and the pressure he was intrigued by the subject and the fact the other man could discuss it in such a dispassionate and scholarly tone of voice.

“That last,” Hanson replied with a noticeable hitch in his voice; the dispassionate tone abruptly gone as suddenly as it had appeared, “my own. I realize that you think that this is all such superstitious nonsense, but I assure you it’s true, and please, I beg, do not dismiss it so lightly!”

“Great, just great,” Detective Greg Menotti muttered under his breath to no one in particular,” If this guy really is trying to make a case for himself of being ‘criminally insane, he’s really going for with full gusto.”

“Under any other circumstances I’d be inclined to agree with you on that count, Menotti,” Chief Mendoza remarked, “but I’d like to reserve judgment on that until after we have this bastard in custody.”

“Sure, Ma’am,” Menotti replied and turned back to regard the tableau of the two men who stood staring each other down.

Even as they discussed the optimum outcome of the situation and attempted to follow the strange twists and turns of the dialogue between the two men, they were both forced to agreed that that this time there might be no ideal outcome and if that were the case, it had to end only one way; with Hanson’s death.

She did not want that decision to be on Detective Daniel’s conscience, but he was a good man and a good cop, and if that was what had to happen than she’d help him deal with the consequences. She may have had a reputation for being a hard-core chief and brooking no nonsense from her subordinates, but she knew how to take care of her own and Daniels would be no exception.

“Alexander,” Hanson said at one point after he dropped the explanatory tone with which he had used to explain about doppelgangers and his both his voice and posture had taken on a cast that could only be described as weary resignation. “May I call you Alexander?”

Daniels was a bit ambivalent about what exactly to make of the man. To all appearances, the man did not look like much: Tall, about 6’2, but lanky and swiney rather than muscular, but he looked exhausted.

Hanson’s blue eyes had the tell-tale rings around the sockets that showed mute evidence of either a history of drinking, or not enough sleep, or more than likely both.
His height was less apparent when he slouched, which he was doing right now.

Alexander Daniels had tracked down, caught and brought in any number of serial killers in his time, all of varying degrees of depravity and violence, but as he as his partner had come too often of late to do, they’d ascribed the label of a Jekyll and Hyde personality to Hanson, and just meeting him and listening him to speak, that theory was borne out more and more.

He also wondered if there was something to what he and Menotti had dismissed as nothing more than superstitious mumbo-jumbo, and perhaps now, when it was much too late to do anything about it; if they had been too hasty to do so.

“Hanson, for what’s its worth, the best thing you can do for yourself right now is turning yourself in. If you do, I personally guarantee that no present here will harm you.”

Jasper Hanson nodded his head and appeared to take that offer at face value. He took a moment to study the man that he’d come to respect even at a distance although they had never met face to face prior to this moment.

Alexander Daniels was dark-haired, square-shouldered, tall and muscular; confident and in control; and he could not help that although they did not resemble each other physically; he’d maintained all along that there was something undeniable and invisible, much like an electro-magnetic force that had drawn them together. “I told you that it this had to happen, sooner or later.”

“I want to believe you, Mr. Hanson,” Alexander replied.

“To be honest with you, Detective Daniels,” he paused and seemed to have to take a moment to collect his thoughts and his breath. His brow beaded with sweat the temperature in the evening air had dropped several degrees by this time and was presently hovering about fifty five degrees.

“I’ve wanted to meet you in person for the longest time, when I started killing people,” Hanson said at last.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Because, Oh I don’t know. I could say that it wasn’t me that it was my alter-ego, and I knew from reading the accounts of your on-going investigation, Alexander… May I call you Alexander, that you’ve given me, the moniker of the New Jersey Jekyll and Hyde killer,” Hanson trailed off and his long-narrow chinned face was a picture in indecision.

“But it was me, no matter what, I am sorry for everything I’ve done. I am ready to do, but I would like to choose the manner of my own death. Does that sound completely insane to you? Because I don’t feel that I am insane,” Hanson replied.

“You can’t ask me to kill you!” Alexander exclaimed.

