Killing Time (15 page)

“Well, hello,” Mr. Davis said. “I thought one of the deputies was driving Knox’s car.”

“You were supposed to stay in the car,” Knox said, his tone cool.

“You told me to stay in the car,” Nikita corrected just as coolly. “You called me a robot because I wouldn’t have sex with you, so why would I do what you tell me?”

Knox made a choked sound, one echoed by his father. She couldn’t believe what had come out of her mouth in front of his father, but she just didn’t care. Nothing and no one had ever hurt her as much as Knox Davis had, and he hadn’t even been trying. It wasn’t even his fault; he couldn’t have known that his choice of words would slam her into a wall of reality and leave her battered. She turned to Mr. Davis and held out her hand. “Hello, I’m Nikita Stover.”

His father took her hand. “Kelvin Davis. Pleased to meet you.” He sounded distracted, a tone that instantly vanished when he turned to his son. “Knox!”

“I didn’t— I mean, I did ask you if you were a robot,” Knox said to her, “but it wasn’t—”

“Why would you say something like that?” his father demanded.

“It was a bunch of other things,” he finished raggedly.

“Oh, yes, I remember now. I don’t get angry, I don’t laugh, and I don’t get turned on. Two out of three is really good, I suppose, but
guess which one you’re wrong about
!”

Mr. Davis shoved his hand through his hair, uncomfortably shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He obviously wished he weren’t in the middle of this. “Uh—are you two dating, or something?”

“No,” Nikita said.

“Then how would he—?” The older man faltered to a halt.

Borne along on the flood tide of despairing rage, Nikita finished the sentence for him. “How would he know whether or not I get turned on?”

“Nikita, stop,” Knox said.

“Don’t tell me to stop!” She whirled to face him. “I’ve been
stopped
my whole life, afraid to do this, afraid to do that, afraid someone will think I’m too much trouble.” To her horror, her voice clogged and tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t cry,” she said fiercely. “I’m afraid to even cry.”

“I can see that.” His voice was gentle now. “You don’t need to cry. If you’re mad at me, hit me. Come on, double up your fist and plant your best shot on my chin.”

“Knox!” Mr. Davis protested.

“Don’t patronize me,” she said with muffled fury, her hands already curling into fists.

“If it’ll make you feel better, go ahead and hit me.”

It would, so she did. He didn’t know what he was asking for. Nikita didn’t telegraph her punch; she tightened the muscles in her arm and back the way she’d been taught and shot her arm straight out from her shoulder in a lightning fast, twisting motion. The punch landed solidly on Knox’s left jaw and he staggered back, then abruptly fell on his ass.

“Holy shit,” he said, holding his jaw.

15

“Damn,” said Kelvin Davis, staring at his son sitting on the ground. “You pack a punch, Miss Stover. Or should I say Ms.?”

She had read about the twentieth-century forms of address, preserved in business etiquette books that hadn’t been digitalized, so she knew what he was talking about. “Call me Nikita.” She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the heels of her palms, then said to Knox, “Are you going to get up, or just sit there all night?”

“Depends on whether or not you’re planning on hitting me again,” he replied. “If you are, I’ll just stay down here, thank you.”

“Don’t be such a large baby,” she snapped. “You’ve been pushing me around all day and I’ve been telling you and
telling
you—”

“That you’ve been letting me do it, yeah, I remember. And it’s ‘big baby,’ not ‘large baby.’ ” Warily he climbed to his feet, making certain he kept out of striking distance.

“
Big, large,
it all means the same.” She was too upset to care if she’d made another language error. Events had unraveled;
she
had unraveled, to the point that it didn’t make a difference to her now.

“You should probably come in and put some ice on your jaw,” Kelvin said to Knox.

“Thanks, I will. I can just hear the guys tomorrow if I go to work with a big bruise on my face.”

Kelvin turned politely to Nikita, extending his hand toward the house. “After you.”

