The Curiosity Killers (20 page)

“But to answer your question…” Ben laughed. “I’m not sure what your question is, really, unless you just want to know if I have money.
”

“Oh, God, that’s so not what I was trying to ask,” Violet protested.

“It’s okay,” Ben said. “I do. And that’s why Eddy sought me out in the first place, to fund his tech. I ran a foundation. I could afford to fund him. It was my idea to partner together, to start the agency and bring in clients and stuff.”

“So he gets to use his machine, to keep going with his science,” Violet said. “And you make that possible. But other than client money—which you probably don’t really need—what do
you
get out of it?”

The stamper lurched at a four-way stop. A traffic cop was holding out a flat hand to their driver while a funeral procession of pedicabs and a carriage hearse meandered through the intersection. Ben looked over at Violet. Her big blue eyes were wide. She smelled like coffee and strawberries. Ben’s stomach grew fluttery again, but not from the motion of the stamper this time. This time it was because he imagined pulling her to him, tasting her lips and smelling her scent even closer.

“Ben?”

“Sorry. Yeah. What do I get out of it?” He exhaled and looked back at the funeral procession. “You see that?”

Violet followed his gaze. “Yeah.”

“I see something like that, I start wanting to know—no,
needing
to know—who that funeral is for. That’s not just a corpse being carried along there, not to me. To me that’s a whole life, and I have to know everything about it.”

In the cockpit the driver, growing bored as he waited for the cop to let him through, pulled out his data pad and activated a radio station. The stamper was now filled with soft music, a classical score of piano and strings.

“So when you send your clients back to solve a mystery…”

“I couldn’t care less about the money part,” Ben said. “My payment is hearing their story.” His desire for Violet fell away as he remembered her return from 1971. She’d been grinning ear to ear, her mechanic’s disguise covered in airplane grease, eager to share her findings about Cooper.

The funeral procession ended with a horse-mounted police officer bringing up the rear. The traffic cop made a beckoning gesture at the stamper, and their driver eased them forward once more.

“But when I told you what I found,” Violet said, “you didn’t act that interested. Now that my memories are back, I know how you listened. You were almost detached.”

Ben’s breathing grew shallow. “I’m not exactly the most emotional person,” he said. “I might not have seemed like it, but I can assure you I was very interested.”

Sunlight streamed in through the stamper’s portholes, turning Violet’s face golden-pink.

~

The doorbell seemed louder than usual. Cob groaned. “Donald!” he yelled. “Donald, door!”

On the marble-topped table beside Cob’s bed, an ancient intercom crackled to life. “Of course, sir,” a crisp British-accented voice said amidst hisses and pops. There were footsteps and indistinct voices, and then the intercom came to life again. “Sir, there’s a Mister Jonson and Miss Lessep here to see you.” There was a pause. “She says she’s with the FBI, sir.”

Cob pulled the blanket from over his head. “What does the FBI want with me?”

“I shouldn’t know, sir.”

“I’ll be right down.” His bare feet shuffled against empty beer bottles as Cob tugged on his robe. He blinked at the sunlight streaming through the half-open blinds. “Fuck, what time is it?”

“You asked that I dispense with the wake-up call today, sir.”

“Hush, you.” Cob raked his hands through his sleep-mussed hair. “Offer our guests some tea or something. I gotta take a piss.”

“Shall I tell them—”

“Jesus,
no
,” Cob snapped. “God, you’re so literal.”

A few minutes later, Cob was more presentable, though still in his pajamas. In the living room sat a man in his mid-thirties, dark hair and bushy eyebrows, but it was the woman across from him who caught Cob’s attention. She was blond and slender and wore a snug black jacket and matching ankle-length skirt. Something about her eager smile was ingratiating…and familiar.

We were both on trips, but we couldn’t talk about it.

The memory was dim, as if it were a long-buried encounter from decades earlier, and yet he could swear the way this woman looked now was how he remembered her.

Impossible, if it was so long ago…

“Ah, Mister Cob.” The man rose. “You won’t remember, but you and I are quite well acquainted. I’m Ben Jonson, and this is Violet Lessep.”

The woman stood as well. “
Agent
Lessep,” she amended. “We met once before, too, though very briefly.”

“We did,” Cob said. He meant it to be a question, but it wasn’t. “I know. I don’t know how I know, but I do.”

Blood and light bulbs and strange creatures sailing through a cloudless sky…

God, I’m hungover.

