Twin Speex: Time Traitors Book II

by Padgett Lively

  His overwhelming sense of unease grew. The police had been unduly suspicious of him. Taking his clothes and testing him for gunpowder residue was standard procedure, as were many of their questions. But there were other questions, ones that were weirdly confrontational, particularly for a son whose mother had just died in his arms.

  “I’m told you and your mother had a tense relationship,” Detective Hamilton had stated when Odell was cleaned up and sat warming himself with a bitter cup of vending machine coffee.

  Odell’s detached self-control likely didn’t help him much when he answered smoothly, “My mother had a tense relationship with a lot of people, Detective. It was who she was.”

  And so it went. Probing questions about his relationship with Ivy and even Ettie were answered with composure and entirely too thoughtful responses. Detective Hamilton had kept him isolated in the exam room while he went to get Ettie. Odell assumed that this was so the detective could question her before she and Odell had a chance to speak with each other. But Ettie had been too shocked to answer any questions and had cried into Beatrix’s fur all the way to the hospital.

  Fortunately, one of the dancers had seen Odell pass by the classroom only seconds before his shouted plea for help. The timeframe for him to have entered undetected, shoot his mother, leave, discard the weapon, and return to discover her seemed impossible. It became even more so when the doctor declared that she couldn’t have survived her injury for more than a matter of minutes.

  The murderer had shot her only a brief few moments before Odell’s arrival, a fact that made him grind his teeth in fury. Someone was watching him. Someone had killed his mother and set a trap. The fact that it hadn’t worked yet, didn’t mean it eventually wouldn’t.

  His own testimony excluded the alleyway as the assailant’s escape route. The police had focused on the main street door, but it wouldn’t take them long to find this window. Perhaps even the remnants of his old forts, pointing them back in his direction.

  He had to act quickly. Odell slipped through the window and landed with a crunch on the broken glass. He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and flipped it on. The basement had once been nicely refurbished. The walls were painted and tile had been put down to cover the cement floors. Ivy had thought to build dormitories for the students, but the promise of a residential program never materialized. For a while, the custodial staff cleaned regularly, leaving no creepy cobwebs or water-stained walls to scare a small child. So it had been left to Odell to use the second-hand furniture to build forts and find some respite from the repetitious notes and grinding discipline that was ballet.

  As his light bounced off the dirty walls and dusty old furniture, Odell saw the boy he once was and felt his self-control slip. His mother had come down here searching for him, a cupcake with blue frosting in her hand, her solemn eyes taking in the fort and his books strewn around the room.

  I know how you like the blue ones…

  He shook off the memory. Now was not the time to lose it. He moved through the narrow hallways and past the abandoned elevator shaft. The service stairs led him up several flights to the third floor. He carefully opened the door into the hallway and shined his light up and down the corridor. It was deserted. The police had cordoned off, not only the office, but several of the classrooms as well.

  Odell clicked off the flashlight and slipped under the tape into Ivy’s office. He flattened himself against the wall and slid over to the window. The blinds were open, and he looked out onto the street. He saw it, an unmarked police car parked on the corner diagonal to the building. There didn’t look to be any others, but he couldn’t be certain.

  Detective Hamilton wasn’t taking any chances. He was unsure of Odell, and this particular stakeout was Hamilton covering his bases. Marta had told him and Ettie what she had overheard while waiting near the nurses’ station to be questioned. Two officers, heedless of the old woman beside them, discussed the case.

  A vagrant saw him enter the building at least thirty minutes before he said…

  But the dancers…

  Yeah, Hamilton’s not so sure…

  Odell was confident that the vagrant in question was no old wino confused with too much drink. Perhaps they would find the gun after all. Maybe hidden under his mattress at home or thrown into a dumpster a few blocks from the studio. He had to move quickly.

  Odell leaned his head back against the wall. Ivy had looked up at him, her eyes intent and pain gouging deep furrows in her forehead.

