Trouble tracks twin sisters in opening to “The Killer Without a Face”

Lying in bed with her eyes closed and savoring the fact that she didn’t have to work, Danielle Calderwood began to think about what she had to do today. Her nine-to-five job as an accountant in a busy firm often meant staying late to get work done. That left her with little time to catch up on other tasks. Saturdays were always busy. Her eyes flew open, and she sat up abruptly, startled by the insistent pounding on her apartment’s door. 

A loud voice announced, “Police! Open up.” 

UNDERWRITTEN BY

Each week, The Colorado Sun and Colorado Humanities & Center For The Book feature an excerpt from a Colorado book and an interview with the author. Explore the SunLit archives at coloradosun.com/sunlit.

She got up and hurried to the door. Peering through the peep hole she found herself staring directly at the chest of a Denver police officer. A badge on his chest said Kurtz, his name presumably. 

Christ, what now? Dani thought. She hesitated for a moment trying to decide whether she should open the door or pretend that she wasn’t home but the pounding began again. 

“Okay, okay! I’m opening the door.” She opened the door as far as the security chain would allow. A tall, heavyset police officer with a deep scowl on his face stared at her. Another officer stood to his side; hands hooked into his duty belt.

“How did you get into the building? You didn’t buzz me.” 

His face was cold and he didn’t answer. Dani sighed. They’d probably buzzed the manager and he’d let them in.

“Can I help you?” she asked, pushing her long blonde wavy hair away from her face.

“Hannah Calderwood?” he barked.

“N-no. I’m her sister.”

He held a piece of paper up and looked between it and her face. “Can I see some ID?”

“What’s this all about, officer?”

“ID, please.”

“Okay, hang on a minute.” Dani retrieved her purse from the coffee table and fished out her driver’s license. She passed it to the cop and watched as he looked at her license and looked at what she assumed was a photo. He looked puzzled, and she took pity on him. “Hannah is my twin sister. Is she who you’re looking for?”

“Yes, ma’am. Can we come in and talk to her?”

“She’s not here.” She saw the look of suspicion on his face, and she saw her neighbor across the hall emerging from the stairwell and heading to his door. “Look, come in and tell me what you’re here for. I’d just as soon my neighbors not get an earful.” She started to close the door and the officer blocked it with his hand. “I have to take the chain off,” she said, raising her eyebrows at him. He removed his hand and she finished closing the door and sliding the security chain off.

They entered the small one-bedroom apartment and glanced around. “Where is your sister?”

“I have no idea. She doesn’t live here, and I haven’t talked to her recently.”

“She listed this address as the place she lives.”

Dani made a sweeping gesture with her hand at the small, tidy apartment. “Take a look around, officer. She doesn’t and never has lived here. What’s going on?”

“She’s missed her last two appointments with her parole officer, which violates her conditions of parole. It’s been revoked. We’re here to take her to jail.”

“As I said, she doesn’t live here. Feel free to look around if you think I’m lying about it.” 

Dani watched as the other cop opened the closet and bent to look under the bed. He went into the bathroom, and she heard him slide the shower curtain open. He returned and shrugged at Kurtz. 

“The Killer Without a Face”

>> READ AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR

Where to find it:

• Prospector: Search the combined catalogs of 23 Colorado libraries
• Libby: E-books and audio books
• NewPages Guide: List of Colorado independent bookstores
• Bookshop.org: Searchable database of bookstores nationwide

SunLit present new excerpts from some of the best Colorado authors that not only spin engaging narratives but also illuminate who we are as a community. Read more.

“I’m sorry I can’t help, but I haven’t seen her in more than a week.”

Kurtz handed her his card. “And you have no idea where she might be?”

“No, I don’t. I’m sorry.” 

“If you hear from her, please let me know. Or, if she’ll cooperate, bring her into the precinct. The address is on my card.”

Dani nodded as she took the card, closing and locking the door after them. She’d lied. She knew where her sister was and should have told the officers, should have allowed her to suffer the consequences of her poor decisions. Dani leaned against the apartment door with her eyes closed as a familiar wave of depression washed over her. Hannah had listed Dani’s address as her own. No big surprise. As usual, Hannah hadn’t asked, hadn’t even mentioned it, leaving Dani to deal with the blowback. 

She changed into clothes a bit more suitable for going to visit a parole officer than an oversized T-shirt and pajama bottoms. Brushing her hair in front of the bathroom mirror, she stopped and looked at herself—really looked, instead of a quick glance, which was her usual habit. A worried frown drew her brows together, and her mouth had taken a more decided downturn in the last year. Twenty-nine just a month ago, but she looked far more worn than she thought someone her age should. 

