Past Imperfect (Jerry eBooks)

by Martin H Greenberg

  He said. “We can make a case.”

  “Against whom?”

  He smiled. He was already imagining it. The prints removed from the elevator door, the sketch artist drawing the perp’s face, the legwork—going to various Godiva stores in New York, canvassing the neighbors.

  Because Wheldon had seen enough to know this perp had staked out the building. The perp knew what time Schlaffler got home. He probably knew when the roommate arrived. Wheldon would wager the perp knew everything about both women.

  Only he hadn’t been interested in Schlaffler. He’d been targeting the roommate, planning to free her from the person who weighed her down. That was why he cleaned up the room, added the chocolates, made the place more inviting.

  Wheldon could catch this guy easily now, using old-fashioned police methods, building an old-fashioned case that would stick.

  “You gonna tell me how we’ll have a case?” Kingsbury said.

  “I’ll tell you after I send your younger self to the precinct,” he said. “I want a little more time to think about this.”

  The roommate was wiping tears away from her eyes. The cops were still talking with her. The neighbors had inched closer, watching everything.

  Kingsbury hadn’t moved. She was looking at the apartment door too.

  “I wonder why she was so sad,” Kingsbury said softly.

  It took him a moment to realize that she meant Schlaffler. From Schlaffler’s perspective, her day had gotten even worse—arriving home to be stabbed by a crazy man waiting in an elevator.

  She would never know how close she came to being another statistic, how the fine spray of blood on her apartment wall would have become a spurt that dripped rivers into the baseboard if Wheldon hadn’t been there.

  She would never know that in another universe, she had died.

  Wheldon had saved a life.

  He had never done that before, at least, not directly. By pulling the perp off her, he had saved a number of lives—not just in this new universe, but in his as well. Because Kingsbury had brought him back here, Wheldon would be able to make sure this perp would never kill again.

  And that pleased him. Even though he was annoyed at being used, he didn’t mind that the blood trail had led him here, to this moment.

  To this odd, but somehow satisfying, point in time.

  THINGS I DIDN’T KNOW MY FATHER KNEW

  by Peter Crowther

  Peter Crowther is the editor or co-editor of sixteen anthologies and the co-author (with James Lovegrove) of Escardy Gap. Since the early 1990s, he has sold almost 100 short stories and poems to a wide variety of magazines and anthologies on on both sides of the Atlantic. The first collection of these stories—The Longest Single Note—appeared in 1999 while Lonesome Roads, the second, won last year's British Fantasy Award. Cold Comforts, containing 18 of his crime and mystery stories, appeared earlier this year on CD-ROM and Conundrums To Guess, his fourth collection, is scheduled for publication in 2002. September 2001 saw the publication of Darkness, Darkness, the first installment in his multi-book SF/Horror cycle Forever Twilight, and he recently adapted his story "Eater" for British television. He lives in Harrogate, England with his wife and two sons where, in addition to writing and editing, he runs his small press imprint PS Publishing.

  If there is an afterlife, let it be a small town

  gentle as this spot at just this instant.

  —Dana Gioia, In Cheever Country

  “Something was different.

  Bennett Differing opened his eyes and listened, and tried to pinpoint what was wrong. Then he realized. He couldn’t hear his wife’s breathing.

  He shuffled over, pulling the bedclothes with him, and stared at the empty space beside him on the bed. Shelley wasn’t there. He looked across at the clock and frowned. It was too early for her to get up. She always stayed in bed until he was out of the shower. Why would she be getting up at this time?

  Then he remembered. She was meeting her sister, going to the mall for their annual shop-till-you-drop spree.

  As if on cue, Shelley’s voice rang out. “Honey?”

  “Yeah, I’m up,” Bennett shouted to the ceiling.

  “Well, I’m on my way. Lisa gets in at 8:15.”

  Bennett nodded to the empty room. Around a yawn, he said, “Have fun.”

  “Will do,” she shouted.

  “Take care.”

  He could hear her feet on the polished wooden floor of the hallway downstairs, going first one way and then another—Shelley suddenly remembering things, like car keys, house keys, purse.