Cob rubbed his temples. “Forgive me, folks, I had a few too many tugs at the bottle last night.” He swept a hand down his robe. “Even I’m usually dressed by this hour.” Cob sank down on a loveseat, and the others sat as well. “You wanna remind me where we all know each other?”

The man cleared his throat. “Mister Cob, we need your help to stop a killer.”

Cob looked at both of them. “Um, you…what? I’m not really in the business of…” He laughed. “Well, I’m not really in the business of much of anything except spending my trust fund on trips to Maine.”

Why
do
I go to Maine so much?

“But Mister Jonson here speaks very highly of your bravery,” the woman said.

Cob laughed again. “My
bravery
?”

“We should’ve brought some sort of proof,” Jonson said to the agent. “Mister Cob, are you familiar with the Zodiac killer?”

Cob frowned. “Yeah, sure, the unsolved serial murders in the twentieth century. To tell the truth, I’ve always been fascinated by that case. I’m kind of a history buff.”

“You were fascinated by the case, yes. And you solved it.”

Both Cob and the agent stared at Jonson.

“I did?” Cob asked. He realized a second later that the woman asked the same question at the same instant. They exchanged a glance, and she blushed and looked away.

“I did?” he asked again. “Why don’t I remember it?”

Cob pictured a dark city street, a man walking up to a parked car and aiming a pistol through the passenger window.

Am I imagining that? Or remembering it?

Jonson leaned forward and clasped his hands together. “So what I’m about to tell you is going to seem impossible.”

“I can assure you it’s not, though,” Agent Lessep said.

“We need you to go back in time,” Jonson said. “Which you’ve actually done on more than one occasion.”

“I have.” Once again, Cob meant to voice his words as a question and once again, they came out as a statement.

You
have
time traveled before
.
You’ve done it tons of times, and you’ve hired this guy to make it happen.

“Let’s say I believe you,” Cob said. “What do you need me to do, exactly?”

Agent Lessep gave Cob a pleading look. “We need you to catch Jack the Ripper.”

Not just Jack the Ripper
.
This guy killed Elizabeth Short, too. And wow, how did I know that?

He wasn’t going to tell them that, not just yet. But Cob believed them already, even as something nagged at him not to let on.

“I’m gonna need a better sales pitch, folks.” Cob sat back and rested one hand on the telephone next to the loveseat. “And I can have the cops here in a hot minute if this is all an elaborate con.”

Headlights shone on a creature with eyes like bright red lasers. And a man, emaciated and terrifying…he’d seen him before.

“Mister Cob, are you familiar with the governor of the RAA?” Jonson asked.

The governor sauntered toward him with a cleaver, Elizabeth’s body bleeding out onto dusty floorboards.

Oh, my God…

Cob choked back a sob and buried his face in his hands. “I’m remembering things,” he blurted. “God help me, but I’m remembering things.”

~

“
J’arrive, j’arrive
…”

Nothing existed but pain. No identity, no memory, no purpose or drive. Just pain, white and bright and screaming. It was ceaseless, not a dull throb or localized to one area of the body, but everywhere, through every cell and atom. Primal, peeling, shredding, and endless. There was some sense of music, but it was garbled, warped, and wrong.

And just when Cob thought he would be trapped in the pain forever, it stopped. Not a slowdown or a gradual ending, but a snuffing out, as of a candle flame being pinched by saliva-moistened fingers. One second all he knew was searing and pressure and agony, then the next it was gone, with the only residual effect being a kind of exhaustion, as if Cob collapsed at the finish line of a marathon.

“Mister Cob? Is everything a bit less fragmented?”

Cob opened his eyes. An older man hovered over him, his eyes made freakish and multi-sized by the lenses of his bifocals. At first, Cob couldn’t place him, but then he recalled trips to a costume wardrobe with him, trips to this very laboratory, and a remote control being aimed at him. Somewhere, very quietly, a phonograph played a piece of French chanson, and he caught snatches of lyrics.

“
J’arrive, j’arrive
…”

“Doctor Vere.” Cob struggled to sit up. He looked around, and yes, he was in the lab of the travel agency. “Ben. Miss Moto.” He struggled again before giving up and falling back against a flat, uncomfortable pillow.

Violins swelled.

“
Mais pourquoi moi, pourquoi maintenant
…”

“You’re very weak. Don’t try to move,” Vere instructed. “I’m a bit alarmed by your state, as Miss Lessep didn’t experience such things upon her memories being restored.”

“I went on a lot of trips, doc,” Cob said.

An accordion.

