CHAPTER 1
I step through the doorway five minutes before the man kills his wife.
The penumbra crackles like a thunderstorm played in reverse. Nausea folds me in two. I fang my lip to make the pain my own. There’s a taste of blood on my tongue, but the world grows sharp, reality replacing the memory I relive every time I travel.
I’m standing in a guest room in the Sleep Rite Motor Lodge, just off the interstate in Monroeville. Low cost and proximity to the highway make it a favorite spot for a midday frolic. It’s the tail end of another sweltering Pittsburgh summer, the blinds closed against a hot, bright sky. The room has that baked-in smoky smell universal to such places, adding insult to injury since I haven’t had a cigarette all day – no stimulants allowed on the job.
In the dimness, I scan the unexceptional décor. Ersatz wood paneling, faux-bronze floor lamp, rustic paint-by-number scene above a nickel-plated headboard. The rattletrap air conditioner competes with a daytime soap, Days of Our Lives or something, while the shower hisses and spits behind the door to my left. More like the Last Rites Motor Lodge if you ask me, but the clientele this place caters to aren’t choosy.
A specimen of that clientele stands by the rumpled bed, waiting for the other occupants of the room to emerge.
He’s in his forties, badly overweight, sweaty in his brown business suit. Graying, unshaved. Whiskey on his breath. So nervous his hands shake. I know what he’s going through, and I feel for him. He doesn’t want to be here any more than I do. But the gun he’s holding doesn’t leave either of us an option.
I train my eyepiece on his trembling hand until the AI returns a match.
Smith & Wesson M&P 380.
An older model, the kind the trade shows used to pitch as a safe bet for newbies. Even if I didn’t know that, even if I didn’t know every salient detail of this man’s recent history, the tentative way he handles the weapon would tell me he’s never fired a handgun before, possibly never touched one until today.
He looks amazed to see me. They always do.
His story’s the oldest one in the book. Businessman gets a funny feeling, decides to turn detective. Tracks receipts and bank transactions, pockets the pistol his wife bought for home protection when the kids were babies and follows her to the Sleep Rite, where she’s been humping his business partner on her lunch break. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the husband’s a neglectful lover at best and the twentysomething year-old partner has the time – and stamina – to give the wife what he can’t.
But the hubby’s not thinking clearly, what with the booze and betrayal. He confronts them in the act, shouts, threatens legal action. Only means to scare them, but gets so worked up when his wife taunts him, he squeezes the trigger like he’s letting out an accidental fart. After a single, stunned moment to eyeball what he’s done, he turns the gun on himself in a spasm of guilt and despair.
The result: two dead bodies, lots of brains and blood, a pair of orphans. A tragedy any way you look at it.
That’s where we come
in.
The blinds rustle as Vax arrives a second later. Thunderclap played backwards, face fighting the urge to vomit. He holds his trusty Glock out straight, left hand cupping the grip to steady it over the nausea.
The husband’s eyes flick from me to my partner. Obviously terrified. Absolutely no idea what’s going on.
Vax briefly takes his left hand from the gun to flash his badge. “LifeTime Law Enforcement. Place your weapon on the floor and raise your hands above your head.”
The man stares, chews the end of his mustache as he nervously processes what must look like two glowing aliens who’ve unaccountably crash-landed in the motel room. Will he feign bravado, misunderstanding, innocence? Or will he be a good boy and do as my partner says?
None of the above. He blinks, stares, but holds on.
“Sir,” I say, trying for a steady, soothing tone. “We’re going to have to ask you again to place your weapon on the floor and raise your hands above your head. You’re under arrest.”
“What for?” A primal wail.
“Attempted murder.”
“I didn’t kill anybody.”
“Not yet.”
He sucks in a breath, looks us over again. His eyes are teary from the strain or the hooch or both.
I’ve often thought we could save ourselves a lot of trouble if, instead of confronting imminent murderers at emotionally fragile moments like this, we nabbed them well before the act. But the law’s the law. You can’t arrest someone for a crime they haven’t committed, even if they’ve already committed it, until you have what the government calls “reasonable inference” that they’re about to commit it again. Booking the husband in the motel room passes the test as, say, collaring him while he’s downing his last shot of Jack Daniel’s at the neighborhood pub doesn’t. We’ve debated among ourselves whether anyone could actually make a violation of the timecode stick, but in the end, we’ve opted for playing it safe.
“Sir,” I say. “Make thi
s easy on yourself.”
He wavers. I see it in his eyes. Like most people, he’s naturally timid, doesn’t want to hurt anyone. If we can get the gun off him, set him up with a cup of black coffee and a long talk with the court-appointed shrink, he’ll be all right. At least he won’t have to carry around the burden of knowing that, the first time around, he did exactly what he never dreamed he was capable of doing.
He’s edging toward me, the gun held gingerly like a bag of dog doo he’s about to drop in someone else’s trash can, when the bathroom door bursts open.
All eyes shift as the two emerge from the steam. They’re naked, beaded with water, the wife’s legs wrapped around her lover’s waist, his face buried in her long black hair. Both of them so focused on the moment they seem unaware that their exclusive party has become something of a social hour. She moans as he carries her to the bed, arranging her in what must be one of their tried-and-true positions.
