The Curiosity Killers

by K W Taylor

  ~

  “And you’re sure you’re all right, Miss Lessep?”

  “It’s been quite a while since you restored my memories. I’m fine.” Violet hopped off the examination table. “Honestly, Doctor Vere, you worry more than my father.”

  Vere packed away his retinoscope in a small black bag. “Unlike your father, I have to determine if you’re suffering ill effects of changes to your neurological system. Changes I created.” He slid the bag into a cabinet over his desk and closed the door. “I don’t expect Mister Lessep has to worry about having given you permanent brain damage.”

  “No, just emotional damage.”

  “Oh, now, now.”

  “No, you’re right, it’s not Michael’s fault. It’s Ambrose’s. Or Claudio Florence’s. Or, God, who knows anymore, right?” Violet gestured to the spiral staircase leading to the agency’s main floor. “We all need to discuss the next stage, don’t we? I’ll find Ben.”

  “I’ll be after you in a moment.” Vere nodded at Violet and heard her quick footsteps on the stairs.

  So it’s Ben now, is it?

  Vere thought of the slim volume of photographs he kept in the cabinet next to his medical equipment. He thought of the photograph of himself and Alison Keller, all smiles—even him—at his induction into the NBE Physicists’ Union. He thought of another photograph, one much more recently taken, giving Alison away at her small wedding. Alison looked the same in both pictures, but Vere went from black hair to gray, deep shadows visible under his eyes in the second photograph. A hardness crept into his mouth, jaw, and eyes in his intervening years.

  I’ve become my father.

  He didn’t need to look at the photographs to know what they proved—he’d let decades of his life go by, and though others around him found love in the most unlikely places, Vere himself was alone.

  Like anyone would put up with me. Stop being a foolish old man, Eddy.

  He clicked the lights off in the lab and followed Violet upstairs.

  ~

  “Wait, you’re the history expert.” Violet looked up from the map. “Why do you think I should go?”

  “You’re, um…” Ben shoved his hands in his pockets. “You know, the FBI thing. You investigate for a living. You should get investigative.” He nodded at the map. “Don’t think of this as going back in time. Think of this as catching a serial killer. Isn’t that an FBI deal?”

  “Yeah, but usually there’s a team,” Violet replied. “There’s not usually a lone agent tracking some dangerous criminal without backup.”

  “Benoy, why are you trying to have her go without backup?” Vere was now behind Ben, a steaming cup of coffee in hand.

  Ben turned around. “Hey, d’you bring one for me?” Ben asked. He pointed to Vere’s cup.

  Vere gave Ben a withering look. “Are you still pretending I’m thoughtful, son?”

  Violet whistled. “Wow, you act protective of my brain cells, but that’s how you treat your business partner?”

  “I’ve learned to expect nothing less from Eddy,” Ben said.

  “You’re a client, dear,” Vere said. “I’m more polite to you because you help me earn money. Though I don’t let that stop me if a client is breaking rules.”

  “He can get damn scary when he needs to,” Ben said. “Trust me.”

  “Am I still a client, though? Really?” Violet looked around the conference room. “Hell, is this still going to be open to the public at all? Or, well, you know, the referred public. The carefully trained public.” She walked around the room. “I mean, if we’re going to get on board this crazy train and try to do something with your technology rather than just you two using it for financial gain, then isn’t that the first step shutting down your commercial operation?”

  Ben shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’ve already had Kris put off any potential clients, even the repeat ones.”

  “I, ah, that is…” Vere coughed. “Not all of us are as well-off as Mister Jonson here, so perhaps a cessation of commercial operations isn’t yet warranted.”

  “Eddy, your salary’s not going anywhere,” Ben said.

  “On the other hand,” Vere continued, not missing a beat, “commercial operations are highly overrated.”

  “So who’s coming with me, if I go try to stop this guy?” Violet asked. “Come on, I’m not going alone, and I can’t exactly tell the rest of the bureau the truth, right? Talk about definitely ceasing commercial operations. As in forever.”

  “Some sort of treason, I suppose,” Vere said. He shook his head at Ben. “Not wise, Benoy. That’s why we’ve employed the Wrights, after all.” He walked from the conference room. “I have an idea of who you should bring, Miss Lessep,” he called.

  “Wait, no, Eddy, nobody’s going with her.” Ben scrambled after him. “Unless you mean that Richards guy or, hell, even her dad or something.”

  “I am not bringing my father on an investigation.” Violet followed the others to the lobby. “I’m a perfectly capable adult with several years’ experience in law enforcement. I don’t need my parent along on the field trip.”

  “It’s not your parent, Miss Lessep.” Vere sat down at the desk and rummaged through the top drawer. “Where does Miss Moto keep her—ah ha!” He withdrew a flat container covered in a plastic film stamped with faux chatoyant amber. Along the side of the container was a tiny triangle of metal. He moved the triangle down the side of the container, pressed a recessed button on its side, and activated a spring. Now the device opened to reveal address cards. Vere fussed about with the pages before pulling one free and handing it to Ben. “There you are. Give this one a call.”

  Ben studied the card. “I don’t know,” he said. “His last trip didn’t go well at all.”

  Violet looked over Ben’s shoulder. “Rupert Cob?”

  “A client,” Ben said.

  “An adventurous client,” Vere amended. “Mister Cob has gone through the Bermuda Triangle, spent the night in not one but two haunted houses, tracked several serial killers, and knows who killed Kennedy.”

  “John?” Violet asked.

  “All of them,” Vere said, “and Marilyn Monroe as well.”

