by MK Alexander
“What happened?”
“I don’t wish to speak of it. Only to say, I have learned that the future is never assured. Not a dream come true, certainly.”
“Okay, so what is the downside to all of this?”
“By this, you mean a price to pay?”
“Yeah.”
“I have what you might term a nexus life, the one from which all jumping springs… And I will say, it is a terrible life for him, this self who is also me. I will admit, it is a wretched existence. So, this is my dark secret.”
“Who is he?”
“He is me, a version of me who dwells in the past.” Fynn held out his compass. “He spends his life making these… He lives in an asylum on Lake Geneva, in the mid-eighteen hundreds.”
“An asylum?”
“A sanatorium, yes. He’s well-looked after, I assure you. This nexus self has a small workshop. He toils there every day making compasses. I visit him quite often.”
“Why?”
“He’s very young… about twenty-two. I back-jump into this life with great frequency. I retrieve a finished compass and I jump out again to a new place.”
I had to think about this and remained quiet for some moments. “You almost talk about him like he’s someone else, not you.”
“A convenience of words, I think. He is me… though he does live in a rather confused state of mind. I am constantly jumping there from somewhere else, and I usually only stay as long as it takes to construct another compass.”
“Why him?”
“It is a well worn path that I often use… Long lives make big targets, they are easy to slip back to.”
“How do you keep that with you?”
“I can duplicate objects by bringing them to the future and leaving them there to find. It doesn’t always work… perhaps about half the time, depending on how much the future has been altered.”
“What happens when you change the future. Does that affect the past?”
“A reverse causality?” Fynn raised an eyebrow. “I have not experienced such, at least not in the true sense of the word. Events in the future do not cause events in the past. Time would have to flow in reverse, and it does not.”
“But every time you travel to the past, you change it. Whatever you bring back, ideas, memories or plans, even objects from the future, they affect the past. Isn’t that reverse causality?”
“There is a question of semantics here. I will say this: you shot me in the head and it caused me to die. For reverse causality it would be: my death caused you to shoot me in the head. Such rarely happens if ever, though I take your point. There is an indirect and a subtle interference going on here. What I bring from the future does indeed affect the past.”
“So I’m not so far off then?”
“What I bring to the past may very well alter it from that moment on. But time still flows forward. In some sense, I am the cause... and the effect.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Well… I travel to the past and stop Mr and Mrs Columbus from meeting each other, falling in love and marrying. No little Christopher is born. The world is a different place. A particular timeline you are familiar with no longer exists. The future from that point on is altered. So I have changed the cause and the effect. I suppose in some sense, causality itself is a measure of the distances between timelines. We would certainly not be here having this conversation.”
“Who are these other travelers you keep mentioning?”
“Do I keep mentioning them?” Fynn asked.
“You do. Who are they?”
“Well, some of the travelers I’ve encountered align themselves with the Keepers… a nickname I presume. They are a loose-knit group of like-minded travelers, a cabal of sorts.”
“What do they do?”
“I cannot say exactly. I have had no dealings with them for the most part.”
“What about Mortimer? Is he a Keeper?”
“That’s rather doubtful.” Fynn gave a grimace. “I suppose there are two types of travelers. Those with awareness, and those without.”
“That sounds simple.”
Fynn turned and faced me with a smile. “It is... for those with no awareness. They seem quite happy and heedless.”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“I run into them all the time, the same people popping up wherever I go through history… and yet they are oblivious to their condition.”
“You’ve met these people?”
“I have, and I’ve talked to some of them at length. I’ve concluded that they have no awareness at all, no consciousness that they slip through time. To them, everything seems perfectly normal.”
“You’re certain of this?”
“Of course. There is this one fellow… he keeps appearing in the oddest of places. I’ve seen him in Bombay in the nineteen fifties, in Cairo in the nineteen twenties, Chicago during your civil war, in Bagdad in the fifteen hundreds… and so on.”
“Do you know this guy?”
“Not at all.”
“And he has absolutely no idea what’s going on?”
“I think not… but who can say that someday he will not gain a measure of awareness. Such is entirely possible.”
“What about the searing pain?”
“I can only suppose these types are falling backwards, only soft jumps as it were.”
“And they have no idea this is happening?”
“None whatsoever.”
“It doesn’t seem possible.”
“I agree… it’s wholly inexplicable to me.”
“What about people with awareness?”
“Ah yes, this is quite different. This is the second type, and they suffer greatly.”
“Why?”
“Awareness is a gradient, it is on a spectrum… we might go from a dim awareness, to a clear recognition, or to a profound understanding.”
“And?”
“It’s a very perilous situation to have only a limited awareness. You are likely to be disjointed, confused, baffled. Indeed, I’m sure many of these people live out their lives in madness, perhaps even locked away in Bedlam.”
“So crazy people are time travelers?”
“Certainly not all of them, but it may explain a good percentage who are confined and deemed insane. You can imagine there is a very strong link between traveling and madness.”
“Never thought of it that way.”
