Agent of Time

by Nathan Van Coops

  “This is the place to be tonight,” Danny replied. “Drinks are cheap, the music is loud, and the scenery is a dream if you don’t mind me saying so.” He winked at her.

  Stella wasn’t quite sure what to make of this after-hours Danny Briggs just yet, so she let the comment pass without response. He had his jacket sleeves pushed up to his elbows and hadn’t bothered with the top three buttons of his shirt. “You going to sing for me tonight?”

  “I was hoping you’d sing for me.”

  “Now you’re really dreaming,” Stella laughed.

  A pair of guys with bleached hair down to their waists were exiting a high-top table, so Danny guided them to it.

  “See if you can hold this down for us,” Danny said. “I’ll go get us some drinks.”

  “All right.”

  “They’re like piranhas in here. Don’t let them steal my seat.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll pistol whip anyone who tries,” Stella said. She slid onto the stool as Danny began to elbow his way through the crowd to the bar.

  The DJ picked up the microphone. “And next up, we’ve got Carson and . . . looks like Ben . . . singing, You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling by the Righteous Brothers. Come on up, Carson and Ben.”

  Stella watched as two young men edged their way to the stage, cheered on by several women at a table near the back. A dark-haired Latina woman whooped loudly.

  It wasn’t until the two men reached the stage and turned around that Stella recognized him. The tall, brown-haired man was even wearing the same Gremlins T-shirt she’d seen him in before. It was her quarry from the week before that had buzzed away on the back of a scooter.

  The two young men began belting out a version of the Righteous Brothers song she hadn’t heard done before and the crowd was eating it up.

  Danny made it back with drinks around mid-song and Stella had to pull her attention from the stage to accept the glass from him.

  “You know those guys?” Danny asked as he set his beer on the table.

  “I think I want to talk to them,” Stella said. “The tall one.”

  “I guess maybe I will have to sing tonight,” Danny said. “Have I got competition already?”

  Stella rolled her eyes. “I spotted him at the impound lot the night I saw you downtown. The night of the fire. There’s a chance he might know something.”

  “You think he’s a suspect?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  When the two men finished their song, they hopped off the stage amid a raucous round of applause from the crowd.

  Stella slipped off her stool and began to work her way toward them.

  “You want backup?” Danny said.

  “No. Your turn to fight off the table piranhas. I’ll be right back.” She hoisted her purse strap higher on her shoulder, her underarm pressing it tightly against her side.

  The bar was a cloud of smoke and neon lights, so seeing her way to the back was harder than she anticipated. She aimed for the rear table where she’d seen the cheering women. When she got there, she was disappointed to find that the men at the table looked different. The red-haired one looked the same, but the tall, dark haired one was a completely different guy. No Gremlins shirt. The red-headed man was now chatting across the table with several blondes with teased out hair and matching jean jackets who seemed enamored by the performance. Where had the other singer gone?

  The red-head caught Stella looking at him and smiled. “Hi. How’s it going?”

  Stella tried to seem spontaneous. “Hey. Great song!” She had to shout over the noise of the next performer beginning their rendition of Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust.

  “We figured it was a crowd pleaser.” The man extended his hand. “I’m Carson. What’s your name?”

  “Stella. You guys locals?” She noted the Latina woman sizing her up and smiled back at her. The woman looked away.

  “We’ve actually come quite a way to be here,” Carson replied. “Bit complicated. You need a drink?”

  “Um, sure. I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

  Carson guided her to the bar and ordered them two domestics. “You know, in a few years there’s going to be a great local beer scene here,” Carson said. “A couple of the guys I went to high school with have been making some great IPAs in their garage. They want to open a brewery themed around the old green benches they used to have down on Central Ave.”

  “You’re into brewing?” Stella asked.

  “Not really. But I like the drinking part.” Carson clinked his bottle against hers. “Cheers.”

  “Looks like you have a good group of friends out tonight. You in town visiting?”