  “Will do,” she shouted. “It’s a lovely morning.”

  Bennett flopped back onto the bed. “Good.” The word came out as a mutter wrapped up in another yawn.

  “What?”

  “I said, good. I’m thrilled for you.”

  The feet downstairs clumped back into the kitchen. “I’ll be home around eight. Lisa’s getting her bus at seven.”

  “Okay.”

  The sound of feet stopped and then he heard them coming quickly up the stairs. “Can’t go without giving you a kiss,” Shelley said as she ran into the bedroom. Now that the door had been opened he could hear the radio downstairs.

  She leaned across him and kissed him on the forehead, making a smacking sound. He knew she had made a lipstick mark, could see the mischievous glint in her eyes as she surveyed her work with a satisfied smile.

  She ruffled his hair lovingly. “What are you going to be doing today?”

  Bennett shrugged, yawned and turned his face away from her. He could taste the staleness of sleep still in his mouth.

  “Oh, this and that.”

  “Words!” Shelley snapped at him, jabbing a finger in his stomach. “Make sure you do your words before you deal with e-mails.” She smiled and rubbed his stomach—another sign of affection. “Will you be okay?” The question came complete with inflection and frown.

  “Sure,” Bennett said. “I’ll be fine. I’ll get lots done.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.” He raised his clenched fist to his head and tapped two fingers against his temple. “Scouts’ honor, ma’am. I’ll do my words.”

  She stood up and picked up her watch from the table by her side of the bed. Strapping it onto her wrist, she said, “Well, have a good day. There’s a sandwich in the refrigerator.”

  “Great.”

  She stopped at the bedroom door and scrunched herself up excitedly. “You know . . . ,” she said, rubbing her hands together, “. . . you can smell it.”

  Bennett shuffled up and rested his head on his hand. “Smell what?”

  Shelley frowned. “Christmas, of course.” She straightened her sweater where she had rucked it out of her skirt. “You can smell it everywhere: the cold . . . and the presents, eggnog, warm biscuits. The skies are clear and the air is crisp . . .” Bennett half-imagined he could hear sleigh bells and his wife nodded as though in response to his thoughts. “And I think we’re going to have some snow,” she added with a devilish smile—she knew Bennett hated snow.

  Bennett groaned. “Oh goody.”

  She waved a hand at him. “You know, you’re turning into Scrooge.”

  He flopped his head onto the pillow. “Bah, humbug!”

  Shelley smiled. “Okay, I’m on my way. See you tonight.”

  “Yeah, see you,” he said to the slowly closing door.

  It seemed like no time at all before the front door slammed and he heard the Buick’s engine fire into life. Then three soft pips on the horn as Shelley pulled out of the driveway.

  Suddenly the house was quiet, the only sound the sound of the car moving off along the street. Then, around the silence, drifting through it like a boat across a still lake, the sound of the radio gave a sense of life, albeit muffled.

  Bennett could hear a funky jingle and the weatherman distantly telling anyone in Forest Plains who was bothering to listen at this time in the morning just what the weather was doing. Rain
coming in from the west, heat coming in from the east . . . all elemental life was there: winds, twisters, cold fronts circling, warm fronts sneaking up for the kill, maybe even a tremor or two.

  “Maybe even snow!” he said to the pillow.

  But there was something else, too. Even he could smell it. Smell it in the air. Was it Christmas? Did Christmas have a smell . . . a smell all of its own, not just the associated things that society had tacked onto it?

  Bennett sat up in bed and looked at the clock. It was a little before seven, two minutes to his alarm ringing, the clock dancing side to side like on the cartoon shows, demanding attention like a family pet, craving a human touch to let it know its job was done for another night. He leaned over and hit the switch.

  The clock seemed to settle on its curlicued haunches and Bennett half-imagined it pouting because he had robbed it of its daily chore.

  He yawned, scratched places that itched, and threw back the sheets.

  It was cool. Cool but not cold.

