Corrector (34 page)

“It’s complicated, and it’s going to take some explanation and faith on your part.”

“You’ve got my full attention for now, but I warn you that I’m not patient.  This had better be good.”

Jake nodded his understanding.  He listed a number of cases that Carlson and Laney had missed.  He could tell that Carlson was at least familiar with some of them.

“You’re saying you were responsible for killing these people.  Why?”

Jake selected one of the cases that Carlson had suspected him of being responsible for.  “He killed thirty-two that day,” Jake said calmly.

“Killed?  What are you talking about.  He didn’t kill anyone.  You shot him.  It looked like he was set up to do some killing, but he never got a chance.”

“He killed them before I knew he existed.  Before I shot him,” Jake said patiently.  “He also committed suicide afterwards.  The news carried the story, with the details of who he was and his background.  That’s how I knew about him.”

Carlson looked confused.

“I can back-track,” Jake explained.  “It’s a special ability that allows me to transfer my current memories back to an earlier version of myself.  I don’t know how or why it works, but it does.”

Jake explained what he could do, but avoided for the moment the limits.  They might be important, and he felt better not having his restrictions revealed.

Carlson stood suddenly, her face red, the annoyance clear.  “You’re either nuts or playing with me.”

“Test me,” Jake said urgently.  “I’ll prove it.”

“Test you?  How can I test you?”

“Tell me something only you know.  It has to be something that no one else could possibly know if this is to work.  I’ll back-track and reveal it to you when I come in.  Then we can have this conversation again.”

“This is silly!” Carlson objected.

“You wanted to know how I did it.  At least give me a chance to prove it.”

Carlson hesitated, then started to say something.

Jake held up a hand.  “It’s got to be a real secret, or it won’t work.  You won’t remember this conversation.  For you it will never have happened.”

For a second Jake thought Carlson wasn’t going to try, but then she shrugged.  She suddenly had an intuition that this man was serious and wasn’t playing games with her.  Uncharacteristically, she decided to take a chance and reveal something that she had long kept private.  Softly she told Jake something personal and secret.

“That should work,” Jake agreed.

“Now what?” Carlson asked, clearly uncomfortable with what she had revealed.

“Now we’ll see,” Jake said.  Then he back-tracked.

“This had better be worth my while,” Carlson said, the annoyance clear in her voice as Jake walked into the room and sat down.  Without waiting for their conversation to start as it had the last time, Jake softly repeated the secret he’d been given by Carlson.  The woman visibly paled.

“How the hell did you know that?” she asked, clearly shaken.

“You told me,” Jake said. 

“I never  . .”

“You did.  But you won’t remember.”  Jake explained the ability.

“That’s a little hard to swallow,” Carlson said after Jake explained about his back-tracking. 

“That’s why we are going through this little exercise,” Jake replied.  “Can you think of any way I could have learned what I just told you other than directly from you?”

Carlson was silent for a moment.  Finally she shook her head.  “No, I can’t.  But I don’t remember telling you and that bothers me.”

“You won’t ever tell me now.  That was something that happened later in a conversation that has now changed.  But, given what I’m telling you is true, the activities I’ve been involved with over the past couple of years should make a little more sense.”  Once again, Jake explained what the killings had been about.  He also told her about some of the incidents where he had been able to turn around situations without resorting to violence or killing.

“And the killing that got you in here?”

“That was a little different,” Jake admitted.  “Mr. Green was going to kill Mrs. Green, who is the mother of one of my friends.  My intent was to make her see what he was up to, then interrupt.  It went sour.  I was about to back-track and try it a different way when Mrs. Green, who doesn’t know me at all, smacked me in the head.  I was still out when the police arrived.  In addition, the blow did something that caused my ability to fade away for nearly a week.”

“But it’s back now?”

“It appears to be completely normal again.  I haven’t pressed the limits, but it worked for this little exercise.”

“I assume you have friends who know about this?  Probably your girlfriend, and maybe even the daughter of this Mrs. Green.  There had to be a reason you got involved there.  She must have come to you for help.”

“She did, but she doesn’t know that she did.  My actions predated her learning that her mother had been killed.”

Carlson shook her head in an attempt to fit the concepts together.

“Why are you telling me this now?  Even if I believe you, and I’m going to have to think about this a while, you’re still guilty of multiple murders.”

“I could have helped with Atlanta if I’d known about what happened there.  If you or someone knew what I could do you could have come to me.”

“And you could have done what?”

“What if you had known it was going to happen a couple of days in advance?”

“You’d have had a devil of a time trying to convince anyone of that,” Carlson said.

“You understand what I’ve been up against then,” Jake replied.

“The effort to conduct a proper search would have been huge, but if one knew for certain that the bomb was there, it would have been worth it and would have saved all those lives and the city itself.  It’s likely Atlanta will have to be totally abandoned.”

Jake watched as Carlson thought it through. 

“You said you could have helped.  If you can go back like you claim, what’s the problem?”

“There are limits.  I can only go back so far.”  Jake didn’t like admitting to the limits, but there was no way to avoid admitting to this particular restriction.  “It’s been longer than I’ve ever been able to back-track in the past.  It gets harder the further back I have to go.  The opportunity is past.  But if something like this ever happens again, at least you’ll know.”

