A Gift of Time

by Merritt, Jerry

  Finances secured, I blew out a long breath and turned to Arlene. “We’ve got to go home and pack. We should leave tonight.”

  “No, Cage. I’ve thought about it. I’d rather go back and face the charges in Florida. If I run with you, it destroys your life and all you’ve worked for. Believe me, you and your family have done enough for me.”

  “We’ve already overcome a lot by sticking together. This is just one more thing to get through. Anyway, to do what I need to do, I have to become someone entirely different. The math whiz, Micajah Fenton, is too recognizable in the technical world. I have to become someone with no history traceable back to me.”

  “Well you don’t have to do it now do you?”

  “Easier now than later.”

  “You haven’t even finished high school.”

  “I already have a PhD.”

  She countered with an accusing look. “You’re just saying that to convince me to go on the run to avoid facing a murder trial.”

  “Well, yeah. But where else could I find someone that already understands me and knows what I’m trying to do. And most importantly, someone I know won’t ever sell me out to the highest bidder.”

  “My god. You really do think you can make a time machine and save Joey. And Mom.”

  “I know I can.”

  She let out a sigh of resignation. “All right. I’ll help. But I better never find out you just made that up for my benefit.”

  “You won’t.”

  “Won’t what? Find out you just made it up?”

  “No; find out it was just for your benefit.”

  We snuck out before dawn the following morning. I had five thousand dollars in cash and another five in my Dan Shepard checking account. We threw our bags into Dan’s VW bus that I kept in the vacant lot behind us and closed the doors as quietly as we could. By sunup we were headed south down the Pacific Coast Highway toward Ventura.

  Chapter 38

  Four days later we pulled off the road near Knob, Arkansas, so I could get my bearings. I had been here many times with my college roommate. My first visit was only two years in the future but sixty-two years in the past from my perspective. Finally oriented, I pulled back onto the road and drove past the two main houses in Knob to pick up the right fork on the other side. A few miles down the road I saw the sign. Peaden Fish Farm, Tropical and Sub-Tropical Aquarium Fish, Wholesale Only. We rolled up the drive past a half-dozen barking dogs. My old college roommate stood in the front yard watching as we pulled up next to him.

  “Dan Shepard,” I said as I stepped out of the van. Two mongrel dogs danced around me barking frantically.

  “Buck, Toby, git. Pete Peaden,” he said offering his sun-freckled hand. It was eerie to talk to him as a stranger, but he was his usual affable self. Tall with a roughneck look about him. But warm, brown eyes, under a carefully combed shock of red hair belied the general air of backwoods, rowdy. “How can I help you?”

  I knew from my visits his father was always looking for help. It took a lot of experience to run a tropical fish farm in Arkansas and what little help was available in Knob usually did more harm than good, often killing an entire stock of fish by overfeeding or adding cold water to top up a tank. But I had loved the visits to the Peaden farm and had raised fish as a hobby on my own property in later life. After meeting with the old man and swapping stories, Arlene and I both landed jobs. They didn’t pay much, but the family was good company and I was pretty sure Knob had never gotten word of any Bonnie and Clyde murderess and math whiz on the run from the law. Or maybe I was just being paranoid. I hoped so.

  Pete helped me find a rental several miles up the road. It was a vacant farmhouse. Four-bedroom. Simply furnished. Isolated. Pete explained the old folks had died and the kids wanted nothing to do with hard work. I paid first and last months’ rent and we unloaded the bus. That afternoon we bought groceries over in Rector. After dinner, Arlene and I sat in the porch swing as the night creatures tuned up.

  “What next, Cage?”

  “Dan.”

  “Sorry. Dan.”

  “I think we’re safe now. We’ll get some bank accounts set up over in Rector and later transfer Dan Shepard’s brokerage account to Memphis.”

  “Memphis, Tennessee? I’m lost. How far is Memphis?”

  “About two hours’ drive south of here. It may be a while before we can get a day off to drive down but I don’t think there’s any hurry. Then, if we can make the right contacts, we can get you a good set of IDs while we’re there. The Peadens think we’re married, so you’ll need a Shepard surname for your end-of-month paycheck.”

  The night sounds were reaching a crescendo out beyond the feeble glow from the front window. Moths beat against the glass. What the hell was I doing? I needed a fortune to even take a stab at a time machine and I now had a job on a fish farm in Arkansas with what everyone thought was a wife. Surely I was smarter than this. Maybe it was the urgency to escape before Marshal Heimer returned with a warrant for Arlene’s fingerprints. Maybe …

  Arlene was pushing my shoulder. “What are you thinking so hard about? You think this is all a mistake don’t you?”

  “No. Well. Maybe. I’m just wondering if I’m doing the best thing coming here to raise fish.”

  “But the reason you came here was to hide from the people chasing me.”

  “That’s only part. I’ve already told you I need a new start if I’m going to develop something as dangerous as a time machine. I need to be a nobody again.”

  “You worry me, Cage.”

  “Dan.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Dan. But you’re becoming too single-minded, too driven by what’s probably an impossible task. And you’ve got years to work on it. I’ve pulled you away from your life too soon with all my problems.”