Nikita strode ahead of the two men, her thoughts and emotions still in turmoil. She could tell that on some level she didn’t understand, both Knox and his father thought it was funny that she’d actually hit him. The violence hadn’t relieved any of the pent-up emotion inside her; she wanted to hit him again, she wanted to cry, she wanted to scream her frustration to the skies.

The back porch light was on, and when they reached the house, she was able to tell it was a one-level redbrick home, far from new, with orderly bushes surrounding the foundation. The porch seemed to have been added on later, because it was made of wood and painted white. Kelvin opened a creaky screened door and ushered them onto the porch, then opened a wooden door that led, like in Knox’s house, into the kitchen.

“Lynnette!” he called. “Company!”

“Is it Knox?” The voice preceded the woman who hurried in from another room. She stopped when she saw Nikita, immediately looking at her husband for an introduction or explanation, whichever seemed necessary.

“This is Nikita Stover, Knox’s—uh—friend. Nikita, my wife, Lynnette.”

“I’m pleased to meet you,” both Nikita and Lynnette said at the same time. Lynnette was a comfortable fifty-something, attractively plump, with short red hair. She had a kind face, and an air of competence.

“Knox needs some ice for his jaw,” said Kelvin.

“What happened?” Even as she asked, Lynnette was already going to the refrigeration unit, opening the side door and pulling out a package of something blue.

“Nikita knocked me on my ass,” replied Knox.

Lynnette took a thin kitchen towel from a drawer and wrapped it around the blue pack, then gave it to Knox, who placed it against his left jaw. “On purpose?” she asked.

“Oh yeah.” Knox pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. “I asked her to hit me.”

“You were probably expecting a girl-slap,” Lynnette said shrewdly.

“Probably,” he agreed.

“That wasn’t what you got.”

He chuckled. “I’ll know better next time. She packs a Mike Tyson wallop.”

He was laughing, Nikita thought.
Laughing.
Her insides were quivering and she thought she might be sick. Not because she’d hit him; he’d both asked for it and deserved it. In fact, she wanted to hit him again for laughing. Instead she stood frozen, staring out the kitchen window even though she couldn’t see a thing outside.

“Sit down,” Kelvin said to her, pulling out a chair and gently guiding her into it. “Would you like something to drink? Water? Milk? Maybe coffee?”

“Nothing, thank you,” she said.

Knox swiveled in his chair and leaned toward her, blue gaze searching her face. She didn’t know what he was looking for; some metal poking through her skin, maybe. He’d look in vain; metal hadn’t been used in robot construction in over a hundred years.

“Let me see your hand.”

He didn’t give her time to comply, already reaching for her right hand and cradling it in his as he examined it. Her knuckles were red and already swelling, and there was a tiny split on one. “Ouch,” he said. “Your hand is going to be worse than my jaw. Lynnette, do you have another ice pack?”

“No, but I can make do. I have some frozen peas.” His stepmother again retrieved a bag from the refrigeration unit, and wrapped it in a towel. “Let’s see,” she said, taking Nikita’s hand from his and carefully placing the cold pack over her knuckles, then tying the ends of the towel in a knot at her palm.

Nikita inhaled sharply at the biting cold, which seemed to intensify the throbbing in her hand. Stupid. She had been so stupid, injuring her hand when she knew she had to be in top shape for the investigation. She couldn’t let herself forget why she was here, or that the mission was far more important than her feelings.

“What’s this about?” Lynnette asked, sitting down. “I know I shouldn’t ask, but I’m curious, and you
are
both sitting in my kitchen holding ice packs to various parts.”

Kelvin snorted. “According to Nikita, she wouldn’t sleep with Knox and he called her a robot.”

“Slug him again,” Lynnette promptly advised Nikita.

Nikita struggled against tears again. She had to stop being so emotional; she had to control herself until she was alone, at least. “I regret my inappropriate action,” she said, her throat tight.

