by T. K. Thorne
“Such as?”
I study him for a moment. Trust or not trust?
I make a decision. “I have a . . . relationship with time. Sometimes I can see pieces of the past or the future.”
He leans back. “Whoa!” His gray eyes grow thoughtful. “I’ve heard of that in the old stories, but wasn’t sure it was true.”
“I can’t control when it happens, but I ‘saw’ back in time in Dr. Crompton’s office. Laurie Stokes said she filled the insulin syringes out of the refrigerator, but I saw her take a syringe out of her pocket and give it to Crompton.”
He takes a moment to absorb this. “Then she was lying. That’s why you kept trying to say it was a homicide. She killed him.” He shakes his head. “But now she’s dead. Why?”
“That is the million-dollar question, detective.”
“I’m trying to sink my teeth into the whole idea of seeing the past and future.”
“Scrying.”
“Yeah. That’s gotta be unusual.”
“Alice, before she died, said it was an ability that skipped around generations. I think, like you said, it’s pretty rare. My mother had a bit of it, and Alice had what she called premonitions.”
“Too bad Alice isn’t around to tell us more about it,” he says.
I shift and concentrate on my oatmeal. I’m not a great liar or actor, as Alice has pointed out.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Ihave a theory,” Tracey says, downing his third cup of diner coffee. “Rose?”
I jerk my attention from the dregs of my tea, which after three cups on the same bag is barely a shade darker than the water.
“Don’t you want to hear my theory?” Tracey asks.
“About?”
“Benjamin Crompton’s murder.”
I take a deep breath and bring my exhausted head back to my job. “Yes, of course. What is it?”
“While I was being a stubborn pig-for-brains, you didn’t back off the investigation, did you?”
My earlobes tingle, but I look him in the eyes. “What makes you say that?”
“I’m an ace detective, remember? Catch me up,” he says, ignoring my play for innocence.
I take a mouthful of cold tea water, which I instantly regret, but have no choice other than to swallow and set the cup back on the table.
“Okay, I visited the victim’s wife, Mrs. Crompton.”
“A nutcase,” Tracey says.
“Yeah, but she had a good reason to think her husband wasn’t normal, didn’t she?”
“True, but he wasn’t an ‘alien.’”
“How do you know?” I ask. “Alice had a theory about evolution, but do we really understand how the Houses originated?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Maybe, but not from Mrs. Crompton’s point of view. Anyway, she wasn’t helpful, except she knew or guessed that her husband was having an affair with Laurie Stokes. Apparently there was a series of women.”
Tracey grimaces. “I know it sounds like he was a philanderer. Maybe he was, but I knew him, and I suspect there was more to it than that.”
“What do you mean?”
Tapping his spoon, Tracey hesitates. “Maybe he was trying to find a woman he could have a child with, hoping for a son.”
I sit up. “Laurie said he and his wife hadn’t been able to have a child—” I suddenly realize what he means. A son. Not just to carry his personal lineage, but to keep his people alive.
“What else did you do?” Tracey asks.
“I interviewed Laurie Stokes again,” I say, expecting an angry reaction.
“Thank goodness for that. What happened?”
“She didn’t confess. I actually started believing that she didn’t do it, even though I saw her do it.”
He narrows his eyes. “How accurate is this ‘vision’?”
“I’ve been over every instance. When it’s a vision of the future, it can be changed, but when it’s of the past, it’s been true. Always.”
“How many times is ‘always’?”
“Um, twice.”
“That’s not a lot of data points.”
I don’t say anything. It feels strange to talk about it. I thought I couldn’t tell anyone other than Alice, that I would be considered a nut case, for which I couldn’t blame anyone. Finally, against all my better judgment, I had confided in Becca, who accepted it without question and thought it was wonderful that her best friend was a witch.
The thought I may have lost Becca forever constricts my chest anew.
“Can you tell me about them?” Tracey asks.
“The visions of the past?”
“Yeah.”
“Once it was at a murder scene.”
“Which one?”
“His name was Darren Jones. They called him ‘Carrot Man.’”
“Yeah, that was Nix’s case, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
I don’t feel like sharing what had been between Paul Nix and me, although Carrot Man’s murder was after our big fight, anyway.
“Rose, are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m just tired.” I rub my gritty eyes.
“I get that. Do you want to talk later?”
“No, I’m fine.” I want to tell him what I know about the visions. Maybe he will catch something I’ve missed. “I was talking to Paul, Detective Nix, that night and when he got a call on a homicide, I rode with him. I saw Carrot Man’s body face down at the bottom of the stairs, and the world went into gray and black. Time ran backward. He lifted up and took a backward step up the steps and the bullet exited out of his forehead.”
“Strange. What about the other instance of seeing the past?”
“That was when Becca and I were inside the mine entrance on Red Mountain.” I wrinkle my forehead. “I knew I was looking at the past, because everything went backward. I saw a man—it was Theophalus Blackwell, but I didn’t know who he was then. I was seeing him before he was crippled and confined to a wheelchair. Anyway, he was carrying a can of gasoline, and he stepped backward into the mine entrance through a hidden doorway.”
