Class Fives: Origins (24 page)

8

A Ball Begins Rolling

Dan headed down the bare concrete stairs behind the other officer, hearing his own steps echoing hollowly around him. It was a depressing sound, in a depressing place.

He had been stunned to receive the call only an hour before and found John Kleinschmidt on the other end. After the last time they’d met, sitting in John’s small apartment, listening to him explain his bizarre situation, he hadn’t expected to hear from the man again, certainly not this soon. And certainly not as the one call John was allowed to make following his arrest.

In front of him, the local officer in his khaki uniform who was doing duty today as guard, appeared to be taking his time to get to the basement level of the modest building where the holding cells were located, and Dan couldn’t really blame him.

Lock-ups of any kind tended to be disquieting places, whether there was anyone in residence at the moment or not. Dan hated having to visit the Los Angeles County Jail, that tall, thick, fortress-like structure near the downtown Courthouse. Walking down between the seemingly endless rows of overcrowded cells with their constant low murmur and the electric sense of tension and anger that seemed to perfume the air, always made him feel like apologizing to someone, though he could never figure out exactly why.

At least this lock-up was small, resting beneath the rather new police building that sat just across the main road from the racetrack. Had it been put there deliberately, Dan wondered idly? Some expectation of potential future trouble when the horses ran? More likely, he thought, it just reinforced the fact that the city of Arcadia was little more than a Los Angeles suburb with a few signs, a tiny municipal building and little else. In some ways the racetrack itself was Arcadia, leaving everything beyond its grounds to the sprawling megacity that completely surrounded it.

Arriving at the basement level, the officer in front of him paused before the large, heavy metal door and fumbled with a ring of keys, inserting one into the lock and throwing the thick bolt. He pushed it open and stood aside to allow Dan to enter behind him before turning to close and lock it.

Well, Dan thought, at least they have some kind of procedures.

The officer merely looked at Dan and nodded toward the far end of the corridor, on either side of which were barriers made of thick, black bars that shot up like iron saplings from floor to ceiling.

“On the right, at the end,” the officer said, then turned to settle into a hardback chair behind a small table where, when there happened to be full occupancy, a constant observer would be stationed. Currently the facility only contained a single guest.

It hadn’t taken Dan too much effort to talk his way past the desk sergeant with a vague story about having to question the suspect about an unrelated matter being investigated by LAPD. Cops, after all, tended to try and work together as smoothly as possible, regardless of jurisdiction, and that was something these small-town officers seemed to respect. He’d turned over his weapon and cuffs for safekeeping and followed the other officer down to this rather small-scale bit of Hell.

He moved straight down the short hallway, between the half dozen small cells, and stepped in front of the final enclosure to see John seated on the bunk, his shirt rumpled and stained, leaning forward with his forearms propped on his thighs and his head drooping.

“John?”

The other man’s head jerked up, his eyes catching sight of Dan, and he rose quickly to his feet, approaching the bars of the cell.

“Dan,” he sighed, relief flooding out with the word, “Thank Christ.”

“What’s up, John?” Dan said, casting his glance around himself. “What happened?”

John heaved another sigh, this one part exasperation, part prelude to a confession.

“I fucked up,” he said and gave a sad, tired grin.

Dan finally fixed on him, taking a moment to scan his rumpled appearance.

“You blew up a hot dog stand,” he said, almost flatly.

“No, I didn’t,” John protested, dismissively. “I couldn’t prevent that. I just stopped the rest of it.”

Dan expelled a weary breath.

“Okay, well, they think you blew up a hot dog stand. And it’s all over the news. So what’s going on?”

“It’s on the news?” John said, an edge of alarm in his voice.

Dan blinked at him, startled.

“Of course it’s on the news. John, they think you’re a terrorist.”

John’s mouth sagged open in shock.

“They think what?” he sputtered.

Dan raised an arm and gripped one of the cold bars, leaning on it.

“They think you tried to blow up the whole damn track as part of some terrorist thing,” he said.