  “We’re mostly all from here, actually,” Carson replied.

  “But you said you’ve come quite a ways to be here? Which one is it?” Stella asked. She kept an eye out for the man she had seen on the scooter but he was still nowhere in sight. Per the DJ, if this one was Carson, then the other one must be named Ben. Danny was staring at her from their table on the other side of the bar looking sullen. She’d have to make this quick.

  The DJ called into his microphone. “And next up we have Tanya and Tasha!

  Carson had to lean in close to make himself heard. “I’m from here but not here, here. I’m what you might call an anomaly. If I told you the whole story, you’d never believe me.”

  “Man of mystery, huh? Why don’t you try me? I love mysteries.”

  But before he could answer, the two blonde women rushed up to him and began begging him to come sing with them. Carson attempted to deter them but Tanya and Tasha were determined to get him back on stage. Carson mouthed an apology as the girls put a microphone in his hand and dragged him in front of the crowd. The next minute all three were belting out the words to Billie Jean by Michael Jackson. Carson even threw in a moonwalk.

  Stella made her way back to Danny. His drink was empty.

  “Get ditched?” he asked.

  “Guess I can’t compete with the Doublemint Twins,” she replied. “But he wasn’t the one I was hoping to talk to anyway.” She glanced around the bar, looking for the man from the scooter, but when she spotted him, she noted that he was deep in conversation with his Latina friend.

  Danny lifted his glass and rattled the ice cubes. “Are we ready to stop working and start drinking? Or do you have more barflies to interrogate?”

  Stella smiled and slid back onto the stool. “Ready when you are.”

  It was nearing midnight when Stella stepped outside into the cool night air. It was the middle of winter but she was barely chilled. Florida latitude and Kentucky Bourbon had conspired to keep her warm. Danny’s hand pressed to the small of her back helped too.

  “I was thinking that maybe you don’t have to go back to that ratty motel tonight,” Danny said, letting his hand linger on her hip. “I feel like maybe you owe it to yourself to get some better accommodations.”

  “I bet you know a place?” Stella said. “Maybe at a place you happen to live?”

  “I mean it’s not fancy,” he said. “But we could have another drink and get comfortable there. See how you like it?”

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Stella replied. She slipped her hand into his as they made their way toward Danny’s car.

  It would have been a beautiful and promising night if it weren’t for the red and blue lights flashing in the parking lot. The broad-chested officer was standing outside a squad car, talking on the radio. He looked up and spotted Danny, then waved. Stella frowned.

  The officer came over to greet them. “Hey, Danny. You may want to get over to 16th Street. Fire department is responding to a call over there. Suspected arson at a gas station. Proprietor is real shaken up from someone throwing gas on him and trying to torch the place.”

  “Anybody hurt?” Danny asked.

  “No. Not that I heard. But if you want I can give you a ride down there.”

  “They need more eyes on it?”

  “Yeah, you should p
robably come down. They think there’s some danger of an explosion and they could use a few more hands to search for the guy.”

  Yep. There went her night.

  The officer turned to study Stella.

  “Oh. John, this is Special Agent York with the FBI. She’s on the escapee case. We were just doing some . . . collaborating. “

  “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” the officer replied. “If you want, I can give you both a lift, assuming you don’t mind the back.”

  Stella glanced toward the bar, then to Danny. “You know what? You go on. My head is a little fuzzy for field work tonight. I can get a cab back to the motel.”

  “You sure?” Danny asked. He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “If you wanted to go back to my place, I could meet you. I feel bad leaving you here so late.”

  “Don’t worry. I can take care of myself,” Stella replied. “You can fill me in tomorrow.”

  Danny seemed to be having trouble making up his mind, but finally agreed. “All right. I’ll give you a call in the morning. We’ll uh . . .”

  “Collaborate?” Stella suggested.

  “Right.” Danny gave her hand a quick squeeze before scooting around the squad car to climb into the passenger seat. Stella waved once as the car pulled away.

