Analog SFF, November 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He took a cab and raced to the industrialist's office. The door was locked, but any Knight Temporal had the experience and tools needed to bypass security systems, no matter how sophisticated they might be.

  When he opened the door, he stared down at the corpse of Vincent Draconis. Shot in the head, with blood pooling on the plush new carpet.

  This was Kyle's thirty-fifth case, twenty-seven of which had been successes. On seven occasions Time, or Fate, or God, or some combination of them, had conspired to prevent history from being changed. But Kyle wasn't finished yet.

  If a Knight Temporal couldn't prevent the murder, he was authorized to use his own judgment. He could give up and go back home, he could try again to prevent it—or, as a last resort, he could give the victim an opportunity to take preventive action. Prevenge.

  Only twice in all of his cases had Kyle resorted to that option. With the greatest reluctance, he had allowed the victim to kill his would-be murderer before the fact.

  Now that he knew Bechtold wasn't the guilty party after all, Kyle turned to the most distasteful aspect of his job: He would have to watch the murder happen and work backward from there.

  Turning away from the corpse, he studied the office, discarding various hiding places. The coat closet looked small and cramped, and crouching behind the large decoy safe (the real one was behind a painting in the outer office) felt too exposed. Kyle chose Draconis's private bathroom as the best place to observe. He pulled the door almost shut, leaving only a narrow gap. From here, he could see both the office door and the desk.

  He pulled out his PDA-look-alike temporal transformer, programmed in the proper coordinates—and promptly experienced the moment of dizziness that accompanied each brief jump. When the fog cleared from his brain he checked his watch: 11:25 P.M.

  Through the crack in the door, he could see a very-much-alive Draconis pulling up various screens of information on his computer and taking an occasional sip from the highball on his desk. He hoped the man wouldn't need to use the bathroom before the time of the murder. Explaining his presence wouldn't be easy, and Kyle preferred not to use his ace-in-the-hole proofs if he didn't have to.

  Five minutes passed, then fifteen. Not long now. Draconis didn't look the least bit worried. So the killing was going to be totally unexpected.

  An elderly woman entered the office, pushing a cart filled with towels, rags, brushes, feather dusters, and cleaning fluids. Her hair was gray, her face heavily lined; osteoporosis and long years of hard work bent her over.

  Draconis never glanced up from his computer, grumbling about his spreadsheets. The cleaning woman didn't seem to exist for him, and he paid no attention when she locked the office door. Kyle's eyes were wide as the old woman reached into an empty bucket and withdrew a handgun.

  "Look up, Vincent,” she said harshly.

  He finally bothered to notice her. “Who the hell are you?"

  "You really don't know, do you?"

  He saw the gun. “If this is some kind of joke..."

  "This is no joke, Vincent. I'm going to kill you."

  He gave her a withering look, showing no fear at all. “Who are you?"

  "You have all eternity in hell to figure it out.” She pulled the trigger.

  Kyle had not expected her to act so swiftly, so coldly. He didn't have a chance to intervene. Already too late! Two strikes in one night. He made no sound in his hiding place. If the woman panicked and shot him, he'd have no way to slip back in time and prevent his own murder.

  Draconis lay in a bloody mess on the new carpet. Moving in a daze, as if wondering whether she should clean the office after all, the old woman unlocked the door and slipped away.

  Stunned, Kyle wasn't sure what to do next. Now that he knew the real killer, he needed to find the woman's name and address. He had less than fifteen minutes before a night security guard was due to discover the body, and the place would be crawling with cops.

  He needed more time to plunder the files, and fortunately he could buy all the time in the world. Without leaving the office, Kyle made the calculations and adjustments and jumped back a few days.

  * * * *

  The cleaning woman was Bertha Gilligan, age sixty-three, widowed, mother of one. She'd applied for a job as a night cleaning woman less than a month ago—clearly with the intent of killing Draconis.

  Late at night, when Bertha was at work, Kyle slipped off to her dingy room in what could only be called a flophouse. He needed to learn something about her.

