Past Imperfect (Jerry eBooks)

by Martin H Greenberg

Kingsbury glanced at her watch. People joined them on the platform as the first train arrived, but she didn’t let him enter it. They stood with a handful of others, waiting for a different train.

  The others were long gone by the time the second train arrived. She counted five cars from the wall, then stepped inside. He stood beside her and was about to sit down when she stopped him.

  “We’ll stand,” she said.

  Five others entered around them and took the available chairs. But, as she had predicted, the car was nearly empty when the train pulled out.

  According to Kingsbury’s watch, they were almost two hours early. He had no idea what they would do in the intervening time. As the train clacked down the tracks, he tried to remember where his other self—his younger self as the FBI called it—was at this moment.

  When the call had come in, he had just come back from dinner—a knish from a stand across the way.

  He remembered that not because the meal was particularly good, but because it had formed a lump in his stomach when he saw Schlaffler’s body, one that stayed with him all night, and made him swear off knishes for the next two weeks.

  Before that, he had been writing the final report on a rape/homicide in Central Park, and before that, he’d been overseeing a line-up in an incredibly brutal murder of a bodega clerk.

  His younger self had to be witnessing the line-up, completely oblivious to his future, happening simultaneously.

  Kingsbury clung to the overhead bar and stared at the windows, even though all that was visible through them was darkness. She seemed to be the only one in the Temporal Office who had an inkling about the kind of power the government now had. Or perhaps she was the only one who was disturbed by it.

  Wheldon was glad she was traveling with him and not Ambersson.

  The train was slowing down.

  “This is our stop,” Kingsbury said.

  He braced himself, paying attention, suddenly, to the people around him. He had no real idea who he was looking for, who the perp was. He guessed—because the statistics were on his side—that the perp was a man, but he wasn’t even certain of that. Anyone on this train could be the killer. Anyone with enough anger and a willingness to use a knife.

  The train stopped and the doors opened. Wheldon followed Kingsbury onto the platform. The enclosed smell of oil, grease and exhaust seemed even more intense here. People swirled around him, intent on finding the exits.

  “Now what?” he asked. They were still early.

  “We wait.” She led him to a metal bench and they sat. She took out her hand-held and tried to be inconspicuous. He watched people, as he usually did when he was waiting for something.

  The subways hadn’t changed during his entire life nor had the people who rode them. All income levels, all attitudes. Only the fashions shifted and the items that people carried. When he’d been a boy, there had been newspapers and books and magazines under people’s arms. Now everyone had their hand-helds. Newsstands were long gone, replaced by food and beverage vendors selling anything prepackaged, from chips and candy bars to cola and iced coffee.

  He’d never really thought about the past and the present before, how they flowed into each other, merged and mingled and became something else, something that differed from day to day.

  Occasionally, Kingsbury would look up from her hand-held to inspect the platform as if it had somehow changed, and then went back to her absorption. Her screen, shaded so that no one looking over her shoulder could read it, hadn’t shifted since she sat down. He knew her study of the machine was all an act.

  At 6:32, just like he’d had in his report, Schlaffler’s train stopped. Kingsbury didn’t even look up. Only Wheldon watched the passengers disembark.

  The train had been crowded, people packed together so tightly that they stumbled out of the exit instead of stepping easily. It took him a moment to see Schlaffler. She was wearing the same clothes she died in—the tweed jacket with matching skirt and sensible shoes—but the colors were different, lighter, prettier, without the deep dark stains caused by her blood.

  Her hair was falling out of its neat bun and her shoulders slumped as she moved forward—showing either exhaustion or depression, he couldn’t tell which from this distance. No one seemed to be following her, but he couldn’t be certain of that.

  He tapped Kingsbury slightly and they both stood. To anyone watching it would seem as if they were getting ready for their train or they were meeting someone. Kingsbury slipped her hand-held in her pocket and took his arm, turning her face toward his as if they were having a conversation. He put his hand over hers in a manner that would look protective, and then followed Schlaffler toward the exit.