The last year had been hard as Hannah had spiraled more and more out of control. Arrested six months ago for selling drugs, she’d reached a plea deal that resulted in a minimal jail sentence, but she had to complete a year’s probation. If she failed to comply, she was looking at two years in jail. Hannah had sworn she’d do anything to avoid going back to jail, and Dani had thought perhaps the threat of a two-year sentence had finally made her decide to turn her life around. 

With the visit from the police, it was clear Hannah had no intention of changing. Using Dani’s address had once again pulled Dani into her messy life. Hannah had always used Dani as a last resort lifesaver—the person she could grab onto when everything went to shit and everyone else had abandoned her. Hannah was the millstone around Dani’s neck. She should walk away and refuse to rescue Hannah. But she had never figured out how to do that. 

Being Hannah’s twin had meant people assumed she was just like Hannah—up for anything, happy to take drugs or get drunk with abandon. Men who knew both of them assumed she was an easy lay as well, and she’d spent far too much time correcting their mistakes. Women judged her with that yardstick if they knew anything about her sister, so Dani had built a high wall around that part of her life. Unless a person had known her growing up, most people would have been surprised to find out she had a sister. 

There was no way to shield the men she had dated from her sister, however. Hannah would show up unexpectedly, drunk, high, or belligerent, which was as hard to explain as a call from her sister, who was in jail or the ER, asking Dani to help. Dani hadn’t had a serious relationship in four years since the last guy had walked out the door after a couple of months. 

Standing in the doorway of her apartment, he’d said, “I’ve had my fill of your sister and the chaos you get into with her. We’ve never had a chance to have a relationship because our time together is constantly derailed by your sister. I barely count, and I don’t like that. I’m done with this.”

Dani gathered her purse and coat, the millstone firmly back in place. Getting into her car, she knew, as sure as she knew anything, that this would be as pointless as every other time she’d bailed Hannah out or tried to get her to stop fucking her own life up or, at the very least, to stop fucking Dani’s life up. She’d never been successful at either effort and admitted to herself that, although she should have, she’d never stopped trying. 

“Hannah’s just being Hannah—that’s not going to change. You’re the one who has to change, you’re the one who has to walk away, now, forever, unless you want to continue to throw your life away.”

Her best friend, Elaine, had been saying that since at least high school. She’d been supportive, and Dani had agreed with her and then ignored her for just as long. The eldest by five minutes, Dani had always felt responsible for her twin, for which her mother was partly to blame.  

Mary Calderwood had been unprepared for marriage, but she’d been a dutiful, if not enthusiastic, wife, and pregnancy had ensued. After the birth of the twins, Mary lost interest in being a dutiful wife and refused to have sex with her husband to ensure no further children would be created. Dani’s parents slept in separate bedrooms, and once, after a nightmare, when she went to her mother’s room, she found the door was locked.

Mary had also not been prepared for children, certainly not twins, but she made a feeble effort to care for them. Hannah had been a small, sickly infant, and Mary had basked in the sympathy from friends and family for her martyred lot in life. She favored Hannah to the exclusion of Dani; she received far more attention for her sick child than she did for her healthy one.

It didn’t take long for Mary to lose interest in the twins altogether. People got tired of hearing her tales of woe and began visiting or including her less and less. Without the attention as a reason for her attempts at mothering, she’d handed over the responsibility for the twins to neighborhood babysitters. When money was tight, she let the twins fend for themselves as best they could. Sporadically as a young child, then permanently as they grew older, Dani had stepped in to care for herself and Hannah, and those responsibilities had worsened as she and her twin grew up. 

Mary’s neglect had begun as confusion and inadequacy, morphed into detachment, and turned into absence after her husband had finally disappeared. Her response to his abandonment was to lapse into a haze of drinking. 

As she left her apartment, Dani’s last conversation with Elaine played in her mind. “I can’t . . . I don’t want to keep talking about this,” Elaine had said a year ago, the last time they’d talked.  “I’m enabling you just like you’re enabling Hannah. I can’t stand by and watch you throw your life away thinking you’re going to have any effect on Hannah’s life. Dani, please, get some help, some counseling, a support group for families of addicts, something.”

But she hadn’t. Now all she had left was her twin sister, the sister she wished, in the most angry, desperate part of her heart, didn’t exist. The sister who would never go away and would never change. The shame that she simultaneously wanted her sister dead and couldn’t seem to walk away from her weighed on her.

Dani huffed out a breath in defeat and drove toward the run-down house Hannah shared with her drug-dealing boyfriend, Billy Alphonse. Another Saturday gone to hell.

Helen Starbuck is a Colorado native, a former operating room nurse, editor, and an award-winning author. When not writing, you can find her ballroom dancing, gardening, traveling, reading books with suspense-filled situations, researching topics that would probably get her arrested if she were a murder suspect.