  Two small cats greeted him, purring and rubbing against his legs. He saw the opened can of cheap generic cat food covered by a plastic wrap with a teaspoon next to it. Two open cans on the floor were for the cats; this other can must have been for Bertha herself. The kitchenette had no refrigerator, only a hot plate; the shelves contained a few packets of dirt-cheap ramen noodle soup and one box of off-brand macaroni and cheese.

  On the nightstand he found a row of medication bottles. Pills for pain, pills for depression, pills for half a dozen serious physical ailments. Behind the bottles was an extensive photo display of a lovely blonde woman in her mid twenties. The cleaning woman's daughter?

  A battered wooden table doubled as a desk. One leg was shorter than the others, propped up with a paperback book. On it were a scrapbook and a notebook. Kyle couldn't have asked for more.

  The scrapbook began with a few news items about one Edward Gilligan, a distinguished-looking man, graying at the temples, with frameless glasses and a thin mustache, a natty dresser. He'd created some nearly frictionless compound the experts estimated would extend the life of heavy machinery by 50 percent.

  Kyle kept thumbing through the book, and the tenor of the news items changed. Vincent Draconis had managed a hostile takeover of Gilligan's company, appropriated the formula, and fired Gilligan. Gilligan had sued, but Draconis had the best lawyers and (it was implied) owned the judge; Gilligan had not only lost, but went broke in the process. The last page was an announcement of the untimely passing of Edward Gilligan, who had taken his own life.

  Next, the notebook consisted of a series of letters, all of them addressed to Draconis, all signed by a Naomi Gilligan—no doubt the blonde girl in the photos. She accused Draconis of persecuting her father; she pleaded with him, she argued with him, she threatened him. The dates on the letters abruptly ended three months ago.

  Kyle neatly replaced both books, finished his examination of the room, and left.

  * * * *

  Later, at a library terminal, he scanned internet records and news databases for Naomi Gilligan. He wasn't surprised to find her obituary in an eleven-week-old paper. She'd been beaten to death in an apparent mugging.

  Following the trail, he used his device and jumped back to the night of Naomi's murder. She was found dead in the park, her head staved in. From the position of the body and lack of blood on the scene, it was obvious even to a clumsy amateur detective that she had been killed elsewhere, and her body dumped out here. Considering that Naomi's purse—with money and credit cards intact—turned up in a trashcan about a mile away, Kyle had more than enough reason to doubt the simple “mugging” explanation.

  Bodies went to the coroner, not the police station, but cops talked. He posted himself at the district station and kept his ears open. Within a few hours, jumping back and forth with his temporal adjuster, he had all the information he was going to get.

  When the crime lab dusted Naomi's purse for prints, the mood in the station changed. Kyle overheard one of the cops whisper “Vincent Draconis!” and they all looked scared as hell. Somebody phoned Draconis and told him that they had a little problem and he'd better come down to the station. Obviously, it was payoff time.

  Why hadn't one of the Knights Temporal been sent back to prevent Naomi's murder? But Kyle knew the answer: Harvey Bloom simply didn't have enough manpower, and he had to choose the crimes with the most impact ... one of the few concessions he made to his otherwise rigid moral code.

  Kyl
e cut off those thoughts before he could start to obsess on the conundrum. Preventing Naomi's murder wasn't his function. Like it or not, his assignment was Vincent Draconis.

  * * * *

  Back to the night of the murder, one more time.

  Bertha showed up for work at nine o'clock. What he'd learned certainly explained why she wanted to kill the man who had ruined her husband and murdered her daughter. But Kyle was not a judge; he despised “situational morality,” people who changed their minds with the blowing of the wind. The law was a framework, not a convenient set of suggestions.

  According to her established habit, Bertha took her break at eleven; doubtless that was when she planned to plant the gun in the bucket. Kyle waited until she went to the small lunchroom. He watched her moving more mechanically than usual, stumbling through the motions. When she sagged into a plastic chair and poured herself watery coffee from a thermos, Kyle carefully, silently, locked the breakroom door so that she wouldn't be able to leave for her murderous rendezvous. He posted himself just outside the room, ready to accost her if she somehow managed to get out.