  So much for romance.

  A payphone on the side of the building was free but she wasn’t ready for a cab yet. She headed back toward the bar. Just as she was reaching the door, three of the friends she’d been keeping an eye on came spilling out. The one named Ben and his other tall friend were propping up a shorter man with a shaved head. “I’m telling you that if I could come up with an idea like that, I could retire right now. Leg warmers? I mean who thought of that?” The young man caught Stella’s eye only briefly before carrying on. “After we save my grandpa, I’m gonna—” He cut himself off when Ben elbowed him.

  The drunken friend looked up at her and smiled.

  “Sorry. Were you headed in?” The second tall man released his grip on his friend and backed up a step to open the door for her. As he did so, their Latina friend emerged from the doorway with a scowl on her face.

  “Let’s get out of here already,” she said as she rifled through her handbag and extracted car keys.

  “Where’s Carson?” the man holding the door asked.

  “The hell if I care,” the girl replied. “Maybe you can pry him away from Goldilocks and her extra clueless sister.” She looked up to find Stella standing there and it didn’t improve her disposition. “Oh. You again.”

  The man holding the door peeked back inside. “Yeah, maybe I should go retrieve him . . .

  Stella turned toward the man from the scooter. “Hi. Ben was it? I caught your Righteous Brothers rendition in there. Nice job.”

  The man smiled. “Oh, thanks. That was mostly Carson. He has an obsession with Top Gun.”

  “Top what?” Stella asked.

  “Gun,” the shorter, drunk friend explained. He had regained the ability to stand on his own. “The movie. You should know that one here. It’s an 80s classic.”

  “Must have missed it.”

  “Shit,” Ben muttered, elbowing his friend. “Probably not out yet.”

  “What’s that?” Stella asked.

  “Ohhh,” the shorter friend took on a grave expression and pantomimed zipping his lips.

  “I’m going to the car. You guys coming or what?” the girl said, jingling the keys.

  “Yeah, we’re right behind you,” Ben said. He turned to Stella and smiled. “Nice to meet you. Have a great night.”

  Stella watched them make their way toward an old boat of a car in the parking lot. A Buick? She made a mental note of the license plate number. She was still rummaging around in her purse for her notepad and a pen when the other tall one and Carson reemerged from the bar.

  “I’m not saying I wrote it, but if I sing it first and produce it, I still think that would technically make it my song.” Carson was still talking when he saw Stella. “Oh, hey. You’re still here. You waiting for a ride?”

  Stella shouldered her purse. “My ride turned into a pumpkin. But I’ll be fine.”

  Carson eyed the pad of paper and pen in her hand. “I’m afraid we don’t do autographs.”

  Stella laughed. “I saw your dance moves in there. Maybe you should.”

  Carson grinned. “Oh, hey, Blake, this is my new friend . . .”

  “Stella.” She extended a hand. Blake shook it politely.

  A car horn blared from the parking lot.

  “Uh, it’s great meeting you,” Blake said. “Sorry we have to run. Our friend seems like she’s had enough fun for one night.”

  Stella nodded. “Another time, perhaps.”

  Carson raised a finger. “That might be more likely than you think.”

  Blake clapped him on the back. “Come on. Fresca’s waiting. We gotta roll.”

  The duo crossed the parking lot and piled into the old Buick.

  A belt squealed as the woman behind the wheel shifted into gear and eased the big car forward. The headlights swept across Stella, causing her to squint before the car swung left and out to the road. She watched it dip into the street, then turn south. She waited until the taillights had disappeared before lifting her notepad and scribbling the plate number.

  She jotted the names down too. Ben . . . Carson . . . Blake . . . and Fresca?

  Tonight may not have gone as planned, but for all the difficulty of the case so far, her gut was finally telling her she had a lead worth investigating. She didn’t know what to make of it yet, but she would soon.

  She walked into the phone booth, picked up the receiver, and dialed herself a cab.

