Convergence Point (18 page)

“It
is
ridiculous,” Sam said. “But so are birds that can't fly, giraffes, and someone named Zoe Frillmumper running for president of France—­but they all exist.”

Mac went to the morgue cooler and rolled out Jane Doe.

Sam picked up the name tag that read S
AMANTHA
R
OSE
and tossed it in the recycler angrily. “We can't call her Jane Doe. We already worked a Jane Doe case. Jane is Jane. This is . . .” She stared at Mac waiting for help.

“Jane the Second? Jana Doe? Jillian Doe?” Mac shrugged. “We both know it's you again.”

“Again?” Edwin's voice cracked into a squeak. “How many times have you done this, ma'am?”

“This?” Sam pointed at her doppelganger on the autopsy cart. “Dying? This is the second time I've seen a corpse that looked exactly like me. It's not like I make it a hobby or anything.”

“That's two more than most ­people see,” Mac said.

She rolled her eyes and refrained from punching his shoulder. “Let's pretend we don't know this is me. What we have here is an unidentified woman in her midtwenties to midthirties who was the victim of a hit-­and-­run accident, possibly in a stolen vehicle. We need facts, boys, not guesses.”

Mac and Edwin both nodded, one looking grim, the other looking terrified.

“Edwin, pop quiz: In a case like this, what is the first thing you do?”

“Check for identity carried on the victim such as a citizen ID card, driver's license, or passport. But none of those were found at the scene of the crash.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Mac?”

“Check the car for prints, see if there is security footage covering the area, then check the missing-­persons database to see if Jane matches anyone on the list.” He looked at Edwin. “Solve the murder first and get the killer off the street. Identity cards can be forged or stolen. It takes five minutes and a pair of scissors to make something that will pass a cursory inspection.”

“Exactly,” Sam said. “Although I'd really love to know why this lady had my car. Edwin, get me the security tapes from the body shop. See if they think they have my car still or if she came in and impersonated me. If they gave the car to her, find out how she paid for the repairs. We might be able to backtrack and see where she's been.”

Edwin made a note on his datpad and nodded. “I'll call you as soon as I have information, ma'am.”

As the heavy door clicked shut behind him, she let the gut-­churning sensation of fear creep over her. Bile crawled up her throat at the sight of the dead body, and she turned away. “How long do you think she's been wandering around our iteration?”

“I'm not sure there's a way of knowing,” Mac said. “You could go around asking ­people if they've seen a lady who looks like you wearing a purple jacket.”

Sam closed her eyes and swore under her breath. At this point, a few more Hail Marys for blasphemy were the least of her worries.

Mac raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“The lady who rented a storage unit to Henry Troom said a lady in a purple jacket came in asking questions. She thought the woman was a reporter.”

“You think it was Jane?”

“Jillian,” Sam said. “The first one was Jane Doe. This one is Jillian Doe. The lady said the ‘reporter' was wearing purple, speaking with a heavy Spanish accent, and drove a gray Alexian Virgo which she drove into the pylons.”

“Ah, well, that explains the vandalism at least,” Mac said. He looked at the cold body on the table.

Her
body, swelling from decomposition, bruised and bloody from the crash. She looked away.

Mac cleared his throat. “So . . . our Mystery Sam is more of a Juanita than a Jane?”

“Maybe.” She rubbed her aching neck with a cold hand. “Put her in the machine. Let's get the autopsy going.”

“Are you sure you want to stay for this?” Mac asked.

“We could be barking up the wrong tree, you know. I can think of at least one very plausible explanation for all of this that doesn't involve time travel at all.”

He looked dubiously at her. “You know a Spaniard who wants you dead?”

“Maybe not dead, but my mother would love for me to forget about the bureau and time machines. It wouldn't be hard to find a woman my height and skin color in Madrid. A little cosmetic surgery . . .” Sam shrugged. “My mother likes mind games. She wouldn't be above ruining my career by sending an imposter to start a scandal or destroy the evidence so she can gaslight me.”

Mac was watching her intently.

“What?”

“You're getting more paranoid than I am. That's not good.”

She rolled her eyes. “Just get me a DNA sample and her age.”

