Jaclyn the Ripper (31 page)

“Have you ever thought about teaming up, old man?”

“What?”

“Yes . . . ! I'm quite serious. We're both civilized, after all. Why don't we meet and divide the universe? If you agree, then I shall hold you harmless, and you shall do likewise. Should you not want to build a second machine, we'll work out an arrangement with
The Utopia
—I believe they call it a time-share these days. Following Satan, I shall run amok in my half of the cosmos, and you shall serve your God in yours. . . . What do you say?”

“I don't believe in God.”

“What a shame.”

His heart pounding, H.G. hunched over the phone, gathered courage. Hand poised, he took a huge breath, then pressed the red-tagged keys he'd seen on telephones everywhere, hoping to generate a phone number or an address on the caller ID screen. 9-1-1. Three beeps resounded on the line.

“What the devil?” said the voice, surprised. “Are you trying to track me, Wells? Like some electronic bloodhound . . . ? I must ring off, I'm afraid.”

“Wait!” H.G. shouted. “Please . . . ! I must know when! I must know where and when you came from!”

“The end of time. Where else . . . ? 20 June 2010, set by your wife on the Destination Indicator.”

“That's not the end of time!”

“Ah, but for some it was, Wells, for some it was, and I speak with a particular authority. Now . . . for you and the missus . . . ? You may have to wait a day or two.” The voice cackled. “But I'm being far too cooperative.”

“Please, John. . . . Tell me. Did mankind survive?”

The voice paused. Only the seesaw buzz of its breathing came over the line, a sound that grew more and more ominous until H.G. was about to scream in frustration, and then the voice started speaking again—only not so robotic this time. Almost lilting and melodious—almost feminine.

“I recall an explosion of light that became an accidental birth in darkness—rather fitting metaphorically, don't you think? I do not recall the void, the hole, the nothingness, the slime or the dark energy feeding mindlessly upon itself—I bear no pain, hence no forgiveness—I only smelt the synthetic stench. I was-wasn't there. I have no clue if all roads in the universe self-destruct at that event horizon. I only know that I am not shredded or in pieces. I remain myself, a dubious corpus of flesh, blood and bile. Your machine hurtled me into an enormous blackness, a place of no recollections . . . a true hell . . . and then—as if I'd called a hansom cab—it just came back and picked me up.”

“Dammit, John,
when
?”

“When . . . ?! Haven't you been listening, you bloody moron? There
is
no time there!”

“Did mankind survive?!”

A silence.

Finally, after a hollow, raspy laugh, the voice replied, “Am I not here?”

“This is stupid.”

Amber sat up on her bed, made a huge ball of her used tissues, went in the bathroom, slam-dunked them in the trash. She peered in the mirror and frowned. If she cried any more, this was how she'd look in the morning, and no makeup in the world would disguise her tear-swollen eyes.
And all for a totally unavailable man who has a wonderful wife he doesn't deserve. Tomorrow I'm going to go on
eharmony.com
.

“This is really stupid.”

She found the copy of the special key in her jeans, went to her small dresser in the closet, opened the bottom drawer—the keepsake drawer—and tossed it in. It landed with a clunk against the plastic key from Room 529 of the Marriott in San Francisco. Her breath caught. She started crying all over again, angrily closed the drawer with her foot, then the closet door, trying to seal off the images, the dreams, but all she succeeded in doing was imprisoning them.

She went in the living room, picked up the phone and dialed, making a feel-good call to Marilyn, but she got voice mail.
Should I go out?
From her window, she gazed down at Ocean Park Boulevard. Dudes in
faux gang colors ambled uphill in the shadows, some with pit bulls, the rest with attitude. Amber saw no females anywhere—not even hookers.

Forget that.

She decided to console herself with a few drinks, take a long, hot shower, go to bed and hope she felt better in the morning. In the kitchen, she found a few bottles of good wine saved for special occasions, but this was not one of them. Besides, wine was romantic. This was more of an Everclear night. Having none of that, she poured herself a water glass of cooking sherry, went in the living room and clicked on the TV, but given her last two days with H. G. Wells, she doubted that anything could hold her attention.
Should I try Syfy?