“This is too much,” Carlson finally said.  “I need to think about this. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Jake nodded.  He hadn’t expected immediate acceptance.  It might take a while, but he’d make Carlson see.  Maybe he could even get Carlson to back him some way.  The government could do that if they wanted.  His ability would more than likely be seen as valuable enough.  As a minimum, this might be a way to get out of here and someplace he could find a loophole they didn’t see and at least get away.  He didn’t kid himself they would never stop looking for him if he did escape.

The next morning Carlson sent for him early.  Once again they sat down across from one another at the same table. 

“I think there are things you aren’t telling me.  The reason you haven’t escaped is because you can’t go back far enough to get to a time when you weren’t here in the jail?”

Jake nodded.

“Why didn’t you slip away when you first came here?”

“I told you.  My ability was temporarily compromised.  I couldn’t use it.  By the time I got it back, it was too late.”

“Something doesn’t make sense to me.  Now that you have the ability back, why don’t you just jump back part way, then jump back again.  Eventually you should get to where you can get to yourself outside the jail.”

Carlson looked at him smugly.  She was certain she had caught Jake in a trap.”

Of course Carlson couldn’t know it didn’t work that way, and she didn’t know that Jake was limited by distance.  Jake wasn’t ready to reveal that little tidbit just yet.  It might be the one thing that would work for him down the road.

“To start with, if I back-tracked a week, I’d be back into the period where my ability was impaired.  That would end what you are assuming right there.  But equally important, I can’t piggyback jumps like that.”

“You’ve never double hopped, so to speak?”

“Never,” Jake said positively.  “Most of what I do only requires a short jump, less than five days.  More than that starts making my headaches almost unmanageable.  Even the shorter jumps aren’t always fun.  After a jump, I’m in no mood to consider another.  The need has never come up.”

Even as he explained Jake couldn’t help think how stupid he’d been.  Would it be possible?  Why hadn’t he ever tried a pair of five day back-tracks to replace a single ten-day?  Did he have an ability he didn’t realize?”

“Christ!” he blurted suddenly. “San Francisco!”

“What about San Francisco?”

“It was a mess,” Jake said as he tried to think.  “I had to make several loops to get things to work out.  I’d never done that before and was a little surprised it worked.”

“It was you then.  I wondered.  What happened there?  The reports say someone called in a potential threat the day before, but nothing happened.  Then they found the bodies the next day a few miles away.”

“He killed a bunch of people at Ghirardelli.  My girlfriend was one of them.  We tried to change it by calling the police, but because one of them was a cop, they knew and simply aborted.  Then they repeated at the new location.  I knew the police wouldn’t believe another call after the first was a bust.  I had to stop him.”

“Something else happened though.  What?”

“Just a minute.  I’m thinking.”

Then Jake had it.  He had gone back to Reno to get help from his friends.  Then he had backtracked again.  Carefully he counted the days.  From the time he first back-tracked to the farthest he went back was . . . .thirteen days!  Jake checked his memories again.  No.  That was right.  He had actually gone back more than ten days.  Why hadn’t he realized that?  Maybe because he had been so caught up in rescuing Karin.

He explained to Carlson what he was recalling.

“So you might be able to get back far enough to impact the events in Atlanta?”

“Give me a piece of paper and a pencil,” Jake demanded.

When it arrived Jake blocked out the days since he’d been clobbered and arrested.  This might just work.

“If I can really do the linked back-tracks, then it should be possible.  I can get back and being careful, I should be able to reach a point where I can warn someone.  That’s if the headaches don’t impair me too badly.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do about them?”

“There’s no way to arrange for aspirin for days that are past.  I think my plan would be go try five day jumps and add them up.”

“There’s a problem though.  Once I’m there, convincing someone to listen is going to be difficult.”

“Have them call me.  I’ll come.”

“You would now.  You probably won’t then.  That was right after I refused to speak with you and your partner.  You had left annoyed for somewhere.  I don’t see you hurrying back.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“The best thing would be for me to contact you before my arrest.  I could reveal a lot to you under better circumstances.  It also would allow me to undo this mess I’m in.”

“So, what’s the problem?  From your list here, it looks to me that a final ten-day jump would take you back to the time before this all started.”

Except Jake was still in jail and too far from himself to make the jump.  He’d have to tell Carlson.  If she wouldn’t help, he could always undo the revelation.

“There’s another problem, he said reluctantly.  “I’m limited by range.  The jump length is just barely within my capability, but being here in Los Angeles is too far from where I was at that earlier date.  I wouldn’t be able to make the jump.”

“You’re saying you would have to be out of jail and able to get physically closer to where you were arrested?”

Jake nodded.

“No one’s going to let you out back then.  You were an uncooperative prisoner.”

“I’d have to escape,” Jake said.  He knew he would make the attempt and try and warn people regardless, but if there was some way to get out, he’d have a better chance for both himself and the people in Atlanta.

Carlson was thinking.  She looked at Jake suspiciously.

“This sounds like a cute way for you to get away.  However, consider this.  Suppose you knew your way around the facility, and you knew the door access codes so you could slip outside the controlled area.  Then, if you could shed that distinctive orange outfit, you might have a chance.  I could give you a tour and give you the codes.  I’ll warn you that they change the codes on a daily basis.  If you can really do what you say, then the older codes will be of use.  They won’t help you now if this is some kind of a game because the codes in use at the moment are all different.”

“That might work,” Jake agreed.  “A lot of “ifs” are involved here.  I still don’t know if I can link the back-tracks, especially that many.  If I get back there, I’ll have to find a way to get loose, then out of the facility.”