My throat tightens with rage at what he was on his way to do. I had stuffed the childhood memories down, burying them, perhaps like Becca was buried in her own mind, only facing them when I returned to Birmingham as an adult, picked up the rose-stone and encountered my blood family, Aunt Alice. But facing the memories and grieving are two different things. I don’t think I ever really grieved. Instead, a cesspool of anger and guilt lodges in my gut.
“This was from long ago?” Tracey asked, his voice gentle.
“Yeah, seventeen years ago.” I realize my hands are clutching the table’s edge.
“What were you seeing?”
“My family’s murderer,” I say hoarsely. “I was seeing him the night he came to shoot my parents and grandmother and sister and burn our house to the ground.”
“I’m sorry,” Tracey says.
I snatch a napkin and blow my nose. I’m not a crier. My adoptive mother said I was wrapped too tight. I think I was afraid that if I ever let go, if I ever started crying, I would never stop.
I guess I appear about to burst into tears now, however, because Tracey looks like someone put him in charge of an entire room of screaming infants.
“I don’t know what to say,” he manages.
I blow my nose again. “How about, ‘What else did you learn, detective?’”
“What else did you learn, detective?”
With a firm swallow, I say, “I learned from Laurie that UAB has partnered with a private lab to develop a modified drug based on the research with zahablan and TXNIP.”
He looks puzzled. “Why?”
“One of two reasons or a combination of them.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“
Reason number one: They might be able to come up with something better than zahablan.”
“Okay, and reason number two?”
“Zahablan has been a generic for several years, which means the patent has run out. And the price of generics has been falling pretty drastically.”
“Meaning,” he says slowly, “even if they determine zahablan works, using it will not generate much profits.”
“Yep.”
“Who stands to gain from Crompton’s death?”
I frown. “Crompton was one of many people monitoring the studies, but even he didn’t know how the human trials would turn out. Remember it’s a triple-blind study. The researchers don’t know who got the drug and who got a placebo.”
“But if the data flipped, he might be one to call foul and investigate,” Tracey says. “He had the disease himself. He would be motivated to pursue it.”
“Laurie said he volunteered to be involved the only way he ethically could. But there are lots of layers to the research and lots of people working on it.”
“But he was the one killed.”
“Yes.”
“Why him?”
“I don’t know, but I know who we need to talk to next.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Parking at the Edge of Chaos is consistently impossible. We park in the back again and hope the municipal tag will stall any attempt to haul away our car. I eye the rooftops uncomfortably. On one rooftop above us, huge metal cylinders hum. Some kind of machinery—generators, air conditioners? I don’t know, but they provide a great spot for a sniper. Call me paranoid. Getting shot at will do that to a person.
The alley we take as a shortcut was once a street, closed off to make the city center university more campus-like. Both sides are lined with cars. I’m not the only one with a touch of paranoia. Tracey also walks through the alley with frequent glances upward and between parked cars, even though it’s broad daylight in the heart of the UAB campus.
Inside, we exit the elevator on the fourth floor. Enslen is nowhere in sight, only a scattering of people about, and no one challenges us. We make our own way to Segal’s cubicle.
“Hey,” he says. “What’s up in the land of mayhem and murder?”
“Dr. Crompton’s assistant was killed,” I say.
He sobers instantly. “You’re kidding me, I hope.”
I frown. “No.”
“Damn.”
“We’d like to ask you a few more questions,” Tracey says.
Segal’s back stiffens. “I’m not a suspect, am I?”
“Should you be?” Tracey asks.
“You’re kind of scaring me, man. Do I need a lawyer or anything?”
“Not unless you’re involved,” Tracey says. “We just want more information about what you’re working on.”
Visibly relaxing, he shrugs. “Sure, I mean, nobody sees the details of the clinical trials until the last results are in, and they aren’t yet, but I can answer general questions.”
“Does everyone get a look at the data right away?” I ask.
Segal shakes his head. “No, we lock the database, no more input, and do a data cleanup. Then the results are analyzed.”
“What’s involved in a ‘data cleanup’?”
“We look for errors, missing data, that kind of thing. Make sure everyone entered everything.”
I sit in the only chair and prop my chin on my hand, looking fascinated. “Who is ‘we’?”
“Um, that would be me.”
“Can you tell us about the trials?”
He rubs his palms on the sides of his thighs. “Yeah, I mean, the trials are pretty straightforward. The patients involved are split into three groups. Two are ‘active.’ That means they get the drug. One gets five milligrams and the other ten milligrams, or whatever dosage the researchers want tested.”
“And the third group?” Tracey asks.
At the question, Segal jerks his head to Tracey as if he’d forgotten he was there.
“Uh, that’s the placebo group. They get a pill that looks the same, but there’s no active drug in it.” He checks his computer screen. “Hey, like I gotta go. I promised to check on my little sister during my lunch break. She’s in Children’s Hospital.”
