by Liana Brooks
Lacey Altin added another cinnamon roll to Sam’s plate. “Eat up, honey. You’re spending so many calories thinking, you’re going to fade away at my kitchen table.”
Altin took the last roll. “We’ll figure it out, Sam. I’m not going to write you off as dead and buried yet.”
Sam escaped the local superstore several hours later with some new clothes, a toothbrush, and food. She was standing in the fine drizzle, a couple of steaks cooking over a new minigrill on the back porch when the front door slammed open. “MacKenzie?” She wiped her hands on her jeans and went looking for the ME. “Hey, MacKenzie, I’m making dinner.”
Agent MacKenzie huddled in the shadowy corner behind the front door, slowly rocking.
Hoss bumped him, and the ME reached up to touch the dog, hands shaking.
“Are you hurt?”
He murmured something that sounded like, “Pills.”
“You need pills?” Sam put her hands on her hips. “You don’t need pills. You need food. Maybe some sleep.”
He kept rocking.
Sam went back to the kitchen and grabbed a crispy potato wedge still hot from the oven, spiced with chili powder and salt. It smelled heavenly. “Look.” She waved the wedge in front of MacKenzie. “Food.”
Hoss licked the potato wedge out of her hand. “Dumb mutt, you’re not helping.” She ran back outside to flip the steak and grab more wedges. “Here.”
With a shaking hand, MacKenzie reached for the potato wedge. He gripped it violently, squashing the potato into mush. “Hot.”
“Yes, hot, I just pulled it from the oven. You want more?” she asked, as he stared at his hand. Sam tugged him to his feet. “Let’s get some food.”
“Marcellus is dead,” he whispered.
“Sure he is,” Sam agreed, running through a short list of morgue personnel in her head. There was no Marcellus in the office.
“I didn’t bring the baby home.”
Sam helped him sit in a cracked plastic chair. “You don’t have a baby.”
“I told her I’d bring . . .” MacKenzie sucked in his breath, eye twitching. “I told her I’d bring her baby home. Baby home.” He pulled his knees to his chest and started rocking in the chair. “Couldn’t save him. Couldn’t save him. Couldn’t. Couldn’t.”
Sam rescued the steak from the grill, set it on the counter, and called the morgue.
“This is Henry,” said the cheerful voice on the other end after the prerecorded greeting finally cycled to a living person.
“Hi, this is Agent Rose from the bureau. Do you know what case Agent MacKenzie was working on today?”
There was a brief moment of static. “Harley pulled him in this morning to handle the three-car pileup from last night.”
“Who was working with him?”
“Ma’am?”
“Who was helping Agent MacKenzie?”
“Why would he need help?”
That answered all her questions. “Thank you.” Sam hung up and looked at the broken agent. “Mac, where are your pills?” He was bound to have a stash lying around. All addicts did.
“Pills? No pills. Agent Perfect said no pills.”
Her thumb hovered over the dial button for the bureau emergency line. MacKenzie was a lost cause. He needed professional help, and a long stay at a medical house where he could get therapy.
Still, she hesitated.
Her father had gone to one of the medical halfway houses. They’d kicked him out into the Toronto winter one bright New Year’s Day with nothing on but a pair of khakis, a T-shirt, and red-felt slippers. At least she’d been there to help him recover from the therapy and the drugs. From what she could tell, MacKenzie had no one to catch him when the system kicked him out.
“They give me pills. Pills.” He shook. “I don’t want more pills.” He seemed to shrink in his seat, almost slipping under the table.
“Getting yourself off the pills is a great idea. I fully support kicking the addiction, but unless you address the root cause, you’ll find another.”
He stared ahead silently.
She piled green beans next to his steak. “Fine. Skip that. How long have you been like this?”
“Five years,” he said in a low monotone.
Saints and angels. Her father had abused the prescription painkillers for less than six months when her mother caught on and took him for therapy.
“You have the pills for depression?” Sam brought over two glasses of water.