  “…proditoris aevus.”

  She had used the last of her strength to pull the delicate gold chain with its circular pendant from around her neck and press it into Odell’s hand.

  Even through his shock, Odell knew he would be searched. And while the pendant was innocuous enough, it could still be held for several days before being released back to him. So he had shoved it in between two volumes on the shelf behind his mother’s head before the police arrived.

  Odell slid down to the floor and crawled over to the bookshelf. He studiously ignored the large bloodstain beside him as he pulled one of the books from its place. The necklace fell to the carpeted floor where it lay glittering in the darkness.

  He had seen it almost every day of his life adorning his mother’s long, slender neck. She never took it off. Odell picked it up, stuffed it into his pocket, and quickly stood as he prepared to leave.

  The room spun, and he dropped abruptly back to the floor again. He breathed deeply and shut his eyes as he tried to ignore his churning stomach. Odell knew the signs of a trans-dimensional shift. Stronger than a poste me, it signaled a change in the timeline that could last for hours or even days. He never knew. He only knew that they had become more frequent, and that Ettie could now feel them to some extent.

  Odell didn’t understand why he or Ettie were conscious of an effect that seemed to strike no one else as particularly odd. It was one of the many questions he was going to put to his mother when he had found her near death in this very office.

  He brought his hands, now encased in black leather gloves, to brace against the shelves and pushed himself off the floor. His tennis shoes had been replaced by ankle-high boots, and the hoodie had morphed into a lightweight wool coat. He thrust his hand into his trouser pocket to assure himself that the necklace was still there.

  His surroundings had changed to reflect a more derelict building. Paint peeled from the walls and dust covered the floor and furniture. Thankfully, the bloodstain was not there.

  The sound of sirens didn’t surprise him. In this timeline, he was most definitely a wanted man. How they could even know he was in the building was beyond his comprehension. He only knew he had to move and fast.

  Odell glanced quickly out the window to assess the situation. A paddy wagon and patrol “cruiser” were out front of the building. The wagon was pulled by two large draft horses, but the cruiser was propelled by a powerful steam engine. In fact, the engine comprised over half the size of the vehicle. It was built to carry only two officers, and speed was its primary function. It had the high grill and bumper of an old Chrysler Saratoga, but almost no space separated that from the windshield and the bench seat behind it. The engine was attached to the back with a dizzying array of wires and two large exhaust pipes bounded it on both sides. It had a dune buggy feel with its small front tires and much larger back ones. Although levers provided rather imprecise steering, the cruiser was indeed fast. It created short bursts of speed before slowing down to cool and recharge for another burst. It was rare that it didn’t catch a running man, or horse, for that matter, within the first burst.

  Odell cursed under his breath. They weren’t playing games. Only one option was open to him now. He saw an officer exit the vehicle and knew the other one was likely already in the building. He raced out of the office and turned down the corridor toward the stairwell.

  “Halt! Halt in the name of the Crown!” The voice, a woman’s, was almost enough to make him hesitate. That was a change he
hadn’t foreseen. But her uniform was a blur of dark blue as he barreled into her, sending her crashing against the opposite wall.

  He had barely reached the corner when a burning sensation grazed the side of his head as he turned and propelled himself into the abandoned elevator shaft.

  *

  Dressed only in an old pair of sweatpants, the man stood shirtless and barefoot on the polished marble floor. He looked out the wall-sized picture windows at the lights burning in the buildings on the opposite side of Central Park. It was a beautiful sight—the park, a pool of darkness, and the buildings like sheer cliffs rising from its depths. He never got used to it, this breathtaking view so far above the crowded sidewalks.

  His own beginnings were much more humble, even destitute. He never forgot the painful gnaw of hunger. The memory often kept him from eating an extra serving or overindulging in the richness of food and drink that surrounded him. People frequently commented on his self-discipline. Both women and men looked with envy and desire at his tall, muscular physique.

