Sand City Murders (37 page)

“No, I’m in the present.”

“Well then, all things being equal, you might see the vase on the floor in pieces.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Would it fly off the shelf under its own volition and shatter right in front of my eyes?”

“No. The instant I travel back to smash the vase is more or less the same instant when the past changes the future. It would simply not be there… your future was altered yesterday in this case.”

I looked at the shelf and everything was exactly the same. I wasn’t sure if I had communicated this properly. I certainly didn’t feel satisfied with Fynn’s response. I tried a different approach. “What would it look like if you returned to my present?”

“This is a difficult question to answer.”

“Why?”

“To start with, where am I returning from? I could only return from the future, as you may remember.”

“You mean back-jump, a soft jump to a previous self?”

“Yes.”

“What would that look like?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“It would seem quite normal to you. I might be a bit distracted, as if I were day dreaming perhaps. That depends on how far I’ve traveled… how quickly I can re-orientate my awareness.”

“What if you popped in out of nowhere?”

“Oh, I see… if I traveled to a future where you happened to be?” Fynn paused to smile. Yes, I would appear in the blink of an eye. But I would be the impostor of myself.”

“Why an impostor?”

“I’ve already explained this to you, no?”

“Has that ever happened?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“It’s fairly easy to convince someone that their eyes are merely playing tricks on them.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. You seem disappointed.”

“A little.”

“If I were to pop into existence, how would you react?” Fynn asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I think you would doubt what you saw. Your brain wouldn’t make sense of it.”

“I guess you’re right. I never really thought about it till now.”

“I hope I’ve answered all your questions…” Fynn smiled.

“Not exactly. I’m still unclear about a lot of things.”

“Such as?”

“Well,
libra lapsus
for one. I was giving it some serious thought.”

“Yes. It’s a very complicated matter.”

“Well, the more I think about it, the less sense it makes.”

“How so?”

“Take riding in an airplane. Isn’t that just like riding a bike over a big bump? Isn’t that another way to free fall?”

“Yes, and believe me, I had exactly the same question the first time I boarded an airplane. I can only guess that it is a matter of degree, acceleration, and altitude perhaps. Air travel seems to have no effect on me.”

“Okay, what about people that free fall for a living?”

“And who would do such a thing?”

“I can make a list of people who live in the state of free fall… certainly nothing unusual happens to them.”

“Who do you mean?”

“Take paratroopers for example.”

“Paratroopers?”

“People who jump from airplanes.”

“Ah, I see your point.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Aren’t you going to explain that?”

“I’d rather not try…” Fynn made a face.

“Free fall is something everybody does, you just don’t think about it… You know, jump over a puddle, exercise, run, play a sport… That kind of thing.”

“Yes, I can never run… it’s a terrible affliction.”

“You never ran as a boy?”

“Eh?”

“It’s hard to believe that you never ran or jumped as a small boy… till you were eight years old and this first jump happened.”

“Yes, I have pondered this at great length. And I have no satisfactory answer. It could be that I did jump before this, but have no memory of it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Perhaps, but
libra lapsus
requires a certain threshold for it to work.”

“A threshold? You never mentioned that before.”

“It’s complicated enough, eh?”

“I guess.”

“Point nine-three meters, approximately.”

“What’s that?”

“The threshold. I need to be off the ground for one point seven seconds, or just less than a meter.”

“Then you travel?”

“Yes.”

“So... below this threshold, nothing happens?”

“I will not say that.” Fynn made a small face of frustration. “Here we enter the realm of conjecture. Is switching from one timeline to another a form of traveling? You are not displaced in time. You go neither to the future nor the past, but your present might be altered, and only if you have some awareness… A jump below the threshold may cause such things. Who can say? Duration and direction, you recall. The first is fairly straight forward the second is fantastically complicated.”

“Is that what’s been happening to me?”

“You seem to have the awareness that things are changing.”

“You’ve yet to prove this, any of this.”

“And what sort of proof would satisfy you?”

“I don’t know, maybe if you, like, disappeared into thin air?” I said and smirked, then took another long sip of beer.