“That’s bullshit!” John snapped, his voice beginning to tighten with panic. “I didn’t blow up anything! Hell, I saved that place! Well, most of it, at least.”

Dan raised his other hand and flapped it to quiet the man inside the small cell.

“Okay, just tell me what happened,” he said sternly.

John looked at him a moment, then stepped over to reach out and grip the bars, fixing his full attention on the officer on the free side of the barrier.

“Okay. I was watching the races, waiting for a decent win to come up…”

It took only a few minutes for John to recount the sequence of explosions that had ripped down along the length of the entire grandstand, the sudden panicked jump back, then the stunning realization that he had only minutes to either get the Hell out of there or try to do something, anything, to prevent what he had almost gotten himself caught in.

When he at last fell silent, Dan was eyeing him sharply, like a hawk trying to decide if it was worth diving on something a long way below.

“So,” John concluded, “That’s it. They cuffed me, brought me here, gave me one call, I called you. I didn’t really know who else to…”

His voice trailed off and he had to avert his eyes from where Dan regarded him.

Dan’s mind was already flipping through the mental file cards of stray information, trying to pull out those that might help in this situation.

“Okay,” he said at last, “I get what you’re saying. You saved a bunch of lives today. That’s good. But this is one Hell of a mess, you know that.”

John looked back at him, his brow furrowing slightly.

“Why?”

Dan gaped at him.

“John, they think you’re a terrorist.”

“But I’m not!”

“But they think you are. You’re being booked on Suspicion of Terror Activities and First Degree Murder.”

John’s eyes flared wide with stunned horror.

“Murder??”

Dan shot a glance back down the short corridor to where the guard was now seated leisurely in the chair by the heavy main door to the space.

“Three people died, John. In that hot dog stand thing.”

“But I didn’t cause that!”

“How can you prove it?”

“Dan, I told you, you know what I can do.”

Dan fixed on him for a long moment before replying quietly.

“I know,” he said, “What you told me you could do. But I’ve never actually seen it. I don’t know that you can actually do it.”

John stared back at him, dumbstruck, his mouth sagging open.

“Okay,” Dan went on, “For the sake of argument, let’s say you can actually do this jumping thing. And let’s say you did use it and stopped a much bigger disaster. How you gonna prove that to anybody?”

John’s expression was sinking into a blank mask hiding something horrible.

“They have you tampering with a gas main, and a few seconds later, a hot dog stand blows up and kills three people. If I was on that jury, I’d convict you.”

“Oh my God,” John sighed, a sudden weakness flooding over him.

“I’m sorry, John,” Dan said, “But I can’t do anything about this.”

“Oh God,” John moaned and began to shiver as if suddenly encased in the ice of Hell.

Dan stared at him uncomfortably, wondering what to do. Could this guy really do what he claims he can, he thought? Really move through time like that?

And what about himself? Had he won some insane cosmic lottery that had allowed him to stumble across two mega-jackpots in a row? First Roger, now maybe John as well? Had the universe changed that much while he wasn’t looking? Or had it always been this way and he was just blissfully unaware of it? After all, he mused, people used to believe the Sun went around the Earth. That was just as real and solid a fact for them as his belief it was the other way around.

So why not this, too?

“Let me think a minute,” he said quietly, his attention sinking down to where the ideas lurked.

John suddenly yanked himself away from the bars, as if attempting to endure something his mind was saying was inevitable, and whirled away in frustrated hopelessness as his eyes swept over the small, gray cell.

“Christ,” he hissed, bitterly. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Dan shrugged instinctively away from the sound, seeking to organize the dimmest flicker of a thought.

John turned quickly back.

“So what happens now?”

Dan had to consider this a moment before slowly shaking his head.

“I don’t know.”

John gaped at him, confusion flooding his eyes.

“You don’t know? You’re a cop, you’re supposed to know these things.”

Dan nodded sharply and managed to almost shake his head at the same moment.

“I’m a city cop, John. And this is terrorism, not some stickup. Normally, they’d have to indict you within twenty-four hours or release you. But this is totally different. As far as I know, they don’t have to do anything they don’t want to. They can keep you in here for months, if they want to… Years, for all I know.”

