THE DOPPELGÄNGER, Chapter 11
"They've declared him a missing person, El," said Gellis. "You have to tell Nathan, at least!"
Elsie tightened her grip on her cell. "And then what? He'll go to the police! I don't even remember half of what happened that night, what if I -"
"For fuck's sake, he's on the run!" shot back the raven-haired woman. "Wake up, girl! Look, if you don't tell them I will!"
Elsie jammed her sole against the concrete and came to an abrupt halt. "Don't you dare!" she said, her stomach twisting. "You promised. You PROMISED, Gel!"
She could almost feel the older woman's sigh through the phone.
"I know…but Elsie, you have to think of the big picture, if he's out there, who knows who else he could be -"
"Don't you think that doesn't go through my mind every fucking day?!" exclaimed the blonde hoarsely. "And if he's not, then I'm a murderer. How's that for door number two?"
"Will you get off it? Blast it, El, you literally get sick to your stomach when you think you've hurt someone's feelings. Killed him? Kicked him in the nuts, more like!"
"I can't do it," said Elsie, her emotions percolating. "I'm sorry...I just can't..."
There followed several seconds of silence before Gellis spoke again.
"I don't know how long I can sit on this, El," she finally said. "I know I promised, and it would absolutely kill me to lose you over this...you're the kid sister I never had, dammit."
The alley stretching out before Elsie became clouded. "Please don't..."
"Let me ask you this...could you live with yourself if you ever found out he assaulted someone else?"
Elsie's lower lip trembled. "I..."
She swallowed the unspoken words. I've been living with that same question for years, Gel...
The tears began flowing.
"I'm sorry -"
Elsie thumbed her cell and dropped it into her satchel.
Clumsily palming her cheeks, the blonde wondered if she would still have a friend in the Gallery manager come the following morning.
Gellis' profession had been no exaggeration: genetics aside, the two were sisters in every meaningful sense. If losing that would kill the raven-haired woman, it would destroy Elsie.
Please stay with me, Gel...
She took a deep breath as her feet started moving anew.
She made her way further down the alley, her surging anxiety fighting her anguish for dominance: she hadn't been down the dilapidated, red-bricked confines since that fateful Friday.
Not that she'd needed to - the route was a significant detour from her normal walk home. But she needed answers. On her terms, rather than those of law enforcement's.
She spied the old fire escape near which the red Corvette had been parked.
Elsie allowed herself the slightest sigh of relief. It was gone.
Of course, the car's absence didn't mean Klipman had used it to flee, and as such did nothing to exonerate her. Given she'd conveniently smashed in the drivers' side window, she'd made it that much easier for any member of the criminal element to seize the valuable prize.
She was almost directly beneath the fire escape when she head a crunch from underfoot.
Broken glass: the final nail in the coffin of the dream theory.
The blonde continued down the alleyway, the prevailing daylight and distant sounds of urban life doing nothing to alleviate her anxiety. Forcing herself to keep going, a bead of sweat defied the nip in the air to trickle lazily down her brow.
Up ahead loomed the familiar chainlink fence – of course, its gate was now conveniently open.
She scanned the nearby clutter for any sign, any clue that might shed some desperately needed light. But apart from the urban debris typical of back alleys, nothing stood out. Then again, she had no idea what to look for.
Elsie knew it had been a long shot from the beginning. She was no further ahead.
She was about to step through the open gate when a darkened section of concrete along the far wall drew her eye.
Elsie hesitated. There were stains everywhere: the detritus of urban life was scattered in abundance around her.
It could be nothing. Most likely was. Old motor oil. A disused can of paint thrown from a nearby window.
So why then were the hairs bristling on the back of her neck?
She slowly crept closer, stepping around a toppled garbage can to get a better vantage.
Crouching down on her haunches, she examined the substance - from directly above it no longer appeared black but rather a darkened crimson.
Swallowing anxiously, she snatched a plastic spoon from the scattered debris. She slowly drew its edge along the concrete, watching as the substance flaked and crackled.
Her breathing grew shallow. There was no doubt what she was looking at.
But there was so much of it...it made no sense, unless...
She scampered to her feet and drew back, horrified. She doubted a mauling by Grizzly bear could have produced such copious amounts of blood.
This was not a scene where someone had been stabbed and subsequently bled to death - it was a scene where someone had been ripped into pieces.
The blonde realized straight away she couldn't have been responsible for such an act; the perpetrator had been someone capable of savage, uncontrolled brutality.
One the one hand, she'd absolved herself of a capital crime.
On the other, she knew someone in possession of both the physical and psychological capacity to do the unthinkable...
She'd been created to kill Lara Croft.