I frown. “What’s going on with her?”
His eyes flick down, and he hits a few keystrokes on his computer. “She’s got cancer. They’re doing chemo and radiation.”
“That’s tough,” Tracey says.
Segal blinks. “She’s a trooper, but, yeah . . . it’s tough.”
“Can we walk out with you?” I ask. “Got a couple more questions, but we don’t want to cut into your time with your sister.”
He shrugs. “Sure. Let me shut down.” He taps the keyboard a couple more times and then leads us down the hall. In the elevator, I hold my questions when a young couple, eyes locked on their electronic devices, steps in with us.
We exit out the front of the library, and he turns down the same alley we came through. “I usually go this way,” he says. “It’s a straight shot, three blocks to Children’s.”
“We’re parked this way, anyway,” Tracey says.
As we start down the alley, the lighting shifts. What was daylight under a warm, cloudless sky is suddenly black and gray, and I can’t move. My heart stills between beats. Ahead of us, a slender figure walks toward us in the alley, his single braid swinging with his slow-motion strides. There is no question of his identity. Segal is alone in the alley, coming toward us. But I’m not seeing the present.
And then he is not alone.
A dark shadow slips from behind a car, a gloved hand pushes Segal’s arm across his chest. I can’t see what he does next, but Segal bows low, knees crumpling. His attacker’s face is covered in a black ski mask. Dropping to one knee, he plucks a wallet from Segal’s back pocket and slips back between the cars and out of sight.
On the ground, Segal’s body is twisted, but I can see something thick and dark pumping from his upper thigh. His femoral artery has been cut. He will bleed out in minutes.
Chapter Forty
When the vision releases me, I stumble and go to my knees. Tracey’s reactions are fast. He grabs my upper arm as I’m going down and saves me anything worse than skinned knees.
“Rose!”
“You okay?” Segal says.
My head is throbbing, and my stomach is threatening to give my morning oatmeal back to the world.
“I’m okay, just give me a moment.”
They do. I stay on my knees.
Segal shifts from foot to foot. “Do we need to call anyone? Paramedics get here pronto.”
I shake my head.
“No,” Tracey says. “Let’s hold off a minute. May just be a dizzy spell. She had a blow to the head not long ago.”
“I’m good,” I say and hold my hand up for an assist.
Tracey pulls me to my feet with little effort, despite my awkward position. He catches my eye, and I give him a slight nod. I think he understands I had a vision. Something we obviously can’t talk about in front of Segal.
“Let’s get you to the car,” Tracey says.
“No, I’m fine. I want to walk Segal to Children’s.”
Tracey hesitates before acquiescing. “Okay.”
“Hey, that’s not necessary,” Segal says.
“I want to,” I insist. “I want to meet your sister.”
Nothing happens on the three-block walk to the hospital, except I try not to throw up from the pain in my head and focus on what Segal is saying about his situation. “My mom died. My dad works two jobs,” he says. “But both are part time, and he has no health insurance. I have custody of Kaleshia so she can be under UAB insurance.”
I don’t do hospitals very well, or kids, for that matter, but Children’s has made every e
ffort to make it a cheerful environment. By the time we enter Kaleshia’s room, which she shares with a sleeping child, she is sitting up waiting for her brother, and my pain has dissipated.
“Hey, Cheerios!” he says. “I brought a couple of visitors.”
“Deon,” she greets him, her mouth wide in a grin that shows both front teeth missing.
He glances at us and shrugs. “Everyone calls me Segal except Kaleshia.”
“Because his name is Deon,” Kaleshia says. She is about seven years old. Her head is devoid of hair, her eyes large, dark almonds with lashes as thick as Daniel’s.
Segal takes her hand. “How ya doing today?”
“Good,” she says. “But you missed them.”
“Who?”
“The superheroes.” She points to the window. “They were out there hanging in the air—Superman, Spider-man, Batman, and Captain America!”
“Wow!” Tracey walks over to the window and looks out. “I wish I could have seen them.”
She beams. “You have to be special to see them, like me.”
“You’re special?” Segal teases.
She nods her head.
“Says who?”
“The nurses and doctors and blood people.”
I flinch, realizing she is talking about the techs that draw her blood, probably on a regular basis, but she is matter-of-fact.
“Okay, Cheerios.” Segal says. “I give up. If all those people say you’re special, maybe you are.”
“Why does he call you Cheerios?” I ask.
She purses her lips. “I don’t know. Because I like them, I guess.”
“That’s all you would eat when you were little,” Segal says.
She giggles. “I eat more things now. They help me be strong.”
I’m feeling tightness in my throat and clear it.
Abruptly, Kaleshia yawns and her eyes close. She opens them again, but they are obviously heavy. “I’m tired,” she says.
“Sleep, baby. It’s okay. I’ll come back to see you after work.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
The eyes close, giving up the burden of staying open, and we leave the room.