The husband takes a step back, his fleshy face turned scarlet. I see the change come over him, and I know what he’s about to do.
“Now, sir!” I say. “Drop your weapon!”
The wife screams. Untangles herself from the business partner, who drops to the floor, shouting something incoherent. The husband bellows right back as he stumbles toward the bed. I’ve got him lined up for a shot that should hobble him, not kill him, when he slips in the pool his wife and former partner left. His hands flail to catch himself against the headboard.
Deafening explosion. Blood smears the sheets. After a moment of silence, the word “Babe!” comes from his mouth.
Vax leaps for him.
You’d think the newly minted murderer would be too paralyzed by the sight of his wife’s head pumping blood to react, but no. He dodges, shrugs off my partner’s charge. Vax goes for him again, but now that the man knows what he’s capable of, he eludes his much fitter adversary and wields the gun with newfound purpose. Vax should be over the wobbles by now, but he seems more sluggish than usual, and the husba
nd has weight and desolation on his side. He throws Vax against the lamp. The bulb shatters, plunging the room into deeper dark.
“Vax!” I cry.
He’s rising woozily. I can’t see if he has his Glock. The husband is a lot closer than I am, and he takes aim like a sharpshooter. He even smiles, his teeth gleaming in the TV’s ghostly glow.
I fire two rounds from my Beretta. The first hits the husband in the chest, spinning him against the wall. The second reddens the paneling behind his head, and he slumps to the floor.
Blood. Brains. Bodies. The only one left alive of the original three is the cowering, whimpering business partner, who’s curled into the fetal position beside the puddle his bladder left on the shag rug.
Vax stands, feels the couple for a pulse. A mere formality. He shakes his head.
“You OK?” he asks.
I nod.
“I had to do it,” I say.
He looks me in the eye. “I know.”
My hands fumble as I holster my gun. My partner peels the sole survivor off the floor while I make the call.
CHAPTER 2
Later, I’m working my way through a pack of cigarettes outside the station when Vax shows up to put in his report.
“You want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly.”
He stands beside the bench while I blow smoke into the muggy twilight. LifeTime Travel bought the old Amtrak station on Liberty when the maglev complex opened across the river, which means Vax and I work out of possibly the most beautiful historic building in the whole downtown area. Rose-colored stone, high vaulted lobby with ornate fixtures, wooden balustrade curving sensually to the boss’s office on the second floor. Infinitely nicer than the regular cop stations, and don’t we let them know it.
Old-timers gaze around in shock when they wander into our headquarters by accident, but that’s because they’re carrying around the newsreel from a half-century ago. Pittsburgh as a decaying mill town, deserted train station full of cobwebs and memories, cue the string section. In reality, the city came back from the brink earlier than most, spurring a nationwide renaissance. If the Steel City is a time capsule of the nation’s fall and rise, it makes sense that it’s also the nexus of actual time travel.
Of course, everyone thinks we book flights to Disneyland, so there’s that too.
Vax puts a hand on my shoulder. I brush it off, readjust myself as far away as the bench will allow. He digs in his pocket and holds out something that looks like a miniature accordion with a penny whistle stuck out of one end.
“Personal grooming device?” I ask.
“Vintage nicotine delivery system. Guaranteed cancer free.”
“I’ll stick with the devil I know, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Come on, Miriam.”
“Myriad.”
“Miriam,” he says firmly. “I fucked up too. You saved my ass back there.”
“By nailing his.”
“The guy was going to die anyway. Did die before we arrived.”
“He didn’t have to die again. That one’s on me.”
He stands there a minute, then stashes the vaping gizmo and sits on the bench beside me. I slide even farther away until my left butt cheek is hanging off the edge. Vax is his usual rocklike self. No reaction at all. Which is either the best thing or the most infuriating thing about him, depending.
“It never went that way before,” I say, my words smoky avatars on the leaden air.
“There was that kid over on Carson.”
“A clerical error.”
The year I joined the force, LifeTime dispatched the two of us to the South Side to stop a drug deal turned gangland-style execution. Trouble was, forensics must have reconstructed the wrong case or the guy who operates the chamber must have sent us to faulty coordinates, because we walked smack into the middle of a suicide. Talk therapy not being m
y forte, it didn’t end well. I can still see the girl’s body departing from the Birmingham Bridge, somersaulting twice, colliding with the Monongahela.
“The husband was in the room,” Vax offers. “Maybe he was…”
“One of us?” I shake my head. “You read the report. He was part-owner of the Sleep Rite. She was having an affair with his buddy in his own hotel. I guess to make him feel bad for missing their anniversary.”
I try to laugh. Vax’s hand settles on my shoulder, and this time, I let it be.
“Do you think it was a knot?” he asks.
“Highly unlikely.”
“What, then?”
“A gratuitous slap in the face. The gods of time having a laugh at us mere mortals.”
“I don’t believe that. There’s no fate–”
“–but what we make. I’ve seen the movies too, Vax. Not exactly where I go for answers to life’s existential dilemmas.”
“Great special effects, though.”
