The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series)

by Heather Blackwood

  He found her in the kitchen, standing in the open doorway to the backyard, the cold winter air blowing her skirts. She was looking upward, at the sky, and was leaning forward slightly as if she was a bird about to fly off into the night.

  “Going somewhere?” Seamus asked.

  “I want to take a walk. I need some air. To clear my head.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “It’s foolish. I know I can’t run to get away from things. That only worked when I was a girl.”

  “It brought you here, so perhaps it wasn’t so foolish after all.”

  “Look at the two of us,” she slouched against the door frame. It was unladylike and when she rubbed her eye with the heel of her hand, he saw the little girl who came to the back door, dressed as a boy, bearing letters or packages for him. “The two of us ran, didn’t we?” she said. “Ran from where we came from, from troubles and now here we are, neither of us knowing what we ought to do.”

  He wasn’t sure what she meant. He knew what he needed to do: find a way to get Miss Sanchez home, look after Hazel. It wasn’t complicated. But then, he wasn’t a young woman being courted.

  “Do you love him?” he asked, moving beside her to look out into the night. The sky was cloudless and clear, the stars sharp and white.

  “I like him,” she said. “Mr. Ross is a good man and a good friend. He would make a good husband. And let’s be honest, Professor. I’m no beauty.”

  “You’re very pretty.”

  “You say that because you love me. You can’t see me objectively. I’m no beauty. I know it. It was painful when I was younger, to know that I would never be beautiful. But I am at peace with the idea now.”

  “You are too hard on yourself.”

  “I am trying to be realistic. I am thinking of my marriage prospects, as any young woman of my station should do. What are the odds of me having a better offer from a better man? Slim.”

  “You sound like a spinster, steeling herself for a marriage of necessity. You are too young to be so cynical,” he said.

  “But you must have thought of it as well. You have cared for me for all these years, educated me, housed me. Surely you have thought of it.”

  “Hazel!” He looked her full in the face. “You don’t need to marry anyone if you don’t want to. You can stay here forever, be a spinster, marry at fifty, never marry at all. I don’t care.”

  “But wouldn’t you rather see me off?”

  “The only way I would be pleased to see you go is all smiles, leaving on your wedding day with a man you loved. You need not leave for my sake.”

  “You aren’t weary of supporting me? It’s been so long, and you’re not blood kin and I’m nothing but a burden to you.” Tears stood in her eyes, glittering in the soft light.

  “My sweet lass,” he said, touching her cheek. He could count on one hand the times he had seen her cry. She was strong, for a female. “You’re no burden to me. You’re my joy and delight. Without you, this house would be a dank old prison. You’ve kept me sane these years.”

  She embraced him then, and rested her head against his chest. He was a tall man, six feet and three inches, and she would never grow any bigger than she was now. She would always be his wee lass, his precious girl. He placed a kiss on the top of her head. Then, she released him and they moved into the kitchen so she could shut the door.

  “Do you still want some hot chocolate?” he asked.

  She nodded. “There’s still time for that, before midnight Mass.”

  “Oh, I’d forgotten about that.”

  “I thought you might have. You make the chocolate and I’ll get your present.”

  While the milk heated, he opened the box.

  “A new set of pencils,” he said. They were of excellent quality with leads that would make clear, dark lines.

  “I thought you could use them with all the figuring you do.”

  “Thank you.”

  She stood on her toes and kissed him softly on the cheek. “Happy Christmas, Professor.”

  “Happy Christmas.”

  Seamus awoke in the night and he fumbled in the dark to find the gas lamp that sat on his bedside table. He had dreamt it. The equation and the solution.

  There were an uncountable number of mathematical curves that satisfied the known boundary conditions to the problem of time travel, but only a finite number were elliptical. He had only just realized that any solution must be elliptical. And finitely many curves just might be calculable.

  He lit the lamp with trembling fingers.

  The numbers had floated before him in his dream, touching one another, forming new strings, revealing their secrets. Barefoot and in his nightshirt, he sorted through the things on his bedroom desk, found Hazel’s pencils, pulled one from the box and made notes, desperate to capture everything before his sleep-clouded mind cleared and he couldn’t remember anything. When he was done, he paused and looked over the numbers.

  He had it. He had a way to find Felicia Sanchez.

  Chapter 5

  May 24, 1982

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  The brutal Las Vegas heat hit Neil Grey like a wave as he stepped out of the office building where Mr. March still sat three floors up. As Neil walked down the sidewalk, he stuffed his top hat into a trash can. He stopped at a phone booth to look up a thrift shop in the phone book and after calling them and getting directions, he headed off.

  With the money Mr. March had provided for him, he would buy some less anachronistic clothing. He occasionally purchased brand new clothing for jobs, but he found that people seemed to notice him more when he did. He was sure they themselves had no idea why. Used clothing made him less conspicuous and the trick was to find something that looked worn, but also fit with the time he was visiting.

