Time of Death

by Nathan Van Coops

  Her hand trailed down my chest till she could slip it under my shirt, press it to my abdomen. So warm. She looked up at me with wide, innocent eyes. “I finished the best book today. I can’t wait to tell you about it.”

  Her irises were an intoxicating green, deep and dazzling. She rose up on tiptoes, one hand pressed to the side of my neck, then reached for the door with the other. She began to close it.

  I stopped it with the toe of my shoe.

  The woman looked down, puzzled.

  “You’re good. I’ll give you that,” I said. “Sometimes I think you synths know more about what it feels like to be human than we do.”

  She traced my stubbled jaw with her fingertips. “Don’t we all just want something real?”

  “This isn’t real.”

  “Well . . .” She smiled. “I did finish the book today. Technically.”

  “And a thousand others?”

  The wall of windows with the snow view faded away, returning to the default smart screen logos. The bookshelves and fireplace disappeared too, replaced with clean gray walls and a heater vent. The scents still lingered. Cedar. Lemon. Ginger tea.

  “You could have at least been dry.” The extra pillows and quilt on the bed were gone, leaving only a rumpled bedspread with a few real pillows in plain white pillowcases.

  I noted the ID on the door, pulled my phone from my pocket, keyed a number into it and authorized a small transaction.

  The synth cocked her head in curiosity.

  “It was a good fantasy,” I said. “And you got me out of the rain.”

  She pressed her fingers to her lips, kissed them gently, then held them out and pressed them to mine. “Next time.”

  I stepped out into the cold night and took a look at the unrelenting sky. I shivered, buttoned my jacket the rest of the way up, and walked on.

  The Boss showed back up in the garage on time and I climbed in, still dripping. I cranked the heater.

  “Would you like me to plan a return route to 2019?” Waldo asked.

  “Not yet. As long as I’m in the neighborhood, there’s one more place I want to visit. And don’t tell me it’s a bad idea. I already know.”

  16

  The house looked cozy. A prairie style home with enormous windows tucked between sprawling oaks. I’d climbed those limbs a thousand times as a child, chasing after my sister or as a means of spying on the neighbors. The yard was tidy, and the grass green though the gutters needed cleaning. There was a swing on the porch.

  It didn’t look like the home of a family of time travelers. It looked normal. That was the idea, Mom said. To give us a simple childhood.

  It wasn’t raining here, though the sky held a few clouds that threatened.

  Lights were on in the house. A yellow glow emanated from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Figures moved across the light. I caught Dad carrying a drink out to someone in the family room.

  Parked on the street I had a clear view. Only twilight. No one had thought to close the blinds just yet.

  I recognized the car in the driveway. An old Ford Galaxie. No way it was street legal here, but its owner had his way of getting around rules like that. It was no more a standard car than the Boss was. And Grandpa Harry wasn’t just some old man having a drink with his family.

  But you could believe it from where I sat. A pretty picture. Simple. Was it a holiday? I hadn’t thought so, but who could tell. They could be celebrating any number of things inside. Dates were just numbers in boxes, but they could choose which to occupy.

  Smoke wafted from the chimney. I could smell something else too. Something cooking. That was Mom’s language now. Feed people. Keep them safe. She’d done it our whole lives. Was there a person in the world better suited for it? She’d been born adrift in time, no place to call home and also a thousand places. Walked the Great Wall as it was built. Watched the colonists land at Jamestown. Visited with kings and queens of old. Became a legend in her own right. She found a place. Made a home. Expressed her love with old wine and fresh bread.

  Then there she was, next to my father. The sun he orbited. Her blonde hair had darkened some over the years. A few streaks of gray. But still the center of our little universe.

  She’d kept it all together, defined a future. This was it.

  There was a lesson there somewhere. A woman who had the world at her fingertips, able to press pause.

  Someone else passed the window. Piper. My sister, three years my elder. She was in conversation with someone in the family room.

  She looked out.

  The Boss was a shadow inside a shadow but she had eyes like an eagle.

  A moment later my phone buzzed.

  <<< You coming in?

  I stared at the message. A simple enough question.

  An invitation.

  It seemed easy. Climb out of the car, walk the worn brick path through the yard. No need to knock. Walk right in. Hugs all around. How’ve you been? Great to see you.

  Sit. Eat. Pretend this was all normal.

  My fingers hovered over the door handle. I had just decided to climb out when another figure passed in front of the window. Tall, sandy brown hair. His face as familiar as my reflection.

  It was me.

  Another me.

  A me that had made different choices.

  The one who hadn’t fucked it all up.

  My hand slipped down the door frame, settled back to the steering wheel.

  Just like that, the spell was broken.

  Because life as a time traveler is never simple. Never clean. It’s a mess of alternate timelines and paths not taken. Pandora’s box. Once the lid is sprung, the contents never go back inside.

  That face in the window was the proof. This wasn’t my life anymore.

  My sister’s message still glowed on my phone. I licked my dry lips and typed a reply.

  >>> Don’t mention I was here.

  I could see her typing as I restarted the car.

  <<< Take care of yourself Grey.