~oOo~
Elsie had kept unusually quiet since arriving home that afternoon, still straining as she was to come to terms with unsettling thoughts. The doppelgänger, for her part, seemed content in perpetuating the silence – she was currently nestled in the patched armchair in the corner of Elsie's study with another book splayed across her lap.
The blonde was wrestling with conflicting emotions coursing through her. If what she suspected was true, the doppelgänger had likely saved her life. But, she'd done so through an act of almost unimaginable savagery. The two possibilities were proving exceedingly difficult to reconcile.
Her growing uneasiness underlined one fact: this was not something she could conceivably sweep under the rug. She had to pose the question, lest she forever view the doppelgänger with trepidation.
"We need to talk."
"If you like," returned the redhead without looking up from her book.
Elsie stood in the middle of the small study.
"I have to ask you something...and Doppie, I need an honest answer."
The redhead flipped a page.
Elsie frowned. "Are you even listening to me?"
"Yes," said Doppie, her eyes never deviating from the text.
Fine, then...
The blonde drew a deep breath. "Where were you last Friday night?"
There was no reaction from the doppelgänger.
"Elsewhere."
"Well, d'uh," said Elsie, keeping most of her annoyance from creeping into her voice. "Where, exactly?"
Doppie's gaze remained fixed on the printed page before her - perhaps even too fixed: the golden-yellow eyes had ceased their back and forth scanning.
"What does it matter?"
"It just does, okay?" returned the blonde. "Will you look at me, please?"
The redhead ignored the request.
"You would not wish to know."
Fuck...
There it was; not an admission, certainly, but the doppelgänger's evasiveness could only mean one thing.
"You're right...but I need to know...for both our sakes."
The redhead was silent, her mouth stretched in a thin line.
Elsie continued to press. "I already know the answer, Doppie. But I need to hear it from you. And I'm not leaving this room until -"
The doppelgänger snapped the book shut forcefully, making the already nervous blonde jump.
"Would you have preferred I do nothing?" asked the redhead, her golden-yellow eyes now fixed directly on Elsie. "I waited as long as I dared in the hopes you would extricate yourself. Almost too long, as it turned out."
"I...I didn't say that," replied Elsie. "But...couldn't you have just..."
"Exercised restraint?" finished the doppelgänger, sneering. "I told you, remember?"
"Dammit, Doppie," lamented the blonde, "You can't go around killing people!"
"Lara does."
Elsie huffed. "Will you just - why do you keep invoking her?"
"Because you hold me to a different standard."
"That's not true!"
"Isn't it?" posed the redhead. "Lara's killed considerably more than I have, yet you absolve her without question."
Elsie bristled inwardly but kept her voice on an even keel. "Okay, what Lara does is for self-preservation."
"While I preserved another," countered the doppelgänger. "According to your human values, which action would you consider the nobler?"
Elsie bit her lip. There could be no adequate riposte - she'd been painted into a moral corner.
"Doppie, please understand...I'm not saying I'm not grateful, believe me...it's just the method you chose..."
"Which is why I desired you remain in ignorance," said the redhead. "For despite your professions of friendship, you still view me with apprehension."
The blonde's mouth opened slightly.
Grey and golden eyes searched each other. Doppie had scored an emotional bullseye.
From the first Elsie had worked to earn the redhead's trust, but she'd omitted to place an equal investment in the doppelgänger. She'd had her reasons, of course - perhaps some were even justified - but if their relationship were to become anything meaningful, the one way street would have to be widened.
There could be no more second guessing. No more doubts.
Damn the torpedoes...I'm in this for the long haul.
Elsie's shoulders drooped. "Not anymore."
She moved closer and slid into the patched armchair, the doppelgänger quickly shifting over as far as the armrest would allow. There was an discernable discomfort in the redhead's body language - Elsie had blatantly invaded her personal space with all the subtlety of George S. Patton.
The blonde had witnessed the same reaction before, the first time she'd slipped into her sleeping bag with Lara two years previously. And like the archaeologist, Doppie would simply have to get used to it.
To further emphasize the point, Elsie grabbed the doppelgänger's hand and entwined her fingers. The latter's shoulders rose ever so slightly in response.
"So...I guess you were looking out for me?" asked the blonde. "Does that make you… my guardian angel?"
"Hardly," replied the redhead, her gaze locked on pair of knee pads propped up against the far wall. "I'm no angel, I can assure you."
Elsie smiled and squeezed her fingers. "Well...guardian succubus, then..."
Doppie arched an eyebrow. "That would be...slightly more accurate."
The blonde lightly nudged the doppelgänger's shoulder.
"Well then…feel like pancakes?"
The corners of the doppelgänger's mouth twitched ever so slightly.
"If you like."
~oOo~
Saturday had at last arrived. And with it, so had Elsie's car - she was free at last to expand her movements beyond the city core without resorting to public transit.
