= The Criminal in the Mirror
  by Kris Neri


The bus blew a diesel gust in my face. While the exhaust felt warm on my skin, I still had time to call out to the driver. To tell him I'd changed my mind. Again. My ticket went all the way to Seattle. I could say I'd made a mistake by getting off now, in a small town along the California-Oregon border. No lie--I had. But by the time the exhaust had drifted away in the cool morning air, I was still standing on the curb and the bus was nowhere in sight.

What was I doing there?

I couldn't afford to indulge in sightseeing, I was on the run. This town was still too close to San Francisco for my comfort. There was no reason to think the police would look for me here, but I had no way of knowing how far their tentacles might reach. One thing was certain. They were not going to believe me when I said I didn't do anything.

Especially not with Mosey's gun in my purse. Why should they be any different from anyone else?

Getting off here was nothing short of insanity. I was in real trouble this time. I desperately needed to get someplace that felt safe, or at least as safe as any place ever felt. I had certainly had no intention of leaving the bus until the last stop.

But when the driver shouted, "Thunder Bay, California" it was like I was drawn by a magnet. I never remembered hearing its name before. Never even saw its dot on a map. Why then did it feel as familiar as my own name? If not more.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a good feeling that came over me. No warm fuzzies here. Once I heard the name of this town, blood began to throb so loudly in my ears, I couldn't hear what the driver said as I left. My breath came so quickly, I thought I would have to breathe in a bag to keep from passing out.

The same refrain kept echoing in my mind, in the nastiest of tones. "Thunder Bay," it said, "home sweet home."

Crazier still. Home was a long way from here. It was out in the desert east of San Diego, a bump in the road called Squatters' Creek where the maniacally religious went to escape from influences more decent than their own. I'd run from it as soon as I could, but never this far north.

"Home sweet home, home sweet home." Each repetition sent a wave of nausea crashing against the walls of my gut.

One thing was consistent, though.

Home, wherever it was, was a lousy place to be.

* * *

Tia Richardson beamed with approval at her office. She'd achieved just the right balance between businesslike and cozy. Wasn't hard, either. All the elements were already there; her predecessor just hadn't known how to put them together. But Tia was a master at faultless execution.

She'd been the acting mayor of Thunder Bay for just over five months now. The last person to occupy the office had kindly dropped dead of a heart attack after she announced her intention to run against him. Smart man, he hadn't stood a chance.  Her appointment to serve the remaining six months of his term came off without a hitch. It should have; she had managed the campaigns of the most influential members on the town council. They owed her.

People had said she'd been crazy to set up her public relations firm in Thunder Bay after she finished college. No one thought it big enough to hold her. But Tia saw it differently. The people who witnessed her many childhood successes would simply expect more of the same. Tia couldn't imagine a better springboard for her move into public life.

She hadn't expected the prior office holder to die; that had been an unexpected bonus. But she had intended to blow him away in the election. Now she would face off against someone else before the voters in just two weeks, but she still wasn't worried. She'd done a spectacular job in office. Cleaned up her predecessor's little messes, without even raising a sweat. That she was overqualified was a given, but she had to start somewhere. The only negative in some people's minds was her age she was just twenty-seven years old.

But she'd handled that, too. She'd engineered a look for herself that achieved a balance between youthful drive and mature stability, qualities her research said voters looked for in a candidate. Wasn't even a challenge.

She flipped open a compact and dusted away a little shine from her nose. According to her calendar, she was scheduled to meander around town for a little seemingly-unplanned pressing of the flesh. Though she expected to win the election, Tia was never careless. Victories were won and lost in the details.

With an impersonal scrutiny devoid of pride, Tia examined the face which would greet the voters. Naturally beautiful, but in a wholesome way. Glamour didn't sell well here. Her only indulgence was the hair. She had never liked her natural light brown. Made her look too much...well, like Norma. The golden blonde she'd lightened it to made a dramatic difference. People almost never remarked on the resemblance now.

Besides, the stylish touch would serve her well in the years ahead. The mayoralty race of Thunder Bay was just a stepping stone. In five years, she'd be in Congress; ten, the Senate. And from there--who could say?

Tia smiled confidently into the mirror. The string of expected successes stretched out before her like...like--a sentence.

She snapped the compact shut to hide how pale she suddenly looked. Where had that word come from? It wasn't that way at all.

