Good, I thought. Be irritated! You irritated me enough when you were … you were …
Damn it!
“It’s the only answer you’re going to get!”
“The first day of the what?” he asked.
“What?”
“You said the first day of some crisis.”
“Never mind!” I was born on the day the hostages were taken, but I was pretty certain that discussion wasn’t going to take us anywhere.
He shifted in his seat, leaned back against the door, and stared at me in frustration. Now, at least, we were both confused. Of course, he was just perplexed and probably a bit annoyed. He had no inkling of the complete, utter, and monumental confusion he would face if this fantastical experience became his reality. But I wasn’t ready to confront that directly. At least, not yet.
I needed to conduct an experiment.
I took the plunge. “I’m sorry. Of course you don’t know me. This time around, everything is reversed. This time, I know you, but you don’t know me. I don’t expect you to understand that yet.”
“That’s good, because I don’t.”
I looked at him, and my own doubts began to erode. Against all natural laws, I was looking at Marc Hastings, aged thirty. Against all logic, I was looking at the same alternately bemused, indulgent, admiring, laughing, and loving face I had known three decades later in his life.
Later?
There was no other explanation. All the things Old Marc should never have known about me, but did … explained. Those things I’d forgotten, or had tried to forget, that he had seemed to know … explained.
The pieces dropped into place.
In 2011, my future lay in Marc’s past.
In 1978, my past lay in Marc’s future.
As insane as it sounded, my new reality in 1978 was just the logical extension of my old reality. Well, logical it certainly wasn’t, but however I labeled it, the impossible was staring me straight in the face.
“I have a suggestion. Why don’t you call me Claire, and I’ll call you Marc?”
“Okay with me.”
“You once told me to tell you the truth.”
“I don’t remember saying that, but the truth is always a good place to start.”
“You wrote it on the back of a photograph. You said, ‘Remember to tell me the truth.’”
His expression warned me that I needed to be careful. I couldn’t afford to alienate him before …
Before what? Before I told him that I was visitor from the future?
“This is a test,” I said.
“What is?”
“Be patient. This is a test for both of us. You believe we’ve never met before, am I correct?”
“Correct.”
“So, would you agree that—?”
He interrupted. “I would definitely have remembered.” I caught that same flash of admiration in his eyes I’d seen the first time I met Old Marc.
I deliberately ignored the implication so I could stay focused. “Do you agree that there is no way I could possibly know your middle name or your birthdate?”
“Unless you’re a psychic. Or,” he added with a smile, “unless my boss put you up to this act.”
That remark startled me. “You think this is an act?”
“If it isn’t, one of us is definitely crazy!”
“Okay. You be the judge of that. Your middle name is Daniel, and you were born on September sixth, 1948.”
A second passed. Wonder mixed with suspicion on his face. “How did you—?”
“What you mean is, how could I know that? It’s a long story, Marcus Hastings, and one you’re not likely to believe … at least for a very long while.”
“You saw my driver’s license!”
“Think back. When did I see it?”
He sat staring at me.
It was all too much, and I felt a headache coming. I leaned my head against the cool of the passenger window. “My folks live in Archer,” I said without looking at him. “Any chance you could drive me there?”
“You told the nurse—Gertie—that your father’s dead and your mother lives up north.”
I gritted my teeth and faced him. “Okay, Marc, am I under arrest? Is that how this starts?”
“No. You’re not under arrest.”
“Are there buses from Gainesville to Archer?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then just drop me at the bus station there.”
“Do you have money?”
“I … uh … no.” My resolve crumbled. “Could you lend me the fare? I’ll get it back to you. I … just need time to, uh … get my bearings.” This impossible new reality was crushing in on me again, and I could feel myself starting to unravel. I felt tears coming, so I turned away. A girl walked past. She was wearing a satin jacket, and her hair was done in a Farrah-do. She peered suspiciously at the police car and hurried on.
Marc’s hand touched my arm. “I’ll drive you.”
36
Stuccoed bungalows, two-lane highways with narrow graveled shoulders, old cars that looked new, and a McDonald’s sign that bragged OVER 24 BILLION SERVED.
“They gave up on that.”
“Hmm?”
“McDonald’s. Now the sign just says ‘Billions and Billions.’”
“Yeah? Where did you see that?”
“Never mind.” I kept watching for something modern, something telltale, but the world of Jimmy Carter’s presidency just kept on rolling past my window. After a few miles—and after the surreal apparition of a giant Virginia Slims billboard proclaiming YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY!—I couldn’t take anymore. I hunched in the corner of my seat and concentrated on Marc. He wasn’t my Marc, strictly speaking, but resting my eyes on him helped me feel “grounded,” as the rehab therapists love to say.
He must have felt my eyes on him. A puzzled smile flickered on his face. “What is it?” he asked.
I deflected. I read off the model name of the police car inscribed on the glove box. “‘Matador’ … What is this car?”
“A Matador.”
“I can see that. I’ve never heard of it. Who makes it?”