“And why Mortimer prefers to recruit from asylums… There are people there who have a dim awareness and hence their experiences have led them into madness.”
“What do you mean exactly by a dim awareness?”
“Consider if you traveled ahead, say a hundred years and stayed for a day or so. What would that be like to you? Maybe you would see some flying cars, a lunar colony, a trip to Mars, other things… and then you slip back to your present. What do you return with? Some memories, some dream-like visions? You are no better than a tourist who carries no camera… I would call that a dim awareness.”
“And who would I tell, anyhow?” I laughed.
“Indeed.”
Somehow all this was more ironic than my choice of sandwiches. The irony of course is that this is the biggest story I ever had, and I could tell no one. No one would believe it. More ironic than any sandwich for sure, sandwiches that we never even ate in the end.
Back at my car, I found a parking ticket. I was surprised, but there was a note scribbled on the back: Lucky for you Jardel, it was me that spotted your car. Don’t forget to get your beach sticker. — Allen. I looked over the ticket again and there was no fine. I definitely owed Officer Allen a favor now.
chapter 31
citizen suspect
On Monday, I got a call from Detective Durbin asking to meet him at the station. I was on my way to the Land Ho for lunch with Eleanor and Melissa. “Can’t you just tell me over the phone?” I asked. He insisted on a visit. Twenty minutes later I was sitting in Aran
tez’s office. Durbin was behind the desk with a very serious expression on his face.
“Where’s the chief?” I asked.
“At home, recuperating.” He gave me a once over. “Listen Patrick, I’ve got bad news…”
“What?”
“You can’t print this,” he cautioned.
“Thanks,” I replied with as much sarcasm as I could muster.
“It’s about the inspector...” Durbin paused awkwardly and then ran it down, “I’m looking at Fynn as our killer.”
“What?” This came as a complete surprise. I started stammering protests.
“He came to us on your recommendation.”
“My recommendation? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Right after the first Jane Doe, you got that letter from him.” Durbin showed me. I looked it over. Sure enough, it was a letter from DCI Tractus Fynn, Amsterdam Politie, inquiring about the Barefoot Killer.
“Okay, so?”
“Look at the envelope,” Durbin said.
I did, but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
“Look at the postmark.” The detective continued, “It was mailed from freaking Fairhaven.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. We all missed that till yesterday.” Durbin swiveled in his seat. “Okay, so we did have him checked out at Interpol, and he came up clean. We did send him an invite as a professional courtesy. Our mistake…” He paused again. “What we didn’t know was that he had retired two weeks before this. The damn Dutch hadn’t updated their records.”
“Where is this going?” I asked.
“I did some follow-up with Interpol... Fynn retired under duress, a cloud you might say. Something about being delusional and the disappearance of his ex-wife. I don’t have many details… But that’s not even his real name.”
“What?”
Durbin looked down at his desk and read from a sheet of paper. “Aldus Kenon, aka Yanni Choros, aka Janek Jones, aka Tractus Fynn. The last name is what he uses when he’s undercover.”
I was much relieved not to hear Javelin Mortimer on the list. “That’s it, maybe he’s working undercover.”
“Are you kidding, Jardel?”
“You got nothing, Durbin… I understand you’re under pressure here—”
“Alibi on the first murder, North Hollow? None. Where is Fynn? You’ve got him at the Fairhaven Holiday Inn. Your man Jason tracked him down.”
“You have no witnesses for that.”
“The second murder, Boxtop Beach… Fynn’s alibi? None. Shows up the next day as a special consultant.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding here.”
“Murder number three, Sunset Park… alibi for Fynn, zip.”
“He was in your office that morning, don’t you remember?”
“He was, but where was he an hour before that— when Jane Doe number three was dumped?”
“I’m guessing you’re going to tell me.”
“I checked with Bert.”
“Bert?”
“Bert’s Taxi… they’ve been driving Fynn all over Sand City. They picked him up that morning in Bayview, hmm, right next to Partners, eight thirty-five, Wednesday, March thirteenth.”
“No way.”
Durbin handed me a receipt: March 13, 8:30 pick up… Bayview Village… Partners.
“Wait a second, you’re seeing what you want to see. Look at this more carefully. It says eight-thirty p.m., not a.m., and that three looks like a two, so that’s March twelfth, eight-thirty at night.”
“And?”
“And it was Fynn going up to Partners at night, probably looking for me.”
“Why would he do that?”
“The letter you mentioned?”
“Maybe you’re just seeing what you want to see.”
“What about Doc Samuels? I’m pretty sure he was with me that morning.”
“Look at the time of death. He could have died hours before that… and where’s Fynn when the kennel is broken into?”
“He was at Partners.”
“Was he?”
“Yeah, Joey called… he was there.”
“And where was he just before that?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did Fynn get to Partners that night?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you telling me he walked from his hotel… like six miles? There’s no record of a taxi.”
“He wasn’t wearing clothes covered in blood either.”
“Well that’s a good sign.”