Tia steadied herself, smoothing away the unaccustomed doubt.

Maybe it had just been too easy.

* * *

It felt like an old Twilight Zone episode. I had never been there, yet I knew this place. Not all of it, but I even knew when something was new, not like it was before. I almost stopped a woman once to ask whether there used to be a bakery where the video store was now. I only held back because I didn't want to call any attention to myself.

Any more attention, that is. I had found the main street as if my feet were programmed for it, but that didn't mean I belonged there. I knew I stood out from the other people in the shopping district of this ritzy little town. When I caught my reflection in glass of a store front, I just about died. You get so used to yourself, you hardly notice. But I felt ashamed now that I had let myself come to this.

Stringy mouse-brown hair brushed my hunched shoulders. My skin was made pale with make-up, and I wore no lipstick, but my eyes were heavily blackened, the way Mosey always liked. My tight, shabby dress made me look like one of the sluts he'd favored. What a joke. I didn't care if I never saw another man.

My face was lined by years I hadn't lived yet. I didn't look young anymore, not like a woman in her twenties should. But my eyes were the worst. They were like the ones a hunter must see in his sights before blowing a fawn away.

Well, what did I expect? The people here all looked so sure of themselves. Someone like me could only dream about a place like this.

That's it! I gasped. I knew this place from the dreams. This was where Jane lived.

The mere thought of the dreams made my head ache the way they always did. And I had to remind myself not to flinch because there was no one to beat me here.

But this was crazy. Jane wasn't a real person, she was just someone I dreamed about sometimes. I knew that. I hadn't just accepted their word for it. When I made it to Long Beach and took up with Tony, I held back some money, even though he would have killed me if he knew. When I had enough, I went to some chi-chi lawyer and made him search the records.

Jane Richardson didn't exist. There was no record that she ever had. There was only Faith Parker. That was my name. If I doubted it, I had only to look at the birth certificate in my purse. No fingerprints or anything, but it had an official seal. You can't fake stuff like that.

Jane was just a figment of my imagination, a product of the dreams.  How many more beatings would it take for me to grasp that?

There was just one problem. If Jane wasn't real, how could I explain the very real place where she had lived?

* * *

Tia took the long way out of the City Hall, pausing occasionally to chat with people on her staff, boost morale. They were also voters, after all.

For the most part, her benevolent smiles were genuine. There was only one she had to force. The one she directed at Daniel Clarke, her deputy mayor.

Daniel had come to her office yesterday to plead the case of someone on his staff. The woman had taken a leave of absence to tend to her dying sister. Tia had overridden Daniel's request that the woman's job be kept open for her and had fired her on the spot.

"There's something missing in Tia," she'd heard him say sadly later. "She just doesn't seem to feel anything sometimes."

She felt something, all right. She felt an unreasonable, causeless anger for a woman she scarcely knew. She longed to strike out at this woman who was taking care of her sister. So why did her eyes sting when she thought about it? Like she was going to cry. That was a laugh--what did she have to cry about?

But Daniel was right. Most people believed the flawless facade, but there was something missing from her. And the emptiness was growing. Soon she'd be as shallow as Norma, and would like herself about as well.

She yearned for whatever it would take to fill her up, and mourned its loss. Sometimes she thought she would trade the rest of her perfect life just to know what it was.

* * *

My head was spinning. How could a place I'd seen only in my dreams actually exist?

My feet continued to plod forward, but I might have been blind. I don't remember a thing until a woman rushed out of a beauty salon and nearly bumped into me. I jerked to a halt to avoid hitting her. She didn't appear to see me at all, but she must have because after a few more steps she stopped and turned to me.

"Darling, I didn't see you there," she said.

Who does? I nodded to accept what I took to be an apology, but avoided looking at her.

Most people forgot me before they even turned away, but this woman wasn't letting go of this.

"Are you okay, sweetie? You look pale. Are you sick?"

She must have thought I was someone else. I finally looked at this stranger.

Dear God! It was her. The woman from the dreams, the one who always called me "plain Jane." She must have thought I was...the other one.

My throat closed up. I couldn't speak. Speak, nothing--I couldn't breathe!

Luckily, she didn't need my input to maintain the conversation.

"Well, I see you took my advice and let your hair go natural. This color looks so much better on you." She patted her own light brown hair with smug pride. "But where did you get that dress, darling? Don't you think you're taking this woman-of-the-people bit too far?"

