Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [119]
“If it was indeed carrying on your normal existence to the best of its abilities, then I think that is entirely possible.”
I shuddered in revulsion. “That’s just . . . wrong.”
“You can’t go home,” he said decisively. “You can’t go to any of the places that comprise your normal life. The risk of encountering your perfect double is too great!”
“Max, right now, this is the place that comprises my normal life. I’ve been here constantly lately. When I’m not in church, that is.”
“Good heavens! You’re right! And the impulses that draw you here may well draw your doppelgangster here at any moment, too! I must find a way to keep it out!”
“I have an idea,” I said suddenly.
“Yes?”
“Lopez wants to put me in protective custody. I’ll call him and tell him I’m ready to agree. I’ll tell him to send a squad car to my apartment to pick me up. They’ll take my double away and put it someplace where I won’t bump into it!”
“What if your doppelgangster won’t go with them?”
“Lopez may tell them to take me anyhow. He thinks I’m crazy or under the influence, right?” I nodded. “It’s worth a try.” I opened my cell phone and called Lopez.
A split second after I heard his phone ringing, a phone in the bookstore started ringing.
It wasn’t the usual heavy ring of the shop’s old-fashioned phone that was sitting nearby. Max and I looked at each other, puzzled, as the ringing continued.
It seemed to be coming from one of the larger piles of debris on the floor. Max rose, crossed over to it, and stooped down to examine the feathery rubbish from which the ringing seemed to be emanating. He started brushing his hand through feathers, bird bones, and clumps of dirt. A few moments later, he grabbed something, then held up a ringing cell phone.
I thought I recognized it. “Answer it.”
He did. “Hello?”
I heard his voice clearly on my own phone.
“That’s Lopez’s phone.” I closed my cell phone and set it aside. “His usual one.” I had called it without thinking, accustomed to reaching him at that number. “The phone he said last night that he couldn’t find.”
“Pardon?”
I explained. Then I said, “If it was buried in that pile of doppelgangster leftovers, it must have been . . .”
“On the doppelgangster when I beheaded it,” Max said.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why didn’t it disintegrate the way the gun did?”
Max turned it over and over in his hands, frowning. “Because this . . . this is Detective Lopez’s cell phone. I mean to say, this is a real object that belongs to the real man.”
“How did the doppelgangster get a hold of it?”
“It could have been . . .” Max suddenly gave a sharp, jerky start and his eyes widened. “When did Detective Lopez lose his phone?”
“Yesterday.” When I broke his prepaid cell phone, he said it was the second phone he had run through that day.
“When yesterday? Did he say precisely?”
“No, but uh . . . Let’s see.” I could tell from Max’s fierce frown of concentration that this was important. “Here, give me that.” I took the phone from him, opened it, and looked at the readout of outgoing calls. “When he called me here late yesterday afternoon to say he was in Brooklyn to investigate Danny’s death, I’m pretty sure he was calling me from this phone.” I vaguely remembered seeing his name on my phone’s LCD panel before I answered the call. “Yes, here it is. This was the phone he used.”
I continued scrolling through the screen of outgoing calls that Lopez had made yesterday. “He called two other numbers during the next hour.” I didn’t recognize them, but they were presumably work-related, since he would still have been at the scene of the murder. “And here’s his call to the bookstore, when he hung up right after you answered. That’s the last call made from this phone.” I added, “When he called me later, while we were confronting his doppelgangster, he was using another phone by then. A spare.”
Max’s chest started rising and falling rapidly. He took the phone back from me and stared intently at it. “He used this phone to call me.