“If he called you a robot, the action wasn’t inappropriate. I’d say it was downright restrained.” Lynnette narrowed her gaze at Knox. “
Did
you?”

“In a way. Not exactly. There was another discussion going on at the time.”

“And you aren’t going to say what the other discussion was.”

“No, I’m not.” His tone was mild, but final. “And for the record, you don’t know anything about Nikita. You haven’t met her, never heard of her. She was supposed to stay in the car so you two wouldn’t see her, but that didn’t happen. She’s incognito, because her life depends on it. If you see her in the street, I’ll introduce you using a different name for her, but don’t act as if you recognize her, okay?”

Both Kelvin and Lynnette nodded. It was obvious that questions were bubbling on Lynnette’s tongue, but she held them back. Instead she brought out the age-old mother’s question: “Have y’all had supper yet? Let me warm up something real quick for you.”

“Thanks, but we’ve already eaten,” said Knox, smiling with genuine affection at her. “And we need to be going.”

“But you just got here.”

“We’re on a case together, and we still have a lot of legwork to do tonight.”

“Depends on your definition of ‘legwork,’ ” Kelvin muttered under his breath, earning an admonishing look from his wife and making Knox grin.

“The official kind,” he told his father. He stood and put the ice pack on the table. “Thanks for the first aid.”

“Take it with you,” said Lynnette. “You have an automatic transmission; you can drive with your right hand and hold the ice pack with your left. Keep it on there for fifteen minutes, then off for fifteen, then on again. Keep doing that and you might not even have a bruise. And definitely take that pack of peas with you, because her hand will be in worse shape than your jaw.”

Knox nodded and picked up the ice pack again. Going to Lynnette, he bent and kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks again. You’re an acceptable stepmother.”

She grinned and patted his arm. “I guess you’re an acceptable stepson.”

Nikita stood and added her thank-yous, then followed Knox out the door. Kelvin and Lynnette stood in the doorway and watched them walk to the car; when they reached it, Kelvin turned off the porch light and closed the door.

In the sudden dark privacy, Nikita felt even more disconnected than before. She got in the passenger seat, while Knox slid behind the wheel. He tried to, anyway, banging his knees on the steering column and swearing under his breath as he moved the seat back enough to accommodate his long legs.

“That went well,” he remarked. “Now they know about you, and they think I’m a jerk.”

She wanted to say something along the lines of “The truth will come out” or “If the shoe fits,” but clichés didn’t appeal to her at the moment. She just sat silently as he started the car and reversed into the yard, making a three-point turn.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asked when they reached the road and he turned the car toward town.

She paused, gathering her thoughts. “When we get to your house, I’m going to sit down and draw up another time-line chart, list everything I know about Taylor Allen’s murder—”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“Oh, you want to talk about personal issues? All right. Don’t kiss me again. How’s that?”

He sighed. “Short, and to the point. I figured you’d feel that way. Look, I was just thinking about how calmly you take everything, and the technology that must exist in your time, and I thought it might be possible.” A few seconds ticked by. “Is it?”

“Whoever killed Allen is a stranger to this time. He has to be living somewhere, eating somewhere. This is a small town; he shouldn’t be difficult to find.”

For a moment she didn’t think he’d accept her change of subject, but then he said, “
If
he’s staying here. He could be in the next county, or the next state.”

“We won’t know unless we look.” Her tone didn’t invite further conversation, and they sat in silence for the rest of the trip.

He had just unlocked the back door to his house when his radio squawked to life. He listened to the codes, his expression going cold. “There’s been another murder,” he said briefly, pushing the door open for her. “Same drill: keep the door locked, and don’t answer the phone unless it’s my cell number. Got it?”

“Yes, of course. This is probably connected, isn’t it?”

“We don’t have many murders in Pekesville,” he said as he turned away. “What are the odds?”