“Bullshit!” John snapped, a fleck of anger flying out with the words.

“It’s not bullshit, John!” Dan spit back, “It’s terrorism. That’s Federal. That’s Patriot Act. John, don’t you watch the news? They’ve got guys in custody that haven’t even seen a judge yet, and it’s been years since they got picked up.”

John’s face sagged in stunned shock.

“That can’t be legal,” he muttered.

“It’s terrorism, John,” Dan repeated. “They can pretty much do anything they want to you. And it’s perfectly legal.”

In the silence that sprinkled down over them, Dan could see the understanding flowing into John’s eyes, followed immediately by the first signs of an hysterical panic about to roar through the air.

“Jesus Christ,” John whispered, his voice beginning to tremble. “They can keep me here? Forever?”

“Not forever,” Dan cut in quickly, “But they can take their sweet time building a case against you. They can deny you legal representation, they can transport you offshore to a holding facility. They can do a lot of shit to you and there isn’t squat you can do to prevent it.”

John half leaned, half rushed to grip the bars, his knuckles going white, his face leaning in close, his eyes widening in a growing panic.

“You’ve got to help me. This is insane. I’m not a terrorist.”

“How do I know that, John?” Dan snapped, “You haven’t proven that to me. Or to anybody, have you? You could just be out of your fucking mind.”

John slowly doubled over, still gripping the bars, as if slowly being impaled.

Dan felt a jolt of remorse. He was this poor slob’s one phone call. And he just felt an obligation to try something. Anything.

“Now, it’s going to take some time but the investigation should uncover what caused the blast,” he said, trying to sound reasonable and calm. “If you really didn’t have anything to do with that – “

“I didn’t!” John bellowed.

“Shut the fuck up!” Dan snapped. “Just calm down. Let me finish.”

John seemed to suck back a string of words that had been about to explode from his lips, and nodded tightly.

“Go on,” he said.

Dan considered for a moment.

“If the investigation discovers that it really was an accident, really just a gas explosion and nobody’s fault, then you’re still going to have to explain how you knew it was going to happen and went wacko to shut down the gas main. What are you going to tell them?”

John considered an instant, then shrugged.

“I had a feeling,” he said, almost limply.

“Bullshit,” Dan responded. “No such thing. Not as far as any halfway decent prosecutor is concerned. You either knew or you didn’t know. Period.”

“Fine,” John spit, sourly, “I smelled the gas, then. How’s that, better?”

Dan hesitated, then gave a half-hearted shrug.

“Maybe. I don’t know. But they’re still going to try to take you apart about it, and if you slip up once, they’re just going to push a lot harder.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” John said, and now he was pleading. “You know I didn’t.”

Dan stared at him, the beginnings of something taking form out of the puzzle pieces of fact swirling around in his mind.

“Let me think a minute,” he said quietly.

John leaned against the bars, resting his forehead on his arm, his fist clenching and opening slowly.

“Dan, can you get me out of here? Just for a little bit? Just get me outside. If I can get outside I can jump and maybe – “

“Hell no!” Dan snapped, “That’s the worst goddamn thing you could do, don’t you see that? You want to be an
escaped
terrorist? You want to have every cop within a hundred miles looking for you? Cops who’d much rather just put a bullet in you and save the cost of a trial?”

“Then what can I do? Dan, I can’t stay in here. If I can’t get out of here…”

Dan regarded him, feeling a welling of sympathy.

“Can’t you do something?” John almost whined. “You’re a cop. Can’t you pull some strings?”

“John, I’m a street cop. I don’t have any strings. Not with something like this.”

The poor, dumb bastard, he thought. This was twice he had tried to do the so-called right thing, however his twisted mind defined that, and both times he’d wound up getting bitten on the ass for it.

“Not fair,” he heard John mutter, his voice trembling.

Dan looked up to see the younger man’s face, suddenly drawn, exhausted, pinched and quivering, the first tears just now spilling from his eyes.