Smith's Monthly #16

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  July 9th, 1906

  Oregon Coast

  WHEN KELLI HEARD the voice and the simple statement, she stepped out to see who had said that to Jesse. Seeing Bushnell standing there in his suit and vest and tie just flat stunned her.

  What the hell was going on?

  Bushnell nodded. “Doctor Rae, it is an honor to meet you for technically the first time. I am a fan of your books, including a couple you haven’t written yet.”

  Kelli could feel her mouth open and then close.

  Not a word even formed in her brain.

  Jesse stood there, his hand on the door, just staring at Bushnell as well.

  “May I come in?” Bushnell asked. “I can explain all this. Honest. Duster and Bonnie told me this would be a shock to you two at this point.”

  Jesse moved first and nodded that Bushnell should come in. Then Jesse looked both ways down the hallway before closing the door.

  Bushnell turned to face Dr. Rae. “Your theory is correct. I am here to meet a ship’s captain who might be willing to part with one of the Season Medals he picked up about twenty years ago. It will be the thirty-first I have recovered.”

  “Let’s back up a long ways,” Jesse said as Kelli just kept staring at the man.

  Bushnell looked fairly old and weathered and his balding head had clearly seen far too much sun over the years. But on closer look at details, he clearly was a man of means.

  Jesse indicated that Bushnell join them at the table overlooking the street and offered him a roll and some cookies, both of which Bushnell accepted with a “Thanks, haven’t had breakfast yet.”

  Bushnell put his saddlebag down on the pine floor with a thump and then sat down.

  So far Kelli hadn’t been able to even form a sentence or a word, she was so shocked. From what she was gathering, the man she had been researching for this book was from the future as well.

  How in the hell was that possible?

  Then she remembered the picture where she had seen Jessie and Madison and Duster and herself and understood exactly the answer.

  Jesse sat down, took a sip of his coffee and then looked at Bushnell as Kelli dropped back into her chair across from both of them.

  “Start off with your real name in the future,” Jesse said, “and when did you come through the crystal cavern?”

  “I didn’t come through the cavern,” Bushnell said, his voice clearly happy. “You two and the original group are the last ones to use the cavern. I’ve never even seen the cavern or could find it if I tried. Have Duster and Bonnie tell you the story of how Carson Edwards was killed on the road leaving that cavern. Before you two joined. Damn scary stuff.”

  “So how the hell do you get back here?” Jesse asked.

  Bushnell laughed. “For research, starting the year after you two joined up. We now all use the new institute out on Warm Springs Avenue in Boise. Bonnie and Duster and all of you built it together back in 1880 from my understanding. It looks like a big mansion, but has top state-of-the-art security and computers. The three levels of basements are amazing.”

  “How is that possible?” Kelli asked, finally getting her brain into gear.

  Bushnell shrugged. “Time travel gives me a headache, but from what I understand, Bonnie and Duster and other mathematicians working for them figured out a way to take crystals and move them from the crystal cavern to the institute and then return them.”

  Jesse nodded, glancing at Kelli. “Did you notice the crystals on the ground by the door?”

  “That cavern was just too overwhelming for me to remember much there,” Kelli said.

  “I sure would love to see it some day,” Bushnell said. “But at this point, except for you fourteen originals, it’s pretty much off limits and kept very secret.”

  “When did you come through?” Jesse asked. “And how many are now traveling in time for research?”

  “Counting the three of us,” Bushnell said, “there are thirty now. I first went through in 2019, but I am not allowed to tell you two anything that happens between 2016 and 2019, so don’t ask. The institute has scary strict rules and you run it.”

  Bushnell pointed to Jesse and Kelli was shocked at how Jesse just sort of jerked backwards.

  “Oops, probably wasn’t supposed to tell you even that,” Bushnell said. “Sorry.”

  Jesse nodded. “Yeah, let’s be careful with that.”

  Bushnell nodded. “Got it.”

  “So you didn’t tell us your real name,” Kelli said.

  “I am Doctor Kevin Bushnell from Michigan State University. We are allowed now to only use our real last names, but must change our first names on research trips.”

  Kelli was now really stunned. “Your first book on Early American Exploration was amazing.”

  “Well, thank you,” Bushnell said, nodding and clearly embarrassed. “I obviously have learned a lot since that first book and am working on updating it given time.”

  He laughed at that joke.

  “So you are back,” Jesse said, “starting in 1880 gathering up Season Medals?”

  “That was the idea,” Bushnell said, nodding. “I figured the best way to get them into museums and back with the right Native American tribes was to gather them up, hide them until 2019, and then release them as a major find.”

  “My research showed that only three have surfaced,” Kelli said.

  “Yeah,” Bushnell said, suddenly looking upset. The man clearly wore his emotions right out for anyone to see. “Three I could not get. But I’m afraid without your help, all the ones I have will not surface ever again.”

  “Why’s that?” Jesse asked. “Hide them in a bad place?”

  “I don’t get the chance to hide them correctly,” Bushnell said, now looking really down and depressed. “I’ve tried twenty times so far, and every time I have been killed before I get the chance to hide them correctly.”

