Shift (ChronoShift Trilogy) (23 page)

I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,

It's what you leave behind you when you go.

“Three Wooden Crosses”

                        ~ Randy Travis

The question was: Now what?

There were literally trillions of injustices that needed undoing in the world, yet there was no way on earth Mark could make even a small dent in their total, not even with all the time in the world.

He needed some method of choosing, some way to focus his efforts on those problems that would make the most difference.

He could always try to stop some of the largest tragedies in history, like the Holocaust — or he could randomly select individual crime victims to rescue.  He could transport inventions into the past in a hope to accelerate technological advancement and better the quality of life for billions ahead of their time.  That last one seemed a little far-fetched, but why not?

Yet the question remained:
Who
should he save?  In what year?  And why them?  Mark didn’t have any good an-swers for those questions.

He drummed his fingers on the glass-topped breakfast table, pushing around his now cool eggs absent-mindedly with a fork in the other hand.  He picked up the newspaper and began to browse the previous day’s police reports.

Ironic.  He’d just spent months making it easier to travel hundreds of years into the past and now he was going to stick with the present?

Oh well.  He had to start somewhere.

Several incidents gripped his attention right away.  The prior afternoon, a man had fallen from his roof while trying to repair it and had died at the scene.  He’d left behind a wife and two young children.

Later that evening, a young woman had been assaulted in the Boston Commons (Newspapers never said so explicitly, but Mark guessed she'd probably been raped).

A two-year old had also been killed in a fatal car accident.  That one in particular broke his heart.  Accidents involving children probably always would.

Picking up the phone, Mark dialed the Boston Herald.  After a few rings, an automated answering system picked up.  He pushed “0” to get an operator.

“Police Briefs, please”

“Certainly, sir.”

A few more rings.

“Becky Thompson.”

“Hello, Ms. Thompson.  My name is Mark Carpen. I’ve got a business proposal for you....”

Police reports in a newspaper never provided enough of the detail Mark would need if he wished to stop a crime, like an exact time and location, etc.  For a couple thousand dollars a month, Becky Thompson agreed to fax him on a daily basis the more detailed crime reports, the unedited versions containing addresses and other in depth detail that wouldn't fit into the small space allocated for them in the paper.  He was overpaying for the service, but this way he wouldn’t have to worry about how well the job was being done or whether she’d forget.

***

It was Saturday and today, John Wilson, father of two, would try to squeeze in a load of household chores.  It was his day off, and like most working men, his “honey-do” list was likely a mile long.  His roof had sprung a small leak in one of the kid’s rooms and he would attempt a small repair about 3:00 PM.  He would fall backwards off that same roof at around 3:15 PM.  He would impact at an angle and snap his neck decisively when his head struck the ground before the rest of his body.  Death would be instantaneous.

Mark had gone over the scenario a thousand different ways on the drive over to the Wilson home, but he couldn’t come up with any sure-fire, easy way of preventing the accident.  He could think of all kinds of ways to get the guy down off the roof, or to delay his starting on the repair, but none of them would insure Wilson wouldn’t just get back up there later that same day — or another day for that matter —  and fall off then.

A seemingly simple accident was proving to be more insidious than it first appeared.  In the end, Mark decided on an equally simple solution.

He parked his car in front of the Wilson home and got out.  Then, Mark shifted back to 8:00 AM, before the family had fully started their day.  Hastily, he scribbled a note on a stray piece of paper from his car:

To: John Wilson

You are planning to fix your roof today.

If you do, you will slip off and be killed.

Please do not fix your roof today or be very careful.

Mark wrapped the note around a rock he found in front yard and secured it with a rubber band.  Winding up with a flourish, he chucked the rock through the large window in the Wilson’s family room.

            The crash of shattering glass resounded and Mark was already shifting out of the scene before the last shards had finished tinkling to the ground.

Back in his car, he re-checked the newspaper lying in the passenger seat.  He breathed a sigh of relief and smiled.  The report of a new widow and two orphaned kids was no longer anywhere to be found.  Wilson had apparently gotten the message and would still be around at the end of the day to tell his kids a story before bed.  The man would probably tell the story of the strange note thrown through his window for years to come.

1 down, 2 to go.

***

According to the police briefs, Jennifer Scott would be attacked right after taking an evening jog in the Boston Commons.

When she returned to her car, she would discover a flat tire.  A stranger would appear playing the good Samaritan, ready to lend a hand.  Nervous about being stuck in an abandoned parking lot so late at night, she was happy for the help.

Her brief gratitude would turn to horror as his true intention quickly manifested itself.  After the assault, he would beat her senseless.  She wouldn’t regain consciousness for several hours, and during those crucial hours, the trail grew cold, making it more difficult for the police to follow.

Mark opted for simplicity once more.  He first determined the make, mark, color, and license plate of her vehicle.  Then, he drove to the park, waited until the right space freed up and parked his car right next to hers.

He purposefully left his lights on and the motor running.  He also turned on the interior light in his car, so passer-bys would not miss his presence.  He picked up a book and pretended to read as his eyes scoured the area for any sign of the attacker.

A couple of policemen on bicycles stopped once and inquired what he was doing.  He made up a story about waiting for his daughter to get off work.  Frankly, their timing stunk.  Twenty minutes later and they would have been in time to save the girl.

Obviously, it would be the attacker himself who would flatten the woman’s tire in order to put her in a vulnerable position.   Mark hoped that by making himself so blatantly visible, the attacker would not dare get close enough to knife the tire.