  He found the thrift shop and pulled open the glass door. The interior smelled musty, like old cigarettes and dust, of attics and garages, aging newspapers and mothballs. He sorted through the men’s clothing racks, looking for something to wear that wasn’t some polyester nightmare or something a grandfather would wear. Along the back wall of the shop sat furniture, boxes of toys and other non-clothing items. A gold sunburst clock hung on the wall next to a landscape painting of a sea coast. On one shelf sat a metal Bionic Woman lunch box, a set of ceramic praying hands and a ship in a bottle. The last item was small, no larger than a soda bottle from a vending machine. The glass was clear and smooth, and the dragon-headed Viking ship inside was incredibly small.

  This could be fun. He liked visiting times far different from his own, but traveling within his own lifetime could be interesting as well. He would only be seven years old this year, living in California. And now, he was twenty and could look at things with new eyes. He left the clothing area and browsed the books, Reader’s Digests, eight-track tapes and other items, things he had vague childhood memories of, or no memories at all. But here they were, these artifacts of a time not so long before his own. In a century, they would be antique treasures, but now they were just junk.

  A blond man in his fifties wearing a tweed jacket and blue jeans flipped through a box of records, pulling out a few and then sliding them back in. He moved on to look at the shelves, and paused at the ship in a bottle. Neil watched as the man leaned forward, examining the interior, and then jerked back.

  “Holy hell,” muttered the man.

  “What?” asked Neil.

  “Monkeys,” said the man with a grin. He picked up the bottle and headed to the cash register.

  Well, it takes all kinds, Neil thought. He returned to the men’s clothing section and found a pair of blue jeans and a white polo shirt. He would keep his shoes. Though out of fashion, they would serve.

  After changing in the back of the shop, he found a homeless man down the street and offered
him his clothing from 1857. The pants and shirt were not too bad and a coat was a coat, after all. Nights in the desert could get cold. Neil also gave him a twenty-dollar bill and walked the few final blocks to the famous Las Vegas strip.

  It was still daylight, so the strip was not illuminated in all its glory. The May sun was harsh, and he was soon damp with sweat. The Rabbit’s Foot Hotel and Casino was one of the older establishments, opening in the 1950s. Now, according to Mr. March, it was barely clearing expenses. It was 1982, and Neil knew that in 1997, this casino would be purchased, torn down and replaced by the Bellagio with its dancing fountains. But for now, the Rabbit’s Foot’s neon sign blinked out front, advertising its winning slots and titillating shows while a few guests moved in and out through the sliding glass doors.

  He crossed the street, admiring the long, boxy Lincoln Continental and the white Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme idling at the stoplight. He hadn’t seen either car in years. He supposed if he could turn on a radio, he would hear tunes he had forgotten too.

  It was strange. Some of his childhood memories were clear, but most were hazy, or he only had an impression, like a set of information about the past. Very few memories were distinct. There were memories of various foster care families, and then, when he was older, Mr. March. It was only the last three years or so that were plain in his mind, but he supposed that was what it was like with childhood. Memories were hazy.

  The lobby of the Rabbit’s Foot stank of cigarette smoke, but at least it was cooler inside. For a moment, Neil worried that he might be asked for his identification. He wasn’t twenty-one, and so could not legally be in the casino. And even if he was old enough, he did not have any identification to prove it. But no one asked and he followed the signs to the back where women in skimpy outfits performed their stage show, Girls of the Wild West. A bar ran along the back of the room, and small, round tables filled the rest of the floor space. Most of them were occupied by individual men, although there were a few couples.

  A standing sign informed him that a show would begin in fifteen minutes and Neil ordered a rum and Coke. His target wasn’t here yet, but according to his profile, he would be.

  Rick Gallo was a murderer. He ran the Girls of the Wild West show, which employed sixteen women ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-seven. Some were runaways or locals trying to earn money to leave town, some were hoping that this would be a first step to a career on the stage. And some of them, three to be exact, had been murdered.

  The Las Vegas desert was large and hard to search. A body could be buried anywhere in its thousands of square miles and would never be found. Especially in times like these, without global satellite monitoring or implantable identification, it was nearly impossible to find a body that had been hidden.

  And there he was. Rick Gallo came in and sat near the front, setting his cigarette in the indentation on the edge of a black glass ashtray. He was overweight, balding, with a round, red face. Neil watched him, and then the curtain parted.

  The rum and Coke was heavy on the rum, which was how he liked it, and the girls were good looking. They played cowgirls and Indians with three blondes in tiny denim shorts singing while shooting at three dark-haired “Indians” who wore fringed vests and brown suede miniskirts. He tried to enjoy himself. He had a nice drink, no one was bothering him and the girls were easy on the eyes.

  But he knew that most of them were there for money, not because they enjoyed men leering at them. They were around his age, which made him wonder. He didn’t remember much of high school, but he must have had a female friend or two. How would he feel, knowing a friend was doing something like this? He studied a girl with straight black hair, imagining it, but then she pulled off her tiny fringed vest and shook her tasseled breasts, and the thought left his mind.

  Rick Gallo was looking over some paperwork now, occasionally glancing at the girls. Neil knew that he had seen all this before. He thought about it. Should he wait, or go forward now? No time like the present.

