Twin Speex: Time Traitors Book II (6 page)

“What did you tell them?”

Marta smiled wanly through her tears. “You know Miss Ivy, she was always acting differently.” Then she shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. “But she wasn’t herself—just not in a bad way.”

“What do you mean?” Ettie asked, leaning in close to the smaller woman.

“She was light, happy… ah… carefree, that’s the word. Miss Ivy was never like that. She was always busy, always… a little sad.”

“Sad?” The twins echoed in unison.

Marta looked at them with mild reproof. “Your mother had always a sadness. That is why she never stopped working… was always busy.” She shook her head again and said as if gently scolding Ivy as well, “It was a sadness that even you, her children, could not lift.”

“Do you know why she was happier?” Ettie asked, even though she felt certain of the answer.

“No, not for sure. But several nights ago, I heard voices outside her office at home—hers and another’s—a man’s voice. I hadn’t seen anyone come in. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and I didn’t recognize the voice. The accent was very strange. Not so much foreign, as…,” she struggled for words.

“Alien,” Ettie finished for her.

Marta narrowed her eyes and nodded slowly. “Yes, strange in a way I have never heard before.”

Ettie began to shake, her eyes wide and staring. “It’s him. That man I saw her with.” She turned to Odell, tears running down her face. “Did she suffer, Odell? Did she know what was happening?”

Odell held her close. “No,” he lied.

*

It was well past midnight, and the street was practically deserted. Pools of light from the overhanging streetlamps dotted the sidewalk. Occasionally, a figure would emerge briefly into the light and disappear again into the darkness on the other side. It was cold, and a soft dusting of snow began to fall.

Odell stuck close to the buildings, skirting the light whenever possible. He knew where the cameras were and pulled the black hoodie down over his face. The police had padlocked the building, but Odell hoped they had missed the basement window behind a scraggly bush at the back.

Once Ettie had begun to dance seriously, the studio became as familiar to him as his own home. Ivy let him use her office for his studies, but the constant ping of the piano drove him nuts. Searching for some quiet and solitude, he explored the most remote and uninhabited reaches of the building—usually leading to either the attic or the basement. There, he had set up elaborate forts in which to read and study. He left this all behind when he discovered public transportation and the community library only a few stops down from the studio. But he had never forgotten the building’s secret byways and its many escape routes.

Odell rounded the building and slipped behind the bush. He bent down to the sunken window. The police hadn’t found it, but it was broken. He drew back, compressing his lips tightly together.

The sense of foreboding that was absent on his earlier visit now descended upon him with full force. He knew that his mother’s murder was not a random act or a robbery gone wrong, but the evidence that it had been carefully planned and executed twisted his gut and made his fists clinch. Someone had cased the building carefully to find this window and then negotiated the maze of hallways leading up to the third-floor office.

His overwhelming sense of unease grew. The police had been unduly suspicious of him. Taking his clothes and testing him for gunpowder residue was standard procedure, as were many of their questions. But there were other questions, ones that were weirdly confrontational, particularly for a son whose mother had just died in his arms.

“I’m told you and your mother had a tense relationship,” Detective Hamilton had stated when Odell was cleaned up and sat warming himself with a bitter cup of vending machine coffee.

Odell’s detached self-control likely didn’t help him much when he answered smoothly, “My mother had a tense relationship with a lot of people, Detective. It was who she was.”

And so it went. Probing questions about his relationship with Ivy and even Ettie were answered with composure and entirely too thoughtful responses. Detective Hamilton had kept him isolated in the exam room while he went to get Ettie. Odell assumed that this was so the detective could question her before she and Odell had a chance to speak with each other. But Ettie had been too shocked to answer any questions and had cried into Beatrix’s fur all the way to the hospital.

Fortunately, one of the dancers had seen Odell pass by the classroom only seconds before his shouted plea for help. The timeframe for him to have entered undetected, shoot his mother, leave, discard the weapon, and return to discover her seemed impossible. It became even more so when the doctor declared that she couldn’t have survived her injury for more than a matter of minutes.

