The Curiosity Killers

by K W Taylor

  Why do I go to Maine so much?

  “But Mister Jonson here speaks very highly of your bravery,” the woman said.

  Cob laughed again. “My bravery?”

  “We should’ve brought some sort of proof,” Jonson said to the agent. “Mister Cob, are you familiar with the Zodiac killer?”

  Cob frowned. “Yeah, sure, the unsolved serial murders in the twentieth century. To tell the truth, I’ve always been fascinated by that case. I’m kind of a history buff.”

  “You were fascinated by the case, yes. And you solved it.”

  Both Cob and the agent stared at Jonson.

  “I did?” Cob asked. He realized a second later that the woman asked the same question at the same instant. They exchanged a glance, and she blushed and looked away.

  “I did?” he asked again. “Why don’t I remember it?”

  Cob pictured a dark city street, a man walking up to a parked car and aiming a pistol through the passenger window.

  Am I imagining that? Or remembering it?

  Jonson leaned forward and clasped his hands together. “So what I’m about to tell you is going to seem impossible.”

  “I can assure you it’s not, though,” Agent Lessep said.

  “We need you to go back in time,” Jonson said. “Which you’ve actually done on more than one occasion.”

  “I have.” Once again, Cob meant to voice his words as a question and once again, they came out as a statement.

  You have time traveled before. You’ve done it tons of times, and you’ve hired this guy to make it happen.

  “Let’s say I believe you,” Cob said. “What do you need me to do, exactly?”

  Agent Lessep gave Cob a pleading look. “We need you to catch Jack the Ripper.”

  Not just Jack the Ripper. This guy killed Elizabeth Short, too. And wow, how did I know that?

  He wasn’t going to tell them that, not just yet. But Cob believed them already, even as something nagged at him not to let on.

  “I’m gonna need a better sales pitch, folks.” Cob sat back and rested one hand on the telephone next to the loveseat. “And I can have the cops here in a hot minute if this is all an elaborate con.”

  Headlights shone on a creature with eyes like bright red lasers. And a man, emaciated and terrifying…he’d seen him before.

  “Mister Cob, are you familiar with the governor of the RAA?” Jonson asked.

  The governor sauntered toward him with a cleaver, Elizabeth’s body bleeding out onto dusty floorboards.

  Oh, my God…

  Cob choked back a sob and buried his face in his hands. “I’m remembering things,” he blurted. “God help me, but I’m remembering things.”

  ~

  “J’arrive, j’arrive…”

  Nothing existed but pain. No identity, no memory, no purpose or drive. Just pain, white and bright and screaming. It was ceaseless, not a dull throb or localized to one area of the body, but everywhere, through every cell and atom. Primal, peeling, shredding, and endless. There was some sense of music, but it was garbled, warped, and wrong.

  And just when Cob thought he would be trapped in the pain forever, it stopped. Not a slowdown or a gradual ending, but a snuffing out, as of a candle flame being pinched by saliva-moistened fingers. One second all he knew was searing and pressure and agony, then the next it was gone, with the only residual effect being a kind of exhaustion, as if Cob collapsed at the finish line of a marathon.

  “Mister Cob? Is everything a bit less fragmented?”

  Cob opened his eyes. An older man hovered over him, his eyes made freakish and multi-sized by the lenses of his bifocals. At first, Cob couldn’t place him, but then he recalled trips to a costume wardrobe with him, trips to this very laboratory, and a remote control being aimed at him. Somewhere, very quietly, a phonograph played a piece of French chanson, and he caught snatches of lyrics.

  “J’arrive, j’arrive…”

  “Doctor Vere.” Cob struggled to sit up. He looked around, and yes, he was in the lab of the travel agency. “Ben. Miss Moto.” He struggled again before giving up and falling back against a flat, uncomfortable pillow.

  Violins swelled.

  “Mais pourquoi moi, pourquoi maintenant…”

  “You’re very weak. Don’t try to move,” Vere instructed. “I’m a bit alarmed by your state, as Miss Lessep didn’t experience such things upon her memories being restored.”

  “I went on a lot of trips, doc,” Cob said.