He gave me a strange look. “American Motors.”
At first I blanked on the company, but then I remembered it had something to do with making Jeeps and had eventually gone broke. I decided not to press that button. Listening to the rumbling V8, I ventured, “Bet it’s hard on gas.”
We passed a Mobil station. The sign read: REGULAR 0.64 PREMIUM 0.67.
“Forget what I just said.”
“Okay.”
After a few seconds, he looked over at me and said, “Do you know how completely weird you are?”
“Weird … but intriguing?”
The corner of his mouth lifted into a faint smile. “Maybe.”
Time to change the subject. “You said there were two things.”
“Two things?”
“Two reasons your boss sent you to pick me up.”
“Yeah.” He chewed his lip. “I’m sorry. Obviously, we were wrong. It’s just that there’s this case we’ve been working on. Disappearances … all young women. We think they’ve been abducted. We were hoping you might be a victim who got away. Someone who could give us a lead.”
Instantly, I felt light-headed.
Of course!
“Marc, please pull over!”
He eased off on the accelerator. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong … well, a lot is wrong! It’s just that I don’t think you should be driving while we have this discussion.”
We were on Route 20, just west of Hawthorne. Marc signaled and turned into a side road. He swung the car onto a grassy field next to a row of mailboxes. A road sign said SE 199 ST. I happened to know the area, but it didn’t look anything like I remembered. The only thing I recognized was an old shed on the opposite corner that was in much better shape than its collapsing 2011 counterpart.
Marc shifted the c
ar into park but left the engine running. He fixed me with a skeptical look. “Is this going to be more crazy talk?” he asked bluntly.
“If I told you I was a passenger in a train in the year 2011 and the train derailed and I woke up in a hospital in 1978, would that sound crazy?”
“Certifiable.”
“If I told you the first time you and I met, you were over sixty years old, would that sound crazy?”
“Do you have to ask?”
“And, if I said you and I worked together, thirty-three years from now, and solved this string of murders?”
“Murders? I didn’t say anything about murders.”
“These aren’t just abductions, Marc! These girls are being killed!”
“You’re probably right, but until we find a body—!”
“Just humor me for a minute, okay? Suspend your disbelief and listen. I knew a few things about you, didn’t I? Things I shouldn’t have known?”
“Yeah, maybe, but—”
“So pretend I’m a psychic if that works better for you.”
“Let me be straight with you, Claire. None of what you’re saying—”
In that instant, a horrifying thought crash-landed in my brain.
“—works for me.”
I put up my hand. “I need you to be quiet for a second!”
“What?”
“I need to think, goddamn it!” I felt him recoil, but I didn’t care. I was picking through the crash scene in my brain. Recognizing something in the wreckage …
A paradox.
The paradox of me.
It explained why Old Marc had forced me to repeat the entire investigation in the last six weeks of 2010. And it explained why he had invariably taken the lead.
Even on the one occasion when I had taken the lead—linking the crab’s eye peas to Harlan Tribe, and engaging the analytical services of Charlie McNabb—I hadn’t really been leading. I’d been following a trail I laid down for myself.
I could feel Young Marc watching me as my roiling thoughts searched for a way out. My immediate problem was that, knowing—or thinking that I knew—exactly where I came from, I wasn’t sure how much I could say without changing history. It crossed my mind that I could be risking my own elimination.
But there was no way out.
I took a deep breath and went for it. “What you believe about me right now probably isn’t important. Belief will come in time. Let’s just say I know a thing or two about the future … including your future.” The expression on his face stopped me. “This isn’t helping, is it?”
He cocked his head. “I’m starting to wonder if I should have cuffed you and locked you in the back.”
“Okay, let’s do this: I’ll tell you what has already happened in your case, and you tell me if I’m right.”
“Try me.”
I rattled off names and dates. “Ina Castaño, April second, 1977 … Constance Byrne, July eighth, 1977 … Catherine Brady, October twenty-eighth, 1977 … Patricia Chapman, Christmas Eve, 1977 … María Ruiz, February thirteenth, 1978.”
He stared. “You’ll have to do better than that. Every one of those cases has been reported in the press. Newspapers, TV, all over Florida and the Southeast.”
“The press…” It hit me. “Lots of out-of-town reporters are covering the story, right?”
“Some.”
“What’s today? March sixth! There’s one case you haven’t made public!”
His eyes narrowed.
I drove the point home. “Pia Ostergaard. She’s a Miami Herald reporter. She hasn’t been seen since Wednesday night.”
His face froze.
“Has she, Marc?”
He released a breath. “She doesn’t fit the—”
“—profile! I know! She’s blond and she’s older than the others, and you guys aren’t following your own instincts. You’re letting the FBI run the show, telling you what to think.”
“How could you know all this? Are you—?”
“—involved in law enforcement? I was, once upon a time.” I read his face. “Oh, I see! You’re wondering if I’m involved in the crimes!” I fixed him in my gaze. “Where was I on Wednesday night? Where have I been since last Tuesday?”