A nod.
“What triggers your depression?” Silence. She fancied she could hear a cricket chirping in the background through the patter of rain on the window. “Rejection? Failure at work? What?”
“Blood,” MacKenzie whispered in the same monotone. He reached for his glass. “Violent death.”
She looked at him, appalled. “What are you doing in the morgue, then?”
“Contract.”
“How many years do you have left?”
“Eight.”
That couldn’t be right. Contract bureau workers were former government employees of the United States who had switched jobs and were guaranteed work when the US joined the Commonwealth. Eight years left, five already done. That sounded insanely long. Almost like . . .
Military.
“Which branch?” Sam asked.
MacKenzie looked at her, frozen in place, then he slouched back down.
“You’re a military holdover, aren’t you?”
The barest nod.
“Is that what you have nightmares about? Did you . . . Did you see someone die?”
The glass in MacKenzie’s hand shattered, making Sam jump back. His head twitched side to side as he shook violently.
“MacKenzie?” Sam stood slowly, placing her napkin on the table with exaggerated care. “What’s wrong? Are you having a seizure?”
He jerked away from her reaching hand.
She focused on the glass. He was still clutching it, grinding the glass into his palm. Mother Mary have mercy. “You need a hospital.”
“No. More. Pills!” MacKenzie stood and threw the glass at the sink; shards of glass jutted out of the padded flesh of his thumb.
“MacKenzie. Agent MacKenzie?
“Linsey?”
He jumped visibly when she used his first name, like a whipped man.
He licked his lips, eyes wide and dilated, panicked. “Mac.”
“Mac?” Grabbing his napkin as she passed the table. She held out the clean napkin. “Your hand is bleeding.”
He stood in front of her, shaking. Fear rose in his red-rimmed eyes. “I didn’t . . .” He licked his lips again. “I didn’t . . .”
“You didn’t do it?”
His head jerked side to side. “Couldn’t. Couldn’t save him. I tried. I tried. ItriedItriedItriedItriedI . . .” He fell down, curling into a ball chanting, “I tried.”
Sam moved down with him, trying to capture his hand. “You tried what?”
“Tried to, tried to, tried to save him. Her baby boy. Baby. Just a baby. Baby-faced butter bar. I tried . . .” He held out his hand, gasping for air. “Blood, blood, blood, blood. Couldn’t, couldn’t find a, find a pulse. Couldn’t make him breathe. Couldn’t. Couldn’t. Couldn’t. Couldn’t find a head.”
Sam rocked back on her heels. “Couldn’t find a head?”
“A head. Explosion. Shrapnel.” He sprung to his feet, looking around, twitching, shaking. “Can’t. Can’t.”
God have mercy on his soul. He’s reliving it. He needed so much more help than she could give. More than a doctor could give, probably. She looked around, helpless, when she saw her purse sitting on the counter. An idea started to form. Ignoring MacKenzie’s stuttered reenactment of his private nightmare, she dug in her purse and tipped two orange breath mints into her hand.
“MacKenzie? Mac!”
Her shout drew his attention.
“Pills?”
He let out a sob, grabbed the pills, and swallowed them whole. For a minute, he sat there shaking, with his eyes closed, tears streaming down his face.
Sam breathed a sigh of relief as he wiped away tears. “Let me see your hand.”
Mac stared at her as if he didn’t recognize her. Maybe he didn’t. Whatever nightmare world he was remembering, she wasn’t a part of it. She tried to look perky, wholesome, and safe.
He held out his bleeding hand.
Using a napkin, she wiped away the blood. “Just a surface cut. I’ll put some liquid bandage on, and everything will be fine by morning.”
He slumped back.
“Do you want to talk?”
He shook his head. Back to the beginning. No wonder therapists didn’t work. This was a constant loop of crazy. So stop thinking about this like a therapist. Mac was past that, he was . . . what? A dog, she decided. A bad dog brought home from death row at the pound. You couldn’t undo a dog’s past, but you could retrain the dog. Give it a new name. Set new rules.