  “Killed?” Jesse asked.

  Kelli just sat forward, watching the man. He clearly was telling the truth and not at all happy about his story.

  Bushnell nodded. “When you are killed in a past timeline, you end up back in the institute two minutes and fifteen seconds after you left. I keep coming back into the past, rounding up the medals, trying to outsmart whoever is killing me and taking the medals. And for twenty different trips into the past, I have failed.”

  Again all Kelli could do was open her mouth and then shut it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  July 9th, 1906

  Oregon Coast

  JESSE SAT STARING at Bushnell. What the man was saying about being killed twenty times wasn’t possible unless he was being followed by someone with intense resources and who was very, very good at what they did.

  And Jesse doubted that was happening. More than likely this was just a crime of opportunity. And Bushnell just kept giving the guy an opportunity. But they were going to have to be careful just in case.

  Jesse had to clear his mind of the time travel aspects of all this and just think inside this timeline. And think like an investigator.

  “When do you buy the next medal,” Jesse asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Bushnell said. “It’s why I came here a day early to meet you two. Duster said you would be here and be able to help. Kind of embarrassing, telling him, to be honest. But after twenty failures, I had to ask permission to break the institute rules and talk with you.”

  Kelli looked at Jesse. “You don’t think this is another time traveler doing this, do you?”

  “No,” Jesse said, and he didn’t, but damned if he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t. At this point, he didn’t know what to believe.

  He just wished Duster and Bonnie had trained them a lot more about the past, not just how to survive, but about the ins and outs of time travel and timelines.

  “Hadn’t even thought of another researcher doing this sort of thing,” Bushnell said. “In fact, I could walk down the street past numbers of them from my time period
and not know them for who they are. And they wouldn’t know me. Especially since I have aged twenty-six long years back here this trip.”

  “And you wouldn’t know at all travelers who joined after you,” Kelli said.

  Jesse sat back, deciding right at that moment that things needed to change. He had only lived a year in the past and he could see massive problems coming in this setup.

  “So what are you thinking?” Kelli asked Jesse, turning away from Bushnell.

  “It only seems logical to me,” Jesse said to Bushnell, “that our robber and killer is someone who follows you each time. And does it very well. Do you ever see him?”

  “It’s a guy wearing a dark overcoat and a black hood over his head with eyes cut through so he can see. The hood is tied with a string around his neck to hold it in place. And he wears miner’s boots that are scuffed and ruff. I saw those boots a lot as I died each time.”

  Silence for a moment in the big suite.

  “So what happens to the medals?” Kelli asked after a moment.

  “More than likely melted down at some point along the way,” Bushnell said, shrugging. “By someone who didn’t know what they actually were.”

  “That would be a crime,” Kelli said.

  Bushnell nodded. “It’s why I kept coming back. To try to stop that from happening.”

  Jesse didn’t want to point out to Bushnell that if he hadn’t collected all the medals, more than likely most of them would have survived just fine.

  “So what do we do?” Bushnell asked.

  “We do as we had planned on doing,” Jesse said, looking at Kelli. “We recover the medals and make sure they get to our normal times.”

  “I would appreciate it if you stopped the killing part this time,” Bushnell said. “Getting shot and killed is just not something a person can get used to even after twenty times.”

  “We’ll try,” Jesse said, smiling. He had every intention of stopping that part.

  “So can we see the medals?” Kelli asked.

  “They aren’t here,” Jesse said, clearly surprising her.

  Kelli looked at Jesse with a frown.

  Damn he was falling so in love with her, he couldn’t believe it.

  Bushnell nodded and pointed to his saddlebag. “That’s a bag of quartz rocks I lug around that is close to the weight of the medals. The medals are in a bank safe deposit box in Portland. I get them on the way through headed for Roosevelt, Idaho, each time.”

  “And where exactly do the attacks happen?” Jesse asked. He knew the answer, but needed it confirmed.

  “Always in the mountains around Roosevelt,” Bushnell said. “I have one man I meet in Roosevelt in June of 1907 to get the last of the medals that I have been able to trace. He sells it to me and I never make it out of those mountains alive.”

  Jesse nodded. The miner’s boots made sense. And now he was even more convinced that the crimes were just always a crime of convenience.

  “So what do you normally do over the next year between now and then?” Kelli asked.

  “For the last five trips back I’ve been working with another researcher. We are researching the riverboats and barges and such that took passengers on the Columbia to coastal towns like this one before the highways were built over the coastal mountain range. I spend the next year with him and then we will be done with that research.”

  Jesse nodded. He now had a plan and he knew where Bushnell’s weak point was and how to stop the killer.

  “We’re going to leave tomorrow,” Jesse said, “ahead of your meeting and meet you in Portland in a week at your bank.”

  Bushnell nodded.

  Kelli nodded, watching him.

  “We’re going to switch out the medals there when you add the new one to your stash that you get from here,” Jesse said. “We’ll do it in the bank so in case someone is watching, no one will know.”

  “Okay,” Bushnell said, but hesitantly.