And it worked.  She emerged from the park a little after 8:30 and jogged up to her car, finished with her run.  She mopped her face and neck with a white sports towel, got in the sedan, and drove off without a hitch.  She would never know the danger that had faced her, or that the stranger she’d glanced at sitting in his car and reading a book had been so integral to her salvation.

It felt
good
to help people this way.  Mark was beginning to feel a true sense of purpose.  Finally.

With this case, however, there was a tinge of regret.  This guy,
this sicko
, who’d attacked her in the alternate past, was still out there in the darkness somewhere.  Based on the nature of the crime, he had to be a serial rapist, and now he was free to go after someone else.  Because of the strategy Mark had chosen, he now had no way to bring the guy out of the shadows.

He would do it differently next time.  It wasn’t enough to save someone from a crime if the potential criminal would simply select another target.

Mark shifted forward to his true present and checked the newspaper.  He was stunned to see the story of Jennifer Scott’s assault was still there, only the details, including the location, were different.  The guy must have followed her in his car.  When she’d turned onto a more secluded road, the attacker had bumped her from behind.

Naturally, she’d stopped because of the accident.  When she got out of her sedan, he overpowered her and the rest of the story read the same from there.

It wasn’t random.  This attacker must have been stalking her in particular.  Either the guy knew her or he was a serial rapist and had been following her for some time.

Strangely, Mark was happy that he would be given a chance to rectify his earlier mistake.

He drove to the roadside where the revised police report now said the attack would take place.  The area was roped off with yellow crime scene tape.  He found the tracks of the two vehicles and took a guess at where he needed to stand.

He shifted back to fifteen minutes before the approximate time of the assault.  The vehicles hadn’t arrived yet, so Mark walked up a small incline beside the road and hid himself in some bushes.  The only light came from a lone street lamp near the road and it was so dark where Mark was he didn’t have to try very hard at concealing himself.

Within ten minutes, the two cars came into sight.  The rear vehicle was following too close and when the girl slowed, their bumpers met with a light crunch of metal.  They both pulled over to the shoulder

Mark waited until both occupants had emerged from their cars.  Jennifer looked visibly distressed.  It was late, she was tired, and now she’d been in an accident.  She was probably worried about insurance premiums and having to wait for the police and all the other headaches that accompanied a fender bender.  She had no idea what greater tragedy would shortly befall her.

The man wore a slithering smirk, a malicious little grin that twisted his mouth unnaturally.  Evil lurked behind those oppressive eyes. Mark didn’t care what the man’s name was.  It didn’t matter.

With an acquired agility, Mark swiftly and silently descended from the incline.  He was dressed in black, so neither the attacker nor the woman noticed him.  This was the kind of operation for which he’d been trained.

In a single smooth motion, he raised his right arm and fired three shots from his .45 into the side of the attacker’s head, the third shot striking home before the man’s body could collapse from the first.  Without a doubt the man was dead.

The girl was screaming bloody murder, but she was safe.

“He was going to attack you,” Mark stated simply, trying to calm the terror in her eyes, but she was so panicked he wasn’t sure the words got through.

He returned to the bushes and shifted out. 

***

The car accident case made Mark nervous.  He had purposely put it off until last.   It just hit too close to home.  What if he couldn’t save the boy?  What if it turned out to be like his own kids?  What if there was some cosmic force mandating that children could never be saved?   Could he take that?  Failing to save the boy would crush him all over again, and there was only so much grief he could withstand.  It would rip the wound in his heart open so wide.... to say it might even kill him wasn’t necessarily an exaggeration.   He’d heard of people dying from a broken heart.  And if he didn’t, he might wish to have.

Yet,if he could save the boy
,
maybe it could help him heal.

Mark stopped at a corner store and bought a pack of cigarettes.  Smoking was not his style, but he needed something.  Fingers shaking, he fumbled with the lighter, finally getting one of the sticks to burn.  He took a few puffs while staring vacantly at the sidewalk.

He knew he was just delaying.

You can’t outrun your fears, Son.  You either face them, or they rule you.

His father had said that the summer Mark had first tried out for football.  He hadn’t ever played on a real team before, and most of the other boys had.  He’d come away from that first practice with pains and bruises all over his body, but the worst damage was to his state of mind.  After getting slammed to the ground repeatedly, each hit jarring him senseless, he’d been thoroughly intimidated.

He hadn’t wanted to go back, but his father had taken him aside and told him different.  Holding both shoulders firmly and looking him straight in the eye, he had said, “You can’t outrun your fears, Son.  You either face them, or they rule you.  You conquer them, or they will conquer you.”

That fateful day in 2009 had been the biggest hit of his life.  Now, just seeing a photo of his kids wrenched his heart from his chest and slammed it to the ground.  Worse than any hit he’d ever felt so many summers ago as a young football player, worse than any battle wound he’d ever sustained as a Marine.

Mark pulled the cigarette from his lips and stared at the butt.  He dropped it and crushed it on the black asphalt with his boot.

This car accident, a different accident, would occur about noon at a four-way stop in a suburban neighborhood outside Boston.  The mother would be leaving her home to run errands with her two-year old, but before she got more than a few blocks, another mother would run a stop sign at full speed, totaling both vehicles and killing the little boy.  No alcohol was involved, the driver at fault had simply and carelessly missed the sign.

There were a number of ways he could try to stop the accident from happening, but basically, Mark had to stop or delay one of the cars before it made the intersection.

He
really
didn’t want to watch (or hear) the accident take place over and over again, which is what he would have to do if he wanted to stop the vehicle at fault before it ran the stop sign.  In the end, it felt easier to mess with the victim’s car.  From the police report, he knew their address.  He drove to their home and shifted back to a few hours before the accident.