Chapter Twelve - The Man in the Mirror
1767 Words
No one moved.
Hayes stared at the fingerprint report.
His own name.
His own fingerprint.
On a diary he had never seen before the investigation.
Brooks broke the silence.
"That's impossible."
Hayes nodded slowly.
"I agree."
"But impossible doesn't mean untrue."
He slid the report into an evidence sleeve.
"Send it back to the lab."
Brooks frowned.
"They already verified it twice."
"I want a third verification."
"And this time..."
He looked around the room.
"...use a lab outside Blackridge."
Daniels immediately picked up the report.
"I know one."
"Good."
"Don't tell anyone what you're testing."
Daniels left without another word.
Hayes waited until the door closed.
Then he locked it.
"If someone inside this department is manipulating evidence..."
He looked at Brooks.
"...they'll expect us to panic."
"We're not giving them that."
An hour later...
Hayes drove alone.
Not to his apartment.
Not to the station.
He headed toward the Police Academy on the outskirts of the city.
Rain tapped steadily against the windshield.
His thoughts refused to settle.
His fingerprint.
The hidden vault.
Nathan.
Elias.
Eleanor.
None of it fit.
His phone rang through the car's speakers.
Brooks.
"Talk to me."
"I've been digging into your personnel file."
Hayes smiled faintly.
"You finally decided to investigate me?"
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
Her voice dropped.
"Michael..."
"...your file has missing pages."
His smile vanished.
"What pages?"
"The first two years of your career."
Hayes tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
"That's impossible."
"I know."
"I graduated from the Academy."
"I worked patrol."
"I remember it."
"I believe you."
"But the records don't."
The call ended as Hayes turned into the Academy grounds.
The campus was quiet.
Most of the buildings were dark.
Only the archive office still had lights on.
An elderly caretaker looked up as Hayes entered.
"Detective."
"I wasn't expecting visitors."
Hayes showed his badge.
"I need access to the graduation archives."
The caretaker hesitated.
"It's late."
"It won't take long."
Ten minutes later...
Boxes of old records covered a wooden table.
Hayes found the graduation class from eighteen years earlier.
He opened the yearbook.
There he was.
Young.
Smiling.
Standing beside dozens of new recruits.
He turned the page.
Photographs from training exercises.
Shooting practice.
Graduation ceremony.
Then one picture caught his eye.
A group photo.
Instructor James Holloway stood in the center.
Cadets surrounded him.
Hayes recognized almost every face.
Except one.
Standing directly beside him...
Nathan.
Only...
Not the Nathan he knew today.
This boy was sixteen.
Too young to have been in the Academy.
Hayes frowned.
He turned to the list of names beneath the photograph.
Every cadet was identified.
Except the boy.
His space was blank.
No name.
No number.
Nothing.
Hayes carefully removed the photograph from the plastic sleeve.
Something was written on the back.
In blue ink.
Protect him until he remembers.
Hayes felt a chill.
Behind him, the caretaker spoke quietly.
"I wondered when someone would finally find that."
Hayes turned.
"You've seen this before?"
The old man nodded.
"I was told never to mention it."
"Who told you?"
The caretaker looked at the photograph.
Then back at Hayes.
"A woman."
"Silver hair."
"Elegant."
"She visited every year."
"Eleanor Whitmore."
Hayes' heartbeat quickened.
"What did she say?"
The caretaker smiled sadly.
"She said one day..."
"...you would come looking for the boy with no name."
Hayes looked back at the photograph.
The blank space beneath the teenager's face suddenly felt heavier than any evidence he had uncovered.
Because he had seen that face before.
Not in an old file.
Not in a photograph.
In a mirror.
The unnamed teenager...
Looked exactly like a sixteen-year-old Michael Hayes.
Hayes stared at the photograph.
His pulse thundered in his ears.
The unnamed teenager wasn't just similar to him.
He had the same sharp jawline.
The same crooked smile.
Even the small scar above his left eyebrow.
A scar Hayes had carried since he was twelve after falling from a bicycle.
He slowly looked up at the caretaker.
"Where did this photograph come from?"
"The Academy archives."
"No."
Hayes placed the picture on the table.
"I mean before that."
The old man sighed.
"It was delivered anonymously about seventeen years ago."
"With instructions."
"What instructions?"
He reached into a drawer beneath the desk and removed a worn leather notebook.
"I kept a copy."
He turned several yellowed pages before stopping.
Written in neat handwriting was a short note.
Place the enclosed photograph in the Class of 2008 yearbook. Do not record the sender. Do not remove the unidentified boy. Someone will need to find him one day.
There was no signature.
Only a familiar symbol at the bottom.
A raven.
Hayes took a slow breath.
Everything always led back to the raven.
His phone vibrated.
Brooks.
He answered immediately.
"I've got something," she said.
"So do I."
"You first."
"The independent lab finished the fingerprint test."
Hayes waited.
"They confirmed the print wasn't altered."
"It really matches you."
His grip tightened around the phone.
"But..."
Hayes closed his eyes.
"There it is."
"The 'but.'"
"The print is about twenty years old."
He frowned.
"That's impossible."
"The diary wasn't discovered until now."
"I know."
She hesitated.
"The lab says whoever touched that diary..."
