Time Travel Omnibus, page 851
“I don’t have time,” Jake Smith shouted, “I only have two minutes left.”
“Left for what?” old Smith asked.
Jake wanted to strangle his great-great-whatever-grandfather. “Tell me. Please! Please tell me! Who were your aunts and uncles?”
Meredith shook his head. “Why, I never knew any of them, son. Not even sure I had any. We left home when I was just a wee lad, and my pappy, he just never talked much about any of them.”
“Where was home?” Jake asked, with only a minute now left in his two-century voyage.
The farmer started laughing and slapped his knee, raising a dust cloud that drifted Jake’s way. “Why, the old country, of course,” he said, “where dya think it was? Penn-silly-vaniya?” There wasn’t all that much entertainment out here in the sticks.
“Ahhh, ahhh”—only thirty seconds left—“just answer me this,” Jake said, “Just, just this one thing. You tell me this and I promise you, I promise I’ll never, ever bother you again.”
Old Smith grinned. “Well, don’t be a-countin’ the daisies, son, what is it?” He spat a wad of slightly-used tobacco on some incipient shoots nearby.
“What was your father’s name?” Jake asked.
The sky started to fade around him, but he heard Meredith Smith’s faint (but crystal clear) reply just before he transported. “Why, Mr. Smith, of course!”
The Rams lost that day.
BLOOD TRAIL
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The blood trail started at the front door. A light spray covered the wallpaper, so fine that it almost looked like part of the design. Then the spray became a spurt, and finally great arching lines of blood that had dripped down the walls into the baseboards.
Wheldon stepped inside the apartment, mourning the destruction of evidence. The crime scene was the entry itself. Even if he hadn’t seen the body—face down in the area where the foyer opened into the living room—he would have been able to tell from the blood that the crime had been committed here.
He could even guess, without examining the body itself, how the wounds occurred: a preliminary stab wound on the left side of the back, into some blood vessels but nothing major; other stab wounds lower, at least one somewhere vital; and the last in a major artery which caused death quite quickly.
The attack started when the victim arrived home and unlocked her apartment door. Her attacker followed her inside, stabbed her, pulled the door closed, and continued to stab until she was dead.
“Is there another way into this place?” he asked the patrolman outside the door.
“Nope.” The patrolman was young, his face green. He’d been standing in the hall when Wheldon arrived, arms crossed, as if he were guarding the place. But Wheldon had seen enough rookies to recognize the reaction: the young man was trying to keep his lunch down and look official in the process.
“Who’s been through?” Wheldon asked.
“The roommate—she’s the one who called—my partner, me, the detectives, and the forensic guys.”
Wheldon nodded. “Keep everyone else out until I give permission. And I don’t want you guys to leave until we bag your shoes.”
“Excuse me?” The patrolman looked at him with a mixture of shock and confusion.
“Your shoes,” Wheldon said. “This is the fourth entryway stabbing I’ve worked on in the last two months. The problem with all of them is that critical evidence gets destroyed from the get-go. I’m making sure that won’t happen this time.”
“I gotta give you my shoes?”
“I’m afraid so, Officer,” Wheldon said.
“But how’m I supposed to finish my shift?”
Wheldon shrugged. He walked farther inside, careful to avoid the spatter that had reached the floor. There was a smear near an end-table, probably from a shoe. But the prints led into the living room and ended near the feet of the woman who sat on the sofa, twisting her hands together.
The roommate, the one who’d called the police.
She was talking to one of the detectives, her head down, eyes averted. She was making a studied attempt not to look at the body sprawled near Wheldon on the scuffed hardwood floor.
He studied her for a moment. She was thin—with a body style that would have been fashionable thirty years before, in the affluent ‘90s. He doubted her thinness had anything to do with diets and exercise. Judging from the apartment, she remained thin thanks to lack of cash.
Forensics was taking photographs using a hand-held computer, two different digital cameras, and then the standard camera required by regulation. Scientific changes, which had brought so much to police work, were still hampered by regulations; good work was getting tossed out in court because it didn’t meet guidelines set before the turn of the century. In the last twenty years, Wheldon’s job had gotten harder, not easier.
“What’re you doing here, Zack?” Amy Mannis approached him from the other side of the living room. She had her hand-held out, and her white plastic gloves on. She looked official. “Dex and I drew this case.”
“You get to assist,” he said. “I’m overseeing you. I can tell you from the blood spatter alone that this one fits into a pattern.”
Her lips thinned. “Why don’t you wait until the preliminary report before you hone in on our case, Zack?” “Because the last time I did that, the vital evidence was gone. You don’t know what you’re looking for.” “And you do?”
He glanced at the living room. The other detective and the roommate were watching the exchange. He lowered his voice so that they couldn’t hear him.
“At first you thought robbery. But all that’s missing are homemade DVDs and photographs of the victim, as well as some pieces of jewelry—anything with a gem or pearl on it.”
Her expression didn’t change. She obviously hadn’t been here long enough to know what was missing. He’d only gotten the call half an hour ago, and the 911 report had come in a half an hour before that.