  She stopped at the food stand. Her hand hovered over the chocolate bars, then she shook her head and walked on. The movement made the knot in his stomach return. The man who was going to kill her was carrying chocolate, but he wouldn’t give it to her.

  He would give it to her roommate.

  Wheldon wanted to warn her, to turn her away from her home, but he had been cautioned against that. It might not do any good—the perp might kill her elsewhere—or it might succeed, and then he would have altered the past in an unacceptable manner.

  His shoulders tightened. Never before had he had this kind of advance knowledge and it made him nervous. Even when he conducted stings, he had the belief—the hope—that the potential victims would get out alive.

  He shuddered. He was watching a dead woman walk.

  Kingsbury’s grip tightened on his arm. She gazed up at him, her expression intense. Wheldon nodded once—he understood the rules—and then he concentrated on Schlaffler.

  They followed her at a discreet distance, always able to keep her in sight. No one else seemed to be behind her. She took the stairs out of the subway slowly, as if each one were a burden. Her head was down, her hair covering her face.

  Depression, he thought again. Or intense sadness. Maybe even loneliness. He could feel it radiating off her, part of her body language, the listless way she moved.

  At the top of the stairs, she bumped into a young man. His face flushed, and Wheldon could feel Kingsbury stiffen beside him. The young man cursed at Schlaffler, then continued down the stairs. He jumped the turnstile, and disappeared on the platform.

  Kingsbury did not relax.

  They reached the top of the stairs. Schlaffler was standing in front of a sidewalk flower vendor, staring at the hothouse roses. She leaned toward one, sniffed, and shook her head.

  “They had more of a smell when I was a child,” she said to the vendor. Her voice was deep and rich. It startled Wheldon. He’d imagined her to have a voice as listless as her body language.

  “You gonna buy one, lady or not?” the vendor asked.

  She leaned back as if the vendor’s harshness startled her, then shook her head, a small apologetic smile on her face. Then she continued to walk toward her building, head down, shoulders hunched even more.

  “Damn,” Kingsbury whispered.

  Wheldon glanced at her.

  She shrugged. “I didn’t need to see this.”

  He understood. A lot of the work he did forced him to reconstruct a victim’s life. But he had never ever seen a victim walk before, interact with the world around her, or breathe.

  Schlaffler was letting herself into the building now.

  “What time is it?” he asked Kingsbury.

  “Six-thirty-six,” she said. “You’re good.”

  He nodded, not feeling as if he’d accomplished anything. No one was following Schlaffler except them. No one seemed to be watching her except them. A chill ran down his spine. What had he missed?

  The door was swinging shut. He bounded up the stairs and caught it just before it closed, holding it open for Kingsbury. As they stepped into the building’s foyer, the elevator doors closed across from them. They’d missed the opportunity to ride with Schlaffler.

  He cursed and ran for the stairs. Kingsbury followed. They took the steps
two at a time, hurrying up several flights. If he pushed, Wheldon knew he would arrive before the elevator did. It was nearly a hundred years old and very slow.

  He shoved the door open on the sixth floor. The hallway was empty, the elevator’s doors closed. Schlaffler hadn’t arrived yet.

  Kingsbury stepped out beside him. “We need a good spot to watch.”

  “Already picked out.” Wheldon moved her toward the corner where the hallway turned, and they leaned against the wall, arms around each other, as if they were waiting for a friend to come home and let them in.

  They weren’t visible from the elevator or Schlaffler’s apartment unless someone was looking for them.

  But their view of her apartment door was clear.

  The elevator opened and Schlaffler got out, adjusting her purse strap as if she were trying to pull the purse closer to her body. She looked even more uncomfortable than she had outside.

  Wheldon tensed. He couldn’t see what had upset her, and he didn’t dare move closer.

  Schlaffler made her way to her apartment. No one was behind her.

  “What is this?” Kingsbury whispered.

