Gem, Himself, Alone, page 10
“No.”
“The fight?”
“What fight?”
“With the drunk.”
“No.”
“Do you often have blackouts like that? Where you can’t remember what happened?”
Gem shrugged. “Plenty of times.”
“And has this happened before?”
“None of your business.” Riker thought that was all he was going to say, but then he went on. “I been places like this before. For all kinds of things.”
Riker nodded encouragingly.
“The doctors all think I’m screwed up. But I do just fine without their help.”
“Even when you have to take downers to stay cool?”
Gem was startled. He looked at Riker. “What?”
“We had a bit of a talk the other day. You took downers before the fight.”
“Yeah. They help better than the meds they give out at places like this.”
“And then you end up in a trance for a week.”
“That wasn’t the downers.”
“Do you know that for sure?”
Gem shook his head impatiently. “When am I gonna get out of here? I don’t need to be here.”
“I’m not a doctor. What did they tell you?”
“I ain’t seen a doctor yet.”
“Well, you should be seeing one before too long. Then they’ll tell you what they think about you getting out of here.”
“They can’t hold me here without a court order.”
“Not for long,” Riker agreed.
Bethany called out when Gem unlocked and opened the apartment door. “Gem? Is that you?”
“Who else has got a key to this door?” He followed the sound of her voice to her bedroom.
“Come in here and tell me where you’ve been,” she invited.
Gem went in. “What’re you doing in bed?” he asked, looking at the clock. He’d never known Bethany to be in bed during the day. Not all by herself.
Bethany motioned to the crutches on the other side of the bed. “I wrenched my knee. The painkillers are making me nauseated if I get up.”
Gem sat down on the edge of the bed. “Yeah? How’s it feel when you’re lying down?”
“Just fine. You want to join me?”
Gem grinned and slipped in beside her.
When Gem was relaxed and quiet beside her, Bethany probed for more answers. “So where were you for so long?”
“It wasn’t so long.”
“Well, where were you?”
“None of your business.”
“You look like you lost weight.”
“Maybe a little.”
“Were you sick?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you come home? I would have taken care of you.”
Gem shook his head. “I didn’t want no one taking care of me.” He sat up and reached for his clothes. “I take care of myself.”
Bethany rubbed his back. “Sometimes, it’s nice to be taken care of.”
Gem stretched lazily, enjoying the massage. “Sometimes,” he agreed.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
RIKER WATCHED BOBBY, Dee’s brother, arrive home and gave him a few minutes to get settled before going up and ringing the doorbell.
The man did not look happy to be interrupted. He liked it even less when Riker flashed his shield.
“What’s this about?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m trying to get as much history as I can about your sister.”
“My sister?”
“Dee.”
“Oh, her. I can’t help you very much there. I didn’t really grow up with her.”
“How old were you when you saw her last?”
“I’ve only seen her a few times since I left. I was only nine when I went into foster care. She would have been five or six at the time.”
“So she probably hadn’t started having psychiatric symptoms yet.”
“I don’t know what normal kids are like at that age. Maybe she was a normal five-year-old, or maybe she was already crazy. I don’t know.”
“Well, how about your mom? It would be helpful to get a little insight into her too.”
Bobby shuddered. “I was happy to get away from her. The others were still under her spell.”
“The others?”
“I have an older brother, too. And there were the babies.”
“An older brother? Oh, the one who committed suicide.”
Riker saw his mistake as soon as the words left his mouth. Surprise flashed across Bobby’s features. “Suicide? Teddy? When?”
“He was fifteen, I think.”
“Four years after I left. Over twenty years ago… and I never knew.”
Riker nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, obviously, we weren’t close after I was kicked out.” He took a few minutes to assimilate the information. “Ma was nuts. She drove him to it. Woulda done it myself if I’d stayed there. She hated us. Parents are supposed to love their kids, but she hated us.”
“Was she abusive?”
“She was demonic. She didn’t hit us—she starved us, poisoned us, deprived us of sleep, locked us up, smothered us, all kinds of things.”
Riker was surprised. “If all of these things were going on, how could Social Services not find out?”
“She was smart. They believed her lies. She rarely left a mark.”
“Why did they move you to foster care?”
“She decided she didn’t want me. Just like that. She had impulses, and that time it was ‘I decided I don’t want you anymore.’ I was crushed, but it turned out to be the best thing that could’ve happened to me.”
“When was the last time you saw your mother or sister?”
“It’s been quite a while. Someone told me Mom was dead. Haven’t heard from Dee for at least five years, and it was probably just a request for money. I never heard anything else from her.”
Riker sighed. He’d come a long way to get nothing. “Did you ever meet Dee’s son? Gem?”