  An accordion.

  “Pourquoi déjà et où aller…”

  “Of course. That could be it, but I’d still like to run some further tests.” Vere moved toward a cabinet.

  “Can I have a drink of water?”

  “Certainly.” Vere knelt out of sight, and there was the sound of rustling. He rose holding a bright purple bottle of House Stream. “I’m afraid it’s not very cold. Most of the electric down here is routed to my more pressing equipment.” He nodded at the staircase. “I can have Miss Moto bring you something else in a moment.”

  Cob shook his head and took the bottle. “This is fine,” he said, his voice coming out raspy. He downed the water. The song was winding down. Cob spotted the phonograph in the corner of the lab, an early model with a giant horn through which the record played its last seconds. The singer became more plaintive.

  “J’arrive bien sûr, j’arrive. N’ai-je jamais rien fait d’autre qu’arriver….”

  Cob translated, albeit imprecisely, tapping into things he remembered studying in Paris in college.

  I come, of course, I come, but have I ever done anything but?

  Now other memories were flooding him. The Black Dahlia. The slender man who’d killed her. The Mothman. The brief moments he’d laid eyes on Violet Lessep before today. The record continued on to another song, this one he recognized as “The Port of Amsterdam.” As Jacques Brel’s anguished voice cried out, Cob saw the face of the man he’d met in the TNT area in Point Pleasant.

  The slender man…that man, he’s—

  “Claudio Florence killed the Black Dahlia!” he shouted. Cob sat up, sore arms and legs screaming in protest. His head swam, and he saw a rainbow of dim colors blur in his field of vision.

  “Steady there, son, you’ll be dizzy, I suspect,” Vere warned.

  “The RAA governor, I saw him. In the forties. And—oh God, in the sixties, too. Has he been following me?”

  “Slow down, let’s get you straightened out, then you can tell us what you know.” Vere pressed the back of his hand to Cob’s forehead. “Your temperature is all out of whack. You’re sweating.” He swiped a small cylinder from his desk and snapped off the top to reveal an oral thermometer. “Open up.”

  Cob allowed the thermometer to be placed under his tongue. “My harfda tall Bun an Mish Lashop abot da—”

  Vere looked up from his pocket watch and glared at Cob. “One minute. Silence.”

  Cob sighed but quieted and tried not to fidget. The phonograph stopped playing, and Vere turned it off when the speaker filled with needle hiss. He checked his pocket watch again as he walked back to Cob. After another few seconds, Vere plucked the thermometer from Cob’s mouth.

  “I have to tell Ben and Miss Lessep about this guy,” Cob tried again. “They think he’s Jack the Ripper, but that’s not all. He’s killed others. I’ve seen him, and I think he’s stalked me.”

  There was a flicker of something in Vere’s expression as he examined the thermometer. “Son, there’ll be time for that, but I’m concerned about you for entirely different reasons.” He put the thermometer down. “I need to bring a consultant in. Or, rather, bring you out to one.”

  “Huh?”

  Vere took his glasses off and chewed on the end of the earpiece. “I’m not a medical doctor,” he said. “Oh, I muddle through well enough, but if Benoy and Miss Lessep are going to send you off into the past again, God knows where or when, I shouldn’t feel good about that until I’ve had you examined properly.” />
  Cob felt a pinch of pain nag at his head. “You think there’s something really wrong with me?”

  “You were having memories bleed through the erasures, even before today,” Vere said. “Most of that was an aberration, but your reaction to the restoration just now was dramatic, painful, far more than I expected.” He pointed to the water bottle still clutched in Cob’s hand. “Finish that off, get cleaned up and whatnot. I’ll tell Benoy…well, I’ll tell him something. Let’s not alarm him yet.”

  Cob exhaled a bitter laugh. “No, let’s just alarm me.”

  Monday, August 30, 2100, Avon, Vermont, NBE

  Kris arranged the plate and cup on a wicker tray before setting out for the lobby. Cob and Vere were halfway to the front door. “Food. Should I have food?” Cob asked Vere.

  “Later,” Vere said.