Volunteering at the shelter never failed to sap her emotionally, and this occasion was no exception. She knew better than most the horrors faced by the young women who sought temporary refuge within.
Elsie would console, nurture and encourage, fiercely determined they not suffer the same debilitating hopelessness she'd herself experienced. But aiding others to confront their demons invariably resurrected her own.
It was in that emotionally raw state that the doppelgänger sprung her surprise.
"A woman came by earlier, by the way."
In truth, Elsie was in not in a mood for chatting; but being one of the very few times Doppie had deigned to initiate conversation she thought it best to encourage the redhead's rare overture.
She dropped a golden potato in the stewpot and began peeling another. "One of those, huh...what was she selling?"
"Nothing, I gathered," replied Doppie from the breakfast nook. "I believe she's a neighbor of yours."
Elsie's hands froze in mid peel; her reflection in the kitchen window displayed a face etched with apprehension.
"What makes you say that?"
"Apparently she took notice of your old bed frame in the back alley," explained the redhead. "She seemed to be under the impression I was from Texas, oddly."
The blonde felt a wave of light-headedness building. "Don't tell me...was she short, squat, with grey hair?"
"She was," confirmed Doppie.
"What...what did she want?"
"She asked if I was residing here."
Elsie closed her eyes and swallowed. "And...?"
The sound of a page turning. The redhead was clueless.
"I told her I was."
The knife slipped from Elsie's hand and clattered into the sink.
No...
She dropped the half-peeled potato and gripped the edge of the counter to keep from swaying. "Doppie...do you realize what you've done?"
She could feel the doppelgänger's gaze upon her. "Obviously not."
"That was Mrs. Webb," said Elsie heavily. "My landlord."
"I see."
"No...you don't."
Her emotional exhaustion combined with a fresh tsunami of dread to overwhelm the blonde. There was no longer any choice: she would have to leave the flat.
Her home.
She bolted from the kitchen and ran to the bedroom. She fell on the bottom bunk and began sobbing into the pillow.
She knew it had been a calculated risk not to declare her guest, but then, she'd assumed she'd be sheltering someone for a few weeks at most. But the doppelgänger's plight had changed everything.
And now the time had come to pay the piper.
Her financial life had stretched to its limit - and snapped.
Gellis had been right.
She could feel the edge of the mattress depress slightly.
Elsie raised her head from the pillow. The doppelgänger was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring straight ahead.
"I am sorry," said the redhead softly.
The blonde wiped her eyes.
"It's not your fault," said Elsie despondently, sniffing. "I should've warned you..."
"Of your landlord?"
The blonde pushed herself into a sitting position and nodded. "My tenancy here is for a single occupant...but now she probably thinks you've been living here all year. She thinks you're Lara - or Laura, in this case - there won't be any reasoning with her now. She's a spinster, Doppie, always looking for excuses to increase her tenant's rent. I guess…I've been lucky so far…"
"Will she penalize you?"
"Undoubtedly," replied Elsie. "I don't think she can increase my rent retroactively, she'd have to prove you've been living here all this time...but even so it doesn't matter."
"Why?"
Elsie tented her hands against her lips, resisting a fresh surge of anguish. "Because...I just can't afford a rent increase, Doppie. I'm not exactly rich, as you can see…so I have no choice...I'm going to have to move..."
The emotional river overflowed its banks once more. Elsie flopped down into the pillow, her shoulders shaking in an attempt to contain the sobbing.
The dip in the mattress shifted closer.
"I will help."
Elsie shook her head into the pillow.
"Told you...no stealing..."
"I will seek gainful employment," explained the doppelgänger. "As I recall, your friend at the King's Head offered me a position should I so desire."
Elsie craned her neck to look at her guest. "W-what?"
"Would the additional revenue not aid in paying off your rent increase?"
Elsie wiped her nose across her sleeve.
"I...yes, but..."
The blonde drew up to face the doppelgänger, ignoring the wetness streaming down her cheeks.
"Doppie...are you absolutely sure about this? Do you think you're ready?"
A raised eyebrow. "Serving food and drink to pub patrons is well within my capabilities, I assure you."
"I know, but...it's not your capabilities that worry me…"
"I won't kill paying customers," clarified the redhead. "It would reduce the gratuity."
Elsie's jaw dropped.
Was that a...a joke?
"You...you'd really do this?"
A slight tilt of the head. "We are friends, are we not?"
The blonde slowly nodded, a fresh surge of new emotions washing away the debris of the tear-filled tsunami.
She threw her arms around the doppelgänger and pulled her into a forceful hug.
A few moments later she felt a light touch on her back, delicate as water droplets at first. The droplets slowly expanded in size and energy, until the doppelgänger's hands were gently cupping her shoulder blades.
"Yes," she whispered, crying into the redhead's shoulder. "Yes we are..."