“She's not a countdown clock,” Mac said. “You can't estimate the time of your death based on her accident. I don't think that's how the timelines work.”

“Really?” The autopsy scanner clicked shut and hummed softly. She turned around and looked at the metal coffin. “Does she have a healed fracture on her left ankle?”

“Sam . . .”

“Does she?”

Lips pressed into a flat line Mac checked the readout. “Yes, there's sign of a fracture.”

“And her other scars and injuries? How many of those are going to line up?”

“I don't know. I can't even compare Alabama Jane to Florida Jane because of the damage Alabama Jane took in the accident!”

“I hate those names.”

Mac gave her sideways look of frustration. “Noted.”

“Gene scan?”

“Unofficially, you. Officially, I'm going to run the tests through the Birmingham lab.”

“Orlando has a good gene lab.”

“But I know the ­people at Birmingham, and I know they can run all the tests I need done the way I want them done.” He frowned. “I'm half-­tempted to take this whole case to Chicago and run the tests there myself.”

“That's not a bad idea.” He was brittle. This was a trigger in too many, she could see that. The PTSD that had driven him into depression and self-­abuse was only a breath away.

Mac gave her a narrow-­eyed look that managed to convey disgust, disbelief, and a general unwillingness to give an inch on his position.

“I'm serious. This is the end of the case. Juanita has been here long enough to steal my car, twice, so that's handled. She took my car when she saw an opportunity. She worked with Troom to build a new machine, so she could get back, and she died. No one is targeting me.”

“But why does she come back at all? Henry dies from a gunshot nine months after the gun is fired. Nealie dies, what, fifteen years after the car accident that should have killed him. This extra agent dies in a car accident, so what? Who killed her? Who killed Bradet? You're going to tell me you don't think this isn't tied to his murder?” He was inches away and fuming.

“Don't be snarky with me!”

“I will be as snarky as I want! I saw you in a morgue today, Sam. Dead.”

“Exactly.” She stepped away taking a deep breath. “Let's face it, I'm very good at ending up dead.”

“That's not funny.”

“I'm not laughing. I'm saying you should go home.”

Mac's eyes narrowed with outrage.

Sam held her ground. “You're ready to break, and I'm not letting you do that to yourself. You're still recovering. This isn't going to help. It would be irresponsible of me, as a senior agent, to let you stay. It would be selfish as your friend to ask you to stay.”

He rolled his shoulders back, ready to fight.

“The threat's past,” Sam said. “Now it's time for me to pick up the pieces. There's an APB out on Donovan. He can't hide forever.

“I don't like the report I'll have to write for Henry, but I will, and I'll send it to Director Loren with most of it blacked out. He'll use sarcasm and grind his teeth, but it won't kill my career. Nealie and Miss Doe here weren't killed by Marrins. If Miss Doe killed Nealie, then there is evidence in this mess somewhere. I'll find it.”

“I'm not leaving, Sam.”

She crossed her arms across her chest. “I'll be calling Chicago within the hour to tell them we're booking you a flight home. I'm a big girl. I can arrest reckless drivers all by myself. Your job isn't to protect me, Mac. You've got that Captain United look in your eye. Reel it in.”

“I am not a fragile flower in need of protection, Agent Rose.” He ground her name out like a curse.

Sam crossed her arms across her chest. “And I'm not a monster who's willing to hurt you, Agent MacKenzie.” Two could play the name game. Mac was hot stuff, but he couldn't out-­Prim her even on his best day.

He took a deep breath, nostrils flaring, and shrugged. “Fine. Call Chicago.”

She glared at him. This was definitely a trick.

“I already put in for leave. Told them I wanted to use up some of my vacation days.”

“You cannot vacation in my morgue!”

His face lit up with a wicked grin. “Watch me.”

Sam put her hands on her hips. The power pose didn't help. “You are such a stubborn cuss some days!” He smiled. “I swear, MacKenzie, why can't you listen to reason?”

“I'm being perfectly reasonable.”

“I'm very tempted to handcuff you to a piece of furniture until this is over,” Sam said
. Saints and angels, this man would tempt Mother Mary to swear. “
I just . . . I don't want you hurt.”