  I kept the headlights off until I reached the corner, the house fading in the rear-view. I tightened my grip on the wheel and shifted gears.

  I needed a drink.

  Waldo spoke from the audio system. “I don’t think I understand your behavior, Greyson Travers.”

  “Don’t try,” I muttered.

  “As you wish. Where would you like to go next?”

  “Back to work. We’ve got a case to solve.”

  Waldo displayed a 3D map of time on the dash screen. “In my estimation, there are several destinations that might prove informative. Shall I list the available options?”

  “No. I’m done beating around the bush. Let’s go talk to Foster Phillips.”

  17

  Mastry’s bar endures.

  Dozens of other nightclubs and retro speakeasies have come and gone beside the dive bar on Central Avenue. Their high priced cocktails came in copper mugs with fancy garnishes but they weren’t steeped in St. Pete history. Mastry’s served cheap drinks in cheap glasses. There was a photo on the wall of Babe Ruth drinking at the original location across the street, opened in 1935, and there were guys on stools who had been drinking on the same stools since the ’80s.

  They finally made the smokers step outside after 2014 but the place still smells like nicotine. It was fused into the furniture with the history—soaked into the old bricks and the ancient Coca Cola logo painted on the wall.

  I showed up on a Tuesday in early October of 2018 and drank cheap beer with the salty old men till after dark. I came back every other afternoon for two weeks, varying my hours only slightly. After seven days I knew each of the barflies by name and by the second week several swore they loved me like a brother. The bartenders appreciated that I wasn’t pushy and left generous tips. I ducked out each night before the college kids filled the place.

  With the help of time travel, I did two week’s worth of drinking in only two days of my time. The hangovers were brutal but I’d managed fewer
of them. It was on my third day—day fourteen in calendar time—that I finally met Foster Phillips. He came in early in the afternoon, while I was still on my first Red Stripe and sat himself a stool away from me at the bar. Jake, the bartender, had his drink poured before he asked for it. Yuengling.

  “Where you been, Foster?” Jake asked.

  “Working my ass off.”

  “Like hell. You?”

  Foster flipped him the bird but Jake only smiled.

  Foster caught me watching him. Eyed me warily. “You got something to say, chief?”

  “This here is Alan,” Jake said, nodding toward me. “Been coming in for a few weeks. He’s a writer.”

  “Non-fiction,” I said.

  “How to drink at shitty bars?” Foster asked.

  “Hey now.” Jake’s voice betrayed no real hurt.

  Not like he owned the place.

  I sipped my beer and eyed the hockey game on TV. The Tampa Bay Lightning were still two years away from their next Stanley Cup. But at the moment they were winning.

  Foster took a drink and turned to me. “Write anything I ever heard of?”

  “Probably. But not with my name on it. I’m a ghostwriter.”

  “What’s the matter? Your own life too dull?”

  “I like getting paid up front. What’s your story? Maybe I’ll write it.”

  “My story’s just getting started.”

  “Big plans?” I asked.

  He paused his beer on the way to his mouth. “Bigger than you can fit in a book.”

  Jake the bartender wandered back over. “Foster here already won the lottery, you ask me. Got himself the prettiest wife in town. Why don’t you bring her in more, Foster?”

  “And have you trying to snake her away from me? Fat chance. She’s working tonight anyway.”

  “Tell her to put me into one of those big money games of hers,” Jake said. “I could retire off one of those pots.”

  Foster’s lip twitched at that. He looked like he wanted to say something but took a drink instead.

  I took the opening. “Your girl works the tables? Casino dealer?”

  “Organizer,” he said. “Not a dealer. She picks the clients, sets the games. The high stakes tables reserved for celebrities.”

  “Any celebrities I know?”

  “I could tell you all kinds of names. But I won’t.”

  “What’s your line?” I asked.

  Foster took another swig of his beer. “Whatever needs doing.”

  “Sounds like you have it all figured out. When’s this big deal of yours going down?”

  “Day after none of your business. But I’ll tell you this. This time next week I’ll be having a margarita somewhere with an ocean view. Won’t miss this place in the slightest.”

  This time next week he’d be dead of a hole in his head. But I thought it rude to mention it.

  I paid my bar tab and rose. “Good meeting ya, buddy. Best of luck with that ocean view.”

  Foster nodded and went back to his beer. Bartender gave me a nod. I walked across the street and climbed into the Boss to think. In a few days Foster was going to have a gun put to his temple. I had to agree with Isla that he was too ambitious to have done it himself.

  So my money was on Magic Max.

  Zhang Zi had admitted she’d sold him a Temprovibe III. That meant that his being outside Foster’s house the day he died wasn’t any more of an alibi than it was for me. He could easily have jumped back in time same as I had.

  Something Isla said came back to me. I synced my phone with the tachyon pulse transmitter at my place. I sent her a text.

  >>>What was the date of the break-in at your house? The one after Foster died?

  The tachyon pulse transmitter relayed the message forward in time to the date I’d selected.

  It was five minutes till I got the reply with the date and estimated time. Close. A few weeks from where I was parked.

  I started the car.

