Thresholds & Reflections: An Empty World Anthology

The Looking Glass

"I'm gonna do it, man, I'll do it!" The .38 was raised to his head. He would pull the trigger. Kelly could see it in his moist, dull eyes, the trembling tense trigger finger. This man wasn't bluffing. Kelly stepped slowly from behind the Queen Anne dressing table, his pistol hanging from a thumb.

"Just relax, we can talk about this," Kelly said. He took two steps forward, held the man's eyes in his. The guy was crying.

"I must not live." The look in the eyes.

Kelly threw himself forward, went for the man's .38. He heard the shot and then felt his shoulder thud against the floor.

"Kelly!" Someone was turning him. A young, short-haired woman in uniform. LaCroce. "You all right, Detective?"

"I'm fine," Kelly said and turned around. A man's body lay bleeding onto to an oriental rug.

"What happened?" LaCroce asked.

Kelly looked up, and then looked past her to the door. Another cop in uniform was entering, just holstering his piece. "I called for the-" he started and then his eyes fell to the dead man.

"Kelly?" LaCroce lifted him to his feet. The storekeeper was just emerging from the back of the store, laying a Grecian urn aside as he came forward.

"Hey, sorry about the carpet," Kelly said.

"He's worried about the carpet," laughed the other officer. Kelly thought his name was Mugan.

LaCroce turned around to face her partner, "Better go call this in, Jimmy, We'll need the coroner and...well Kelly's already here...we don't need another homicide detective. Huh, Kelly?"

Kelly was staring down at the man on the carpet, ragged clothing, and long greasy hair...the dull eyes.

"Kelly, sure you're all right?"

"Fine. I'm fine. It's just this reminds me of another case I had recently."

* * *

Kelly sat at his desk staring at shots of two crime scenes. He lifted his cup for another sip of coffee, realized the cup was empty again. His eyes were shot; he knew it. Somehow these two suicides had something more in common than men who shot themselves. He could feel it in his gut.

He went over the shopkeeper's story in his head. At around four in the afternoon, he had noticed a loud banging at the storefront window. As he went to the front of the store he saw a man was hitting his fists against the window. The man, now identified as one Thomas McCarthy whose fingerprints had been lifted from a knife used to murder three women last week, had looked suspicious, as the shopkeeper said. And so the shopkeeper had called 911. Kelly had been driving nearby when he heard the call.

"I must not live," witness had quoted both the suicidal men as saying that same line...but that wasn't much to go on. Coincidence that both chose to say something other than, "I gotta die." But the way they implied that they were compelled, that some force other than depression made them pull the trigger, that interested Kelly. Some new drug?

The phone rang.

"Yeah?" Kelly rubbed at his eyelids, "I don't know, Honey, not for a while. You go on to bed." He sighed. "Tomorrow, we'll talk about it tomorrow."

He let the phone down as one of the pictures caught his tired gaze. The first suicide had taken place in the restroom of a fast-food restaurant not far from the antique store, the photo showed a small streaky mirror on a tile wall, a pattern of blood smears on the glass. It almost looked as if the man had drawn a face in his own blood as he died.