  He smiled mirthlessly to himself. There was nothing like starvation to instill an appreciation of healthy food, or the raw bite of a bitter winter to make one long for the warmth that comes with strenuous exercise.

  He walked to the sofa and sat down, leaning back into the cushions. It was here, in this position, that she had straddled him. Only a short hour before, his hands had encircled her waist, and he had watched as she moved rhythmically above him, her head thrown back and hair cascading around her shoulders.

  But what started out as desire never lasted. The simple act of sex itself was never enough. It always had to be harder, rougher. It ended on the floor with her face down, his hands pulling her hair back in a brutal grip. Her slender frame penned beneath him, the force of his thrusts pushing her violently into the unforgiving marble.

  She had said nothing as she slipped the dress on over her head and pulled the high-heeled pumps onto her feet. She merely patted his cheek and smiled. When she reached to pick up the heavy fur coat from the chair onto which it had been flung, he saw a livid purple bruise rising on her forearm. It made him queasy.

  “Don’t forget what you owe us,” she admonished him playfully and left.

  Would she ever let him forget?

  He got up, suddenly restless. He would go for a run. Perhaps the rush of endorphins would lift the curtain of depression that had fallen over him.

  As he headed toward the bedroom, his cell phone rang. He grabbed it from the counter and kept walking.

  “Hello… Ettie?” He pulled up short. “What…? My God! I’ll be right there!”

  His head spun, and he stopped to catch his breath. What was happening? Was this even part of the plan?

  His disorientation increased as his reality twisted into another dimension.

  Six

  AVA FOUND HIM asleep on her sofa. She couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten in. Her apartment was on the eighth floor, and the building boasted both an electronic security system and an actual human guard. Even she, with her key card, had been stopped and questioned a couple of times when there was a newly employed guard on duty.

  Once, she had walked in next to a woman with a baby stroller, only to be waved on by a new guard assuming she was the nanny. I guess that’s one way of doing it, she thought, but doubted that Odell would ever be mistaken for the help.

  He lay on his back. One long leg was stretched out on the couch and the other rested bent with his foot on the floor. His blond curls were in disarray, and she could see dried, matted blood along the left side of his head. He slept so deeply, she thought at first he might be dead. She held her breath until he moved restlessly and murmured something unintelligible before settling down again.

  Ava went into the kitchen and set her bags on the counter. She had been out all night, mostly in her office, but also rummaging through the dusty records in the library basement. Her experience in the hidden art gallery had prompted a frantic search for answers. She had found none, but an unexpected piece of information had surfaced on the passenger list of a certain Pennsylvania packet out of Portsmouth in March of 1775.

  Those late night hours among the documents of the long dead had helped to wipe away some of the grime of her encounter with Knightly Davis. After she had stared speechless and sickened for several minutes before the portrait of what could easily have been an adolescent Ettie, Davis had intoned, “An excellent example of erotic portraiture, don’t you agree? It puts the voluptuous colors of the eighteenth century to good use, and the rendering of the young lover is beautifully idealized, even somewhat mythologized.”

  His admiration of the picture as well as the dry, academic speech infuriated her.

  “Really?” She had turned to him, incredulous, eyebrows dangerously raised, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “That’s your takeaway from this painting?”

  He smirked condescendingly, and his eyes took on the flat, opaque aspect she was beginning to recognize. “Dr. Washington, I’d hoped that your background in the liberal arts would have produced a more open mind. Art is beyond mere plebeian morality.”

  “Is that what you think the liberal arts teach?” It was her turn to smile stiffly with condescension. “Just the opposite, Mr. Davis, my background informs me that this…” She waved to include the entire gallery. “…reflects an evil and disregard for human suffering that sickens the spirit. These paintings should be thrown onto a bonfire and release the suffering souls that inhabit them.”

  “Very Nazi Germany of you,” he shot back at her.