  Bennett slid his legs out of bed and rested his feet on the floor. It was part of the getting-up process, a kind of airlock sandwiched between sleep and wakefulness. The first ritual of the day.

  He sniffed a bear-sized sniff and drew in everything and anything.

  Somewhere in that sniff, alongside the fresh coffee and toasted bread smells that Shelley had left behind in the kitchen and which were now threading their way through the house, were the smells of his bedroom and his clothes, the wood grains and varnish of the furniture, the oily odors imbued by the machines that had stitched the mosaic linen of the curtains and stamped the twists and whorls on the bedside lampshades; old smells, new smells. Unknown smells. Smells from near and faraway . . . smells of other people, other places, other times.

  And small-town smells. Plenty of those . . . so different to the smells of the city, New York City, where Bennett had worked as an insurance adjuster for twenty years before turning to writing full-time and hiding himself and Shelley away in Forest Plains . . . a town as close to all the picket-fenced and town-squared small towns as could possibly exist outside the pages of an old well-thumbed Post, particularly in these dog days of the second millennium.

  He sniffed again and glanced at the window.

  Outside, over the street, gulls were circling. On the wires running across the posts that stood sentry-like alongside the grassy lawns, the neighborhood regulars—sparrows, chaffinches and thrushes—were perched. . .like hick locals lazing on a front porch watching an invasion of bike riders crazy-wheeling and whooping around the square.

  Bennett frowned and got to his feet, finding new places to scratch as he staggered to the window. Now he could see what was happening.

  “Huh!” was all he could think of to say. Someone had taken the world while he had been dragging himself from his bed. Someone had stolen everything that was familiar and had covered it with gauze. But this was a moving gauze, a diaphanous graveyard mist that, even as he watched, was drifting along Sycamore Street, swirling around the tree trunks, twisting itself like ribbons through the leafless branches, washing up the sidewalks to the polished lawns and onwards, stealthily, reaching, conquering and owning, pausing every now and again to check out a crumpled brown leaf before moving on.

  He leaned on the sill and yawned again.

  It was the mist he could smell. He wondered why Shelley hadn’t mentioned it. He’d have told her to take special care. In fact, if he had known it was this bad—because it was getting bad . . . thickening by the second, it seemed—he’d have driven her over to the train station at Walton Flats. And anyway, hadn’t she said that the skies were clear? He looked both ways along the street. Maybe it had been clear when she looked out, but that must have been some time ago.

  Bennett frowned. Well, whatever it had been . . . it was foggy now.

  Now the mist was pooling all around, settling itself onto the trees and the pavement, resting on the sidewalks and the dew-covered lawns, investigating the promise of warmth offered by his partly open window.

  The mist had a clean, sharp smell, snaking across the sill and around him into the room, sliding beneath the bed and inside the louvered wardrobe doors, checking out the threads, evaluating the labels. Evaluating him.

  Bennett watched it.

  Soon it would make its way out of the bedroom door and onto the landing. It would find the spare bedroom—nothing here, boys . . . let’s move on—and then the stairs leading down to the kitchen and the tinny radio sounds.

  Bennett stretched and threw the window wide.

  A boy appeared out of the mist, dodging the tendrils that grasped for but never quite caught hold of his bicycle wheels. The boy was standing on the pedals, pumping like mad, a cowlick pasted down on his forehead, a brown leather sack crossed across his chest and filled with news and stories, comments, cartoons and quotes. The boy reached into his sack, pulled out a rolled-up paper and made to throw, his arm pulled back like a Major League pitcher. As the paper left his hand, spinning through the milky air, he caught sight of Bennett and smiled.

  “Hey, Mist’ Diff’ring!” the boy yelled, a Just Dennis kind of boy, his voice sounding echoey and artificial in the silent, mist-shrouded street.

  Forest Plains was full of boys just like this one, all tow-heads, patched denims and checked shirts. But many of them didn’t have names, at least not names that Bennett knew. They were just boys, boys who whispered giggling and mysterious behind your back when you bought something—anything—in the drugstore; boys who viewed any structure as merely something else to climb; boys who propped up the summertime street corners, drinking in the life and the sounds and the energy; boys with secret names . . . names like “Ace” and “Skugs.”