  Waldo navigated us to the time Isla had sent. I parked down the street and watched this past Isla leave for a late shift at the Casino. I waited. It was just after midnight when the Mercedes G-Class SUV rolled by. They did a lap of the block and parked not more than a hundred yards from me. After a few minutes Max climbed out of the passenger side. He wore a beanie on his head that I was certain would roll down to cover his face as a balaclava. No gun visible but it could be under his coat. Gloves on both hands. One would be concealing the weapon that he shocked me with.

  Things were starting to come together. The reason I never saw anyone go in or out of the house the day Foster died was because that wasn’t when the killer entered. Max broke into the Phillips’ house now, weeks after Foster was dead, in order to throw off suspicion. He jumped back in time to kill Foster, then ran into me investigating the scene from farther in the future.

  It was frustrating to not be able to get out and accost him now. But I couldn’t stop what had already happened from happening.

  Slouched in the darkness of the Boss’s interior, all I could do was think. It was looking like Max was Foster’s killer, but I still didn’t have a motive.

  Max vanished into the backyard of the Phillips’ house. The sound of a breaking window wouldn’t be audible from here. Nor would Foster’s death because that was happening weeks ago.

  It took only a matter of minutes until Max reemerged from the house. He glanced up and down the street, pulling the balaclava from his face as he walked to the corner. The black SUV pulled up the side street to meet him. He climbed in, then it turned my way.

  I slouched lower in the seat.

  “Waldo. Blackout mode.”

  The windshield went completely dark. The tint was so heavy I could barely make out anything outside, just the faint glow of headlights. They were slowing.

  Shit.

  “Exterior cameras.”

  I slipped my sunglasses on. Waldo projected the view of the street into my glasses, creating an augmented reality and allowing me to view the exterior as if I was seated inside a transparent bubble.

  Tommy the Tank was in the driver’s seat of the SUV and he studied the Boss as he went by. His eyes narrowed. Then he accelerated away, the tires on the Mercedes chirping as he took the next corner.

  I told myself it was nothing. Could be he just thought it was a cool car.

  No way they could know it was me inside.

  Shit.

  Not even I believed that. They were time travelers too. They’d be back for another look. I started the car again and pulled away, heading the opposite direction from where I saw them turn.

  “First safe jump space you can find, Waldo. We gotta get out of here.”

  “Telephone pole on the next block makes a suitable anchor via a tether cord,” Waldo said. “We’ll be gone inside of sixty seconds.”

  I watched the rear-view mirror and tried not to hold my breath the entire minute. I breathed easier once we’d made the jump back to early 2019. My present.

  “That was too close, Waldo. Whatever these guys are up to, the last thing we need is to have them gunning for us.”

  “Would you like me to drive from here?”

  “Yep.” I released my grip on the steering wheel and ran my hands through my hair. Some days I hated time travel.

  I pushed my palms into my eyes and worked on clearing my head as Waldo took us back to the office. A dark cloud was looming over St. Petersburg as we crossed the Howard Frankland Bridge. By the time we reached Central Avenue the windshield was flecked with rain.

  “Do I have any messages?”

  “I’m having difficulty syncing with the office,” Waldo said as he parked the car.

  “Connection issue?”

  “I should have received an update from my presence in this time as soon as we got in range. I’ve received nothing.”

  I shrugged into my jacket before getting out of the car, then flipped up my collar to keep the rain off my neck as I jumped the growing puddle at the curb. The
fingerprint lock on the door beeped as I was admitted. I took the stairs slowly, pulling my Stinger out of its holster as I climbed.

  When I reached the landing on the second floor, nothing looked amiss, but when I tried the door to my office lobby, I found it had been pried open. I pushed on the door and it swung wide. Stuffing from the lobby chairs littered the floor. The windows that partitioned the lobby from my private office had been smashed to pieces and I could see directly into the interior.

  I opened the door to my office and found it a wreck. The mini fridge was hanging open and all of the cans of beer had been poured out on the floor. The ficus was kicked over, spilling potting soil across the hardwood. So was my trash can and recycling bin. My office chairs had no stuffing so they’d been spared the gutting their lobby compatriots had endured, but someone had carved a message across the entirety of my wooden desk with what must have been a very large knife.

  WHERE’S OUR MONEY?

  Wow.

  Hell if I knew.

  Staring at the words, I had the urge to carve WHAT MONEY? underneath the scrawl, in the off chance whoever had done this planned to keep up this dialogue. Maybe I could add my phone number to avoid additional furniture damage.

  But that was my mind going.

  I was a detective. I should be able to figure out what money they were talking about.

  Too bad I hadn’t the foggiest idea.

  18

  “Why do they think I have their money, Waldo?”

  Waldo didn’t answer. Likely because I didn’t have my earbuds in and the speaker in the lamp on the desk had been ripped apart. It was more of a rhetorical question anyway.

  I sat in my swivel chair and took in the destroyed interior of my office. This was a mess. I opened a few drawers in the desk and found them all in disarray. It took me a minute to think through what could be missing. Foster’s phone? No. This was Sunday afternoon and I’d given that back to Isla last night. I didn’t keep much in the way of petty cash or anything valuable. I rummaged around but didn’t note anything that was missing. This was about sending a message. I reread the carving on my desk.