Dr. Jack and Mr. Higgins

This all started in the second grade when my neighbor’s son and some of his friends killed Luke, the dog that belonged to my twin brother, Jay, and I as revenge for something they thought we did to them. That changed both of our lives, but it hit Jay a little harder than me, he had to go see all of these medical and psychological doctors. Everything that my family and I did we had to do around Jay’s mood, all because of one day, and one stupid joke. The worse thing about it is that everything that we would say to him we would have to be careful, because the littlest comment could set him off and he would not cool down until like three days later if we were lucky. When we turned 18 Jay went and joined the Army. One year later we got word that he was MIA (Missing In Action) and since they never heard anything from him they thought that he was dead, but he wasn’t.

Well if I haven’t introduced myself I’m Dr. Jack Michael O’Callaghan, I’m 5’9”, blond hair, blue eyes, like most Irish people, but for some reason people also call me Mr. Higgins, and in a few minutes I’ll tell you why they think that he and I are one in the same, when we are not. But the thing is that we look exactly alike, we are both 5’9”, blond hair, blue eyes, there are only two things that are different about us and they are so small most people don’t even realize it, not even our parents. For one, I talk will more of a Celtic ancient then he does. The second one is that Jay has this little birth mark right under his left eye, but if you aren’t looking for it then you would never notice it. Well that’s all you need to know about me and my brother, now it’s on to the story.

You are probably wondering why I’m telling you all of this aren’t you. Well my current living space is a 4x6 prison cell in a maximum security state penitentiary in Mississippi. I am here because everybody thought that I was my “dead” brother, (which I’m not.) Because of what he did while he was on one of his rages. About two years after Jay supposedly went MIA he was driving and saw this girl whose name was Alyssa who was 14-years old with blond hair and blue eyes. She was just walking down the street, at around 9’oclock, minding her own business when Jay just grabbed her. Then after that nobody ever saw her again, and only one person knows what happened to her and that is Jay, but he has disappeared, again. The cops found a couple body parts lying on the side of a creek and found other parts all over the city, and throughout the Mississippi River. This was just the beginning everything.

About three weeks later another person went missing but this time it was a middle-aged man. Expect this time Jay had stepped it up a notch, making it more personal. The man he killed was our neighbor Mark, from when we were little, the man who killed our dog. Mark’s murder was even worse than Alyssa’s, because for him this one was personal. But even after that one he didn’t stop. Well I guess you have heard enough of the back-story, I hope you are ready for this story.

Like I said after Alyssa was murdered, Jay disappeared, but at the time everybody thought that he was still dead, but some of us had questionable thoughts when the symbol that the killer left behind was a symbol, that he and I had made when we were little when we were each other’s best friends, scratched into the back of her neck I started to have sick feelings in my stomach. Because only two people ever knew about that symbol and that was me and Jay, and since one of those people is suppose to be dead was really curious. The symbol was really simple it had a black outline with both of our names scratched into it, but there was always something that nobody else saw but us, in the bottom right hand corner is a little symbol, it’s a little ND collided together. Then whenever Mark showed up with the same symbol on the back of his neck I knew that is had to be Jay. As Jay continued his killing spree each body was marked with the same symbol. But there was one problem, during one of Jay’s kidnappings there was a witness who saw him and gave the police a description not of Jay, but of me. So I guess they ran it through some kind of facial reconstruction system, where they took the picture and reconstructed it to make it look like a real face and then ran it through the computer on some type of government system and came up with both mine and Jay’s face but since they have a death certificate for him, they figured it had to be me. After that I was brought in for questioning, and it went something like this:

“Please state your name for the record.”

“Jack Michael O’Callaghan”

“Where do you work?” The detective asked.

“The UPMC Hospital in Mississippi”

The detective wrote down the answer and the asked, “What do you know about the murders of Alyssa Williams, Mark Thompson, John Walker, Damian Cooke, and Mary Perez?”

I thought for a moment and answered, “All I about them is that they are all dead and somebody who looks like me is killing them, and I can assure you that it is not me.”

Once again the detective wrote down what I said the asked, “Then how come we have a witness who places you there when you kidnapped Damian Cooke. The witness actually saw you grab him and put him your rental car, you know the one you are renting from Paul’s Rental Cars, a white van with the license plate RTD-9837.”

I answered, “I own a black Cadillac with the license plate JQO-1374.”

“May I ask where that car is now?” The detective asked.

“It’s in my garage at my home,” I answered him with hesitation.

“Would you mind if we brought it in?” the detective asked.

I shot back, “Yes I would, because unless I’m being charged with something, I’m leaving, I do not have to take this.”