  “Spare me the Hitler comparisons,” she retorted, recognizing the typical fallback of the corrupt and dishonest. “These aren’t great, transcendent works of art. You don’t keep them to study or illuminate the society that allowed the creation of these atrocities. You admire them. They give you pleasure. And as long as they are used for that purpose, these children can never rest.” It was an impassioned speech for all that it was spoken in the calm, modulated tone she had cultivated long ago.

  He had laughed abruptly and changed the subject. “You think you know her, don’t you? Dr. Cooper did as well. I could tell.”

  Ava compressed her lips tightly together and took a deep breath. He had known all along why she was there, but she merely replied, “I’d like to see any verification of provenance you may possess regarding this painting.”

  “Why would I share that with you?” he queried, amused. “You obviously don’t admire the work, and your interest is clearly only of a personal nature.”

  He forestalled her reply with a shake of his head. “No, I have nothing more to show you. You can easily see his signature in the corner and will just have to take my word that it is authentic. Although, if it makes you feel any better, it is the only one of this nature that Jonas Bell was known to have painted.”

  “Do you know who she was?” Ava persisted as he shepherded her toward the door.

  He didn’t answer and maintained a cold silence as they had waited for the pressure to equalize. Once back in the library, Faith reappeared, smiling politely.

  Davis gave a lazy wave of his hand. “Show her out,” he commanded.

  Ava resisted Faith’s sweeping gesture toward the door and walked over to Knightly Davis. She stood directly in front of him. He wasn’t a tall man, so she didn’t have to look up far to meet his eyes.

  “I want you to destroy every last one of those paintings,” she told him stoically.

  “By all means, Dr. Washington,” he replied mockingly.

  “I mean it. I’ll report you. I’ll go to the press and tell them exactly what the sainted Knightly Davis has hidden away in his lovely penthouse.”

  He laughed. “You signed a confidentiality agreement. I’ll sue you.”

  She turned her back on him and walked out the door. Once in the elevator, Faith warned her, “Don’t mess with him, really, I’ve seen…” She shook her head. “He can hurt you,” she insisted.

  “He doesn’t scare me,” Ava l
ied yet again. “You should visit the neighborhood where I grew up.” Then she exited the elevator and out the building.

  Once on the street, she brought shaking hands to her mouth. She felt sick. The drug dealers and gang members that roamed her old neighborhood had nothing on Knightly Davis.

  “Dead-eyed creep,” she murmured under her breath, and had taken the entire subway ride back to the university to calm her shattered nerves.

  Once there, Ava had spent the entire night searching for the girl. Her faculty key card got her into the documents room of the library, but she had found no leads. The rest of the night was spent in her office, searching the internet and firing off discreet email inquiries to trusted colleagues. She had even spoken briefly again with Tim—to warn him.

  He had smiled fondly and shook his head. “Listen, no worries, Ava. With his reach, there’s a good chance Davis knew of my efforts to report the collection to the authorities anyway. If he’d wanted to hurt me, he would have done so already.”

  Ava looked unconvinced, but only shook her head and apologized again. By the time she had signed off, it was near dawn, and a quick visit to her Facebook page found a news alert involving Ivy and the White Swan Dance Theater.

  The rest was kind of a haze. She had called Ettie, but there was no reply. Finally, she had reached Marta at the house. Ettie had left with a man, and it was anybody’s guess where Odell was.

  Ava gripped the kitchen countertop and blew out a long gust of air. Her place hadn’t even been on her radar of possible locations of Professor Odell Speex.

  “Hey.”

  Ava looked up and saw him leaning against the doorframe.

  She had transferred to the White Swan Dance Theater after an incident at the prestigious studio she was attending forced her departure. Ivy had offered her a scholarship. Ava knew, even at sixteen, that dance would not be her life; Ivy knew it as well. But the studio was a lifeline, the calm eye of the storm that was her young existence. The discipline and constancy that was ballet taught her how to cope, how to strive and succeed.