MacKenzie wasn’t a hopeless case. He wasn’t violent. He’d broken the glass and thrown it across the room, but he hadn’t thrown it at her. That was a good sign. “Mac?” He looked up from the floor. “What do you want to be?”
His eyes went wide. “I . . . I want to be . . . to be me.” He sighed, turning to look out the window into the dark night. “Dependable,” he whispered. “High-speed. Gets things done. Go-to guy. Trust him. He gets it done.
“Superman.”
CHAPTER 13
By careful observation of einselected nodes in other iterations, we are able to predict the event horizons where decoherence—the collapse of all possible histories but the prime state—will occur with over 80 percent accuracy. At this time our calculations suggest that humanity will reach the next event horizon before the decade is out.
~ Excerpt from Lectures on the Movement of Time by Dr. Abdul Emir I1–20740413
Monday June 10, 2069
Alabama District 3
Commonwealth of North America
Hurricane Jessica stormed into town on Monday, a bitter woman with a grudge against humanity. She shredded the Gulf Coast, leaving the resort towns of Florida’s panhandle in retreat. She tore through lower Alabama, swelling the rivers and spawning tornadoes. In record time, District 3 went from concerns over summer wildfires to sandbagging sidewalks.
In the short sprint from Sam’s car to the bureau’s front door, the rain drenched her, and mud from the flooded sidewalk splattered her pants. She leaned against the glass doors, managing a half smile for Theresa. “Rough weather.”
Theresa pursed her lips. “Senior Agent Marrins is upstairs with Detective Altin. They’ve been waiting for ten minutes.”
“Wonderful.” Sam grimaced as she pushed away from the door.
Altin stood in the hall outside the conference room, thumbs hooked on his belt. Behind him, the horse-faced Officer Holt glared at her, hand resting on her cuffs. “Agent Rose.”
Sam smiled. “Good morning, Altin. Loving the weather?”
The old detective sighed. “Hardly.”
Marrins sat at the head of the conference table, swilling his off-brand coffee. “So glad you could join us.” He made a show of checking his watch. “Running a little late, aren’t we?”
“No, sir, technically my pass is good until noon today. I showed up three hours early just for you.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Keep it professional, or Officer Holt there is going to have you in cuffs.” The senior agent smirked at some private joke.
Sam tried not to visualize the horse-faced Holt and Marrins enjoying some unprofessional kink together. It was repulsive at an awe-inspiring level. “I’m not at fault here.”
Altin sat. “That’s what we’re here to determine, isn’t it?”
“Shouldn’t I have a lawyer and a judge?” Sam asked.
Marrins shook his head. “This is a friendly little inquiry, Rose. Altin is going to ask a few teensy-tiny questions because this ties to his case. Then I’m going to ask some rather serious questions because violent crime leading to death is a bureau problem, and—if you answer the way we want—everyone will break for lunch without major changes to anyone’s living arrangements.”
Sam took her seat at the back of the room with a tight smile. “Ask away, Detective Altin.”
Altin sat. Deputy Holt stayed near the door, artfully blocking Sam’s only means of escape. Altin pulled out his notepad and an old-fashioned pen. “All right. You are Samantha Lynn Rose, junior agent of the Commonwealth of North America Bureau of Investigation?”
“Yes.”
“You were assigned to Case 516-29-5698 involving the property damage, and assumed break-in, at N-V Nova Laboratories?”
“Yes.”
“Prior to the order to join the case, did you, or anyone you are in close contact with, have knowledge of, communicate with, or work for N-V Nova Labs?” Altin asked.
“No.”
Altin made a note. “Did you, or anyone you are in close contact with, have dealings, contracts, knowledge of, or a friendship, with the deceased security guard Mordicai Robbins?”
“No.”
“Had you ever seen Mordicai Robbins before he was found at your house?”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “I never saw Mordicai Robbins at all. I have his file photo in my case files, but I haven’t ever seen him in person, dead or alive.”