“It’s inevitable, it is fate,” Jasper Hanson intoned and then with a surprising lunge forward he flung himself at Detective Alexander Daniels and grasped at his left arm and grasped at the. 38 caliber gun nestled in its holster and yanked it out.

Alexander reacted with the quickness and reflexes he gained in his years as a cop and shoved the man off balance even as the move toppled them both to the ground. He had several inches and at least fifteen pounds of muscle on the shorter and skinnier man but the man fought for possession of the gun like a man with very little left to lose.

He shouted to the watchers that he did not want or need any help or interference, because somehow without his or anyone else realizing how it had happened, it become personal; very personal. It was if everything and everyone else gathered in and around the small park had simply ceased to exist for him and there was just this singular moment and the struggle for the gun.

In the stillness of that moment he dimly felt the bite of a sharp blade bit into his wrist but forced himself to ignore the pain and continue to subdue Hanson.

For his part, Jasper Hanson never quite knew what had energy possessed him, in that moment. When he had his lucid moments the guilt and the fear that took him over after every kill was so much that he simply could not eat or sleep.
Whenever he had been in the process of planning a murder, targeting his victim and following through on it, he had felt strong, confident, unstoppable, but those moments had becoming few and far between of late.
And whenever he stood in his bathroom, shaving the results of several days’ growth of chin whiskers from off of his face; that was he could have sworn that the reflection in the mirror seemed to regard him with barely hidden malevolence and disgust at his weakness and fading resolve. It was if Jasper were staring at a stranger’s face.
He was frightened, very frightened and sometimes believed that he was losing what little grip on sanity that he still retained.
He had pretended to dismiss the stranger’s insistence that he only existed because the other did. Hanson had determined in the moment when he simply could not stand this eerie duality much longer, and had resolved to finally bring an end to it.

And with that same precision he had shown on the line when he’d had a steady job of which he could point to and say that he was proud of, he gone about planning a way to not only rid himself of the other presence and make amends for what he had done, had gone about arranging this meeting.

Although, even as he fought, he realized that he was not making it any easier, he wanted, no, he needed that gun, because a bullet shot from Detective Daniels’ weapon would mean that everything had finally come full circle and at last, at long last, his pain would be over.

For his part, Alexander had managed to break the strangle-hold grip the other man had on the gun’s smooth metallic barrel and thrust the man away from him.

He wanted to make one last plea for the man to see sense. Even after everything that had happened and everything that was happening here and now he did not want to have to kill him.

Just because the other was asking for suicide by cop did not mean that he had to give it to him, or that it would be any better than some of the other types of fate that would await him, given the alternative.

“End it”! Please, end it!” Hanson whispered looking up at Daniels with an imploringly look in his watery blue eyes.

Alexander made an unspoken plea of his own to his own God, and silently, in the privacy of his own mind, “I trust and hope that I am making the right decision here.”

Another instant and the loud report of a bullet round being fired echoed and reechoed in the small park and when it was over Jasper Hanson’s lifeless body lay at Detective Alexander Daniels’ feet.

There was a sudden hushed silence that held for as long as it took Alexander to count the beat of his own heart and suck in deep breaths of the chill autumn air and then put his gun back into his holster.

After that, it was all over except the sudden rush of people crowding around him, shoving him to one side and taking the body into custody.
***

Later that evening Alexander sat slumped in the chair in front of his desk staring at the mound of paperwork that had accumulated on his desk, most of it having to do with the Hanson investigation, but about thirty percent of dealing with unrelated cases as well; without really seeing it.

If he were being honest with himself he was extremely relieved that the case had finally come to an end, although at the end he could have hoped for a better outcome.

He knew that even had the murderer been taken into custody alive and the case gone to trial, with that many murder counts on his record added to the fact that he had confessed to committing those atrocious acts he would have set to the chair. The state of New Jersey had capital punishment on the record books and even had his defense lawyer argued for clemency there were not that many judges or juries in the world who might find that argument a compelling one.

So, even though he acknowledged that particular fact in the silence of his own mind and that both his partner and his superiors had convinced him that there had been nothing else he could have done under the circumstances, why was it that he still felt so damn ambivalent about it, even now, almost four days later?

“There’s one thing that I don’t understand,” Greg began and don’t give ‘the look...