“In the roommate’s bedroom—not the victim’s—you’ll find the bed turned down and a Godiva truffle in its original box sitting on the pillow. That room will be neat as a pin even if it hadn’t been left that way.”
Amy started. She had seen that.
“The jewelry will be missing from the roommate’s room. The victim’s room will be untouched.”
“Son of a bitch.” Amy shook her head. She knew that he would take charge. He’d worked with her before. She hated playing the subordinate. “I don’t supposed I have a choice.”
His smile was thin. “I don’t suppose you do.”
The victim was Rhonda Schlaffler, a forty-five year-old book editor who worked just off Times Square. Divorced five years before, no alimony, no children, living off her salary which barely covered essentials, and saving for an apartment of her own.
Her roommate was 34 year-old Trisha Newman who managed a Greek restaurant off Times Square. Newman, who’d never been married, had a spotty employment history, and a tendency to quit jobs in the heat of anger. She was also extremely competent, so when she did find work, she was promoted rapidly.
The women had met when Newman advertised for a roommate through one of the apartment services. They’d lived together for five years, but never socialized. Newman didn’t even characterize them as friends. Still, she’d been upset and terrified—upset at her roommate’s death, terrified at the staged scene aimed at her.
The body confirmed what Wheldon had already guessed. The first wound, somewhat shallow, in the back beneath the ribcage, catching some blood vessels. Two more wounds, also in the back, near the spinal chord, and the fatal wound in the neck, severing the carotid artery.
The only surprise were matching rips in the collars of victim’s coat and shirt, caused by a hand gripping them too tight and pulling, straining the material until it tore. Either the victim had made a near-successful bid to elude her attacker or her knees had buckled and he had to use her coat to hold her up while he finished the job. Judging by the blood spatter, she had nearly gotten away.
Wheldon had come to all of those conclusions by late evening of the first day. His greatest gift as an investigator was his ability to place himself at the crime scene—to see things that others missed.
It was also his greatest curse. His mind was always filled with what-ifs and would-have-beens. After thirty years of tough cases, he had become quiet and morose. His friends wouldn’t let him drink with them any more, and he’d stopped dating ten years before.
The job was everything, and everything, for the moment, focussed on Rhonda Schlaffler.
Her last few seconds must have seemed like hours.
He doubted she’d noticed her attacker following her, although he might have joined her in the elevator, making her uncomfortable. Or maybe not. Maybe she had been the kind of woman who closed into herself in an elevator, ignoring the people around her. In either case, she had gotten off the elevator on her floor, pulled her keys out of her purse, and unlocked both deadbolts on her door.
She’d pushed the door open before noticing him behind her, but there was no way to tell whether or not she had gone inside voluntarily. Perhaps he had shoved her forward, perhaps he had just followed her—the evidence was inconclusive about that. What it was conclusive about was that the attack started just inside the door. He had to still be standing in the hall when he stabbed her the first time.
Unfortunately, the building’s security system was as primitive as its locks. An old-fashioned buzzer system on the front door instead of a doorman, security cameras set up in the 1970s and not maintained since, and a super who was away from his apartment more than he was inside it. New York had too many buildings like this, and the killer knew it. He seemed to know a lot about his victims and their roommates, and he used that knowledge to achieve his ends, whatever they might be.
That was what Wheldon couldn’t figure out. He couldn’t tell from the evidence whether he was trying to find a serial killer, defined as someone who killed randomly and indiscriminately within a certain physical or personality type, or a series killer, defined as someone who killed for a select period of time to fulfill some kind of pattern only he saw. After the second murder, Wheldon had ruled out murder for hire. Neither victim had been wealthy enough nor had they had enough enemies to justify the expense.
In fact, he had found only a handful of things in common between all four cases: the manner of death, the victims’ gender, the neighborhood, the presence of a female roommate, the Godiva truffles and the turned-down bed, and the stolen DVDs and jewelry.
Everything else was different. The victims’ ages ranged from 24 to 53; their incomes ranged from $20,000 a year to $80,000; and their marital status ranged from divorced with children to permanently single. None of them worked in the same place or even the same neighborhood, none of them frequented the same shops or restaurants, and none of them had the same friends. They even used different on-line services.
The murders weren’t quite random, but they were random enough to give him fits. After the second killing, he’d entered the information in the FBI’s National Database of Unsolved Crimes. He’d thought the Godiva trick unique enough to bring a hit from another state, should such a thing exist. But after the third killing, he’d given up hope. He’d found nothing else like it in his search of unsolved crimes nationwide.
He’d also found nothing when he searched for murders connected to chocolates. His investigate of the Godiva boxes didn’t help either—they were all from different batches which had been on the market all over the country on the day of the murders, and hundreds of them were sold in New York City alone—with most of the purchasers paying cash.
Even though he entered information from the fourth murder into the database, he had no illusions this time. He knew he would have to catch this killer on his own.
And he knew he would probably have to wait until the killer struck again.