Altin frowned and made a note. “Is there any reason why Mordicai Robbins might have been at your house at the time of death?”
“Was he at my house at the time of death?” Sam turned to Marrins. “I thought he was dumped there. No one said he was killed there. Did the forensics team find blood? A murder weapon? Anything?”
“Ah.” Marrins coughed. “Actually, we’re still waiting on the report.”
Altin gave Marrins a tired look. “You said this morning Robbins died at the house.”
“I said he might have,” Marrins protested.
“Do you have evidence?” Altin asked.
“We’re working on it.” Marrins crossed his arms.
There was a knock at the door, and Coroner Harley waddled in. “Sorry I’m late. Rain.” He took his donut and dry coat to the other side of the table and sat. “I miss anything?”
Marrins held out his hand, snapping his fingers as if he was calling a dog. “Harley! Where’s that autopsy report?”
“Which one?”
“The traitor who got his throat shot out gang-style. They found him in Rose’s freezer. That one.”
Harley leaned back in his chair. “Don’t know, that’s bureau business. Where’s your boy, the scraggly one? I told him to do it.”
“Agent MacKenzie?” Sam asked through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, him.”
“As the agent who found the body, he isn’t supposed to work on the case,” Sam said. “And yesterday, MacKenzie worked for fourteen hours on autopsies for the city. I know. I called to ask about Robbins.”
“Shouldn’t have done that,” Harley said with a belch and a smile. “It looks bad.”
Sam looked to Marrins for help.
The senior agent rubbed his temples. “Harley, I told you to take care of the body. You promised me you would handle this.”
“Right, it’ll be handled. What’s the rush? We know the cause of death. He choked to death on his own blood because his throat was cut out by a bullet.”
“We’re trying to determine if there is enough evidence to arrest Agent Rose on suspicion of murder,” Altin said patiently.
Harley frowned. “Rose?” He looked over at her in confusion. “Did you kill that guy?”
“No, but the law demands proof.” She glanced at Altin. “I still don’t have a motive–isn’t that enough?”
“It was your freezer, Sam. At least give me an alibi,” Altin said.
“How can I give you an alibi when I don’t know time of death? I wasn’t there when he died. It’s not like I have ‘Make up alibi for 3:15 Friday’ penciled in my planner.”
“Wasn’t dead on Friday,” Harley said.
“What?” Altin demanded.
The ME shrugged. “Body bloated like that? He was probably dead Wednesday or Thursday, maybe early Friday if he was left in the sun a bit.”
“That’s not good enough,” Altin said as he leaned back in his chair. “Honest to goodness, Marrins, what kind of circus are you running here? I’ve got half the force tied up waiting for the dams to break upstream, and instead of doing something useful this morning, I’m jumping in your clown car. Please tell me you have something I can work with.”
Marrins thumped the conference table, making everyone’s drinks jump. “Fine, I’m not making any arrest. Rose, I want you to document your every waking moment of the last week.” She’d already done that after speaking with Altin on Sunday but decided it wasn’t worth bringing up again. Marrins continued, “When Harley is done with the autopsy, we’ll see where you were at the time of death. In the meantime, you’re on office duty. Stay in your office, go straight home at the end of the day, and no leaving the district until you’re cleared.”
Sam forced herself to sit still even though she wanted to yell.
“Altin, the bureau will collect the case files and look them over. If Robbins’s death can be tied to the break-in, we’ll take over. Otherwise, we’ll cut that loss and call it funny timing.”
That did it. “You honestly think it was a coincidence?” Sam demanded.
“I honestly don’t think we’re going to get the timing to become admissible court evidence! There are no prints, no murder weapon, nothing that ties Robbins to anyone. We still don’t have any evidence that something was stolen from the lab, but no, Rose, I don’t think it’s coincidence. I think someone is doing a damn fine job of covering their tracks.”