“I won't be.” He stepped forward and pulled her gently into a hug. “Listen, I'll be fine, Sam. If I can't handle it, I'll let you know. But we make a great team. Let me help you.” Lips brushed across her forehead in a tender kiss.

She leaned against him for a moment longer than was appropriate for an office setting, then broke away.

“Fine—­let's find out how I keep dying.”

 

CHAPTER 14

No matter what we want to believe, we cannot change the past. We can change the world around us, but our own personal histories never change. I can't undo what I did ten years ago. Going back and stopping my younger self doesn't change my history, it only splinters the world's future.

~ excerpt from
Thoughts on Einselection
by Saree Tong I1—­2076

Wednesday March 26, 2070

Florida District 8

Commonwealth of North America

Iteration 2

S
am walked the perimeter of the conference room, trying to see the individual details of the paintings collected from Henry's storage unit instead of seeing them as a whole. The problem was that they were a cohesive whole. Ordered by the dates on the back, the large paintings created a complete cityscape that bled from futuristic metropolis to decaying wasteland in a faded rainbow of colors.

Mac propped his feet on the table and leaned his chair back on two legs. “This is a mess.”

“We'll tag them as evidence and store them later.”

“That's not what I'm talking about.”

“They're paintings, Mac, not windows into another world or glimpses of the future.”

“Wanna bet money on that?”

She looked over her shoulder and glared at him. “There's a connection here. Miss Doe did not wind up in this iteration—­in my car—­by accident. Henry had the answer to how she got here. If we have a How and When, we might find a Why. Once I have a Why, I'll have the killer.”

“I'm glad to see you let the reckless-­driver thing drop,” Mac said.

They'd argued about the case over dinner, and again after their morning run. Life would be so much less complicated if the deaths weren't tied together, but neither she nor Mac was a believer in coincidences. Not anymore. “I'm not ruling out reckless driver yet. But I'm thinking more about timelines at the moment, trying to figure out who saw what when.”

Mac tapped his pen on the table. “Did you get the sheriff to confirm he'd seen Edwin's pirate at the cemetery?”

“Not yet. I'm waiting for him to call me back.”

There was a knock at the conference-­room door, and Agent Edwin shuffled in, sidling past the art blocking the main door. “Good morning?” He looked around the room in confusion.

“How'd your bedtime reading go?” Sam asked, nodding to Henry's notebook that Edwin had in his hand.

“Um.” Edwin scratched his head. “There is nothing in here that you are going to want to hear.”

“Really?” She raised an eyebrow.

Edwin shrugged. “It's nonsense. Just ramblings about dreams and calculations for things that don't exist. It's . . .”

“Nonsense?” Sam offered. Edwin nodded. “Henry wasn't insane,” Mac said.

“You wouldn't get that from his journal.” Edwin slid the book across the tabletop to Mac. “He wrote in pen on dead-­tree paper, which gives you a hint of where his mental state was.”

Mac frowned in confusion. “He liked vintage style?”

“He was paranoid,” Edwin said. ­“People who don't use electronics are always paranoid that someone is after their secrets. But the thing is, there are no secrets in here. He was documenting his nightmares. All you can glean from this is that Dr. Troom needed to see a therapist.”

“What did he dream about?” Sam asked.

“Dying.” Edwin shrugged.

“We got that from skimming it,” Mac said. “What else did you see?”

“Notes on convergence events and decoherence. Sounds physics-­y, but it was just scribbled in the margins. I thought they were partial notes from a lab project.”

Mac flipped the book over onto the surface of the smart table and did something. A moment later, a picture of sine waves weaving in and around each other appeared on the conference-­room screen. “This drawing appears on multiple pages,” Mac said. He touched his screen and enlarged the picture. “Look here, where multiple sine waves hit the same point on the graph? Troom called it a Convergence Event.”

Sam sat down and pulled her own tablet out. “All right. So what's a Decoherence Event according to Henry? Is that when these iterations pull apart?”

Mac flipped through the pages. “Doesn't look like it. He has the timelines moving apart labeled as an Expansion Event.”