She finally remembered she had somewhere to go, and with a parting caution to "get more sleep" she ducked into her black Mercedes and drove off.

Tears flooded my eyes. I still didn't know what it all meant, but I knew too well the knife sliding between my ribs--its name was betrayal.

I stumbled on in search of somewhere to hide. A wounded animal in search of her lair. A place to curl up and heal the hole that unknown woman had torn in my chest. I didn't want to make sense of it--I didn't want to know.

But there was nowhere in this town to just disappear. Not for someone like me, anyway. Finally, I came upon a drugstore that looked old-fashioned and, with its small, dirty windows, more than a little seedy. Perfect for me.

The drugstore didn't appear to be doing too well. Its pharmacy counter had been closed, and there were only a couple of middle-aged women browsing through the sparse cosmetic shelves. A pimply-faced clerk was the only employee in sight.

My face felt rigid from the effort of holding back the tears. But my anger was also close to the detonation point. How much pain should one person have to take? What could I have done to deserve this?

Home sweet home, what a miserable joke that was. I should never have left the bus. The sooner I caught another one, the better my rotten life would be. But I couldn't walk another step. I'd get some change and call a cab to take me straight back to the bus stop.

"Can I get you anything?" the boy asked as I approached the counter.

"Just some money," I murmured. Stupid thing to say. I meant change, but I couldn't think anymore. 

I groped in my purse for my wallet. What I gripped instead was the gun Mosey had hidden in there after he robbed that convenience store, before he skipped out on me. I hadn't found it until I was already on the bus, when there was no way to get rid of it. I thrust it back into the purse, but it was too late. The teenaged clerk had already seen it.

"She's got a gun!" he shouted.

The women in the store screamed and ran for the street.

"Don't rob me, please. My Dad will have a fit," the kid behind the counter sobbed.

"You don't understand--" I started.

"And please don't kill me."

The women who ran for the street continued to scream even after they cleared the drugstore door, only now they were shouting for the police. I tried to explain to the boy, but he kept babbling too frantically to listen. From somewhere out in the street, I heard the word, "hostage."

I slammed the front door shut and glared at the boy. His eyes widened till they were ready to pop. I looked down--now I really was holding the gun. Damn him! Why couldn't he have just listened to me? Why couldn't anyone in this whole rotten world ever listen to me?

"NO!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, before breaking into convulsive, wracking sobs.

* * *

Until now, the dreams had been my worst nightmares, but this topped them. It didn't take long before the police gathered out there, with their cars blocking the street. Occasionally they called to me on a bull horn, but they took pains not to upset me. They cared more about the fate of this stupid boy than anyone ever cared about me.

He and I sat on the floor facing each other. It was all his fault, but I didn't direct my anger at him anymore. Had I felt any differently the first time someone pointed a gun at me?

"You're not going to kill me, are you?" he asked tentatively.

Pretty good guess since the gun was now safely tucked away in my purse, which sat more than a foot away from me. He could reach it just as easily as I could.

I shook my head, and reminded him that I didn't point it at him until he turned it into a full-blown hostage crisis. Didn't mean it then, either.

"Look, why don't you just leave," he suggested. "They must have the back door blocked, but you can go out through the roof and shimmy down the lamp post at the end of the block."

Not even tempting. From the earliest time I could remember, everything had gone wrong in my life. I no longer had the energy to fight the inevitable.

"Why don't you go?" I said.

He looked like he couldn't believe his luck, but I didn't have to tell him twice.

"I'll just slip out the roof then, give you a chance to collect yourself. But I'll tell them the truth when they ask," he promised as he left.

Would he? Not likely. Not when he feared the wrath of his father over the store being robbed more than the prospect of being killed.

Besides, no one had ever kept a promise they'd made to me. Not my parents who swore they'd stop the beatings if I'd only be good--no kid had ever been any better. Not any of the men who used and abused me in the years since I'd run away.

And though I couldn't say how I knew, I felt I could say for certain that the woman I'd seen in the street had broken every promise she'd ever made to me.

* * *

Tia wandered over to the where the police cars blocked the street.

"What's the problem, Chief?" she asked the man with the bullhorn.

"Hostage situation, Tia. But nothing you need to worry about."