  Then, just as the elevator doors closed, a hand slid between them and grasped the left door. The doors held for a moment, then slipped open. A man peeled himself off the elevator’s side wall and hurried into the hallway.

  He fit the profile: slender, white, rather plain. But he was younger than Wheldon expected, and his eyes were cold. His hands were stuffed in the pocket of his coat, and Wheldon thought he could see the shape of a box and a knife.

  Wheldon’s heartbeat increased. He had to clamp his lips together to keep from shouting a warning.

  Schlaffler stood in front of her door, fumbling with the locks. She’d managed the lower deadbolt, but the upper was giving her trouble.

  The perp walked down the hall, his shoes not making a sound. He slipped behind her as she turned the second lock.

  Kingsbury’s fingers bit into Wheldon’s arm. He could feel how nervous she was.

  Schlaffler shoved her door open, and the perp was on her, one hand over her mouth, the other slipping the knife into her back. She made a single, startled cry, muffled by his hand, and then disappeared into the apartment.

  Wheldon cursed and ran forward, Kingsbury clutching at him. He reached the apartment as the perp pulled the knife out for the second time.

  Wheldon grabbed the man, yanked him off Schlaffler, and tossed him into the hallway. The man hit the wall and slid down it.

  Kingsbury was shouting at Wheldon to stop when a woman pulled open a door, and Wheldon yelled at her to call 911.

  The perp got to his feet. Wheldon turned, unable to reach him. The perp started to run, but Wheldon tripped him. The perp went sprawling, the knife skittering from his hand. Wheldon pulled out his gun and aimed it at the back of the perp’s head.

  “Move and I’ll shoot, you piece of shit,” he said.

  Kingsbury came up beside him. She was shaking. “What are you doing? You have to let him go.”

  “It’s too late,” he said.

  The perp moved. Wheldon shoved the gun against his skull.

  “Make sure Schlaffler is okay, and make sure someone called 911.”

  “No,” Kingsbury said. “We’ve already made a mess of this.”

  “And I’ll make a worse mess if you don’t help me out.”

  Another door opened. Wheldon couldn’t see the person behind it.

  “It’s all right,” he said to the person who opened the door. “We’re cops. Call 911.”

  The perp’s hand was inching forward, toward the knife. Wheldon knelt, shoving his knee into the perp’s back.

  Something made a cracking noise. He hoped it was the perp’s spine.

  “They’re on the way!” a man’s voice yelled.

  The elevator doors opened again. A woman stood inside, clutching her hands together. When she saw the people on the floor, she leaned back in the elevator, and let the doors close.

  The ex-wife. Apparently, she had arrived a little later than the neighbor had initially claimed.

  Kingsbury bent over the perp and shoved at him with her foot. “Who are you, asshole?”

  The perp closed his eyes. She shoved at him harder.

  “Answer me.”

  The perp squirmed beneath Wheldon. So much for the broken back. “I’d answer her, buddy.”

  The perp inched his hand forward. In a minute, he would reach the knife.

  Wheldon shoved the gun harder against the perp’s head. Kingsbury kicked the knife farther down the hall, and then she stomped on the perp’s hand. “You gonna talk to me?”

  He squinched his eyes tightly closed, and then his mouth for good measure.

  “Asshole,” she said again and moved out of Wheldon’s line of sight. After a moment, he heard her crooning, telling someone she’d be all right. A deep rich voice, filled with pain, answered, and Wheldon’s shoulders relaxed. Schlaffler was alive then. He hadn’t taken this risk in vain.

  His knee was getting sore and his shoulder ached from the pressure of pushing the gun against the perp’s head. It seemed to take forever before he heard sirens below, and knew that his relief had arrived.

  The paramedics came up first, taking the stairs. Wheldon waved them toward Schlaffler, and they disappeared into the apartment.

  Then the elevator doors opened. The roommate had arrived. It must have been 7:20.

  She looked terrified. Someone told her to remain at that end of the hall. Her gaze kept going to the open apartment door.

