Agent of Time

by Nathan Van Coops

  It was the same man from the alley. Ben. She turned toward where the young man had been hiding and could still see his foot protruding from behind the bushes. Now there were two of them? The man on top of the trailer had to be his twin.

  The other man stood up as well.

  Stella’s stomach turned a flip in her gut.

  It was the dead man from the Interstate. Her arsonist.

  Stella lurched backward, colliding with the wall of the building. It was as though the ground was a rug that had suddenly been pulled out from under her. Her head spun and she slipped sideways and landed in the leaves and twigs behind the shrubbery. Her legs went to jelly and the gun fell from her fingertips. She struggled to stay alert. Oh God. What was happening to her?

  Stella grasped at the shrubbery next to her, scratching herself in the face with dried limbs of the poorly watered plant as she tried to right herself and dispel her dizziness. She managed to keep herself upright long enough to regain a view of the top of the trailer. The two men were grappling atop the truck. The one called Ben tried to run, but the other man tripped him. Stella lost Ben to view, but heard the other man, Stenger, give a loud shout. The next moment everything went silent.

  Stella’s world flipped upside down. It was as though the sky was leaking out of the hole in the building above her. She was vaguely aware of sirens in the street. Unkempt shrubbery. A lizard watched her from its perch on the concrete wall of the building. Its throat extended in a colorful display of orange. Its gaze was pitiless.

  Stella wanted to throw up. If she knew which direction the ground was in, she may have tried, but she felt like her mind was being siphoned backward through a straw. Her vision narrowed. Everything in the world was shrinking smaller and smaller until it was a single point of light. If there was anything else in the universe beyond that luminescent pin prick at the edge of her consciousness, it was failing to show itself. Stella realized it had been a very long time since she had taken a breath. Eons perhaps. She ought to try it. She gasped for air but there was none to be had. Then her universe went black.

  8 Wake Up

  Stella blinked several times and waited for her eyes to focus. She wasn’t dead. That was something. The room around her slowly took shape, synapses connecting in her brain to trigger the right memories, the right word for this place.

  Hospital.

  She was lying in a bed and two men were beside her. One was a doctor she didn’t recognize. The other was a familiar face. Detective . . . Briggs.

  “Good morning, Hot Shot,” he said. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

  Stella tried to sit up.

  “Whoa, whoa,” the doctor said. “No need to rush yourself. You’ve been through quite an ordeal. Just relax.”

  “Where—” Stella managed. She squinted in the morning sunlight streaming through the window.

  “Where are you?” the doctor suggested. “This is St. Anthony’s hospital, downtown. I’m Dr. Yearwood.”

  “No,” Stella muttered. “Where did he go? The arsonist.”

  “Sorry, Doc,” Danny said. “Always working, this one.” He turned toward Stella. “Don’t worry. Bureau says they have your case under control. Nothing to fret about.”

  “Can you tell me your name?” the doctor asked.

  Stella blinked at him. “Um . . . Stella.” The rest of her name. Must remember it. “Special Agent . . . Stella York,” she corrected. “And I need to get out of here.” She tried to sit up again and began looking for her clothes. Where had they put them?

  “Special Agent York, you have suffered a very significant blackout,” the doctor said, moving to block her exit from the bed. “I may need to run some tests on you before we let you go. I’d recommend lying back and resting for now.”

  Stella blinked at him, then slowly eased back against the pillows. Maybe a little rest wasn’t a bad idea.

  “Could you maybe give us a few minutes, Doc?” Danny said. “Just so I can fill her in on a few things? Won’t take long. Then we can do those tests if she wants you to.”

  The doctor stood up straighter, checked his clipboard, then nodded to Detective Briggs. “All right, a few minutes isn’t likely to hurt anything. Try not to agitate her at all. I’ll be back in about five.”

  Danny waited till the doctor was out of the room before speaking. He sat on the edge of the bed and rested his hand on hers. “Gave us a bit of a scare there. When they found you they said you were in and out of consciousness. Do you remember what happened?”