16

The old former mayor, Harlan Forbes, was in his eighties and deserved a more dignified death than being choked as he sat in his battered favorite easy chair watching the game-show channel on television. His bladder and bowels had released, and his kicking feet were probably what had knocked the lamp over. Choking was a violent death, with the victim struggling for long minutes before the brain finally died. It also took a tremendous amount of strength, or the knowledge to substitute technique for the needed strength.

The killer was perhaps strong, but he hadn’t used his hands. There were no livid finger marks on the old man’s neck, just a single ligature mark, meaning something had been looped over his head, twisted, and pulled. A belt, maybe. Could have been a rope, a long scarf, anything that was long enough and pliable.

It wasn’t Knox’s crime scene. The mayor lived within the city limits, so the scene was being worked by the city detectives. There was a great deal of cooperation between the two forces, though, effectively combining the experience, manpower, and budgets. They knew each other, formed specialized task forces together, and each helped the other as needed.

They didn’t need Knox to work the scene, but the city detectives were always interested in hearing his observations; his reputation for being insatiably curious was well-known. He wasn’t the only county investigator present; Roger Dee Franklin was also there, pretty much doing the same thing Knox was doing, which was watching.

The murder had occurred shortly after dark, by the next door neighbor’s reckoning. She’d seen Harlan let his cat out as he did every day, late in the afternoon. It was the cat that had led her to check on Harlan, because the poor thing was standing at the door yowling to be let in, and he never ignored his cat. The racket had finally gotten on her nerves and she had called him. When he didn’t answer the phone, she then called 911.

Roger Dee heard the cat story and drifted over to where Knox was standing. “Good thing the cat was outside,” he murmured. If cats were trapped in a house alone with a dead person, they had been known to start snacking on the body. People forgot that cats were predators as well as pets. After seeing a few instances where someone old had died alone, with only a cat or cats for company, Knox swore to himself that if his lifestyle ever allowed him to have a pet, it would be a fish. He liked cats, but not enough to be their food.

Knox let his gaze drift back to the murder scene. There was nothing similar to the scene at the Allen house; the method was different, and on the surface the two victims had nothing in common, one being a fairly prosperous lawyer with a trophy wife, the other a retired, widowed old gentleman who owned a cat and had lived in the same house for fifty years. From what the neighbor said, Harlan Forbes didn’t leave the house much, content to putter in his flower garden or sit on his front porch watching traffic pass by. His daughter or granddaughter usually brought his groceries once a week or so, or would pick him up to take him on an outing. He’d grown increasingly frail over the past year, and had begun talking about maybe selling his house and moving into an assisted-living apartment. The poor old guy didn’t have to worry about that anymore.

With nothing to connect the two murders, Knox was amazed at his own conviction that they were, somehow, related. He wasn’t crazy enough to mention that to anyone, however. He’d be laughed out of the county. If he hadn’t known Nikita, if he hadn’t seen someone materialize right in front of him, if he didn’t know a killer from the future was in the area, the idea would never have occurred to him, either.

The weird things that had been happening were all linked. The time capsule, the flashes out at Jesse Bingham’s place, Nikita, the time traveling, Taylor Allen’s murder—those were definitely linked, though Nikita didn’t know exactly how Taylor Allen figured into it. She knew only that her UT had killed him, not why, and not who. So . . . how did Harlan Forbes’s murder connect?

Harlan hadn’t been robbed. There were no signs of forcible entry, but neither had his doors been locked. Most people around town didn’t lock their doors if they were at home, until they went to bed. Both the method and the fact that nothing had been stolen said that the murder wasn’t drug related, because an addict would have been looking to score some cash or something to sell.

“Poor old guy,” said Roger Dee, echoing Knox’s earlier thought. “Who’d want to kill someone like him? Retired, living off his pension—and God knows, being mayor of Pekesville never paid much. If he’d been robbed, at least there would be some sense to it, but to just come in and kill him—why? Reckon one of his relatives was in a hurry to inherit this old house and some beat-up furniture?”