Edwin sighed. “The first two pages have drawings and the word ‘decoherence,' ” he said as he took a seat at the table. “It made my head ache,” he added with a guilty look at Sam.

She shrugged. “Physics wasn't my best class either.”

“It doesn't make any sense!” Edwin said in frustration. “Time is linear. It moves forward. You don't just have multiple timelines.”

“It's the Many Worlds Hypothesis,” Mac said. “The theory that anything that can happen does happen in some variable universe. Dr. Emir called them iterations of time, and that's the school of thought Henry was working from.”

“What I don't get is
why
,” Sam said. “He knew this theory killed Emir, so why go and try to re-­create the past mistake?”

Edwin and Mac both stared at her as if she just grown a second head.

“What am I missing?”

“Why does anyone try to re-­create a scenario?” Mac asked. “Why does your brain replay embarrassing scenes from high school at 3
A.M.
? Why do you go to the place you went on your first date on the anniversary of the day you broke up?”

Sam shook her head. “I don't know.”

“You do it because you want to change something. Emir created the machine to pass messages, to stop tragedies like terrorist attacks. Marrins wanted to use the machine to change the nationhood vote. Troom . . .” Mac shrugged. “What one event do you think he wanted to change the most?”

Sam bit her lip as the truth slowly took shape. “Emir's death. If Henry could have changed one thing, that would have been it, right? To go back and save his mentor?”

“He had everything he needed,” Mac said.

Edwin cleared his throat. “So, the bullet? From the original crime scene in Alabama? Are you saying Dr. Troom was shot with his mentor?”

Mac raised an eyebrow and shrugged in a sort of what-­else-­is-­there? way. “It fits the facts.”

Sam pushed her tablet across the table in disgust. “The backlash of the machine's collapsing would have created enough force to cause the lab explosion.”

“Lots of little electrical fires as the collapsing time wave short-­circuited the tech in the room. Friction burns.” Mac shook his head. “Cause of death? Arrogance and stupidity.”

“Stupid idiot. What makes anyone think messing around with time travel is a good idea?” Sam frowned at Henry's notebook like it was about to bite her.

“Most ­people make mistakes,” Mac said. “They have things they want to undo.”

She reached for her tablet and made a mark next to Henry's name. Case closed. “Fine. Henry was an idiot. This will be super fun to explain at the next district meeting.”

“It's all classified,” Mac said. “What are the chances they won't ask too many questions?”

“Poor.” That was not a day she was looking forward to. Director Loren hadn't gotten to his current position by not asking questions. Her fists clenched at the thought of the fight they were likely to have.

Edwin cleared his throat. “Um. I'm going to go see if the lobby has any donuts left. You want some?”

“Chocolate glazed,” Sam said.

“Anything but cake donuts or strawberry frosting,” Mac said, as Edwin hurried away. “Did we scare him?”

“Maybe a little.” She sighed. “This doesn't feel right, you know?”

“Of course it doesn't—­you didn't get to lock up the killer. A murder case where the shooter was dead before the shooting is not something they cover in the academy textbooks.”

“It's more than that.” Sam stood and started pacing past the paintings. “I feel like . . . I'm working the wrong case, maybe? That I'm looking at this and seeing the wrong thing. Like in Alabama. A break-­in didn't quite make sense, but we ran with the idea because there was no other explanation.”

Mac rested his elbows on the table. “You think we're missing a bigger crime?”

“Not a crime, a threat. This is a threat,” Sam said, gesturing to the paintings. “There's something here. Bits and pieces, and I put the puzzle together wrong.”

She stared at the paintings of Alabama. “There was this book when I was a kid with this fuzzy blue guy scared of the monster on the last page. You turned the pages, and at the end, the guy is standing alone.”

“Is this a ‘you have nothing to fear but fear itself' thing?” Mac asked

“More of an existential thing. Only you can destroy you. You are the real monster.” Sam walked toward the gray landscape.

“And you bring this up because?”

“Because this was a story. Emir was trying to tell a story with his painting. We know how this story ends.” She stopped in front of the first gray portrait of Iteration 1. “It's the story of Sam, and, spoiler alert! Sam dies.”