  Stella’s memories were jumbled. Her head had a fuzziness to it that she couldn’t place. It was like a hangover without the dehydration or headache. Everything was slow in coming to mind and seemed on the edge of slipping away.

  “There was a building fire. After the accident.”

  The detective leaned closer. “We know about the building fire. What kind of accident?”

  “The one on the freeway.” The memories were coming back to her. “I saw him die, Danny. Our arsonist. But then he wasn’t dead. Neither of them were.”

  “The gas station arsonist from the videotapes? You saw him get killed?”

  “He was on top of the truck. On I-275. The pile-up. He was the one that caused it.”

  Detective Briggs pulled out his notebook and scribbled a few notes. “Pile-up, huh? What does it mean he died, but didn’t die?”

  “It was . . .” Stella tried to put it to words. “It was like things were happening out of order. I saw them end up on the truck. But it was after they were on it. Only I had already seen it. He was dead in the road. The other guy, Ben—the one we saw at the karaoke bar—he was on the truck too, but he disappeared.”

  “Afraid you’re not making a lot of sense,” Danny said. “Take your time. Do you remember how you ended up in the bushes? Some firemen found you unconscious in an alley. You have any idea how you got there?”

  “Yeah. I was hiding,” Stella replied. “Trying to see where the hostages were.”

  “Hostages? What hostages?” Danny asked.

  “The ones the guy in the street was talking about. What was his name? Melvin? No. Malcolm. What happened to him?”

  “Malcolm,” Danny said, scribbling in his pad again. “I’ll ask around if anyone saw him. Sounds like we have a lot more questions to ask.”

  It was nearing lunchtime when Stella was finally cleared to leave the hospital. The doctors wanted her to stay longer in case her incident had been something more serious, but Stella assured them that she felt fine and had merely fainted at the scene of the fire. She was lying of course. Whatever happened to her was shaking up her memories in a bad way, but she wasn’t going to spend another day in the hospital if she could help it. She wanted answers.

  She lingered on the sidewalk outside the hospital lobby and checked her watch. Detective Briggs had promised to pick her up, but hadn’t arrived yet. An older man was seated in a wheelchair near her, apparently waiting for a ride as well.

  “You escaped too, eh?” he asked cheerily. “Good for you. You have a ride?”

  Stella smiled back. “I do. Thanks.”

  “Hope it was nothing serious,” the man said. “Not that it’s my business.”

  “It’s all right,” Stella replied. “I’ll be fine. How about you?”

  “Would’ve been dead if my grandson hadn’t been around to help me,” the man replied. “But luckily my story gets a happy ending today. Home in time for lunch.” He looked up as a car pulled into the roundabout. “Ah. My getaway driver is here.”

  Stella turned to observe the car and it immediately arrested her attention. It was an old Buick. The same old Buick she had seen at the karaoke bar. It couldn’t be the same one, could it? She couldn’t recall the plate number.

  But when the driver got out of the car, she immediately recognized him. He was the short young man with the buzzed hair who had been helped to the car by friends on account of being too drunk that night. She didn’t recall his name but his features were easily
recognizable. He was sober now and moved quickly around the car to help the old man out of his wheelchair.

  “All right, Grandpa, let’s get you out of here.”

  “You need any help?” Stella asked, moving closer.

  “I think I got it,” the young man said. He had a pleasant smile and eyes that resembled his grandfather’s.

  “This is my grandson, Robbie,” the old man said. “He’s a time traveler, you know.”

  “Grandpa!” the young man said. He turned to Stella with an apologetic smile. “Sorry. They have him on a lot of meds still.”

  “Oh, she doesn’t care what I say,” the old man said. “I’m just having a little fun. Gotta tell somebody.”

  Robbie got his grandfather seated in the Buick and then disappeared back inside the hospital with the wheelchair.

  “He’s been good to me,” the old man said.

  “We actually met the other night,” Stella said. “Your grandson and I. Though I don’t know if he remembers. It was a busy place.”