“Could be.” If Harlan had a hefty life insurance policy, maybe, or a nice nest egg in the bank. He hadn’t lived as if he had money, but then a lot of old folks who’d gone through the Depression squirreled their money away and lived as if they could barely make it from month to month. Knox tried to think of all the possibilities, but the fact was he was still convinced this was somehow connected to Nikita’s case. Well, it wasn’t his scene to work; the city boys would check out the insurance/bank-account angle, and he’d help out here with interviewing the neighbors.

He and Roger Dee set out with their notebooks, knocking on doors and asking questions. This was an old, established neighborhood, and most of the residents were retired, which meant they were usually home at night watching television. None of them reported seeing anything or hearing anything unusual. They were all aghast at the violence done so close to home, and to someone they knew and liked, but not one of them was any help at all.

It was after two
AM
when he wearily drove home. The day had been a very, very long one, and when he pulled into his driveway and saw the lights still on inside the house, he knew it wasn’t over yet.

Nikita sat at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee steaming close to her hand as she read one of Knox’s books and waited for him. When she heard the car pull into the driveway, she got up and looked out the kitchen door to make certain it was him, then unlocked the door and opened it for him.

He looked tired when he came in, but why shouldn’t he? It was late, he needed some sleep. Instead of going to bed, however, when he came in he sniffed the air and asked, “Is that coffee fresh?”

“I made it about an hour ago,” she said as she returned to her seat at the table. She was proud that she’d figured out what the coffeemaker was, and how to work it. She had done the first because she’d seen a machine at Knox’s office with the name “Mr. Coffee” printed on it, and though this one didn’t have that name, it was essentially the same machine, the carafe differing slightly in shape. Without any instructions, she had puzzled out the procedure: the big empty space had measuring marks on it, so something went in there. The coffee? But if the coffee went there, then what was the box of paper coffee filters for? By experimenting, she discovered that the filter perfectly fit in the little basket, so that was where the coffee had to go. That meant the empty tank was for the water.

She found an unopened bag of coffee, read the instructions on how much coffee to use for each cup of water, and carefully measured both into the machine. Then it was a matter of pressing the
On
button, and after a moment the water began hissing and spewing into the carafe. Simple. And it tasted wonderful.

“Guess coffee’s still around two hundred years from now,” he said as he got a cup from the cabinet and poured some for himself.

“Definitely. It’s the largest cash crop in South America.”

“Even bigger than oil?”

“The oil market crashed when technology moved on.” She remained in her position, book open, and kept her gaze on the book even though she was no longer seeing the words.

He pulled up a chair across from her and collapsed heavily into it. He rubbed his eyes, then folded both hands around the coffee cup. “The victim is a former mayor, Harlan Forbes. The MO is totally different, strangulation. Harlan was eighty-five, physically frail. There’s nothing that ties his murder to Taylor Allen’s, except my gut feeling.”

“Could the mayor have written some sort of research paper that went in the time capsule?”

“No, he didn’t even go to college. He was just one of those good old boys with the ability to glad-hand and schmooze, intelligent enough to be a good administrator, but not a go-getter.”

Most of that, she mused, was in English, and she could understand the meaning of the idioms she didn’t know by the way he used them.
Glad-hand.
She had to remember that.

“Perhaps it wasn’t related to the other murder, then,” she suggested.

He shook his head. “I’ve been thinking, and remembering who was at the ceremony twenty years ago when the capsule was buried. The football coach, Howard Easley, was found hanged the next morning. Coroner ruled it suicide, but now I wonder. The coach was close enough to see what exactly went in the capsule; in fact, he helped bury it. The mayor was right there. And now that I think back, Taylor Allen was there, too. He was just getting started in his law practice, and he was doing all sorts of civic things to build a network of contacts. He was part of the ceremony.”

“But the coach died twenty years ago,” she pointed out. “Why wait twenty years to kill the others?”