The worst part of being mayor of your own home town, Tia thought, was that everyone thought of her as their baby sister. The chief's younger sister had actually been Tia's baby sitter. She had to do something to take charge here, assert her authority.

"Who is that?" she heard someone whisper behind her.

"That will probably be the first woman president," someone answered.

For the second time that day, her glowing future felt like a trap. Without allowing herself time to consider it, Tia made the most reckless choice of her life.

"Chief," Tia said in her "mayoralty" voice, the one that demanded attention, "let me see if I can solve this problem for you."

* * *

The telephone in the store kept ringing. I finally answered. Who would have thought it would be for me. They were sending in a negotiator. At least I might get out of this alive. Not that I would have anything to live for after this. Even if I could endure the injustice of being sent to prison for a crime I didn't commit, I knew I'd never survive what they would do to me there.

The door slowly opened and a woman entered. I looked away. I did that a lot, I realized; like I didn't have the right to look them straight in the eye. A little late for self-discovery now.

"Jane?" she gasped.

Jane? Someone thought I was Jane. Jane really existed? I fell to my knees. "It's true, isn't it? All of it is really true."

I raised my eyes and nearly choked. The face that looked back at me--was my own.

* * *

Dreams and reality converged in the truth. The shadowy night world dissolved into the crystal clear one of day. No Twilight Zone here--just the twin daughters of Norma Richardson. "Talented Tia" and "Plain Jane," as she called us.

I slid to the floor, propped myself up against one of the store's counters. I would have collapsed if I'd tried to sit upright on my own. I looked up at her where she still stood in the middle of the floor.

My twin, myself.

She looked like me, and she didn't. The blonde hair was fake, of course, but it suited us, I saw. Her dress was too old for her, but it had probably cost more than I made in the last five years. Most of all, she wasn't branded by the life I had led. No, she wasn't me, she was who I might have been with a different kind of life.

"Let me see if I have it all," I said. "We were--what? About two or so when she dumped me? What did she tell people here? Didn't they ask questions when one of her babies disappeared?"

"That you died. She couldn't get a death certificate, but she did manage to have the record of your birth destroyed. If anyone had ever happened upon that, she'd have been in a lot of trouble, but she was lucky," Tia said.

People like her were always lucky, it seemed.

"I dreamed about it, Tia. They beat me for it, told me it was nonsense, that I had always been their daughter, but I kept dreaming nonetheless."

"Me, too. And when I was old enough, I found our old maid and asked her to tell me the truth."

"Maid? But I thought--"

"That it was about money? That she gave one of her children away because she couldn't afford to keep them both?" Tia slumped to her knees. "I'm sorry, Jane."

The shattering of the last illusion gave the knife another twist. Though I should have known. I'd seen my pampered mother, after all; I knew her town.

"Why? Why me? What did I do that was so horrible that she had to get rid of me?"

She rushed to my side and mirrored my position. She clasped my hand. "It wasn't you, it was her--Norma. I think she only had so much to give. And you were smaller, sickly. I don't think she knew how to care for you."

"You call her that? Norma?"

"Ever since the first gray hair, yes."

"Your version of what happened is too kind to her. She also invested everything that was good about motherhood, everything she loved in one child--and all the rest in the other." Then she just jettisoned the one she designated as crap. "If she's so inadequate, how did you turn out so well-adjusted?"

"You're making an inaccurate assumption there," Tia said. "But you see, when someone keeps telling you how wonderful you are, how lucky she is to have you, even when you discover it was just the ravings of a lunatic, it doesn't matter. She packed me with enough confidence for life. Understand?"

"Not firsthand."

"Tell me about you, Jane. Whatever it was like, I want to share it."

I shot her a look. Hearing was not the same as sharing.

But I told her everything, from my earliest recollection. I should have fought harder, and I would have if I could. No one wants to be a doormat.  But after enough attempts to rise up, even doormats learn it's safer to stay underfoot. I wanted to be like one of those plucky heroines in the TV movies, the ones who come through incredible abuse unscathed, instead of a victim tossed by the side of the road. But most people who have lived through what I have aren't that strong. The reason the heroines get singled out for immortality is that they're the exceptions.

"I wish it could have been me, Jane," Tia whispered.

She almost sounded like she meant it.

The telephone rang, jarring our world, linking it to the one outside.

Tia snatched up the receiver. "What do you want?" Tia snapped irritably.

