CHAPTER 19
I wrapped up all my work and got ready to go and meet the real Mr. X a.k.a Joe Jacobs
I had a ton of questions for him, starting with why would he kill his own family? Why Sarah? Why not kill me that day? The bastard had a lot of explaining to do.
I went to the place and I instantly recognized it. It was the place I saw in my dreams. There was the pendulum clock I could see. I looked around a little to find everything the same as in my dreams. I definitely was in the right place.

I reached the place I was called to. It looked like an old beat-down factory of sorts. Tons of machinery here and there. There was grease and oil on the floor making it slippery. It looked as if this factory was shut down years ago. It was a perfect hideout.
I hardly saw anyone around.

I was frisked by one of Joe’s henchmen at the entrance to the building. Any weapons or communication devices I had were taken away, which included my phone, department radio, pistol, a knife and believe it or not they even took away the nail clippers I had in my pocket. How scared are you to do this? I was actually laughing inside but I couldn’t show this on my face.

I was shown my way into a room, where a man was sitting on the chair, facing the other way. As soon as he turned towards me, memories flashed in front of me. All that running, all that turmoil, all that suffering, all for this. He had exactly the same face as Mr. X.
“There you are Joe! You bastard! How could you do all this!”
“For firsts Richie… I am Steve not Joe. Joe is dead”
He said this so nonchalantly, with absolutely zero guilt. How can a person be so cold towards his family? And wait a second what does he mean he is not Joe, He is Steve.
We had confirmed Steve’s identity by checking DNA records of old suspects.

Then it struck me, identical twins have almost exactly the same DNA structure. We might have ignored a little variation as sampling error. But then fingerprints wouldn’t have matched.
“Wait a sec…. I don’t get it. I can understand the DNA, but how did the fingerprints match.”
“You didn’t read the report your friend made closely, did you? They did not find any fingerprints. You know why? Because my plans are always perfect. My poor brother Joe had Nasopharyngeal Cancer. I, being the nice brother, consulted him to a doctor who gave him Capecitabine on my orders. Ain’t I a nice person?”

This made me furious. Standing before me was an absolutely shameless man who was planning this since a long time. Capecitabine is an anti-cancer drug which has a long term side-effect on fingerprints. It causes destruction of fingerprints if taken in high doses for a long term.
“You are an absolute scum!! Using your brother like this. Practically killing him long before he died. And all this for what? Just so you can be let off the hook? By staging your death and by killing your own brother? Ruining these many lives? You are a complete psychopath!!”
“I had a very disturbed childhood because of my brother and sister, and I had to take revenge. So why not? It was fun having them work to get me...