“Normally, I don’t like jumping from inside a structure…” Fynn sighed heavily and looked around the bar. “Very well, if it must come to this.” He picked up the barstool and dragged it to the middle of the aisle. He sat again and slid to the edge of the seat, then placed both feet on the topmost rail. Fynn swiveled in his stool and consulted his compass for a time. If I were pressed, I’d say he was roughly facing south. It actually looked as if he was going to jump this time. I wasn’t going to be fooled again.

“Pay attention, please,” he called across to me.

I turned and saw Fynn leap from the stool to the floor. Only he never hit the ground. In the blink of an eye he was gone, vanished, disappeared. I was flabbergasted to say the least. I couldn’t quite believe what I had just witnessed. I looked around the room. No one else seemed to notice. Things went on as normal. I finally got Suzy’s eye.

“Did you just see that?”

“What?” she asked and smiled sweetly.

“The guy I was with. He just disappeared.”

“What guy?”

“The guy I was just sitting next to.”

“Oh, the old guy… where’d he go?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re paying for his drink, right?”

chapter 24

wild dogs

I had a date with Joey. We were supposed to meet in the parking lot of the
Chronicle
just before midnight. But I just sat there in Partners for a while, glued to my stool and staring at the empty one beside me. What had just happened could not have happened. Not in real life. “Pay attention…” that was the last thing Fynn had said to me. Isn’t that exactly what a magician says right before he does his trick? Isn’t that how he distracts you? Makes you look the wrong way? But wait… I was looking right at him. He disappeared. He vanished.

I was left with three stark possibilities. I was crazy, plain and simple. Fynn was a master illusionist. Or he had been telling the truth all this time. I tried to remember what he’d said that day in front of the not-so-black board. “I would disappear, pop, vanish…” Okay, that meant he had gone to the future. The present was unchanged, right?

“You want another one, sweetie?” Suzy asked.

“No, I’m good.” I turned and smiled. “How many did I have tonight, anyhow?”

“Two beers… if you finish that one.”

“That’s all?”

She nodded.

“No scotch?”

“No…” she laughed.

I got a text on my phone:
Where RU?
Ten minutes later, I pulled up into the parking lot beside Joey’s car and rolled down my window. I could hear sirens way in the distance.

“Hey Patrick… you ready for tonight?” he called across.

“I am,” I lied. I was functioning on automatic. My reality had already shut down. This was just something that had to be done. At least it seemed real, sort of. I heard some chatter coming from inside Joey’s Prius, or his mom’s.”

“What are you listening to?”

“Police scanner.”

“Really? Is that a band?”

“No.” Joey grinned and turned up the volume. “What’s a ten ninety-one?”

“A what?”

“A ten ninety-one.”

“No clue.”

“How about a ten fifty-four?”

“What are you talking about, Joey?”

“On the scanner… the police codes.”

“Don’t really know. So what did you hear about the kennel?”

“You mean the shelter?”

“Yeah.”

“Just what I told you on the phone.”

“That’s it? Didn’t you go out there?”

“I did, but I couldn’t get past the uniforms.”

“Adams or Allen?”

“Not sure which one.”

“Hmm… how many dogs got out?”

“Like twenty, I heard.”

“Wow, that’s weird. What did Emma say?”

“Nothing, I couldn’t get through to her cell.”

“Alyson?”

“Her either.”

“We should probably head over there. What time is it?”

“Midnight, a little after.”

“Alright, so what’s first... buried treasure or wild dogs?”

“Treasure.” Joey grinned as usual.

“Okay. Hop in.”

It was a warm night. We had the windows open. It was also foggy, like a cloud had descended and just sat there obscuring everything. I drove up the hill past the Village to a little-used cemetery just outside Cedar Bluffs. And when I say little-used, no one had been buried there since 1879. I pulled off to a dirt track that wound through the woods, then rolled into a sandy clearing. The genuine cemetery was to our left, but we were going right to dig our hole in less hallowed ground. Joey hoisted the treasure chest from the back of my Saab. It wasn’t heavy at all. Disappointingly light, I thought, but it might be some kid that finds it, so it had to be liftable. It looked fantastic though, small but very authentic: distressed wood, all the varnish peeled off, rusty hinges and tarnished metal in all the right places. I looked around suspiciously to make sure no one was in the immediate area. I grabbed two shovels and slammed the hatchback closed. We could both hear sirens in the distance.