  “Oh, did you now?” the old man said. “Isn’t that a strange coincidence?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder,” Stella replied. “Strange coincidences seem to be multiplying in my life this week.”

  The old man bobbed his head. “I’ve been alive a long time now,” he said. “But there are things in the world that still surprise me. Things no one would ever believe if I told them. Do you know what that feels like?”

  “Actually, I do,” Stella replied. “More than you might imagine.”

  “Best keep our heads on straight then, eh?” He winked at her.

  Stella closed the old man’s car door as his grandson re-emerged from the hospital lobby and made his way around the vehicle.

  Detective Briggs pulled into the roundabout a moment later, angling his Pontiac Trans Am into position behind the Buick.

  “What’s your name?” Stella asked the old man as she leaned down to address him through the window.

  “Robert,” He replied. “Robert Cameron. But my friends call me Lucky.” He offered her a hand. “What do they call you?”

  “Definitely not lucky,” she replied, shaking his hand.

  Robbie, the grandson, shifted the car into gear and gave her a polite smile.

  Stella backed away from the car and gave the old man a wave. “Nice meeting you.”

  “You take care now,” the old man said.

  Detective Briggs shut the Pontiac’s door and walked over to join her as the Buick pulled away from the curb. “You all set to go?”

  “Yeah.” Stella watched the big car pull back onto the street and into traffic. She turned to the detective. “You believe in coincidences?”

  Danny pondered the question momentarily. “Sure. I mean it’s a small world. Bound to happen, don’t you think? Why? You know that old guy from somewhere?”

  “Not yet,” she replied. “But I have a feeling it’s not the last I’ve seen of him.”

  Danny held the door for her as she climbed into his Trans Am.

  “You aren’t going to like the news I have for you,” Danny said, as soon as he was behind the wheel.

  “What news?”

  “I put in a few calls around the station this morning. Nobody had any reports of this pile-up you mentioned. You sure it was bad enough that the department got calls?”

  “Are you kidding?” Stella asked. “There was a body in the middle of the freeway. You couldn’t get the report on that? Had to be at least a dozen officers on scene.”

  “Nobody I talked to seemed to know anything about it,” Danny said. “You’re sure it was in the city limits? Wasn’t in Lealman or something, was it?”

  “It was right in the middle of the Interstate, Danny. You obviously didn’t ask around very well.”

  Danny headed toward the freeway. “Maybe you can show me the scene real quick, and talk me through what happened.”

  Danny was taking the same freeway on-ramp Stella had used the night before. It was easy for her to narrate the events as they merged into northbound traffic.

  “And there was a car ahead of me, a convertible with an old couple in it, so I tried to go left and then the tractor trailer…” she paused as the memory caused a twinge in her head. She winced.

  “You okay?” Danny asked, looking over with concern.

  “Yeah. I’m good.” Stella shook off the strange sensation and focused on the road. “And right, up here, that pedestrian overpass. The truck went under it. That’s what hit him.” She scanned the median and guardrail. “There were cars all over the place. There ought to be an indent in the guardrail right where…” she paused as she realized she couldn’t spot any damage. What the hell? She pivoted in her seat to try to look back and they went under the overpass. “Pull over, okay?”

  Danny eased the car into the breakdown lane and rolled to a stop. Stella opened the car door and got out.

  Where was it? What had happened to the dented guardrail? There’s no way it had been fixed overnight.

  Stella waited for a break in the traffic, then sprinted across the three lanes of freeway to the median.

  “Stella! Wait!” Danny shouted.

  But Stella was already back to the overpass and scanning the grass. Multiple cars had gone off the road. There ought to be tire tracks everywhere. Where in the hell were they?

  Trucks barreled past on the freeway, rattling and roaring, while big blasts of air rushed by her. Stella pushed her hair away from her face and continued to search the median, jogging forward to the point where her car had slid to a stop the day before.