The phone rang.

She figured it was Marilyn and smiled, picked the phone up on its third ring. “Hi, there.”

“Hullo, 'Dusa?”

His voice jolted her. She was thrilled to hear it, yet annoyed at the same time.
What are you doing calling me when you should be in Amy's arms soothing her wrecked sensibilities? I'm no longer available.

“Sorry to ring so late,” he said, his tone brittle and tense, “but I've just heard from Stephenson, and I didn't know who else to call.”

Her emotions faded, leaving her with the stark reality that she was still connected to this man on account of a time-traveling murderer.
This is one of those late-night business calls.

“He sounded strange—as if something had electrified his vocal cords—so I can only assume that on his trip back from infinity a reformulation error radically altered his voice.” He paused. “It was actually quite awful. . . . For a moment, I thought I was having a conversation with a machine from one of my books.” He sighed heavily. “At any rate, I wanted you to know that we should be prepared for someone that not only sounds different, but might appear radically different as well.”

“You didn't happen to get a caller ID on him, did you?”

“It said restricted number. Can your technology trace the conversation, regardless?”

“I'll ask the lieutenant in the morning, but I wouldn't hold my breath.”

“Why don't we meet in the
A.M
.?”

“Sure.”

“Shall we say, nine o'clock?”

He rang off.

She took a large swallow of sherry. She hugged herself. She tried not to imagine him, but failed. She thought,
He must've loved me and me alone in an earlier time. Amy wasn't in that universe, so it wasn't like we were hurting her or anything. It was just the two of us. He loved me and I loved him. It's the only thing that makes any sense.
She frowned petulantly, put her face in her hands and wondered how she could suppress—no, kill—her feelings.

Poison them.

She chugged her sherry.

After he was packed, Lieutenant Casey Holland tried one last time to reason with his wife. He pleaded with her to reconsider and not break up their family. Instead of listening, she carried his bag to the front door by herself, set it outside on the steps, stood in the doorway with her arms folded.

“For Christ's sake, Cheryl, I—”

“You what? You love me and the kids . . . ? Show me your letter of resignation and we'll talk.”

Fighting back tears, he tossed his bag in his '05 Mustang, backed into the street. As he took one last look at his buttoned-up four-bedroom home with its proud bluish green lawn, Cheryl switched off the living room lights, plunging the front into darkness. Wearing a tight-lipped, angry smile, he punched the Mustang and pulled away, pipes roaring. He took the corner too fast and left the pleasant little Sherman Oaks neighborhood behind, sped south until he hit Ventura Boulevard, then drove aimlessly, passing his future: lonely, dangerous people on the street, more of the same in the cars around him, dozens of bars offering shelter from the storm. Removed, he kept driving, ignoring the street-corner
smiles from an occasional hooker, the naked stares from gay drivers. He drove with no clue where he was going.

Jaclyn flooded his brain. He resisted her lurid images, memories of her taste and smell. He tried to convince himself that if he didn't call her—if he didn't hook up with her—that then he was a better person, and Cheryl would know instinctively, accept his love as genuine and welcome him back home. Except Jaclyn dodged his good intentions; she had taken out a lease on his mind; she was waiting.

When he came to his senses, he saw that he had ended up on the 405 and realized that despite Jaclyn he had no place to go and was automatically driving to work. He grinned sardonically.
How pathetic is that? What am I gonna do? Ask the desk sergeant to give me a holding cell?
He fished his phone from his pocket and turned it on.

One missed call. He returned it.

“This is Sergeant Young. Is that you, Case?”

“Yeah.”

“Where you been?”

“It's a long story.”

 

Holland found out that Sergeant Young was still at work, jumped off the freeway and got to headquarters in under five minutes. He nodded at the desk sergeant, strode into the homicide bay and poured himself coffee left over from that morning.

Young looked up from his computer, then finished his typing, leaned back in his squeaky desk chair and put his feet up. “So what happened? The little woman bust you for getting some strange?”

Holland smiled sheepishly. “Actually, she got tired of me being a cop.”