“Yeah, she left him here for a couple of days. I called Child Protective Services to come to get him.”
“What was he like? It’s him I’m trying to get the background on.”
“He wasn’t too bad. Quiet while he was here, watched everything. Kind of disconcerting, the way he watched me.”
“You didn’t have any trouble with him?”
“I wasn’t prepared to take care of a kid. I don’t know the first thing about kids. He was only here for a couple of days. We didn’t kill each other. He wasn’t happy about me calling protective services on him.”
“He wasn’t violent or emotional when he was here?”
“No.”
“How long ago did you say?”
“I don’t know. Five years or more.”
Riker assessed and reassessed the information he had about Gem.
There was no indication that there was anything special about Gem. He was mentally unstable, not a genius. The only solution he could find was the simplest one. Whenever he could, Gem used hookers as his alibis, trading on their shared experience. He backed them up with whoever he could buy with money from bank robberies or other big jobs.
Riker had just one more contact, an old family friend of Dee’s. That would wrap up his investigation.
“Dee?” Rachel said, nodding. “Yeah, I remember Dee. She was pretty… freaky, sometimes.”
Riker nodded. “I understand she had some major problems.”
“Those poor babies; sometimes I wondered what would happen to them.”
“Babies?” Riker repeated.
“The twins,” Rachel said.
“Katie’s twins?” Riker asked in confusion, recalling the dead siblings.
“No,” Rachel frowned and shook her head, “I never knew Kate’s twins. Dee had identical twin boys.”
Riker stared at her, all the tumblers turning in sequence to unlock Gem’s secret.
Gem.
As in Gemini.
The twins.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A STUNNED RIKER explained it to Gordon. “Dee had twins. Identical twins. That’s how Gem could have unbeatable alibis. The witnesses’ stories couldn’t be broken because they were telling the truth. He was in two places at once.”
Gordon rubbed his chin. “So what are their real names?”
“I don’t know. I have to do some more research now that I know the truth. How could it be that none of the people that I talked to happened to mention that he was a twin?”
“Maybe no one knew.”
Riker shook his head. “I talked to people who knew him as a toddler. They had to know.”
Surveillance kept a close watch on Gem’s apartment, trying to get tails on both boys. They had to have teams in front and behind the apartment, since one or both sometimes left by the fire escape.
They got some night vision pictures of the two of them together.
After watching their routines for a few days, giving Riker a chance to do some more research, they arrested the two of them separately.
“They must have been raised apart,” Riker speculated. “I’ve talked to everyone who knew him when he was young, and no one knew he was a twin. One of them must have been raised by a family friend or some other casual arrangement.”
“What about their names?” Gordon asked.
“No joy. There’s only one birth certificate.”
“What a bizarre situation. Did you notice that they have different personalities?” Gordon asked.
Riker frowned. “Do you think so?”
“I’ve been watching them while they’ve been questioned about the various charges. They have very different personalities.”
Riker raised an eyebrow and waited for further explanation.
“What are we going to call them?” Gordon asked. “Gem 1 and Gem 2?”
“Seems like the only thing to do, right now.”
“Okay then, Gem 1 is the brash one. He talks big, gets emotional quickly. Gem 2 is quieter, more withdrawn. He seems like he’s the brains of the operation, and Gem 1 is the brawn.”
“The split personalities! Everyone keeps saying that he’d be calm one day and wild the next. I thought it pointed to schizophrenia or bipolar or multiple personalities. But it was two separate boys.”
“But… that would mean they were raised together,” Gordon pointed out.
Riker stopped and considered. “Yeah… it would, wouldn’t it?”
Riker and Gordon looked at each other, thinking through the implications of this statement.
It was Bobby who provided insight into what might have happened to the twins.
“I remember when ma’s twins were born. She kept saying that they were evil, that one was a baby, and the other was a devil.”
“How did she treat them?”
“She would feed one and lock the other in the closet. Things like that.”
“Did she always neglect the same one?”
“The girl.”
“They weren’t identical?”
“No, boy-girl fraternal twins.”
“But both eventually died,” Riker pointed out.
“You don’t understand my ma.” Bobby shook his head. “Just because she thought the girl was the devil, that didn’t mean she couldn’t change her mind after the girl died and decide that meant the girl was the real baby, and it was the boy who was the devil.”
“So you think that Katie would behave the same way toward Dee’s twins?”
“Why not? Makes as much sense as anything.”
Riker shook his head. “I can’t fathom what you guys went through with her.”
“You could never, ever even begin to understand,” Bobby agreed. “And with crazy Dee trying to take care of those babies too? It’s a miracle they survived.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I THINK WE should put them together and see what happens.”
Riker considered Gordon’s suggestion. “I don’t think we’re going to get much more out of them while we keep them apart. They’re sticking to their original stories.”