  But the door remained locked. He didn't even hear her rattling to get out. Finally, at a quarter to twelve, he slipped upstairs to make sure that Draconis was still working at his desk. The straightforward delay should have been enough to derail the killing. Case closed, mission accomplished.

  But Vincent Draconis was sprawled on the floor, blood still seeping out of the fatal wound in his head, still ruining the carpet.

  Kyle groaned when he discovered that the break room had a second door, which Bertha had used.

  His next attempt to prevent the murder was to confront Bertha directly in the break room—but for whatever reason, she went straight upstairs and killed Draconis. Again.

  This was getting complicated, one of those cases that seemed jinxed, as if Fate didn't want it to be fixed. For reasons that no Knight Temporal understood, certain actions simply couldn't be diverted.

  Poor Bertha's only sin was to have married a man who'd stood in the path of a steamroller named Vincent Draconis. Her daughter had stood up for fairness and justice, and she had been killed. Bertha's life had been in a downward spiral, emotionally and physically—going from all the benefits of wealth and culture to that horrible room five blocks away, seeing two loved ones trampled into oblivion by an unethical bastard whose sole virtue was that he was stronger than anyone else.

  But Kyle had to stop her. The rules were clear-cut. All Knights Temporal swore an oath. Moral gray areas were for the weak and indecisive, not for the agents of Harvey Bloom.

  Kyle realized that his only alternative was to give the victim a chance for prevenge.

  * * * *

  "Who the hell are you?” demanded Draconis when Kyle appeared in his office two hours before the scheduled murder event.

  "My name is Kyle Bain—"

  "Well, get your ass right out of here, Kyle Bain, or I'm calling security. In fact, a couple of them are going to get fired for letting you get this far."

  "I'm here to save your life tonight."

  Draconis made a rude snort. “What are you selling, religion or laxatives?"

  "Murder prevention.” He had already prepared the way for this man to believe his improbable revelations, planted his ace in the hole. Since Draconis was a secretive man, there were plenty of places Kyle could drop the necessary information—a hidden safe that even his wife and his most trusted aides didn't know about, private notebooks kept under lock and key. One or two “impossible” details would be enough to raise sufficient doubt.

  Kyle explained briefly how and why he had come here, not expecting Draconis to believe his crazy time-travel story. “Go to the safe in the outer office. Open the ledger for July of last year. Turn to page three."

  "What do you know about that safe?"

  "Just do it, Mr. Draconis. We haven't got much time. If you try to sound the alarm on her desk, or the one on the way out of this office, I'll leave you to your fate."

  Frowning, Draconis seemed about to ask something, then thought better of it. “You've bought yourself a few extra seconds, Mr. Bain. I'm intrigued.” Kyle watched him dial the safe's combination, open the door, remove the ledger, and look at page three.

  "If you need further proof,” said Kyle, “call your house and ask your maid or your wife to bring your 1973 diary to the phone and read you the June 15 entry."

  "I believe you—or at least I believe your tricks are highly sophisticated,” said Draconis, looking down at the totally unexpected note in the ledger. “So, who's going to try to kill me?"

  "She's going to do more than try, Mr. Draconis. Due to some temporal exclusion in this case, I myself have been unable to stop her. Therefore, it's in your hands. If I don't give you the wherewithal to take your prevenge, she's going to kill you. Tonight."

  "All right. Who is she and what has she got against me?"

  "We'll come to her name in a few minutes.” Now that he knew Bertha, understood her anguish, Kyle felt cagey. “As for her motive, you ruined her husband."

  "I've ruined a lot of people.” Draconis made no attempt to keep the contempt out of his voice. “That's the way the game is played."

  "It's the way you play it,” replied Kyle distastefully.

  "And I'm damned good at it. Look around you. I don't just work in this building. I own it, all thirty-four floors of it."

  "How many people did you destroy along the way?"

  "Business is Darwinian. Clear cut, black and white. There's meat and there's meat-eaters, nothing in between."

