Daniel Klein by Blue Suede Clues: A Murder Mystery Featuring Elvis Presley Page A

apart,” Regis went on. “The left side of LeRoy’s face looks just like mine. But on the other, he’s a freak, a freak with a glass eye that wanders and a cheek that turns in where it should turn out.”
    â€œThat is an awful thing,” Elvis murmured.
    â€œIndeed it is,” Regis said. “Especially considering the fact that I did it.”
    â€œ What?”
    â€œI pulled the trigger,” Regis said evenly. “I shot my brother in the face.”
    Elvis put both of his hands flat against his face. His fingers were trembling. “It … It was an accident, right?” he blurted out.
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œWhat in God’s name do you mean, ‘ maybe’ ?” Elvis stared at Regis.
    Regis bowed his head. “It seemed like an accident at the time,” he said in a monotone. “And that is the way it was written up, of course. Couple kids fooling around with a BB gun, shooting at pop bottles out by the lake, taking turns, passing the gun back and forth. And then, this one time, LeRoy passes it to me and— Pop! —it goes off in his face just as I grab it.”

    â€œThen it was an accident,” Elvis said.
    Regis raised his head and looked solemnly into Elvis’s eyes. “Have you ever read any Sigmund Freud?” he asked.
    â€œHeard of him, never read him,” Elvis answered.
    â€œWell, Dr. Freud says that there are no accidents. Things may seem like an accident, but there is always a human motive hidden there somewhere. An unconscious motive—the kind that secretly wants to blow your brother’s head off.”
    â€œThat’s crazy,” Elvis said.
    â€œIt sounds that way, doesn’t it?” Regis said. “But it’s funny the way people just naturally find their way around to that point of view. Maybe that part is unconscious too.”
    â€œWho are you talking about?”
    â€œMy parents, for one,” Regis said. “They kept assuring me it was just an accident and that I shouldn’t feel guilty about it. But the more they said that to me, the more I knew that they were thinking just the opposite. That I had ruined my brother’s life because I was careless. And, little by little, it wasn’t because I was careless—it was because I was bad .”
    â€œThey said that?”
    â€œOf course not. They never said anything like that. They just lived it. And so that’s how I became Bad Regis, the proverbial evil twin,” Clifford went on with a grim smile. “You know how you never want to disappoint your parents’ expectations of you? Well, I didn’t want to disappoint mine. No, sir, from that day on I fulfilled their’s. Got expelled from school that year. The first of many schools, I might add. Arrested for shoplifting at the age of twelve. Off to military academy where they threw me out for shouting obscenities in chapel. Ran away to Mexico when I was fifteen. Worked in a furniture factory there for close to a year. My little twist on migrant labor.”
    â€œBut you went to college. Became a lawyer,” Elvis said.
    â€œAfter a fashion,” Regis replied. “That part still amazes me. Maybe it’s genetic. My father was a lawyer and a judge, and his father before him. Naturally, they went to Stanford and Harvard Law. I, myself, took a slightly different route. Sent myself through night
school by tending bar. Took me almost ten years, but here I am, Counselor Regis Clifford, Attorney at Law.”
    â€œAnd LeRoy?”
    â€œIt took over a year for LeRoy to heal,” Regis said. “They did some reconstructive surgery on him, put in the glass eye, but it never completely worked. He’d look fairly decent for a few months, but then the right side of his face would simply cave in.”
    â€œAwful.”
    â€œYes, awful,” Regis said. “That’s what LeRoy sees every day when he looks in the mirror. And, when he looks at