Young nodded and slapped the desk appreciatively. “Well, hey, welcome back.”

“Huh?”

“Face it, Case, you been gone for a long time now.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Ever since you had kids and moved to the valley.”

Holland turned red. “Do we have problems, Sergeant?”

“I dunno, Case. I can't cover your ass and do my own work at the same time, you know what I'm saying? Every five fucking minutes I'm getting a call from the fucking media because your mailbox is all filled up. So, yeah, I guess we do have problems. . . . Or did . . . if you're really back.”

Holland grimaced, let the guilt wash over him—for Cheryl and his job. Yet he had enough sense of self left to want to try again, so he didn't walk out or deny what Young had told him. He waited in the silence and drank the sludge that had once been bad coffee.

“We let Albert Grattan go. . . .”

“Makes sense.”

“His DNA and prints didn't match the ones we found at the Getty and in Michael Trattner's Porsche.”

“He was never the one,” said Holland. “He was just a bone to toss to the reporters.”

“Yeah.” Young grinned. “I love watching them trample each other when they're all going in the wrong direction.” He laughed, then: “Hey, y'know this ‘REMEMBER ME?' our boy's been signing his bodies with?”

Holland nodded. “I figure he's just trying to tell us this isn't his first barbecue.”

“That's the joke, Case. There's been so many psychopaths in the last x number of years he could be any one of them.”

“Maybe he knows that.”

Young shrugged, sat up and typed a thought into his computer.

“So where are we?” said Holland, annoyed that he had to ask.

“We should get the dental records on Venus de Milo in the morning. If I get here before you, I'll call and tell you who the Jane Doe is. If not, they should be on your desk.” Young shut down his computer. “I'm outta here.” He put on his jacket, started for the door. “Wanna go for beers?”

“No, thanks.”

But Young was already gone, the door closed behind him. He hadn't even waited for a reply, and Holland was left wondering if Young had anticipated his response or was flat-out dissing him. It didn't matter.
Young was the least of his problems. He went to his office down the hall and flipped on the overheads, intending to digitally clean out his mailbox, but as he was reaching for the landline, he felt his cell buzz in his pocket. Voice mail. It must've been buried under Young's missed call. He hoped it was Cheryl, that she'd changed her mind and wanted him to come home.

No.

He heard Jaclyn's heavy, sensual sigh. It went straight to his heart, then spread to his groin like liquid. He shuddered involuntarily, and a sense of relief, of salvation washed over him. He was connected. Her words came next, sustenance for his soul:

“I miss you. . . .”

H.G. and Amy took a taxi to the Four Seasons, H.G. gazing morosely out the window at the nighttime opulence of Beverly Hills, its gleaming motorcars, its chic people outside clubs lit in vivid colors, the darkness hiding the less fortunate, the flotsam and jetsam of this roller-coaster world. He didn't share his dashed hopes for an enlightened world-state in the twenty-first century with Amy. He didn't share his realization that in 2010 the only likely Citizen of the World he would find was himself. He didn't tell her that the monster had phoned and taunted him with his grim knowledge. And, no, he didn't tell her that he was preoccupied with the end of the world.

So they rode in silence, Amy thinking that H.G. didn't want to talk in front of the cabdriver, and H.G. trying to calculate the year mankind had blown up the planet. If the worst was going to happen, he wanted proof, so he ran the numbers through his brain again. If Amy had arrived at the Getty at 12:01
A.M
., that meant . . . He scowled, frustrated. Without accurate times for the variables, he could calculate nothing. In the morning when he met 'Dusa's Lieutenant Holland, he would try to find out exactly when the murder at the Getty occurred, then subtract three or four minutes for the unfortunate security guard to chase the Ripper before getting
her throat slashed, and that would give him
The Utopia
's arrival time. Subtract that from when Amy had pulled the declinometer at, say, 12:02, and multiply the minutes by three years. Divide the result by two, add 2010, and he would know what year the world would end . . .
Blast it, no, I still won't know. The damned Destination Indicator had malfunctioned.
Yes, of course, he had repaired and recalibrated it, yet he would never find out how much real time his machine had lost bringing Stephenson back from infinity.