Wheldon had already moved the Schlaffler case off his desk when the Suits came to visit. In the two weeks since Schlaffler’s death, Wheldon overseen four other difficult homicide investigations and helped solve three of them. The fourth would be wrapped within the week.
Solving difficult cases was his specialty, which was why the Godiva cases really bothered him. Still, he hadn’t thought about them in two days when he arrived at his office to find two women in cheap black suits waiting for him.
They looked official. He figured they were either Internal Affairs, coming to see him about some of the cops he’d overseen, or the Feds, wanting to argue jurisdiction on something he hadn’t even heard of yet.
He wasn’t surprised when they flashed their shiny Bureau badges at him and asked him to shut the door. He did, after he ran their badge numbers through his hand-held, and saw photos that matched the faces before him. The women smiled as he did that, one of them commenting that she liked his caution.
He’d learned, over the years, that caution made him a good cop.
“Agents Ambersson and Kingsbury,” he said as he sank into his chair. “Your identification checks out, but doesn’t tell me what unit you’re in.”
“That’s right,” said Ambersson. She was younger than he was by at least twenty years, a bright-eyed thirty-something who still had the patina of a true believer. “Our status is on a need-to-know.”
“And our superiors believe you need to know,” said Kingsbury. She was closer to his age, with a deep rich voice, and a world-weary manner. He got the sense that she tolerated her partner, but didn’t entire approve of her.
Wheldon folded his hands, leaned back, and waited. They clearly wanted something from him, and they would take their own sweet time to get there.
“We understand you’ve been investigating a series of murders in the West 80s.” said Kingsbury.
“That’s right.”
“We’re particularly interested in the last murder. Rhonda Schlaffler.”
Despite himself, he felt a surge of hope. At last a breakthrough. Maybe Schlaffler had a secret double-life. Maybe she had been under FBI surveillance for political actions in the late 80s, her college years. Maybe she had been a Person of Interest in another crime.
“According to the information you entered in our database,” Ambersson said, “you can pinpoint the time of death to a 15-minute window, is that correct?”
He frowned, somehow not expecting them to pick up on that detail. “Yes.”
“You came to this conclusion how?”
“Her workplace uses an electronic i.d. system. Her employee identification number ran through the exit machine at 6:05 p.m. She walked with a friend to the subway and took the train home. It arrived at her stop at 6:32 that night. The stop was a two-minute walk from her apartment. Even if she stopped somewhere, like a deli, she had to have arrived before 6:50.”
“Because?” Kingsbury asked.
“Because her neighbor received a visitor at 6:50—his ex-wife. He didn’t get along with the wife, and didn’t want her inside the apartment, so he talked with her, more like argued with her, in the hallway for the next half an hour. He watched Schlaffler’s roommate unlock her apartment door, enter, and heard the screams. We figure Schlaffler arrived home at the earliest at 6:35 and died before 6:50, since there was no other way out of the apartment.”
“Not even a fire escape?” Ambersson asked.
“A point of contention between Schlaffler and her landlord. There had been a fire escape out the bathroom window, but the iron had rusted through and fallen away from the building. Anyone trying to exit that way would have had a three-story drop before hitting another fire escape landing, which probably wouldn’t have supported the perp’s weight.”
“I trust you checked this,” Ambersson said.
Wheldon was beginning to get impatient. He wasn’t used to being quizzed on his cases. “Of course. We looked for fibers, blood, hair, asked residents about strangers or anything out of the ordinary, even checked with the two homeless guys who slept in the alley, and we turned up nothing.”
“Excellent,” said Ambersson.
“Excellent?” Wheldon asked. Whatever response he had expected, it was not that one.
She wasn’t paying attention to him. Instead, she was looking at her partner and smiling as if they’d caught the killer without Wheldon’s help. “Sounds good to me.”
Kingsbury shrugged. “I’d like something tighter, but this’ll have to do.”
“What are you talking about?” Wheldon asked.
The agents turned toward him. The look of expectation was still on Ambersson’s face. Kingsbury’s expression hadn’t changed at all.
“For the past three days,” Kingsbury said, “we have conducted an investigation of you.”
“Me?” Wheldon frowned. “For what?”
“A high-level security clearance. If you sign the forms we’ve brought with us, you will receive a six-month clearance, subject to renewal and review. We have brought documents with us for you to sign. Anything you learn because of your security clearance will remained classified. You can’t speak of it to anyone. Ever. Is that clear?”
“No,” Wheldon said. “I haven’t requested security clearance and I really don’t want one. I have no desire to work for the FBI, and I don’t appreciate being investigated.”
He said that last a bit breathlessly. It was, he realized as he spoke the words, the real reason he was irritated. He was the one who conducted the investigations. He wasn’t the person who was investigated. He’d worked his entire career at being a clean cop, despite all sorts of temptation. He didn’t appreciate having that spotless record examined now.
“It’s just a matter of routine,” Ambersson said.
“For you, maybe. Not for me.”
Kingsbury held up her hand. It was a small gesture, meant to silence her partner, not Wheldon.
“You want to find this killer, don’t you?” she asked Wheldon.
“Of course.”