  “If you’ll recall, taking Hartley down, saved both of us.”

  That shut her up for a few seconds. The creak of the swing punctuated the chirps of crickets.

  Finally, “You mean you think I actually protected you?”

  “Yeah. Remember Presley Poole. You’ve always protected me. You’re tough. You stepped into Hartley’s business. Both times. And wrapped it up each time in about five seconds as I recall.”

  She settled back staring out across the night. “Yeah. Hartley. He was a turning point in my life. I finally got fed up taking crap from everyone after he tried it out there on the ball field.” She paused, seeming to ponder that revelation before turning toward me in the swing, her eyes bright even in the dim light. “But you were a bigger turning point. I was a different person after I met you. You saved my life. You don’t deserve all this.” She started to cry.

  And there we were, both sixteen. When I put my arm around her to stop her crying she was soft and warm. Then she wrapped around me—her breath on my neck; her shoulders so tan, so bare. Behind us, the moths continued to beat out their lives against the windowpane.

  Chapter 39

  I subscribed to the Pensacola newspaper that first week so I could see what, if anything, was going on with the DA and his obsession with Arlie. A week later the first issue arrived in the mail. As I had feared, the suspected link of Arlie to Arlene had reenergized the DA. He dominated the front pages above the fold for the next week, promising to marshal all possible resources to bring justice to the two boys so brutally attacked by Arlen Quintin who, it seemed, had faked his death and been masquerading as a female all this time with the Fenton family in California. The readership was both entranced and outraged by the twists and turns. Letters to the editor poured in calling for no effort to be spared in bringing the infamous son of the serial child killer to justice. Now the DA couldn’t back out if he wanted to. He was stuck with the public’s call for swift justice. To make matters worse the AP had picked up the story. If the DA didn’t deliver, it would be a serious defeat for him. The DA Tiberius Colcraine had no choice but to pull out all the stops.

  Sure, Arlene might have made a sympathetic defendant if we had stayed
to fight the charge. But she had now run from the law. I wondered whether the juvenal records of the four other boys could be unsealed as evidence of their earlier brutality then realized the earlier attack only provided motive for Hartley’s later killing. And a first class defense would probably cost more than the ninety thousand Arlene and I had at the time with no guarantee of winning. Not to mention the years we might be tied up in both criminal and civil litigation and the appeals. It was time I didn’t want to waste. I had a mission now.

  ***

  We finished out nearly a month at the Peaden farm before getting a day off to go into Memphis to take care of business. We arrived just after eleven and drove around until we found a useable phone booth. The yellow pages listed the same national brokerage firm I used in Santa Barbara. After making an appointment to come in and transfer my account that afternoon, we stopped at a restaurant high on the bank of the river for lunch. By then the weather had started to blow up. Seated at our window table, we watched low clouds borne on gusty winds scuttle crab-like across the featureless farmlands to the west. It was comfortable being insulated from the outside turmoil for a while.

  Three-thirty found us sitting across from Brad; a fresh-faced, eager, young man; working diligently to transfer my five-figure account to his Memphis office. A secretary had just handed him notes on the California account. I relaxed, confident I was finally ahead of the game. Then Brad spoke.

  “Looks like that account’s been frozen.”

  “Frozen?” I sat upright. “Why?”

  “There’s a code next to it. Let me check.” He pulled a book out of a side drawer and flipped through it for several seconds. “Ah, here it is. No specific reason. Just that it’s in response to a federal request.” He looked at me with raised brows, expecting an explanation.

  “Maybe a tax issue? That account’s a recent inheritance.”

  “Ah, makes sense. Those bastards, excuse my French, ma’am, are always doing stuff like this. You want me to call the Santa Barbara office and see what’s going on?”

  “Nah. I’m going back that way in a few days, Brad. I’ll handle it when I get back.” Then his phone rang. He excused himself and took the call.

  “Yes. … Dan Shepard. … He’s here now. ... No haven’t heard the name Fenton. ... Sure. ... Okay.” When he hung up, his eyes were as big as golf balls. “That was a U.S. Marshall. He wants me to keep you here. They want to talk to you about your account. You two didn’t rob a bank or something did you?”

  “No. Of course not.” I tried to sound a bit offended.

  Brad immediately apologized profusely.

  “Well, we have another appointment in thirty minutes. Tell them I’ll be back in an hour or so.” Arlene had already gathered up her purse and was standing next to me.

  “He said not to let you leave, though.”

  “It’s not a problem—unless he deputized you over the phone or something.”

  Brad seemed to appreciate the incongruity of being deputized over the phone. “No, he just asked.”

  “Well, there you go. We’ll be right back. I just have some other business to take care of.” Brad seemed to accept the business excuse.

  “Okay. Just don’t forget to come back, though. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  Once outside, Arlene and I bolted around the corner to the VW bus. The wind spun newssheets down the street as we nosed out from the curb.