  Kris put the tray on the coffee table. “Somebody else can eat this stuff, then, if you’re going,” she said.

  Ben wandered over and picked up a triangle of buttered toast. “Eddy, you sure he’s okay?”

  “It’s a precaution,” Vere replied. “Fitzhugh is an old colleague and needn’t know any of our other activities beyond the simple tests I want done on Mister Cob here.”

  “Remember what I said.” Cob called before being ushered out the door.

  “What’d he say?” Kris asked. She plopped down on the floor and wound her legs into a half-lotus position.

  Ben and Violet exchanged a look.

  “Oh, come on,” Kris said. She picked up the other piece of toast. “I’ll find out anyway. I already know things are badness with a capital B.”

  “Cob thinks Claudio Florence isn’t just Jack the Ripper but also murdered the Black Dahlia,” Ben said.

  “We should just generally start looking at unsolved serial killings,” Violet said. She sat down next to Kris, a heavy book in her hands. “You said he found the Zodiac?”

  “On one of his trips last year, yeah,” Ben said. “But that wasn’t Florence. That was a guy who’d been stalking one of the first victims. A normal psychopath, not a psychopath time traveler.”

  “Still, it’s like he has a keen eye for that stuff,” Kris said. “Might even kinda attract it, in a weird way.” She took a bite of the toast.

  Ben pointed to the teacup. “Anybody care if I take this?”

  Both women shook their heads.

  “You might have a point,” Violet said to Kris. “I mean, not in any mysterious way, just that if he’s the thrill seeker you all describe him as, solving unsolved serial killings is about as thrill-seeking as it gets.”

  “There a lot of folks in the bureau like that?” Kris asked.

  Violet shrugged. “I guess I have a little streak of that in me, even. Not as much as some of my colleagues.”

  Kris noticed Ben studying his tea a little too carefully. Thrill seeker was not a term that came to mind when she thought of Ben Jonson. “Repressed,” “nerdy,” “awkward,” plus all the normal boss terms like “inflexible” and “not willing to see my creative potential.” But Ben knew these things about himself—Kris was willing to tell him, in fact, when he was being geekier than usual or indulging in his sad sack propensities. So why should the idea that Cob and Violet shared a common seeking-of-thrills bother him?

  She glanced from Violet to Ben and back again. Oh!

  A giggle escaped Kris, and she quickly clamped her lips together and worked to stifle it.

  “What’s so funny?” Ben asked.

  Kris shook her head and waved a hand at him. “Nope. Nothin’. Carry on.”

  ~

  Fitzhugh shut the door of his office before crossing the room to greet Vere and Cob. “Gentlemen, I’m afraid the news isn’t great,” he said. He withdrew several sheets of X-ray film from a file folder and pinned them to the light box on the wall behind his desk. He switched the light on and rubbed at his beard as he pointed to a spot on the first image. “This is the place in Mister Cob’s brain that troubles me.”

  “What is that?” Vere asked.

  “Well, it’s not supposed to be there, for one thing,” Fitzhugh replied. “Are either of you familiar with the Charcot-Bouchard-Rillsman scale?”

  The patient’s face was blank, but Vere frowned. “It’s been a long time since I took neuroscience, Allen.”

  Fitzhugh nodded. “Of course. It’s a measure of the severity of a type of cerebral aneurysm. Vogel Rillsman discovered the minute sub-subtypes of traumatic brain events back in 2050, and—”

  “Allen.” Vere looked impatient. “Can we dispense with the history and more complicated science?”

  Fitzhugh gave his old friend a sad smile. “I always was a bit more of a researcher than a practitioner, I’m afraid, Eddy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cob said, “but we gotta cut to the chase if I’m about to die. Am I?”

  Fitzhugh pointed to the spot again. “Someday, of course, Mister Cob. But discovering your aneurysm’s place on the scale is important in telling me when. If it’s a certain grade, we can halt its progress with drugs, even shrink it down to nothing. If it’s a different grade, we may be talking surgery, and if it’s still another…” He sighed.

  “If it’s another, I’m dead,” Cob finished.