“
Pourquoi déjà et
où aller…”

“Of course. That could be it, but I’d still like to run some further tests.” Vere moved toward a cabinet.

“Can I have a drink of water?”

“Certainly.” Vere knelt out of sight, and there was the sound of rustling. He rose holding a bright purple bottle of House Stream. “I’m afraid it’s not very cold. Most of the electric down here is routed to my more pressing equipment.” He nodded at the staircase. “I can have Miss Moto bring you something else in a moment.”

Cob shook his head and took the bottle. “This is fine,” he said, his voice coming out raspy. He downed the water. The song was winding down. Cob spotted the phonograph in the corner of the lab, an early model with a giant horn through which the record played its last seconds. The singer became more plaintive.

“
J’arrive bien sûr, j’arrive. N’ai-je jamais rien fait d’autre qu’arriver….
”

Cob translated, albeit imprecisely, tapping into things he remembered studying in Paris in college.

I come, of course, I come, but have I ever done anything but?

Now other memories were flooding him. The Black Dahlia. The slender man who’d killed her. The Mothman. The brief moments he’d laid eyes on Violet Lessep before today. The record continued on to another song, this one he recognized as “The Port of Amsterdam.” As Jacques Brel’s anguished voice cried out, Cob saw the face of the man he’d met in the TNT area in Point Pleasant.

The slender man…that man, he’s—

“Claudio Florence killed the Black Dahlia!” he shouted. Cob sat up, sore arms and legs screaming in protest. His head swam, and he saw a rainbow of dim colors blur in his field of vision.

“Steady there, son, you’ll be dizzy, I suspect,” Vere warned.

“The RAA governor, I
saw him
. In the forties. And—oh God, in the sixties, too. Has he been following me?”

“Slow down, let’s get you straightened out, then you can tell us what you know.” Vere pressed the back of his hand to Cob’s forehead. “Your temperature is all out of whack. You’re sweating.” He swiped a small cylinder from his desk and snapped off the top to reveal an oral thermometer. “Open up.”

Cob allowed the thermometer to be placed under his tongue. “My harfda tall Bun an Mish Lashop abot da—”

Vere looked up from his pocket watch and glared at Cob. “One minute. Silence.”

Cob sighed but quieted and tried not to fidget. The phonograph stopped playing, and Vere turned it off when the speaker filled with needle hiss. He checked his pocket watch again as he walked back to Cob. After another few seconds, Vere plucked the thermometer from Cob’s mouth.

“I have to tell Ben and Miss Lessep about this guy,” Cob tried again. “They think he’s Jack the Ripper, but that’s not all. He’s killed others. I’ve seen him, and I think he’s stalked me.”

There was a flicker of something in Vere’s expression as he examined the thermometer. “Son, there’ll be time for that, but I’m concerned about you for entirely different reasons.” He put the thermometer down. “I need to bring a consultant in. Or, rather, bring you out to one.”

“Huh?”

Vere took his glasses off and chewed on the end of the earpiece. “I’m not a medical doctor,” he said. “Oh, I muddle through well enough, but if Benoy and Miss Lessep are going to send you off into the past again, God knows where or when, I shouldn’t feel good about that until I’ve had you examined properly.”

Cob felt a pinch of pain nag at his head. “You think there’s something really wrong with me?”

“You were having memories bleed through the erasures, even before today,” Vere said. “Most of that was an aberration, but your reaction to the restoration just now was dramatic, painful, far more than I expected.” He pointed to the water bottle still clutched in Cob’s hand. “Finish that off, get cleaned up and whatnot. I’ll tell Benoy…well, I’ll tell him something. Let’s not alarm him yet.”

Cob exhaled a bitter laugh. “No, let’s just alarm
me
.”

Monday, August 30, 2100, Avon, Vermont, NBE

Kris arranged the plate and cup on a wicker tray before setting out for the lobby. Cob and Vere were halfway to the front door. “Food. Should I have food?” Cob asked Vere.

“Later,” Vere said.

Kris put the tray on the coffee table. “Somebody else can eat this stuff, then, if you’re going,” she said.

Ben wandered over and picked up a triangle of buttered toast. “Eddy, you sure he’s okay?”

“It’s a precaution,” Vere replied. “Fitzhugh is an old colleague and needn’t know any of our other activities beyond the simple tests I want done on Mister Cob here.”

“Remember what I said.” Cob called before being ushered out the door.

“What’d he say?” Kris asked. She plopped down on the floor and wound her legs into a half-lotus position.