After that I walked out the door and slammed it behind me, and that was the end of our conversation. About two days later the cops showed up at my door with a warrant in their hand for my car, and to search the whole house, shed and pool house. They had just reached the pool house, their last stop, when they found what they were looking for, a bloody knife, and that was the end of it. I was back in the interrogation room with a Detective Tony DiNardo from the Special Forced Unit. The Detective has dark-brown hair, brown eyes, he was kind of muscular, and he had on a pair of khaki pants, light blue shirt and a tie. This conversation was a little different though, he was a little meaner then the last cop who last talked to me.

Detective DiNardo started our conversation with, “Well here we are again Dr. O’Callaghan. Now the last time you were here, before the officer could finish you got up and walked out. Would you like to explain the reason why Mr. O’Callaghan?”

I thought carefully then answered, “Well that’s because the officer was being disrespectful, and rude. That and I had some place to be and I didn’t have to be here.”

“Where did you have to go, because it seemed that right after you left another body showed up, now we here find that very suspicious. So would you like to tell me where you went after you left the police station?” the detective asked.

“I had an appointment.”

The detective looked at me with one of those looks, and then finally said, “Where?”

I hesitated for a moment then said, “If you really need to know, I was at the doctors.”

The detective looked at me with a funny face and then said, “Dr. O’Callaghan, you ARE a doctor and your best friend is a dentist, what kind of doctor do you need to see?”

I kind of looked down because I knew that whatever I told him was going on record, even though I knew that I had the right to remain silent but I did know that it would look like I was trying to hide something when I wasn’t. So I thought about it for another minute and then finally said the only thing that I could, THE TRUTH.

“I went to see a friend of a friend who specializes in insomnia.”

“Now why would you be seeing a sleep trouble doctor?” The detective asked

“Because I have been having trouble sleeping,” I said, “is there a problem with that?”

The detective stood up and leaned over the table, then said in my face, “Is it because of all the people that you have killed that you can’t stand the guilt, of taking away a daughter, a sister and a mother, a father and a son to someone? I know I would lose sleep over that too if it was me.”

I said right back in his face, “Ok, let’s get something straight, I didn’t, have never, and will never kill anyone. Do I make myself clear Detective?”

The detective sat back down and said, “If you say do Doctor. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

I paused for a minute and thought; I knew that it was going to come out sometime about me thinking that my brother, Jay, wasn’t dead. Then I finally said,

“I have had thoughts about my brother.”

The detective flips up his file and looks and then said,

“Jay, right?”

I nodded my head and said, “That is correct.”

Looks at his notes again, “It says here that your brother went MIA in the Army over in Germany.”

“That’s correct, but we never believed that, when Jay was growing up that’s all he ever talked about was joining the Army and fighting for his country,” I said back to him.

The detective hesitated for a minute, “Then why did he go MIA?”

“He didn’t,” I said back sharply.

“It says here that he did, and that he never returned. So why would you be thinking about him now?”

“No certain reason,” I said.

“There had to be a reason, you can’t just start thinking about somebody. What are you hiding?”

I replayed very sharply back you him, “I am not hiding anything and I am free to think what I like. It is a free country after all.”

The Detective’s face started getting all red; I don’t think that he liked that comment very much. Then to top it he started yelling.

“DO NOT GIVE ATTITUDE DOCTOR! I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR!?”

“Yes sir. Then don’t give such personal questions,” I answered.

While still all red he started to calm down a bit, but was still kind of yelling,

“Well then, where were we? Yes, what was this doctor’s name and where does he work?”

“His name is Doctor Patrick Maloney; he works at the 13th Street Clinic,” I said.

“Thank you, now see was that, that hard? We have a warrant for you DNA and figure prints.”

“Fine.”

After he told me that, this lab technician walked in and told me to open up my mouth; she took my DNA and then took my figure prints. After she and the detective left, another officer came in and took me to this holding cell. Five or ten minutes later a different lab technician came and took be to a room, where they took my DNA and figure prints again. They also took my picture. It seemed like the process took forever; I mean they must have taken my picture about 20 times. When all of this was complete they took me to this cell way in the back of the police station. It looked like one of those places that you see it the movies, you know, where they take all of the real bad guys, and lock them up alone. I mean this place was like maximum security in the back of a little police station. That’s when I really started to flip-out, there was a man in there, both of his arms were covered in tattoos from his shoulders the whole way down to his wrists, his head was bald and it had this massive scar, it went from his right ear the whole way to the back of his head. On his face was a jagged scar, and his cobalt blue eyes were as emotionless and cold as any arctic morning. Now this guy just looked like he was ready to bite my head off, either that or chop it off, take your pick. I looked at the officer, who was taking me to the cell, and he just smiled at me, like he knew what I was thinking, that if he put me in this cell that I WAS NOT going to make it out alive. He opened up the gate and shoved me inside and closed it behind me, I started to think that maybe if I just started to cry for my mommy that maybe whenever he killed me he would make it quick and painless. But to my surprise he didn’t even look at me, which I think is a good thing, I hope. After what felt like a life time of a just sitting there a man wearing a suit and tie came to the gate with a guard at his side and told me to get up. I did and the guard put handcuffs on my wrists and tightened them, really tight. Then he locked the gate back up again and took me by the arm and took us to this little room that smelled horrible. After about 2 minutes of just sitting there in quietness the man in the suit and tie finally introduced himself as Mr. David Brown, my court appointed attorney. Then he started asking me all of these questions:

“What do you know about all of the murders Dr. O’Callaghan?”

“The police have already asked me these questions Mr. Brown, and please call me Jack.”

“Well as your lawyer I need to hear all of these things from you, and please call me David.”

“All right David, all I know about these murders is what I’ve read in the newspaper. Other then that I don’t know much.”

“As long as you are honest with me Jack this will all end well. Does that sound like a plan?”

“That sounds good to me.”

After we were done there, instead of taking me back to that holding cell with the really big scary guy, they took me to the back of the precinct where two guys who both had guns, took me and put me in a van with the name, “MISSISSIPPI STATE MAXIMUM SECURTY PRISION” on the side of it, the name alone scared me. It was about a two hour drive, when we got there I looked out the window, and what I saw scared me even more. There was three layers of barbed wire on top of cement walls, the guards in the guard houses had big guns that looked like one bullet out of it could split you in half, and as we were driving through to where I would get out, there were these big guards that looked like they could rip me in half. Then when the van stopped, one of the guards got out and pulled me out of the van and the other guard came out behind me. As we walked inside through these big steel doors, there was another big scary guard and he patted me down to see if I was concealing anything that I wasn’t allowed to have. Then they gave me a gray jump suit and on the back it said, MISSISSIPPI STATE MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON. After I put that on they took me to where I am now, cell block D-756. The newspapers were full of “The Dr. Jack” murders. Placing all if the blame on me. I had been in prison about a week, when my brother, my “dead” brother came to see me. Our conversation went something like this,

“Hey little brother. How’s little Jacky been these past couple years?” I could hear the hatred in his voice. It shocked me to know that my twin brother had absolutely no love for me at all.

“Well do you want to know what I’ve been doing or what everybody thinks that been doing? Answer carefully Jay.”

“Whatcha mean Jack?”

“YOU KNOW… very well what I mean Jay, don’t play that game with me.”

“What do you want me to say, that I killed all of those people?”

“IF THAT’S THE TRUTH THEN YA I DO JAY! And DO NOT lie to me.”

“Well I guess you caught me red handed, but how are you going to tell the cops, because to them I’ve been dead for about 10 years. And all they will think is that you are trying to blame somebody for what you did.”

“I don’t plan on telling the cops, you are going to tell them.”

“I ain’t goin to tell em.”

“You mean to tell me that you’re going to let me take the blame for something that you did?”

“Ya, that sounds about right Jack.”

“Why Jay, what did I ever do to you to deserve this?”

“You were always the good son, the friend, the person everyone looked up to. You are so perfect, except to me. You even forgave the man who killed my dog.”

“That is what this is all about? Our dead dog?”

“No, it is about you and me. You have it all, I have nothing. Well, now you know how I feel. Invisible, just like Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll.”

“I don’t know what to say. You are my brother, my twin. I have always loved you and tried to help you. You are sick Jay, you need help. And once the police see this tape, hopefully you will get some.”

“Well good luck with that,” Jay turned down the collar of his shirt and pointed to little clear dots that were wired to each other, “these little baby’s block out my face so that you can’t even see it, all you see is a white light everywhere my face can be seen little brother, I thought a head, you were always the smart one in the family.”

With a sinking feeling in my stomach I realize jay was more deranged then I thought. He had planned all of the murders out carefully with the end result of putting me in prison.”

“Jay pleases. I will stand by you if you tell the truth. Have you no feeling for me? “

With a look of such hate in his eyes, Jay stood and smiled at me. “I am not the good brother; I take care of me first.” With that Jay turned and walked away.

After that conversation, that was the last that I saw of my brother. So we back to where we started sitting in my little cell waiting for my trial. I guess we will just have to wait for the trial to see what is going to happen to me. Will good win over evil, or not?