  6 Disappear

  “I’m sorry about the other night.” Detective Danny Briggs was looking solemn. “I should have stuck around.”

  Stella was working at a borrowed table in the police headquarters conference room, reviewing the latest additions to the case file.

  “It’s the job. You don’t have to beat yourself up about it.”

  “You get the info I sent on the gas station fire? We don’t know if there is a connection to the van escapee yet but we’re looking at everything.”

  “I’ve looked through most of it. I actually wanted to ask you something. I was reviewing the security camera footage but I feel like you’re missing a big chunk of time.” She picked up the VCR remote and aimed it at the rolling TV stand. “I get up to around one o’clock, then it cuts off. What’s the story with that?” She reached the end of the tape, then hit the rewind button.

  Briggs leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “Yeah. Perp flipped the breaker on the building right after he chased the manager down the bathroom hallway. When someone turned the power back on, the CCTV required a manual restart to start recording again. We didn’t get anything from the fire itself. Just the bit where the guy first walked through the door.”

  Stella flipped through the file on her desk. “Manager says he got rescued by a . . . ‘barefoot guy in a jumpsuit who locked himself in the bathroom and then disappeared?’ Who gathered that testimony?”

  Danny sighed. “Officer Marks took that report but I was there too. Door was still locked when we got there. Manager swears a guy went in there and never came out. When we finally got the door open, the room was empty.”

  “So what’s your take?” Stella asked. “Guardian angels?”

  “I assume he slipped out when the manager wasn’t looking,” Briggs replied. “Must have locked the door behind him for some reason.”

  Stella flipped through the file in front of her. “Report says the back door was blocked by a dumpster. You didn’t see anybody leave out the front?”

  “Not that anyone noticed, but he had to have gotten out sometime. Maybe before we got there.”

  At that moment, Special Agent MacGregor barged into the room. “York, what do you think you’re doing? I need you getting testimony from Polk County.”

  Danny raised his ey
ebrows, then eased himself out the door. Stella frowned, then turned to her partner. “The Wallace lead? We beat that into the ground already. He’s a dead end.”

  “Toe tags on those stiffs in the morgue still say John Doe on ’em don’t they? Is that what you call case closed?”

  “I’ve run every lead on the bodies you gave me. No one has ever seen them before. You have something new?”

  “I want you to come up with something new, not spend your time floozing it up with local PD. If you want to embarrass yourself, do it on your own time.”

  Stella opened her mouth to speak but MacGregor’s expression was too eager. His jowls were practically quivering with anticipation. If she took the bait and unloaded on him, it would give him the perfect excuse to write her up. She’d worked too hard to let him get to her now.

  “I’ll finish this arson research and then get back on the Wallace angle.”

  MacGregor sniffed, seeming disappointed in her lack of confrontation. “I’m heading to the airport. Meeting with SAC Renfroe to report in and take a few days off. When I get back I hope you’ll have made yourself useful.”

  “Yes, sir,” Stella replied.

  She waited till he was out of the room before she muttered the curses she was holding back.

  She was happy he was leaving town, but had no confidence in him saying anything good about her work in his report to the Special Agent in Charge. She would have liked to be at the office in person to represent her own research but it was never going to happen.

  She realized the video on the TV was still rewinding and caught an unusual flurry of activity beyond the fuzzy horizontal lines. She reached for the remote and hit the play button again. The time stamp on the camera feed showed just after seven pm. The proprietor of the station was leaning over a magazine, but looked up in alarm suddenly, then hurried to the back of the convenience store. A woman was guiding a little girl out of the bathroom. The child was clearly jabbering something but the video lacked an audio component. Whatever happened, she was flustered and kept pointing to the rear of the building. The mother had a worried expression on her face and gestured at the proprietor. The man quickly moved to the rear door of the store and out of frame. He came back perhaps ten seconds later and shook his head. The conversation continued for a few minutes before the woman hurried her daughter back out the front door.