  That's what Harvey Bloom always says about murder. It's clear cut, black and white. To feel sympathy for a killer is an insult to his victims. I wonder what he'd say if he knew how much he sounded like you?

  Finally Kyle spoke. “Aren't you forgetting to include bystanders, advocates, families? The woman who's going to kill you has another grievance besides the fact that you ruined her husband."

  "Yeah, they all do.” Draconis was unimpressed, almost bored. “What's this one's?"

  "Her daughter."

  "What happened? Did she go into a nunnery?"

  "No. Into a morgue."

  Draconis shrugged. “Lots of people die. Half of them are somebody's daughters."

  "Half of them haven't had their heads staved in by a person with your fingerprints."

  Draconis frowned. “Yeah, I read in the papers that Eddie Gilligan's daughter was killed in the park. So tell me this, hot shot—if my fingerprints were found, why wasn't I ever charged with anything? I was out of town that week."

  "No, you weren't. I was at the police station when they contacted you and arranged for the payoff."

  "Have fun trying to prove it!"

  "It's not my job to prove it. It's my job to prevent Bertha Gilligan from murdering you.” He tried to sound firm, convinced. Even if it'll destroy the last few scraps of her life ... and even if you deserve it. “Your office has new carpet, Mr. Draconis. I guess Naomi bled on the old one? Is this where you killed her, then dumped her body in the park?"

  "You're really not a cop, even in the future?"

  "I'm really not a cop.” Sometimes I just wish I was.

  "The bitch bled like a sieve.” Suddenly he grinned. “She actually thought she could threaten me with a letter opener. Hell, she couldn't have weighed a hundred and ten pounds."

  Kyle felt sick. “Why do so many people consider murder an effective solution to their problems? You could have just disarmed her and sent her away. Or reported her to your friends at the police station and gotten a restraining order."

  "You think that would stop a psycho girl? She'd come back with a gun the next time. Anyone who threatens me had better make good on that threat, because I don't give second chances."

  "The Darwinian rule of threats?"

  "Yeah, now that you put it that way."

  "I consider myself a moral man, Mr. Draconis. Law and ethics are the glue that holds our civilization together. Justice
is blind, and murder is wrong. My job is supposed to be simple. You make it complicated."

  Draconis looked at him with a sneer. “Oh, you're one of those types."

  "I assume you short-change your partners, lie to your friends, cheat on your wife, and stiff the government on taxes.” Kyle sighed wearily. “It's all Darwinian, when you get right down to it."

  Draconis took a sip from the highball on his desk. “You don't like me much, do you?"

  "Does anyone?"

  "Probably not. But they sure as hell respect me."

  "I think it's more likely that they fear you."

  "Same thing.” Draconis shrugged. “Look, hot shot, you just concentrate on keeping me alive and I'll take care of you. Vincent Draconis always pays for services rendered."

  Except when you can get away with not paying. Aloud, Kyle said, “Doing my job well is payment enough."

  There was a long silence. Finally, Draconis broke it. “So what do we do now?"

  "Now we wait. She'll be here soon, and you'll have to prevent your own murder."

  "You're telling me Eddie Gilligan's used-up widow is going to sneak past all my security and try to kill me?” He let out a contemptuous laugh.

  "She won't have to sneak past anyone. She has every right to be here."

  Draconis frowned for a moment, then looked up. “Cleaning service, right?"

  "That's right."

  "What's she like?"

  "Probably like a thousand other people you wouldn't recognize by sight. She's been beaten down by circumstances—circumstances of your making. She's lost the two people she cares for, she's destitute, she's taking medication for pain and for depression, she lives in a dump, and she has only one goal left in her life—to kill you."

  "That's her misfortune. No one will miss her, any more than they miss Eddie or her daughter. They're the roadkill of history. It'll be like she never existed.” He picked up his highball glass, realized it was empty, and put it back down on his desk. “You know, I always figured if anyone had the brains and guts to take me out, it'd be Jason Bechtold. I keep the bastard under surveillance every minute he's near me."