“
A
Sam dies,” Mac said. “One possible you.”

“Jane died. I died. Then I died again. In, what? Three years? Two? A car crash is better than torture, but I'm still dead. Can you hear the clock going ticktock? I'm going to die, sooner rather than later. I know how. I know where. I've got a good guess as to why, but I'm missing the
who
.”

“Spoiler alert, Sam: everyone dies! That's what ‘THE END' means. Life isn't Happily Ever After and riding off into the sunset. Life is death. You die. I die. We all die. Doesn't matter. All that matters is that you die knowing you did something.”

“What I want to do is find my killer and put him in the ground. I feel like raging against the dying light.”

“Well. Good. Juanita Doe is a homicide, let's solve it. It's one more death in the ten thousand.”

“The what?”

“Every life is ten thousand deaths. You've never heard it before?” Mac asked. Sam shook her head. “You exist because of death. ­People who lived and died and in between had children who lived and died as your ancestors. All the plants and animals you consume. They die so you can live. Ten thousand deaths, and the goal is to make your death one of the ten thousand that brings a new and better life to the world. ”

Sam frowned. “Ten thousand? That sounds low. If we're talking about every lettuce leaf or grain of rice, ten thousand barely covers a week.”

“It's a poem. It's meant to be metaphorical.”

“Terrible poem. That's going to bother me, you know. Instead of wondering about sodium content of my dinner, I'm going to wonder how many trees I've killed before they could grow because I'm eating almond slices. Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

“We have a problem,” Edwin said as he slammed the door open.

“No donuts?” Mac asked.

“There's a guy who sent a thing to the news saying he killed you, ma'am,” Edwin said as he gulped in air.

“A guy sent a thing?” Sam raised an eyebrow.

Edwin waved his hand. “A video thingy? It's playing on the channels downstairs, and the office phone keeps ringing. There's a news crews outside!”

Sam shut her eyes. “Of course there is.”

“What are we supposed to do?” Edwin asked.

“I'm going to go down and hold a press conference. I'll tell everyone I'm not dead. And then I'm going to schedule a meeting with the regional director and explain this.”

“Does the regional director have the security clearance for this?” Mac asked.

“He's going to have to get that expedited.”

T
here was quite the crowd outside when Sam arrived. Traditional camera ­people and reporters were vying for spots with the automated media bots, all creating a ruckus that would put a rowdy preschool to shame. The head of the WIC office glared at Sam and told her the CBI was not invited to this year's Christmas party. Sam just adjusted her blazer and painted on a sardonic smile.

She stepped out into the sunshine, briefly wishing she were home in Toronto, and raised her hand. “Quiet down please. Thank you. Thank you for responding so promptly. Our field office had just received the news of the death threat when the junior agent noticed you gathering.” She didn't add that a flock of vultures had more decorum. Saints and angels knew she'd gotten an earful after snapping at a reporter during the trial last summer in Alabama. “Now, if we can do this in an orderly fashion, I'd like to answer your questions and get back to work. Let's not waste the taxpayer's time. First question?”

A woman in a red blouse raised her hand at a fraction of the speed of light. “Mandy Martin, Channel 9 news. Is it true that your car was in an accident this morning?”

“Yes,” Sam said. “My vehicle was taken from the repair shop by an unidentified woman. She was subsequently in a fatal hit-­and-­run accident. The police are working with the CBI to identify the driver of the other vehicle.”

A man crowding his way to the front jumped in as she took a breath. “Agent Rose, is it true that you are a clone?”

She raised both her eyebrows. “No. Are you from Channel 2?”

“Stach Christel, Channel two evening news, in-­depth reports on everything you need to know,” the reporter rattled off in a single breath. “You were accused of being a clone a few months ago. Do you still deny it?”

“I do. My blood work was made public and tested by independent labs,” Sam said, teeth grinding together as she smiled.

Another hand. “Richone Lawley. Agent Rose, was the woman killed in the hit-­and-­run this morning your shadow?”

“No,” Sam said. “I don't own a shadow. I don't support cloning though I do continue to openly support clone rights and equality. The victim of this morning's accident has yet to be identified, but we will be doing genetic testing.”