“For the late twentieth century, maybe.”
I turn away. Vax’s hand doesn’t budge.
It’s like this. When you travel, even for the measly week the agency takes to reconstruct a murder before sending us back to stop it, you learn things. Your body and mind return to the scene of the crime, then proceed forward along whatever altered trajectory you’ve precipitated. So far as anyone can tell, the reality you create becomes the reality, with each part of the sentence rearranged in its new syntax. People, places, things. Verbs too. When it works out according to plan, you’re
the good guy – no ticker-tape parades or keys to the city, but at least the shock to your system was worth it. Conversely, when things go the way they went today, that becomes your reality. The new you you have to live with from here on out.
Either way, it raises a question I’ve wrestled with since I joined the force. What happens to the other you that would have lived its life if you hadn’t doubled back? For that matter, what happens to all the other lives that would have played out differently if not for you? The lives that did play out differently – yours included – between the original occurrence of the event and your return to alter it? Do those lives cease to exist? Or are they hanging out somewhere else – in another place, another time?
Maybe the genius who designed the system knows. I sure don’t. A strong body and receptive mind were in the job description, not an advanced degree in quantum physics.
Still, it seems to me I can sometimes feel the ones I left behind. The strays. All of the other possible Miriams that might have been, each of them trapped in her own personal limbo.
Hence my alias.
Myriad.
We all use them on the job. Vax told me the story behind his the day we became partners. Back in the academy, some semiliterate trainer mispronounced the double “c’s” in his last name, so it came out “Martin Vaxaro.” He tried for years to shake it, but it stuck.
“Miriam,” he says.
“Si, Signor Vaccaro?”
“I have to submit my report. What are you doing later?”
“Killing myself slowly, as usual.”
“Try not to finish before I get back, OK?”
He lets his hand slide off my shoulder as he climbs to his feet. Electricity tingles in me. Just before he enters the station, he half-turns and flashes a smile.
He’ll be in there for hours. Quality Control brings us in one at a time to reduce the possibility of partners concocting an alibi. I’ve already been through the wringer. Weapons check, review of my body cam footage and AI interface, lie detector test. Endless questions about what I did and didn’t do, infinitesimal dissection of events that have already played out twice, with subtle and not so subtle variations.
It’s a painful but necessary process. Changing time erases the reports that were written, the memories that were made. Why write them, why make them, if the event never happened? The only record of what used to be
is lodged in the minds of the travelers, and QC needs us to tell them whether we succeeded in what we were assigned to do.
Or, in my case, failed.
Legal was called in. I’ve been demoted to desk service pending a full investigation. When your job is to prevent a murder and you end up committing one instead, they want to know what went wrong. I do too, but at the present moment, what I want even more is not to know.
I call Chloe, the cheerful middle-aged woman from Angel Care who watches my mom three days a week, plus weekends when I’m working. The scheduling gets complicated when I travel, but I’ve managed to figure it out so far. I tell her I’m tied up with my partner, which isn’t entirely untrue, or at least it won’t be. She tells me sure, no problem, take my time. See me when I get back.
Conscience cleared, I put my phone away and watch drones skim through the darkening sky like high-tech bats. With me and Vax, a day on the job can go any number of ways. Good, bad, ugly. But it almost always ends up in bed.
CHAPTER 3
Most nights, it’s his bed.
Vax’s condo looks nothing like your stereotypical bachelor’s paradise. It’s oppressively neat, with books aligned on shelves, dishes scrubbed and gleaming in the drainer. Pillows plumped, sheets tucked. I suspect he actually dusts and vacuums, and not just for special occasions like this.
“Are you still Myriad?” he asks. “Or Miriam?”
“Who do you want me to be?”
“I prefer Miriam.”
“Ta-da!” I say. “Like it?”
“Very much.”
“Show me.”
He does, with expert lips and fingers. Once I get my breath back, I sigh deeply, then reach out and touch his face.
“I wish we could travel,” I say.
“You’ve told me that before.”
“So is there a law? Against telling you again?”
He’s quiet.
“You wish we could travel,” he says as I climb on top of him.
“When we make love.”
“When we make love.”
“Because then, we could go back.”
“To the moment just before.”
“To the moment just before. And that way…”
“That way, it wouldn’t have to end.”
That’s what Vax thinks. No matter how many times I tell him, he thinks it’s the sex I wish could last for all eternity. Don’t get me wrong, the sex is something else. What he doesn’t understand is that it’s not the during I’m trying to hold onto. It’s the before.
As always, it slips away. I roll off, flop on my back. He breathes hard, satisfied. Oblivious.
“Did you ever kill anybody?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer right away, and I brace myself for a post-coital pun.
“No,” he says.
“Me neither.”
“They say it sticks with you.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad. Except…”
“Except?”
“Today’s the day.”
He turns to face me. “Today?”
“Last of August. Twenty years.”
“Jesus, Miriam, I’m sorry. I–”
“Forgot. I know.”
“Why did you come in? Dispatch would have understood. They could have given it to som
eone else.”
“We worked on the case for a solid week. I didn’t want to bag out on you.”
“But you knew when you took it that it was the day. ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