“In the hospital,” he conceded a bit grudgingly.
“And drugged and unconscious most of the time! Look, what’s happened to me is crazy! If you only knew how crazy! But my brain is intact and I’m perfectly sane—and, believe me, I know this case better than you do!” I shifted and faced forward in my seat. “I’ve said enough for now. Can we go?”
He took a long, deep breath … and then he surprised me. “I’ve got to say … you might sound pretty crazy, but you don’t look crazy.”
“Oh? What do crazy people look like?”
“Well…” He grinned. “Definitely not like you.”
So … here’s when it started.
Here’s when we began the beguine.
“Drive on, Junior,” I said.
37
The JCT 27 sign on Route 24, just before the turnoff to Archer, was in the same place, but nothing else was. There were no traffic lights at the intersection, the future Kangaroo gas station was a scrubby pasture, and the tire shop had reverted to being the single-pump corner store of earlier times. There was no escaping from the mind-numbing conclusion that when I was ejected from that railcar window, I had plunged through more than just space. Either I had landed on a muddy beach on the St. Johns River in the year 1978, or I was having some weird psychotic break.
I was hoping for psychosis.
With a faint heart, I directed Marc through the turns toward my childhood home on Mcdowell Street. I recognized some of the buildings along the way. I hadn’t returned to Archer often as an adult, but just from memory, I knew that many of the residences we were passing had been torn down or modified in my lifetime.
But, no. Unless I was psychotic, I had it backwards. It wasn’t “had been” torn down—it was “would be.”
My past was now in the future.
It was all so damned confusing.
Then I saw the house. “Can you pull over here?”
The car slowed and drifted to the right, onto the grass next to the road. I sat perfectly still, staring in wonder at the house where I grew up. It appeared exactly the same as it did in my earliest, gauziest memories—the pale green clapboard siding, the white trim, the broad veranda, the power pole set unaccountably in the middle of the lawn, the row of hibiscus bushes along the road at the front … even the two creases in the roof gutter that I had once convinced myself were left there by the runners of Santa’s sleigh.
Reluctantly, I shifted my gaze to the playground across the road.
The playground of my fragmented and recurrent dream.
“Your hands are shaking.”
Marc’s expression was part curiosity, part concern. Thinking back, there was a third element in that look—fascination. But I wasn’t noticing. I couldn’t speak. I locked my fingers together and shoved my hands between my legs. I took deep breaths. I felt like throwing up.
And then it happened. The door opened and a man appeared on the front veranda. He was carrying a small suitcase. He was young, maybe mid-twenties, with dark hair and a lean frame. He stopped at the top of the steps and set down the suitcase.
He looked familiar, but it still took me a few seconds.
It was my father.
My father!
I gasped—and then almost choked, because the woman who appeared beside him a second later was definitely, categorically, undeniably … my mother.
The mother I remembered from her wedding pictures.
I sat frozen as my parents kissed. My father picked up the suitcase, descended the stairs, and disappeared around the corner of the house. My mother stood waiting. A moment later, Dad’s red ’78 Bonneville convertible—the one he was still driving when he abandoned us in 1985—appeared from behind the house. It gleamed as I had never seen it gleam when I was a ki
d. With a wave to my mother, he drove onto the street, passed Marc’s squad car without giving us a glance, and disappeared in the direction of the highway.
I watched my mother. I expected her to return to the house, but as soon as my father’s car disappeared from view, she lowered herself to the top step and sat there, watching the street. For a few seconds, the surrealism of where I was—of when I was—vanished from my conscious thoughts. My hand inched toward the door handle.
Abruptly, she rose to her feet and went back in the house.
Marc’s voice brought me back. “Attractive girl. Sister?”
“Mother,” I replied dully.
He was silent. His cheek twitched. “She looks younger than you.”
I didn’t answer.
“Are you planning to get out here?” he asked.
“I can’t.”
“You said—”
“I know what I said! But I—I…” I let out a rattling breath and slumped against the door. “I don’t know how to deal with this! It’s so fucking crazy!”
“Nice language.”
“Drop me on the highway! I’ll figure something out.”
“On the highway … with no money?”
No money.
Of course!
“That’s right! I have no money … and no place to go!” I favored him with what must have seemed a spooky look. “But you must have done something about that.”
“I must have done something? What does that mean?”
“Never mind. To quote you: ‘One day you’ll understand.’ But just for right now, answer this: What do you do with lost girls after you take them into custody?”
“You’re not in custody.”
“Maybe I’m not in police custody, but I’m in your custody.”
He couldn’t help himself. His eyes flicked over my body. “Guess we could find you a meal and a bed.”
I locked him with a cool gaze.
He stammered. “I—I mean … I didn’t mean…”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“It’s just that…”
“What?”
“You’re right. You intrigue me.” He gave a nervous laugh. “There. I said it!”
I laughed.
It was unbelievable. I had just fallen down a rabbit hole into 1978, and this man had made me laugh.
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