“You can’t really believe Fynn is capable of doing something so messed up. Killing Alyson, Emma, all those dogs?” I asked, my anger came forward. “Come on, Durbin. You know this guy…”
The detective made a face, a grimace of pain. “No, I don’t know this guy. And yes, I’m having a hard time with this… He must be a psycho, that’s all I can guess.”
“How could he even transport a body to Sunset Park? Fynn doesn’t have a car.”
“He says he doesn’t… I’m still checking that… the rental companies…”
“And if not?” I asked.
“Two possibilities: he had help, an accomplice, or… well… I’m thinking he could’ve used Hector’s bike and then dumped it… It’s not that far a walk back to his hotel from there.”
“This is crazy talk.” It didn’t quite strike me what Durbin had just said, possibility number one. “Wait a second, an accomplice? Like who?”
“You tell me.” Durbin eyed me up and down.
“What the hell?”
“I’m not saying it’s you, not yet anyhow. Would you volunteer your car for forensics?”
“What?”
“Let the techs give it a once over for trace evidence… It would put you in the clear.”
“I guess.”
“Good.”
“Wait, I’m a suspect here?”
“Not really. You were in Colorado for Jane Doe number one.”
“I was?”
“Yeah… I checked. You returned that same day…” Durbin paused and consulted his file. “Flight twenty-three…” He looked up again. “And Jane Doe two? Well, you took the pictures. No way you were faking it that day… Sunset Park? I’m doubting that one too, especially since you like to sleep late…” Durbin gave me half a smile. “I know you, Patrick... I’ve known you for a long time. You’re just not a killer.”
“Thanks, I guess. Neither is Fynn.”
“Lucinda Roberts?” He’s got no alibi.”
“No motive either.”
“You don’t need a motive if you’re a freaking psycho.”
“No way.”
“Lorraine Luis killed… Hey, where’s Fynn?” Durbin paused. “Said he was in his hotel, sleeping. I checked. They say he was out for an early morning stroll.”
“He likes to walk.”
“The call to Lorraine Luis’ cell... ten p.m. the night before… It came from your office.”
“My office?”
“Yeah, from the Chronicle.”
“How does that put Fynn in the picture?”
“It doesn’t… but it doesn’t rule him out either. Remember what he said about the telephone call? How did he guess about all that at the crime scene?”
“You got this all wrong, Durbin.”
“There’s more… Arantez remembers this guy now. He was around in Sand City in the mid seventies, a student or something…” Durbin picked up a copy of an old newspaper. “Look at this: winner of the nineteen seventy-seven Sand Castle Competition, Tractus Fynn, pictured here with Lorraine Luis. We found this in your goddamn paper, Jardel. Did you know about any of this?”
“Hmm, I guess Joey must have missed that one.”
“What?”
“I had him doing some research.”
“The guy is a psycho. That’s all there is to it.”
“It can’t be Fynn.”
“How can this guy not be the guy?”
My doubts c
ame flooding back as a terrible deluge. Paranoia stomped through my brain… “you best tell no one…” those words echoed in my head. Had he actually disappeared? A trick, or a trick of the light? My head hurt. “It can’t be him.”
“Why not?”
“His shoes… they don’t match.”
“Anyone can change their shoes.”
“He doesn’t have a cane.”
“So?”
“What about Samuels?”
“Okay, take that out of the picture for now. Maybe that was just an accident after all.”
“How can it be an accident? I mean, with Emma and Alyson afterwards.”
“I’m not saying it was. But I am saying, all this time we’ve been feeding the inspector clues, so he’s had a leg up on us.”
I was pretty much at a loss for words. Durbin said nothing for a time but gave me a hard look. “He’s my number one suspect right now. I just have to find him. You know where he is?”
“Me?”
“You guys are best buds.”
“You tried the hotel?”
“Of course we tried. He’s not there.”
“He likes to take walks… on the beach.”
“Right…” Durbin’s hand reached for the phone.
“Let me talk to him first,” I blurted out.
“What?”
“Let me talk to him.”
“What, like an interview?”
“No, like a conversation… You don’t need to bring him in so hard. I’m sure he’s harmless…”
“Screw that. This guy might have killed eight people.”
“No, he’s being set up, framed.”
“What the fuck, Jardel— by who?”
“I’m not totally sure. Some guy named Mortimer… but that’s just an alias. It’s somebody who lives in town.”
“Who, goddamn it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Listen, you give me one shred of evidence, physical evidence and I’ll leave him be. But you got nothing, do you? Besides, who told you he was being set up? Fynn himself?”
***
I thought my Saab was pretty fast. It was nothing to Durbin’s Charger. He flipped on the flashing blues and tore up to the ocean side. All traffic before him swerved to the right, off the road onto the sandy patches. To a person, an expression of relief came to their faces when they realized they were not the target. It felt like constant one G acceleration the whole way. I was pinned back in my seat, a ride that probably only lasted three whole minutes. Two squad cars and four officers were already in the parking lot.