The murderer had shot her only a brief few moments before Odell’s arrival, a fact that made him grind his teeth in fury. Someone was watching him. Someone had killed his mother and set a trap. The fact that it hadn’t worked yet, didn’t mean it eventually wouldn’t.

His own testimony excluded the alleyway as the assailant’s escape route. The police had focused on the main street door, but it wouldn’t take them long to find this window. Perhaps even the remnants of his old forts, pointing them back in his direction.

He had to act quickly. Odell slipped through the window and landed with a crunch on the broken glass. He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and flipped it on. The basement had once been nicely refurbished. The walls were painted and tile had been put down to cover the cement floors. Ivy had thought to build dormitories for the students, but the promise of a residential program never materialized. For a while, the custodial staff cleaned regularly, leaving no creepy cobwebs or water-stained walls to scare a small child. So it had been left to Odell to use the second-hand furniture to build forts and find some respite from the repetitious notes and grinding discipline that was ballet.

As his light bounced off the dirty walls and dusty old furniture, Odell saw the boy he once was and felt his self-control slip. His mother had come down here searching for him, a cupcake with blue frosting in her hand, her solemn eyes taking in the fort and his books strewn around the room.

I know how you like the blue ones…

He shook off the memory. Now was not the time to lose it. He moved through the narrow hallways and past the abandoned elevator shaft. The service stairs led him up several flights to the third floor. He carefully opened the door into the hallway and shined his light up and down the corridor. It was deserted. The police had cordoned off, not only the office, but several of the classrooms as well.

Odell clicked off the flashlight and slipped under the tape into Ivy’s office. He flattened himself against the wall and slid over to the window. The blinds were open, and he looked out onto the street. He saw it, an unmarked police car parked on the corner diagonal to the building. There didn’t look to be any others, but he couldn’t be certain.

Detective Hamilton wasn’t taking any chances. He was unsure of Odell, and this particular stakeout was Hamilton covering his bases. Marta had told him and Ettie what she had overheard while waiting near the nurses’ station to be questioned. Two officers, heedless of the old woman beside them, discussed the case.

A vagrant saw him enter the building at least thirty minutes before he said…

But the dancers…

Yeah, Hamilton’s not so sure…

Odell was confident that the vagrant in question was no old wino confused with too much drink. Perhaps they would find the gun after all. Maybe hidden under his mattress at home or thrown into a dumpster a few blocks from the studio. He had to move quickly.

Odell leaned his head back against the wall. Ivy had looked up at him, her eyes intent and pain gouging deep furrows in her forehead.

“
…proditoris aevus
.”

She had used the last of her strength to pull the delicate gold chain with its circular pendant from around her neck and press it into Odell’s hand.

Even through his shock, Odell knew he would be searched. And while the pendant was innocuous enough, it could still be held for several days before being released back to him. So he had shoved it in between two volumes on the shelf behind his mother’s head before the police arrived.

Odell slid down to the floor and crawled over to the bookshelf. He studiously ignored the large bloodstain beside him as he pulled one of the books from its place. The necklace fell to the carpeted floor where it lay glittering in the darkness.

He had seen it almost every day of his life adorning his mother’s long, slender neck. She never took it off. Odell picked it up, stuffed it into his pocket, and quickly stood as he prepared to leave.

The room spun, and he dropped abruptly back to the floor again. He breathed deeply and shut his eyes as he tried to ignore his churning stomach. Odell knew the signs of a trans-dimensional shift. Stronger than a
poste me
, it signaled a change in the timeline that could last for hours or even days. He never knew. He only knew that they had become more frequent, and that Ettie could now feel them to some extent.

Odell didn’t understand why he or Ettie were conscious of an effect that seemed to strike no one else as particularly odd. It was one of the many questions he was going to put to his mother when he had found her near death in this very office.