Funny, she sounded as hounded as I felt. She listened for a while, then cut off the squawking I heard on the other end of the line.

"What is it you think I'm doing here, Chief? Ordering fast food? This is a delicate operation. But it will work, I promise you that." She slammed the phone down. She turned to me. "We don't have much time."

"Will you stay with me, Tia, till they come for me?"

"No."

Grow up, I said to myself. Why should she be any different?

She smiled enigmatically. "Because it won't be you they come for."

* * *

Tia ran into the back room of the drugstore. "No shower, dammit, but there's a big old-fashioned washtub back there. Good enough."

She started running through the aisles of the store, plucking things from the shelves. The place wasn't well-stocked like the big chains, but there seemed to be enough of whatever she wanted. Though why she was taking makeup and boxes of hair coloring, I couldn't imagine.

"Tia, what--"

"I said I wished it could have been me. Well, now it is. Jane, we're trading places."

* * *

"This will never work," I insisted.

Though as I looked into the mirror, with my hair newly blonded and blown dry, in Tia's dress and her style of make-up--all courtesy of Thunder Bay Pharmacy--I did look like her. Well, maybe after she'd had a rough day. She, on the other hand, only approximated my shabbiness. She'd had to duplicate my under-eye circles with blue eye shadow.

"People will notice we're twins," I said.

"Did they when you walked through town? Did anyone except your own mother think they knew you? We might be variations on a single theme, Jane, but we've moved them far apart."

Tell me about it.

"Besides, people usually accomplish their expectations. You expect defeat, Jane, I expect victory. If you don't think people will recognize you, they won't."

"What I expect is that I'll never be able to fool anyone into thinking I'm the mayor of this town."

"You are being thrown into the deep end, Jane. But don't look at it as an obstacle, think of it as your chance. If you hate being mayor, you don't have to do it for long. Just long enough so no one connects your resignation with the day Faith Parker took Dougy McClure, the drugstore clerk, hostage. My--our grandfather left me well-cared for. You now have enough money to do whatever you want. But you can use this opportunity to see how good you really can be. You need to start filling yourself up with that."

She made it sound so easy. What were her expectations for what she had ahead of her?

"You don't realize what you'll be letting yourself in for, Tia."

"I do know--and I also know which of us is better able to handle it. But don't make me out to be such a saint. I won't let them railroad me. I don't intend to serve as much time as you would."

She probably wouldn't. Winners never did.

"Believe me, Jane, it's not as much of a sacrifice as you think," she said.

I looked deeply into her eyes and saw a door swinging open. "There are easier ways to change your life."

"But none so imaginative," Tia said with a laugh.

Maybe her confidence was infectious. I knew how hard it would be. I was being thrown into a job for which I was unprepared and--despite years of voracious reading--uneducated. I would have to maintain a relationship with a mother who abandoned me. But hardest of all, I would have to act like a person who had been programmed for success rather than failure. Could I do it? Some small part of me thought I just might pull it off.

Tia's expression became serious. "You have to let me do this, Jane. You said before that she invested all the good traits in me. Not entirely. Sure, she gave me all the drive and confidence, but she left all the humanity with you."

The sky, when we emerged from the drugstore, looked as blue as a sapphire. The sun was warm on my face. The air looked so clear, I thought the whole world had been dipped in crystal. Or maybe that's how everyone feels in the first moment of their lives.

"Don't shoot," I ordered. I shielded Tia's body with my own. "We're coming out."

I barely recognized the sound of my own voice with strength resonating in it. The muscles of my chest stretched tightly when I threw my shoulders back. New sensations, good sensations.

I watched my twin being helped into the back of the police car. I desperately wanted to keep her with me, now that I had found her. But Tia's eye caught mine for one last moment before the police car carried her away, and I knew I wasn't alone anymore. Neither of us was.

Isn't it funny? I've spent my life running from the things I feared most. I would have stopped years ago if I had any idea that, all this time, I'd only been running from myself.


KRIS NERI is the author of the humorous Tracy Eaton mysteries, REVENGE OF THE GYPSY QUEEN, an Agatha, Anthony and Macavity Award nominee, and DEM BONES' REVENGE (Rainbow Books). She has also published more than forty-five mystery short stories. Two of her stories, "L.A. Justice" and "Capital Justice," were Derringer Award winners. 

Copyright (c) 2001 Kris Neri