  Finally the cops arrived. They cuffed the perp, then covered him as Wheldon moved away. He flashed his badge at them, but Kingsbury covered for him, telling them she was FBI and this was a planned sting.

  She told them to book the perp and she’d meet them at the precinct. She waited until they took the perp down the stairs before pulling Wheldon aside.

  “You made one hell of a mess of this,” she whispered. “We’ve got to figure out what to do now and how to make sure this guy gets charged with a crime. The problem is that there’s two of me and two of you in this timeline and things are about to get very confusing.”

  “No, they aren’t,” he said. “Your younger self is going to take care of this.”

  “How?” she said. “She doesn’t even know about you or this case.”

  He nodded. “Give me something of yours, something she’ll recognize. I’ll go to her and explain. She’s with the Temporal Unit. She’ll understand.”

  “No, she won’t.” Her voice was calm. “I never thought I’d break the rules. She won’t believe you.” “Really?” he asked. “You never thought of this? Never wondered how hard it would be to just observe?” She looked away. “No.”

  He didn’t believe her. “Then why did I hear your footsteps behind me when I ran to stop the murder?”

  She didn’t say anything, and that surprised him. He expected her to lie, to say she was trying to stop him. But she could have stopped him easily. She had ahold of his arm when the attack began. She could have held him back.

  Instead, he had felt her fingers slipping away, maybe even felt a slight nudge from her body, propelling him forward, making him act in her stead.

  Maybe that was why she had picked him. Not because this was his case, but because she could trust him to break the rules. She had studied him after all. She had gotten him the clearance. She knew how much he cared about the victims after they died. Did she think he’d stop caring just because they were alive?

  And then his eyes narrowed. Of course she hadn’t. She knew him. They all knew him.

  “You set me up,” he said.

  Kingsbury raised her gaze to his.

  “What the hell is going on?” he said.

  She shrugged, looking remarkably calm, considering what had just happened. “You didn’t understand the mission. You acted without thinking, saving the woman. And I couldn’t stop you, so now we have to deal with the consequences.”


  “What?” he breathed. He had never misunderstood a mission in his life.

  “Fortunately, you’ll be fine. We brought you in from outside, and we’ll never make that mistake again.” Then she grinned. “At least, that’s what we would have told the folks who administer the new technology if they knew what you’d done.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “At least,” Kingsbury said, “we now know what happens when someone takes an action in the past. I’ll be able to brief the entire unit when we get back. Unofficially, of course.”

  People stood in the hallway, watching them, staring at the open apartment door. A couple of cops surrounded the roommate, interviewing her.

  His shock was turning into anger. “You risked my life.”

  “Not really,” she said. “We figured one of two things would happen. Either you would push him out of the way and we’d both vanish, going back to a brand new present with no knowledge of what we had done, or we’d be standing here, discussing how we changed things.”

  “You used me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why the hell couldn’t you have done this yourself?”

  Her smile was guileless. “It’s against regulations. They’d have taken the technology away from us if things hadn’t gone as we’d planned. We would have had to blame you. But we were lucky. As it stands right now, they’ll never know. Only you and I know what we did. Schlaffler’s still dead in our timeline. We saw a few things, but we didn’t get the perp’s name. And that’s all that happened.”

  He looked down the hall at the open apartment door. He’d thrown the perp against the wall. He’d felt the man’s back beneath his knee. He’d heard Schlaffler speak after the attack.

  “I did all this for nothing?” he asked.

  Kingsbury shook her head. “She’s fine in this timeline. We have him. You probably saved several lives, not just hers. The problem is that we didn’t get his name. We don’t know who this guy is. Once we get back to our own timeline, we’re screwed.”

  “Maybe,” he said softly.

  She frowned at him. “What?”

  He stared at the scene. In his mind’s eye, he could still see the perp, peeling himself off the side wall. The hand, catching the doors as they split apart, the fingers grabbing the edge.