“I don’t have an answer to that, but I think I’m beginning to see a pattern. I need to refresh my memory. First thing tomorrow we’ll go to the library, look up the newspaper article, and see if it mentions who was there. There was a photograph, too, because I remember looking to see if my dad and I were in it, but the angle was wrong.”

She nodded and looked back at the book.

After a minute he sighed. “Look—I’m sorry. I didn’t ask if you were a robot because of the sex thing, I swear.”

“There is no ‘sex thing.’ You’ve kissed me a few times, it was pleasant, and it won’t happen again.” She kept her expression as blank as possible, fighting down the urge to weep that swept over her again. She would
not
cry in front of him again.

She closed the book and got up. “I’m going to bed, if you don’t mind.”

“You won’t be able to sleep, after drinking that coffee. We might as well sit here and talk.”

“I didn’t drink much, and I’m very tired. Good night.” Taking the book with her, she went to the small bedroom he’d designated as hers and turned on the bedside lamp. She hadn’t lied about being tired; she was so exhausted she could barely think.

He appeared in the doorway right behind her. “Do you have everything you need? Something to sleep in?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“Are you sure? You can have one of my T-shirts to sleep in if you need it. The nights are warm, and the air conditioner in this house isn’t the best. A T-shirt will be nice and cool.”

“I have my sleep garments. I’m fine.”

“Okay, then.” He lingered in the doorway. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Are you asking for reassurance that you will, indeed, see me in the morning? I’m not leaving. I have a job to do.”

“I know you’re not leaving. You’ve had plenty of chances, if you wanted to go. It’s just . . . damn. I hurt your feelings and I didn’t mean to, but I don’t know how to make it better.”

“You’ve apologized. That’s sufficient.”

“No, it isn’t. You’re still hurt.”

“Then I’ll get over it,” she said coolly. “I’m an adult. Would you close the door, please? I’d like to undress and go to bed.”

He stood there for another minute looking extremely frustrated; then with a muffled curse he backed out and closed the door behind him. Nikita heaved a tired sigh of relief. She didn’t want to deal with personal conflicts at all, but especially not when she was so tired.

Her clothing that she’d brought from her time wouldn’t wrinkle, but she unpacked her suitcase and carefully hung the garments on some of the empty hangers in the closet, then did the same with the clothes Knox had bought for her. Those she was wearing, she removed and draped over the lone chair in the room. When she was nude, she put on the single, seamless garment, a sanssaum, that she wore for sleeping. It was very comfortable, made of an opaque, fluid fabric that was gossamer in weight and adapted to body temperature. If you became too hot, the material wicked heat away from your skin. If you were too cold, it conserved heat. She couldn’t imagine any of Knox’s T-shirts were even half as comfortable as her sanssaum.

She turned back the covers on the bed and wearily climbed between the sheets, then stretched to turn off the lamp. In the sudden darkness she lay awake, far more aware of the strangeness of being here/now than she had been even when she first arrived. A scant thirty-six hours ago she had been full of plans and optimism. Now she was marooned in a time that wasn’t hers, she had been betrayed by one of her own, and she didn’t know if she would ever get back or if another assassin would be sent to kill her.

That must mean she would succeed, and they knew it.

Otherwise, why kill her? If she was destined to fail, they could just leave her here and no one would ever know. She hadn’t been able to tell her family where she was going on her mission, because time missions were top secret, used only by the military and law enforcement. The technology was still too new—twenty years since the first one, and for the first ten years the transit had been fraught with danger, resulting in death often enough that every volunteer knew the odds of returning alive were, at best, fifty-fifty—the ramifications hadn’t all been worked out concerning the effect of changing history, and the terrorist groups would love to have the technology.

If she didn’t return, no one would ever know what happened to her.

So much had happened that she didn’t understand. The time capsule was a surprise, but someone from her time had transited in and taken it. Who, and why? Knox knew the people in his town, and he said neither the lawyer nor the retired mayor could have had any sort of knowledge that could in any way be used to develop time-travel technology.