“So shall we do it?”
Riker nodded. “Let’s plan it carefully. I have a feeling we’ve got a pretty unique opportunity here.”
Gem heard approaching footsteps. Inexplicable panic gripped him, squeezing his chest so hard that it hurt.
Then he saw Himself with the cop and understood. They had found his secret. Gem was silent as the cop opened the door and pushed Himself through.
The cop looked at Gem, grinning, then walked away.
Gem wasn’t sure what to say. He had never imagined this might happen. He’d always been careful. No one ever saw Gem with Himself. He was careful.
“What’s going on?” Gem demanded, unable to suppress the panic in his voice.
“They figured my secret out.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how anyone could have found out.”
Gem looked around the cell nervously. “Can’t talk here. Could be bugged.”
“Talk code,” He suggested.
Gem immediately reverted to the ‘babble’ he had used as a very young child. It had been a while since he’d had to, and it was awkward for the first few minutes, but then it flowed, coming back to him like his native tongue. Which, of course, it was.
Riker walked into the room and looked at the two boys talking to each other on the monitor. Gordon, listening on a pair of earphones, shook his head and lowered the earphones to rest around his neck.
“No luck,” he sighed, “we only got a few words, and then they switched to twin-speak.”
“Twin-speak?”
Gordon switched the audio from the earphones to the speaker so that Riker could hear the babble.
“Sometimes twins communicate in their own language before learning English. Occasionally, they keep the language past early childhood for private conversations.”
Riker listened in dismay to the twins babbling incomprehensibly to each other. “Unbelievable.”
Mary Saunders, the social worker, had said that Gem referred to himself as ‘Gem’ or ‘we’ when he was young. She knew more about his history than any other person. It was time for Riker to meet her face to face.
Riker went to the Social Services office to meet with her. She met him at the reception desk and took him to a conference room to talk. She was a plain woman, her very red lipstick not hiding her mannish features. But she had a comfortable, pleasant manner that put Riker at ease.
Riker handed Mary a picture of the two boys together. It was a picture caught by the closed-circuit camera of the two of them cuddled up together asleep on the bunk, faces serene. Mary looked at it and sat down with a bang in one of the hard tubular chairs.
“What is this?” she demanded, staring at the print.
“You never once suspected there might be two of them?”
“Never! How could they hide that?”
“I understand Katie had a thing about twins. It was probably a matter of survival.”
“But it isn’t anywhere in the records; I’m sure of that.”
“There’s only one birth certificate. The deception must have started right from birth. I don’t know what happened those first few years, but somehow by the time they were preschoolers, they knew they couldn’t be seen together.”
Mary shook her head, staring at the picture with her eyes wide in shock. “How could this be? It’s impossible. How could such a young child fool everyone?”
“Normally, I’m sure they couldn’t, but when Dee and Katie never gave any indication he was a twin, who would suspect?”
“I’ll pull the old records. We’ll have to go through them bit by bit, with new eyes, and try to figure out what was going on. This is going to be a big project.”
“We’re going to be doing the same on our end. We should get together occasionally to collaborate.”
Mary nodded. “Two of them,” she breathed, still staring at the photo. “It’s incomprehensible.”
Bethany wondered what was going on with Gem. No one knew exactly what he’d been arrested for. But they knew it must be something big. It had been a couple of days, and she figured he’d probably been transferred to juvie. But she went to the precinct anyway to see if he happened to be there still. She waited for a long time after asking about him at the front desk. The big woman at the counter told her to sit on a bench until she was called. It seemed like an awfully long wait, and she wondered if they’d forgotten about her. Eventually, she was approached by an officer whose ID tag said, ‘Riker.’
“You’re here for Gem?”
Bethany stood up. “Yes.”
Riker motioned for her to follow him. “What’s your name?”
“Bethany.”
“And how do you know Gem?”
“I’m his roommate.”
“I see. How long have you known him?”
“A few months. However long it’s been.”
“You close?”
Bethany shrugged. She didn’t think she had to answer that. Riker didn’t pursue it any further.
“I know you from somewhere,” he said.
Bethany shook her head. She recognized him too, but she wasn’t going to remind him how.
“Yeah, I do.” Riker snapped his fingers. “You’re the one ‘owned’ by the Rippers.”
“Not anymore. Gem paid the debt.”
“So Gem owns you now? That’s why you’re rooming with him?”
“No. I room with him ’cause I like him. Gem isn’t like that.”
Riker led her to a meeting room. Bethany was surprised not to be taken to the usual visiting area. Something was going on. Riker opened the door for her and shut it behind her.
Riker joined Gordon behind the observation glass to watch the reunion. Bethany stood inside the door, looking at the two boys.