He brought his hands, now encased in black leather gloves, to brace against the shelves and pushed himself off the floor. His tennis shoes had been replaced by ankle-high boots, and the hoodie had morphed into a lightweight wool coat. He thrust his hand into his trouser pocket to assure himself that the necklace was still there.

His surroundings had changed to reflect a more derelict building. Paint peeled from the walls and dust covered the floor and furniture. Thankfully, the bloodstain was not there.

The sound of sirens didn’t surprise him. In this timeline, he was most definitely a wanted man. How they could even know he was in the building was beyond his comprehension. He only knew he had to move and fast.

Odell glanced quickly out the window to assess the situation. A paddy wagon and patrol “cruiser” were out front of the building. The wagon was pulled by two large draft horses, but the cruiser was propelled by a powerful steam engine. In fact, the engine comprised over half the size of the vehicle. It was built to carry only two officers, and speed was its primary function. It had the high grill and bumper of an old Chrysler Saratoga, but almost no space separated that from the windshield and the bench seat behind it. The engine was attached to the back with a dizzying array of wires and two large exhaust pipes bounded it on both sides. It had a dune buggy feel with its small front tires and much larger back ones. Although levers provided rather imprecise steering, the cruiser was indeed fast. It created short bursts of speed before slowing down to cool and recharge for another burst. It was rare that it didn’t catch a running man, or horse, for that matter, within the first burst.

Odell cursed under his breath. They weren’t playing games. Only one option was open to him now. He saw an officer exit the vehicle and knew the other one was likely already in the building. He raced out of the office and turned down the corridor toward the stairwell.

“Halt! Halt in the name of the Crown!” The voice, a woman’s, was almost enough to make him hesitate. That was a change he hadn’t foreseen. But her uniform was a blur of dark blue as he barreled into her, sending her crashing against the opposite wall.

He had barely reached the corner when a burning sensation grazed the side of his head as he turned and propelled himself into the abandoned elevator shaft.

*

Dressed only in an old pair of sweatpants, the man stood shirtless and barefoot on the polished marble floor. He looked out the wall-sized picture windows at the lights burning in the buildings on the opposite side of Central Park. It was a beautiful sight—the park, a pool of darkness, and the buildings like sheer cliffs rising from its depths. He never got used to it, this breathtaking view so far above the crowded sidewalks.

His own beginnings were much more humble, even destitute. He never forgot the painful gnaw of hunger. The memory often kept him from eating an extra serving or overindulging in the richness of food and drink that surrounded him. People frequently commented on his self-discipline. Both women and men looked with envy and desire at his tall, muscular physique.

He smiled mirthlessly to himself. There was nothing like starvation to instill an appreciation of healthy food, or the raw bite of a bitter winter to make one long for the warmth that comes with strenuous exercise.

He walked to the sofa and sat down, leaning back into the cushions. It was here, in this position, that she had straddled him. Only a short hour before, his hands had encircled her waist, and he had watched as she moved rhythmically above him, her head thrown back and hair cascading around her shoulders.

But what started out as desire never lasted. The simple act of sex itself was never enough. It always had to be harder, rougher. It ended on the floor with her face down, his hands pulling her hair back in a brutal grip. Her slender frame penned beneath him, the force of his thrusts pushing her violently into the unforgiving marble.

She had said nothing as she slipped the dress on over her head and pulled the high-heeled pumps onto her feet. She merely patted his cheek and smiled. When she reached to pick up the heavy fur coat from the chair onto which it had been flung, he saw a livid purple bruise rising on her forearm. It made him queasy.

“Don’t forget what you owe us,” she admonished him playfully and left.

Would she ever let him forget?

He got up, suddenly restless. He would go for a run. Perhaps the rush of endorphins would lift the curtain of depression that had fallen over him.

As he headed toward the bedroom, his cell phone rang. He grabbed it from the counter and kept walking.