“What look?”

“The one that tells me that you think that I’m off my rocker and have now hit upon a half-baked idea that has nothing to do with reality. Why do you think we make such a good team?

“Because we work well together: It’s a case of an even balance of hard-edged realism and thinking outside of the proverbial box optimism?”

“Yeah, something like that. What I don’t get, is all of that stuff he kept spouting about the two of you being connected in some way. Not to mention the fact that the perp seemed to have adopted your style, the way you walk, talk and even dress. Now that’s just creepy.”

Alexander shrugged his shoulders. “I am afraid that you’ll get no argument from me on the creepiness factor. But we’ll never really know for certain because as we all know the autopsy and forensics can only tell us so much.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, so much. You can’t blame yourself for what happened. You had to shoot him. I think, at the end, that he was even asking for it.”

“Suicide by cop, huh?” Greg added with a shake of his head, as he wondered how everything went south so rapidly and if there might have been anything else that they could have done to prevent it from happening. He also thought, ‘You read about it happening all the time in the papers and you see it on the news, but it’s never pretty and it never gets any easier.’

Aloud Greg said, “Yeah, something like that. I know that I’ve always had the reputation of being something of the less practical sort of the two of us…”he trailed off. But, I gotta admit, that coin-stuff and this fixation…why not call what it was, obsession with weird coins and Two-Face, now that was creepy.”

“You called it.” Alexander wanted to let Greg talk it out, as much for what he had to say as because of the two of them Greg was much more vocal and for the most part, he agreed with every word, even if he could not articulate the way he was feeling right now in his own words.

When Greg had finally wound down and was seated in his desk chair instead of straddling the back of it, Alexander remarked: “The fact of the matter, towards the end, you could see it in his eyes. I think he wanted to die.”

“If he had wanted to die there are far more alternatives than a bloody and messy death in a shoot-out.”

Even as he clutched the back of his chair fronting onto his desk at the police precinct Alexander had to admit that although he felt a twinge of guilty about having to shoot a man in order to protect the lives of his partner and several other uniformed cops, he could almost feel sorry for the poor man who had turned from a mild-mannered blue-collar man into a bloody-minded serial killer.

And in fact,looking back with the luxury afforded by hind-sight, which gives one perfect clarity of vision when it is far, far too late to do anything about it; he had to admit that Greg had been correct, the foggy slightly off-center bluer eyes Jasper’s had held a look of resignation.

The anger that had coursed through the main like a river in high flood seemed as much to come off of him in waves, but from an unseen and unidentified source.
And underneath the anger and the invective laid on in between was a deep well of grief, almost as if the man had given up the will to live. Although, it would come as little solace to the family and friends of the victims he had murdered.

For his own part, he found that he was merely relieved that it was finally over. Still the sense that they had had that odd connection had not completely gone away.

Right up to the very end when Hanson had insisted that they connection between had been so strong, so undeniable that he had been forced to seek out Detective Daniels despite his better judgment and force his presence on the other man; he tossed it off as the rambling of mad-man.

Added to the fact was the distraught man’s assertion that it this undeniable compulsion had originated with the double-headed Roman coins, and that they were ‘speaking to him, not in words so much as images in his head.

Of course, he had also said that until very recently he too had thought it nothing more than his own depression over his current situation, his own weary resignation and his belief that everything that had happened to him was the world out to get him.

Hanson had maintained till the very last that they each had had a powerful connection and one that it could not be explained away by conventional means; that it had been supernatural in origin and that the coins were the source.

He had not believed then and he certainly belief it now, but, since Jasper Hanson had seemingly chosen the manner in which he wished to depart from this world, Alexander figured that they would never for certain, one way or the other.

“It’s been a pretty long week, Alex, why don’t you go on home,” Greg offered. “I’ll finish up here.”

“Thanks, Greg,” Alexander replied. “I owe you one.”

“You owe more than one, but then we stopped counting a long time ago.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean! Catch you on the flip side!”