“You got the flashlights?”

“Yeah… let’s do this.”

We walked up to the edge of the real cemetery. Joey took out a compass and pointed.

“Count fifty paces from over there… that first gravestone…”

Our path led us off the trail and deeper into the woods.

“This is so cool,” Joey said and grinned.

“This is as good as it gets, I think.” I smiled back.

We agreed on the perfect spot and started digging. Halfway to China, I stopped. “Did you hear that?” I asked.

“Hear what? Sirens?”

“No… like some twigs snapping?”

“It’s a freaking bear…”

“I promise you, Joey, last time I checked there were no bears in Sand City.”

He stopped to listen and grabbed one of the flashlights. He scanned the woods, but oddly the treetops.

“Joey, it wasn’t a bird… try lower.”

He did and the light caught the unmistakable red glint of an animal’s eyes. Some feral creature was sitting in the bushes not twenty yards from us. I guessed it was a dog, one of the newly released wild dogs. I walked back to my car and grabbed a bag of nacho pretzels from the back seat. I tossed one over to the shrubs. Joey shined the light again. A medium sized dog crept into the clearing and sniffed the snack, gingerly picked it up, then gulped it down. The dog started wagging its tail and slinked over to us.

“Hey there,” I said in a soothing tone. “What’s up, dog?”

He or she came closer. I grabbed another nacho-filled pretzel and held it out in my hand. The mutt looked to be some kind of collie mix. It came right over and gently took the treat from my open palm. I started petting him, or her— it was hard to tell in the dark. “Oh, you’re a lonely little thing aren’t you?” The dog responded by slithering along the ground on its back. Its gender became more apparent. Joey came over and lavished some attention on her as well. A few moments later we heard some barking, howling; I’d say, pretty far off. Our new found friend stood to attention and pricked her ears. She let off a single muted woof.

“Let’s put her in the car,” I said to Joey.

“Why?”

“She’s only the perfect excuse to drive over to the shelter.”

“Good idea, bro.”

“And let’s finish this up quick.”

“Absolutely,” Joey agreed.

Rather unceremoniously, I dumped the treasure chest into our newly-dug hole. It was about two feet deep.

“You want to say a few words?” Joey asked.

“Funny.” I gave him a friendly shove and we started piling on the dirt. It took us all of five minutes and Joey stomped the area down.

“Where’s the grave stone?” he asked.

“I thought you brought it?”

“I did… it’s in the trunk.”

Joey had spent at least a week fashioning a fake tombstone. He had found an old chunk of lichen-covered granite from the quarry and engraved a message on it with a chisel. It took him another week to make it look really old. It was perfect: stained, worn, chipped and faded.
Here lies Barnaby B… privateer in life… and forever your eternal benefactor.

We placed the stone and did our best to make the area look completely undisturbed, scattering sand, pine needles, leaves and branches. We recounted our paces to the real cemetery. Fifty exactly, north by northwest. Job well done. No one would ever find this unless they solved the puzzle. We started back towards the car, shovels on our shoulders. Along the way we heard more barking, this time much closer; four, maybe five dark figures went slinking by low to the ground. Then we heard a yelp, a yelp of pain. The barking stopped. In the distance, we could see flashlights waving in the woods, cutting through the mist. Some men went running by. Then, beside us, flashing blues and the single chirp of a police siren. A cruiser pulled up right next to us. Startled is not a strong enough word. An officer leapt from the car, weapon drawn.

I stepped forward. “Adams, it’s me, Jardel… from the
Chronicle
… and Joey.”

“What the hell are you doing out here?” He lowered his weapon at least. “Up against the car, both of you.”