  He’d heard two of them talking in the drugstore just the day before yesterday, the one of them calling over to the other—Hey Skugs, get a load of that, will ya!—holding up a comic book, his eyes glaring proudly as though he were responsible for the book and the story and the artwork. And the second boy had dutifully sidled up the aisle to his friend, and equally dutifully exclaimed Wow! as he was shown a couple of interior pages. Wow! Neato!

  Bennett had wanted to interrupt, stop the boys in the middle of their comic book explorations, and ask, What kind of a name do you have to wind up with Skugs? But he knew it wouldn’t make sense. It would be Charles or James—which would only explain “Chuck” or “Jim”—and the surname would probably be Daniels or Henderson, both equally unhelpful. And that would have meant him having to ask, So why “Skugs” ? and then the boys would have looked at each other, shrugged, dumped the comic book back on the rack and run out of the store giggling.

  Bennett suddenly felt that he wanted to be standing out in an early-morning street, alone with an invading mist, hair-plastered onto his forehead, Schwinn between his legs and his old leather Grit sack around his shoulder, drinking in the sights and smells and sounds of a life still new . . . still filled with so many possibilities. Suddenly he wanted a secret name of his own . . . one that made no sense at all and that would make adults frown and shake their heads as he ran off laughing into the life that lay ahead.

  He wondered what the secret name was for the boy in the street and, for a second, considered asking him. But then he thought better of it. At least he knew this kid’sreal name: it was Will Cerf.

  Bennett waved. “Hey Will. Looks a little misty out there,” he shouted as the paper hit the screen door below him, its thud sounding like a pistol crack.

  “Fog,” the boy retorted, his face serious, brow furrowed.

  Fog. Such an evocative word when spoken by a voice and a mind still alive to things not so easily explained by the meteorological charts on the morning news programs.

  The boy stopped the bike and straddled it, one foot on the curb, and waved an arm back in the direction he’d just ridden. “Coming in thick and fast,” he said, sounding for all the world like a tow-headed Paul Revere thumbing back over his shoulder at the advancing British troops. For
a second or so, Bennett glanced in the direction indicated and felt a small gnawing mixture of apprehension and wonder.

  “Down by the scrapyard,” Will Cerf added. “Cold, too,” he almost concluded. “And damp.” The boy rubbed his arms to confirm his report.

  Bennett nodded absently and looked back along the street.

  Already the first fingers of fog had consolidated, holding tight onto picket fence and garage handle, wrapping themselves across fender and grill, posting sentries beside tree trunks and fall-pipes, settling down alongside discarded or forgotten toys lying dew-covered on the leaf-stained lawns.

  “Gotta go,” Will Cerf said, a hint of sagacious regret in his voice.

  “Me, too,” Bennett said. “You take care now.”

  The boy already had his head down, was already reaching into that voluminous bag of news and views, his feet pumping down on those pedals, the tires shhhhing along the pavement. “Will do,” came the reply as another airborne newspaper flew through the mist, gossamer fingers prodding and poking it as it passed by. “You, too,” he added over his shoulder.

  And then, as if by magic, Will Cerf disappeared into the whiteness banked across the street in front of Jack and Jenny Coppertone’s house. The whiteness accepted him—greedily, Bennett thought . . . immediately wishing he hadn’t used that word—and stretched over to Audrey Chermola’s Dodge, checking out the JESUS SAVES sticker on the back fender before swirling around the rain barrel out in front of her garage, climbing up the pipe and over the flat roof to the back yard beyond.

  Bennett pulled the window closed.

  Outside visibility was worsening.

  Now the power lines and their silent bird population had gone. Even the posts were indistinct, like they were only possible ideas for posts . . . hastily sketched suggestions for where they might be placed. The Hells Angels gulls had gone, too. He leaned forward and looked up into the air to see if he could see any shapes negotiating the milky currents, but the sky appeared to be deserted.

  Deserted and white.