***
Conclusion

It was late and he figured that by now his family had long since retired for the evening so as he unlocked the front door and slipped inside he tried to do so as quietly as he possibly could and kicked off his boots and hung his jacket on the coat rack. Then slipped into the living room and over to a high shelf on the wall where he kept his gun and shoulder holster and made certain that that safety was on.

Satisfied on that count he heard a shuffling and rustling from across the way.

“Alex, is that you?” she sleepily asked, pattering over on her soft cotton purple slippers and clad in her pajamas from the bedroom and into the living room.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he replied, removing his coat and carefully hanging it up on the coat rack located next to the front door.

“I’ve missed you so much, so have the kids,” Anna said even as she tightly embraced him, “I’ve been so worried.

“Truth to tell, while I don’t want you to worry about me, I’m actually kinda of glad that I have someone unrelated to the cases that I work to worry about me and my well-being,” he said.

“Do you realize that that actually makes sense in rather roundabout way,” Anna remarked and then stood on her tip-toes to give him a long lingering kiss on the lips. “You look tired, why don’t you come to bed?”

“Peter and Paul are they all right?” he asked.

“The kids are fine,” Anna replied. “You can see them in the morning; in the meantime you need to get some sleep.”

“Good, you don’t know what a relief to have some kind of closure on this case because it’s been an ordeal,” he replied.

She tugged on his arm and this time he went along and then crossed over from the main entry hall to the stairs that led to the second floor of their house and into the master bedroom.

He gave her another long, lingering kiss and said, “You lay down, I’ll just be a minute and then I’ll be right back.”

She nodded and let go her grip on his arm and lay down on the queen-sized bed.

He kicked off his shoes and sat down on the edge of the bed in order to remove his socks and then his slacks and reached up to slough off his shirt and although he was exhausted; he still got up and picked up the discarded garments and placed them in the hamper.

It was not because it had become a matter of habit, but neither he nor Anna felt it was right to leave piles of dirty laundry all over the place. From there, he picked up his pajamas from the ottoman where Anna usually left them out for him and put them on.

And then, he went into the bathroom and splashed water on his face and brushed his teeth. After finishing that task he took a long glance into the mirror and studied his reflection, he did look haggard and their dark circles underneath his eyes. “I’m just glad that it’s all over,” he remarked to his reflection. Unsurprisingly his reflection did not answer back.

Coming out of the bathroom, Alexander lay down beside Anna on their bed, and without saying anything she held onto him as tightly as she possibly could.

She had not realized until at this moment, just how much she had worried over his safety and how much she had missed his presence, even the scent of aftershave and sweat and leather.

Anna took a moment to drink in the scent and realized that she loved him more than ever and that they needed each other more than ever. For his part, Alexander held onto her and whispered

“I love you, you know that?”

“Of course, I do,” she replied. “I love you, too.”

Alexander had believed that as exhausted and mentally weary as he felt, that he would fall asleep the moment that his head hit the pillow. In instead he felt as taut as a drawn bow, trying to slough off the tension, anger and the stress of the past week like water off a proverbial duck’s back; but it was proving to be much more difficult than he had anticipated.

Anna reached for him and turned over on her side of the bed to hold him, being there that the physical contact was what he needed just now, until the tightly tension she could sense coming off in invisible waves finally dissipated.

“I love you,” she whispered,” as she gently and quickly kissed his lips, his cheeks, and brow, drinking in the sight of the man that she had fallen in love with and still did, even after all these years.

“I love, you, too,” whispered Alexander in return, at last.

She studied his face, his eyes, the way the skin over the bridge of his nose crinkled whenever he was in deep thought or happy or angry or any combination of the above and then lightly punched him and then remarked. “I heard a little bit of what happened over at Parapet Park, I realize that it could not have been easy for you, but please; don’t ever scare me like that again.”

“It wasn’t easy,” he replied. “God knows! It all happened so fast, and in the end I don’t really know how it all spiraled out of control so fast. Frankly, I’m just glad it’s all over.

“So am I,” replied Anna.

“As far as that last request goes,” he said, “I promise I’ll be more careful moving forward.

“Now, that’s a promise that I’m going hold you to,” she replied and pulled him closer into her arms.

For a long while they lay entwined together like that, both giving and receiving each other’s love, security and strength until they fell asleep.