  There was nothing. The grass hadn’t been disturbed. There were no ruts or indents in the mud. What had happened to them?

  Stella kept her hands to her head, pressing in the sides of her skull trying to force her eyes to see what they ought to see. She wasn’t crazy. She knew what she saw. She doubled over as another twinge of pain shot through her skull.

  “Hey, hey, take it easy over here,” Danny said, grasping at her wrists and pulling her hands away from her head.

  She looked up at him through strands of her hair and gasped the words. “It was right here, Danny. I saw what I saw!”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, wrapping her in his arms. “It’s gonna be fine.”

  The feel of his arms around her should have been comforting but her mind was racing too fast.

  The body. The aftermath of cars colliding with one another. It was too much. She never could have imagined such a scene in her dreams. It was too vivid. It was real.

  “There’s something wrong, Danny,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his back. “This isn’t what happened.”

  Stella was in a daze as they made their way downtown. Danny took her to his place and ushered her inside the one-story ranch house.

  “I feel like you should get more rest,” he offered. “I’ll make you some coffee, or maybe tea. You can sort through all this stuff and make some sense of it.”

  “I ought to be down at the station talking to the officers who were on duty last night,” Stella said. “I need to find the ones that were there at the scene.”

  “That’s probably not a great idea right now,” Danny said, glancing out the front window to the street. “I’ll ask around if I go down there, but maybe it's best if you don’t stir things up there just yet.”

  “You don’t believe me,” Stella said. “You think I’m making it up.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” Danny replied. “I don’t know what’s going on with the car accident you mentioned. All I know is that I’m going to help you get to the bottom of it. I just think you should stay put for a bit before we go off half-cocked. Let’s make a plan and see what we can figure out.”

  Stella admitted that wasn’t the worst idea. Her head was still fuzzy and she needed to sit down. She eased herself into a recliner in the living room while Danny went in search of tea. Leaning to one side, she pulled her service pistol and holster from her belt and laid them on the coffee t
able next to her, then eased back into the cushions.

  The moment she closed her eyes, the scene played out in living color in her mind. She was there. The traffic. The disappearing man, Ben. The man on top of the truck had been struck by the overpass right in front of her. He was absolutely dead. Someone had to be able to confirm it.

  She opened her eyes. “We need to call the hospitals and the morgue,” she shouted to Danny in the other room. “They’ll be able to confirm an ambulance brought in a body. Elton Stenger. That’s the name we’re looking for.”

  “I’ll make some calls,” Danny said. The microwave dinged and he reemerged from the kitchen a minute later with a mug of hot water and a couple packets of instant tea. “Not sure which flavors you like.”

  Stella selected an Earl Grey and dropped the tea bag into the steaming cup. “I need to check in with my field office. You mind if I use your phone?”

  “You ought to wait a bit. Clear your head,” Danny suggested.

  “You keep talking to me like I’m a crazy person,” Stella snapped. “You don’t have to baby me.”

  Danny raised his palms. “Hey. I’m just saying you might want to get your facts in order. Present it in the best light once you know a few more details.

  “Well, I’m not an idiot. You think I’m going to spill everything to MacGregor without backing it up first? I plan to get evidence. But our van escapee is dead. I saw him die. Now I need to figure out what happened to him after that…” She pressed a palm to her eye socket and tried to shake off the ache in her head.

  Danny moved to the doorway and took his keys from his pocket. “I’ve got to make an appearance in court this afternoon, so I have to run out, but I’ll be back in a bit. Stay here and get some rest. I’ll make us some dinner tonight when I get back. It’s Friday. I’m off-duty all weekend. I’ll help you get to the bottom of this. I promise.”

  When he walked out, Stella got up and watched from the front window as he climbed into the car and pulled out of the driveway. He waved and she raised her mug in response. Once he was out of sight, she took the cup of tea on a tour of the house as she searched for the telephone. She located it on the wall in the dining room. The phone book was nearby so she snatched it up, depositing herself at the dining room table and thumbing through the white pages until she found the Cs.