"...did it approximately twenty years ago."
Hayes looked at the photograph in front of him.
Twenty years.
The same period when his earliest personnel records disappeared.
The same period when Eleanor Whitmore wrote her letter.
The same period when Victor Hale vanished.
It couldn't be a coincidence anymore.
"I'm coming back," Hayes said.
"Wait."
Brooks' voice turned serious.
"You should know one more thing."
"The lab also identified a second fingerprint."
Hayes stopped walking.
"Whose?"
There was a long silence.
When Brooks finally answered, her voice was barely above a whisper.
"Nathan's."
Hayes frowned.
"Nathan touched the diary too?"
"Yes."
"And according to the aging analysis..."
"...he touched it on the same day you did."
Hayes looked at the old photograph again.
His mind raced.
He had no memory of ever meeting Nathan as a child.
No memory of Eleanor.
No memory of the Whitmore estate.
Yet the evidence insisted otherwise.
Either someone had fabricated twenty years of forensic history...
Or someone had taken twenty years of his memories.
The thought was absurd.
Impossible.
And yet...
So had everything else.
As Hayes stepped out of the archive building, he noticed something tucked beneath the windshield wiper of his car.
A white envelope.
No stamp.
No address.
Just two handwritten words.
For Michael.
He opened it carefully.
Inside was a single Polaroid photograph.
Three children stood in the garden of Whitmore House.
One was clearly Nathan.
One was a young Elara.
Between them stood a third child.
His face had been burned away.
Only the edges remained.
On the back of the photograph, in Eleanor Whitmore's unmistakable handwriting, were seven chilling words:
Some memories are stolen before they're forgotten.
Hayes stood motionless in the rain, the photograph trembling slightly in his hand.
For the first time since the investigation began, he wasn't just questioning the evidence.
He was questioning his own past.
Rain hammered against the windshield as Hayes drove back toward Blackridge.
The Polaroid lay on the passenger seat.
Every few minutes, his eyes drifted to it.
Three children.
Nathan.
A little girl who looked like Elara.
And a third child whose face had been burned away.
The photograph felt less like evidence and more like a warning.
Someone hadn't wanted that child to be recognized.
The temporary command center was unusually quiet when Hayes arrived.
Brooks was waiting outside.
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
Hayes handed her the Polaroid.
She studied it carefully.
"Where did you get this?"
"It was left on my car."
She turned it over and read Eleanor's message.
Some memories are stolen before they're forgotten.
Brooks looked back at him.
"I don't like this."
"Neither do I."
They walked inside.
Daniels was already there, pacing.
"I found something in the old city records."
He spread several maps across the table.
"They're sewer maps?"
"No."
"They're utility tunnels."
He pointed to one section beneath downtown Blackridge.
"These tunnels connect Whitmore House..."
He traced the route with his finger.
"...Ashcroft Rare Books..."
"...the abandoned chapel..."
"...and the old police headquarters."
Hayes leaned closer.
"Show me."
Daniels pointed to one final location.
"The network ends here."
A single building stood at the center of every tunnel.
It wasn't a mansion.
It wasn't a police station.
It was a hospital.
St. Agnes Children's Hospital.
Elara frowned.
"I've never been there."
Hayes looked at her.
"Are you sure?"
She hesitated.
"I..."
A sharp pain shot through her head.
She grabbed the edge of the table.
Images flashed through her mind.
A white hallway.
The smell of disinfectant.
A nurse humming softly.
A little boy laughing somewhere nearby.
Then...
A woman's voice.
"Don't let them separate the children."
Elara gasped and stumbled backward.
Brooks caught her before she fell.
"Easy."
"I'm okay..."
But she wasn't.
Her heart was racing.
"I know that hospital."
Hayes stepped closer.
"You said you'd never been there."
"I thought I hadn't."
She pressed her fingers against her temples.
"I was little."
"Very little."
"I remember a room with blue walls."
"And..."
She squeezed her eyes shut.
"There was another child."
"A boy."
"What did he look like?" Hayes asked.
"I can't see his face."
"It keeps disappearing."
"The same way it disappeared in the photograph."
Silence settled over the room.
Daniels slowly looked from Elara to Hayes.
"The burned face."
Hayes nodded.
"It wasn't burned to hide him from us."
"It was burned..."
"...because someone didn't want her to remember him."
Before anyone could respond, a loud knock echoed through the command center.
Three officers entered.
One of them carried a sealed evidence box.
"Detective Hayes."
"This was just delivered."
"Who brought it?"
"He wouldn't give his name."
"He just said you'd understand."
Hayes opened the box.
Inside was an old VHS tape.
A hospital wristband.
And a patient file.
The wristband was small enough to fit a six-year-old child.
Hayes picked it up.
The printed name had faded with time.
But one word remained perfectly clear.
MICHAEL
His breath caught.
He opened the patient file.
Across the front, stamped in bold red ink, were the words:
ST. AGNES CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL
RESTRICTED RECORD
Patient:
Michael Hayes
Age:
6
Diagnosis:
The remainder of the page had been torn away.
Only one handwritten note remained at the bottom.
Memory procedure approved.
Hayes stared at the file.
His voice was barely audible.
"...What memory procedure?"
No one in the room had an answer.
- Writer