  “He’s a thrill seeker, sure,” Ben said, “if you, um, like that sort of thing…” His voice trailed off to an inaudible mumble.

  He glanced at Violet. There was a wild look in her eyes.

  “Wow, who killed Marilyn Monroe?” she asked.

  “You’d be shocked,” Ben replied. “It all started when Peter—”

  “Children, focus,” Vere interrupted. “Mister Cob would be ideal for this. Shall we consult him?”

  Ben dropped the address card. “Eddy, Rupert Cob was decidedly not okay when we brought him back from West Virginia. He had memory loss even before the usual procedure, and he couldn’t report what he found out about the Mothman.”

  “Whoa, the Mothman?” Violet picked the address card up. “I think I’d like to meet this Cob guy.”

  Of course you would.

  “Fine, but Eddy, you have to give him a full physical and make sure he’s okay. He takes risks. He’s going to be on board when we tell him everything, he’s going to want to go, and I don’t want him hurt.”

  Vere raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think you cared much for Mister Cob.”

  “I…no, no, he’s a good client,” Ben said, “but no matter what I think of him personally, I don’t want to see the guy dead. He’s told us a lot of good tales, after all.”

  “Florence has left enough dead bodies throughout history, huh? Don’t need one more, no matter who it is?” Violet patted Ben on the shoulder. “Yeah, there was this agent going through Quantico North with me. Brody. She annoyed me to no end, but then when we were shadowing a senior agent in the field, this guy pulled a Taser on her. I pushed Brody out of the way and took the hit.” She shuddered. “It was the fourth model, too, jacked up and powerful as hell. I could’ve been paralyzed if the perp got me just a few inches up, but I didn’t
even hesitate. I’d do it again, too.” She quieted briefly. “Now that I think about it, Brody later slept with this researcher I liked, so maybe in hindsight I made the wrong decision.”

  “Is that the problem, Benoy?” Vere closed the desk drawer and stood up. “Did Mister Cob—”

  “Let’s go.” Ben took the address card and held out his arm toward the front door. “Why don’t you join me on an errand, Miss Lessep?”

  “I think fieldwork earns you a first name basis, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” Ben smiled, hoping it didn’t look too eager. “Violet. Sure.” He followed her through the front door and out onto the sidewalk.

  “Why does your partner always call you Benoy?” she asked. “Does anybody else?”

  Ben looked up and down the street for a hovercab. “I don’t think he realizes he’s doing it,” he said, “but I think he enjoys making me feel like a kid, the whole full name thing.” A stamper slowed down as it neared Ben.

  “Oh, jeez, no. These things are so slow,” Violet said. She eyed the vehicle. The main body was the same size and shape as a hovercar, but it rode higher, not on the magnetic lines but via four clockwork legs, horse-like, that whirred and bucked and propelled the vehicle along at an average speed of only thirty miles an hour.

  “Yeah, but they’re cheaper than hovercabs and faster than pedis,” Ben pointed out. He withdrew a flat cap from his jacket and waved it at the stamper driver before setting it on his head. “Cob doesn’t live too far, just too far to walk. This keeps us out of the weather.”

  The stamper slowed down, and the front legs swerved in to meet up with the sidewalk. The driver was now close enough for Ben to see his movements on the control panel. He was young, too young for a hovercar license, and he danced around the cockpit moving wheels and pulling levers at a frantic pace. After a few tugs of an overhead fob on a chain, the vehicle came to a wheezing halt. The gears on the legs groaned as they telescoped down, bringing the passenger area to street level.

  The driver wound a crank on his dashboard, and the right hand porthole opened up on a hinge in response. “Last run of the day,” he called. “If you’re goin’ south, I can take you, so long as it’s not beyond mid-town. My garage is by the cemetery off Route 24, and I don’t want to backtrack.”

  “No, we’re just going to Avon Heights,” Ben said.

  “That’ll do well, then.” The driver wound another crank, and the vehicle’s back door sprang up. A rectangle of metal slid from the vehicle floor to the sidewalk. “Mind the escalator, folks. It’s runnin’ a mite slow, but if you step on before it’s done, it’ll take your feet off. Wait for the green light.”

  The rectangle whirred and panels opened up on each side. Four steps now connected the passenger area to the sidewalk.

  Ben climbed each step instead of waiting for the escalator to pull him along. Behind him, Violet stepped on, but she waited for him to get settled before ascending.

  “Avon Heights, huh?” she asked. “This guy must be loaded.” Violet pulled on her harness. “But then, that’s what Vere…well…” She shook her head. “Never mind, it’s rude.”

  The door slid down and the stamper rose back up on its legs. Ben felt his stomach flip flop at the movement. He cringed, wishing for a mint to ease the faint nausea.

  “Oof, see, that’s the other reason I hate these things.” Beside him, Violet leaned over and held her head against her knees. Beneath her long skirt, one leg was bouncing with nervous energy.

  Ben reached a hand out toward her, his fingers pausing in the air above her back. He’d been about to pat her, comfort her against the jerky motion of the stamper, but that was too familiar.

  Don’t be creepy.

  He withdrew his hand just in time; Violet soon sat back up and gave him a weak smile.

  “What, ah, what’s rude?” he asked. He watched the scenery move as the stamper made its slow way from downtown Avon to its southern suburb.

  “Well, you pay Vere’s salary, but he treats you like a kid.” She blanched. “I don’t even know why I’m curious.”

  “You’re a curious person,” Ben said. He’d neglected to pull on his own harness and he now busied himself with remedying that. “If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be an FBI agent, you wouldn’t have ever wanted to go find out about D.B. Cooper, even.”

  “I guess.”

  “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 t
oday, 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.”