  He took his drink and moved along the edge of the room, plastering a big smile on his face and sitting down across from Mr. Gallo. The man was twirling his pen, pausing to write things now and then. It brought forth another memory in Neil’s mind, one of learning coin tricks. Moving the coins from hand to hand, undetected, palming them, doing little flourishes. Something was wrong in the memory, something about the hands, but Mr. Gallo was now looking at him expectantly.

  “I’m Neil Grey. I was talking with one of your girls earlier, and she said I should come and find you.”

  “Yeah? What about?”

  “My employer, Michael Gorski, is known for choreographing some of the big shows in Paris, New York and Tokyo. You’ve heard of him?”

  “Can’t say as I have,” said Mr. Gallo.

  Neil lied to him without a qualm. This man had murdered three girls, and he deserved no better. Neil regaled him with tales of his fictional employer who had made barely profitable shows into highly profitable ones. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the syringe and while keeping it out of sight, pulled off the safety cap and pushed back the button cover. He palmed the syringe, like he would a coin, in his left hand.

  He gave Rick Gallo a made-up phone number and then stood, his right hand out. Gallo shook it, and Neil moved his left hand to enfold Gallo’s hand in both of his own. The gesture was too familiar and intimate for this time and culture, but it didn’t matter. He touched the syringe to the back of Gallo’s hand, pressing his left thumb to the administration button while keeping the syringe concealed. The job was done.

  Today’s poison was not a time-release formula. Mr. March had said that Gallo having a heart attack within a few minutes would not be a problem. It was only a matter of time now.

  Taking his rum and Coke, Neil returned to his seat for the grand finale which involved the girls marching in a patriotic military display in sequined white bikinis with red, white and blue feathered headdresses. They were safe now, all of them. He felt a little flush of pride. All the beautiful girls would live. They would keep dancing and go on with their lives.

  Mr. Gallo fell from his chair, pulling it down with him, and there was a commotion up front. The show was almost over anyway, and two of the girls hurried down to help their boss. The bartender and a waitress soon joined them, and Neil watched. He supposed he should leave, but he didn’t. He wasn’t done with his drink.

  Someone ran to call an ambulance, there was shouting, and the girls on the stage crowded around, whether out of sympathy or curiosity, Neil could not tell. One girl started crying, and she backed away, leaning up against the wall. It was the busty girl with the tassels and straight, black hair who had pulled off her vest.

  He had seen her nearly naked, and now, standing in a tiny white bikini, she seemed small and vulnerable. Something about this was wrong, he thought. Her emotion was raw, and now he saw that some of the other dancers were crying or had their hands pressed to their mouths or throats, as if this man was a good friend. Neil approached the black-haired girl.

  “Was he your friend?” he asked.

  “Mr. Gallo was the best,” she said. “He helped us so much.” Her eye makeup was a black mess under her eyes and she looked younger up close.

  “I heard that he wasn’t good to the girls, that he hurt them.”

  “What?” she said, looking up at him in bewilderment. “No, not Mr. Gallo. He was not like the other guys who run the shows. He was good to us.”

  This wasn’t right. But maybe she didn’t know about the three murdered girls. “I heard there were three girls, Clara Barnard, Sally Polanski and Brandy Ito who all disappeared. Rumor had it that he killed them.”

  It was a very risky thing to say, but it wasn’t as if he would be lingering here, and he couldn’t afford to beat around the bush. If something was wrong about this job, he needed to know so he could report
it to Mr. March.

  “I didn’t know Clara very well, other than seeing her around. But I know that Sally went to school in Boston and Brandy moved up north with her boyfriend.”

  No, how could that be? Mr. March couldn’t have been wrong. He was never wrong. Mr. Gallo must have lied to the girls to explain the disappearances of their fellow dancers. Naturally, there would be turnover in a show like this. People moved on, and no one would think anything of a girl moving away.

  “Have you heard from any of them?” he asked.

  “No, but Denise,” she pointed to a blonde woman, “shared an apartment with Brandy. They still write to each other.”

  Denise, upon hearing her name, looked up at them. Neil motioned her over.

  “I heard you’re friends with Brandy Ito. Is that true?”

  “Yeah, we used to room together,” said Denise, glancing at the black-haired girl in concern.

  “Where is she now, and how long has it been since you heard from her?”

  “She’s up in Carson City. And I got a letter day before yesterday. Why?”

  “No reason,” Neil said. “Was Mr. Gallo good to all of you?”

  “He was great,” said Denise. “Some of the girls, if they can’t make rent when they first get here, he loans them money. They have to pay it back, it’s not a gift, you understand. And I know what you’re thinking about how they pay it back, but that’s not how he is. He doesn’t make you do anything you don’t want to. He’s not like some of the other creeps in this business. Why are you asking about those girls anyway?”

  “I’m a private investigator. There have been rumors.” Let them interpret that however they pleased. But now both women were studying him, which was not to his liking. “Is Mr. Gallo going to be all right?” he asked.