  “We are going to take the medals to Roosevelt and bury them under the floorboards of Janice and Steven’s general store there in Roosevelt. About three feet down in the dirt.”

  Janice and Steven were two other researchers and part of the original fourteen, but this time they were there in the general store from another timeline. They had not come through with the bunch of them. But as Duster had told him when he introduced them, “No real difference at all.”

  “The flood will cover them,” Bushnell said, looking worried.

  Kelli laughed, finally understanding what Jesse was planning.

  “The flood will protect them for a century or more,” Jesse said.

  “In 2019,” Kelli said, “when you get back, you and I will be in charge of an expedition to dive and recover the medals as we put the final part of the mystery to bed.”

  Bushnell looked at her for a moment, then smiled. “I’ll do the research nonfiction book about my distant relative who gathered up the medals and what it was like dealing with the Native Americans of the time, with a focus, of course on the Native Americans.”

  “And I’ll do the historical crime book about the medals themselves,” Kelli said, smiling. “And we’ll reference each other’s books and how we solved the mystery through our mutual research.”

  “Perfect,” Bushnell said, his face beaming.

  Jesse smiled at the smiling face of the woman he was falling head-over-heels for, and then at Bushnell.

  “Only one problem,” Jesse said. “We still don’t really know who is doing this and killing you each time.”

  “Yeah, that would be nice to know,” Bushnell said. “But if I have to take another bullet for the cause, I will. Don’t want to, but I will.”

  “Now that’s commitment to your research,” Jesse said.

  And the two researchers laughed.

  Jesse wasn’t so sure it was funny. In fact, he was completely convinced that something much deeper was going on. He just didn’t know what.

  But killing Bushnell so many times in so many places did not make sense in the slightest. And that had him worried more than he wanted to admit to the researchers.

  PART FOUR

  The Chase

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  June 2nd, 1907

  Roosevelt, Idaho

  KELLI WAS AMAZED that it had been almost a year now since Jesse came up with the plan while they were talking with Bushnell on the Oregon Coast. And so far, it seemed to be working fine.

  She and Jesse had spent another night on the coast, mostly making love and enjoying the wonderful room.

  Then, just before Bushnell finished buying the medal, she and Jesse had headed for Portland about four hours ahead of Bushnell.

  She and Jesse had hidden up the trail in the coastal mountain range and had let Bushnell pass them, just to make sure no one was following him.

  As Jesse had suspected, there wasn’t. The robbery and murder and loss of the medals took place in Roosevelt.

  But they had decided they were still going to take no chances.

  They had made the transfer without a problem in the bank. Then she and Jesse had hauled the medals over to Roosevelt by train. She didn’t even allow herself to look at them. She figured there would be more than enough time for that after they dug them up in 2019.

  Jesse had figured how to fit the leather-wrapped medals into pockets inside his duster and in a money belt he had bought in Portland.

  In Ontario, Oregon, they had left the train with the medals, purchased two horses, and headed for Roosevelt with the medals in a third saddlebag hidden underneath Jesse’s main saddlebag.

  They had made it all the way to Roosevelt by July 18th of last summer, transferred the medals into some oilskin bags, sealed them as best they could, and then buried them one late evening in Janice and Steven’s general store under the floorboards and down into the dirt about two feet.

  Jesse had asked Janice and Steven for permission, but not wanted them there for their own safety. And he had not told them anything about what they
were doing.

  They had agreed.

  Then over the next few days, Jesse and Kelli had taken some rough measurements and markers so the underwater expedition in 2019 wouldn’t have to dig up too much of the lake bottom.

  With the medals safely stored for the future, both Jesse and Kelli had the rest of the summer and the entire winter to wait until Bushnell arrived in Roosevelt.

  So they headed back to Boise, not to stay with Duster and Bonnie this time, but to stay in the wonderful mansion that Dawn and Madison had built right beside Bonnie and Duster’s home.

  Since Dawn and Madison were now living and running the Monumental Lodge on the summit above Roosevelt, their home they had built in Boise was free for the summer and winter.

  The place was massive, with high ceilings in the entry and main room and dining room. Tall windows let in more than enough light and the tan and brown furnishings were picked by April, who had wonderful taste and knew how to make a room elegant, yet comfortable.

  Dawn and Madison’s master bedroom was huge and had a closet larger than Kelli’s first dorm room in college. But both Kelli and Jesse didn’t feel right staying in the master bedroom, so they took over the guest bedroom that had a featherbed that a person could get lost in without much problem.

  To Kelli, the summer and winter and spring had been a magical time. She and Jesse just fit together, and both of them had enough projects that held their interest to keep them more than busy.

  When the weather allowed, they went into the Idanha Hotel dining room for wonderful breakfasts. Kelli spent most of the days writing in notebooks in the library or at home, getting in as much detail about the history of the medals as she could, while Jesse spent afternoons in the downtown library and listening to old-timers in barber shops and bars tell stories of lost treasures and forgotten crimes.

  He had gotten some great stories. A couple ideas Kelli was convinced would make great books after a ton of research.