  “What the heck, Cage? How did they find out about the Dan Shepard account?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they discovered we closed out our accounts with bearer bonds and checked other brokers to see if any large bearer bond deposits had been made shortly after. Once they had the Dan Shepard name, they would be able to get my driver’s license next and probably the registration on the bus too.”

  “Then our cover’s blown.”

  “Not yet. I doubt they know about the fish farm. But, now that they know we’re in Memphis, it won’t take them long to put out bulletins on our van. We just need to get back home to pack up and head out. We can sell the van in another state, pick up new IDs, and start over.”

  I got no response after that. I drove along thinking over the procedures for selling a vehicle to another individual. I had done it several times in the future and recalled the seller just had to sign the title over. It was pretty straightforward. I asked Arlene to check the glove box to make sure the title was in there. It was. Maybe this wouldn’t be as hard as I had feared.

  We pulled into our rented quarters around six and threw everything into the bus. The weather had held, though dark clouds continued to sail in low from the west. Wind whistled through the trees and whipped Arlene’s hair about her face as she climbed into the bus. I thought about going by to see the Peadens to apologize for leaving without giving notice, but it would be evening before long and I wanted to be well gone by morning’s light.

  An hour later we hummed along a deserted highway into approaching darkness as we crossed into Missouri. I flipped the wipers on smearing the desultory raindrops into streaks across the dusty windshield. Within minutes a Missouri Deputy Sheriff’s car approached from the opposite direction. My heart jumped a little as he flew by growing ever smaller in the rearview mirror, then it beat out a tattoo as brake lights winked on, and he began a three point turn in the middle of the road.

  “I think we’ve been spotted.”

  Arlene twisted around in her seat. Her eyes darted apprehensively out the back window then to me then out the rear again. “Oh, shit, Cage. He just turned his flashing lights on. What now?”

  I could only come up with one plan. “That title in the glove box. Pull it out and sign ‘Dan Shepard’ in the box marked ‘seller.’” Arlene scrambled for the title. “There’s a flashlight in there if you need it.”

  “Does it matter if it’s in my handwriting?”

  “No. Just hurry. Then put it back and crawl into the rear and hide under a blanket or something. And keep your head down. That deputy is coming up fast now.” Arlene slammed the glove box shut and scrambled between the seats into the back. “My old wallet with my Micajah Fenton driver’s license is in the little pack behind the seat. Pass it up to me. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  I chided myself for not getting more fake licenses back in California when I had the chance. I just hadn’t wanted to appear paranoid. Turns out I wasn’t paranoid enough.

  I pulled off the road as the patrol car rolled up behind me filling the van’s interior with flashing red light. I was still working on my story when a lanky, young trooper tapped on my window and yelled for me to step out of the bus. At least he didn’t throw me to the ground, though he did have his hand on his sidearm.

  “License and registration,” was all he said. He seemed a little tentative and his uniform and shoes looked brand new. Maybe I was in luck.

  I pulled out my wallet and handed him my Micajah Fenton license. He studied it in the beam of his flashlight. “You’re from California?”

  I had lost much of my Southern accent while I was in California but I brought it back with what I hoped was a Tennessee twang. “I’m from Memphis, officer.”

  “This license gives an address in California and you have California plates on your vehicle.”

  “Yes, sir. Pappy and me was out there a couple years working the fields. You could make a livin’ at it for a time. Then the Mexicanos showed up. They worked for just about nothin’. We come back last month. I guess I still need to get a new license. I was just trying to save a few pesos using that one till it give out.”

  “What about the California plates on your vehicle?”

  “I traded for it just this afternoon so the registration is still in the other feller’s name but I got the title signed legal-like and all. It ain’t stolen or nothing. I had California plates on my old pickup too. That’s what got us to talking. He wanted to know if I was from California. Later he said he needed a pickup and would I be interested in trading even. I said, ‘sure.’ It were a good
trade. That pickup had bald tires and burnt oil like a tanker.”

  I presented the title as another spate of rain blew across us. He turned sideways to block the onslaught and studied the document for some time. “Was the seller this Dan Shepard?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s him.”

  “Did he have a female with him?”

  “Sure did. Pretty little thing, too.”

  “Can you give me a description of the truck you traded?”

  I went into great detail. About how it had been my father’s before it was mine. Dents from hitting a deer in Vacaville one night. Crack in the windshield from a buzzard strike near Lodi. The deputy finally began to get annoyed.

  “Okay, that’s enough.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He handed my papers back and said, “You’re a lucky boy. You have any idea who that pretty girl was?”

  “His wife, I ‘spose.”

  “A wanted murderess.” I could tell he expected to see some kind of reaction from me. I snapped my head up into the light rain and flashing lights.

  “Sweet angels and saints. I guess I’m lucky they didn’t just knock me in the head and take my truck.”

  “Probably wanted a legal title signature from you. After they got that, they weren’t smart enough to kill you so you couldn’t give a description of the truck they’re driving now.” He tucked his flashlight back in its little holster. “Well, I need to pick up the Kennett repeater and get this called in.” He turned to his car then stopped with two final admonitions. “Be sure to get that driver’s license updated. And be more careful next time you get such a good deal on a trade.”