  “Son, it may not be—”

  Cob held up a hand to Vere. “No, it’s cool, doc. I get it.” He smiled up at Fitzhugh. “You wanna do more tests, I bet.”

  “As soon as possible,” Fitzhugh confirmed.

  “We’ll let you know.” He stood and shook Fitzhugh’s hand. “C’mon, doc, let’s you and me have a talk.” Cob headed for the door.

  ~

  Violet handed Ben the legal pad she’d been using. “That last one is what I’m curious about,” she said.

  Ben canted his head to one side. “Hmm. That doesn’t ring a bell.” He held out a hand. “Do they talk about it in that book, or one of the ones we left in the conference room?”

  Violet picked up the book she’d been looking at. “No, it’s in here.” She flipped through several pages, not finding the section. “It’s in here. It’s not a long article, though I don’t know why. The case was gruesome enough to be interesting, if you’re into that sort of thing.” Frustrated, she checked the index and found the passage. “Here you go.” She tapped the page and handed the book over. “Left side, halfway down.”

  Ben read for a few moments. “Okay, this is sort of sounding familiar. I’ve probably read this before.” He put the book down and stood up, letting out a soft groan. “God, how long have we been at this?”

  “Few hours.”

  “I’m getting old.” He stretched, bending over at the waist and pulling on his arms. There was a percussive popping sound, and Ben let out a brief moan. “There we go.”

  Violet giggled. “You should do some yoga, like your assistant. You’re not very flexible.”

  “I am very flexible, thank you very much, I just can’t be sitting on the floor all day. Let’s sit on real people chairs. I think I have another book that might talk about this, or we can see if the ’net’s not being suppressed right now.”

  Very flexible, huh?

  Violet grinned as she stood up. “I could use some coffee.” She headed toward the kitchen. “You want anything?”

  “No, let me.” Ben followed her. “So what caught your eye about this case, the Cleveland Torso Killer? Man, what a terrible name.”

  “Similar M.O. as the Black Dahlia, which itself is kind of—not identical, of course, but still—kind of similar to the Ripper.” Violet snapped on the kitchen lights. “Where do you guys keep stuff?”

  “You know, this has been kind of a terrible day.” Ben opened the fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer. “Is it really coffee time?”

  “It doesn’t have to be.” Violet spotted a bottle opener magnet on the side of the refrigerator and took it down.

  They clinked bottles. The front door opened. “Who’s got two thumbs and is ready to time travel?” Cob called. A second later he
poked his head in the kitchen and pointed his thumbs at his head. “This guy.”

  Violet laughed. Behind Cob, she caught sight of Vere, who was frowning and pacing.

  “So, clean bill of health?” Ben asked.

  Cob stepped into the kitchen and took Ben’s beer from him. “I am ready for some grand-fucking-adventure,” Cob said. He took a long swallow of the beer. “When do we leave?”

  Vere opened his mouth but then shut it and wandered away. A moment later, Violet heard the clatter of footsteps on the spiral staircase to the lab.

  “Where’s Eddy going?” Ben asked. He walked out to the lobby.

  “Is everything really all right?” Violet asked Cob.

  Cob took another swig of the beer. “Hey, I’m just happy to be backing you up, agent. It’ll be great.” He followed Ben out of the kitchen.

  He never answered us.

  Violet left her beer on the counter, untouched.

  Tuesday, August 31, 2100, Avon, Vermont, NBE

  Ben finished reading the passage aloud and closed the book with a flourish, causing the pages to thunk together audibly. A tiny puff of dust rose from between the leaves. He studied Vere, noting the other man’s deep frown.

  “You have to admit it’s similar, both to the original Ripper and to the Black Dahlia,” Ben said. He sat down in the chair to the left of the loveseat and leaned forward, watching Vere for any change in expression. Bodhi nudged his whiskers against Ben’s hand, and Ben absently scratched the cat behind the ears. “If we can capture him there, somewhere he’s not expecting us to be, I think we’ve got a pretty good shot of getting to him.”

  Vere nodded. “It’s also a violent time we’re discussing,” he said. “Cleveland in the 1930s, full of mobsters and whatnot. Big city, lots of strife.” He raised an eyebrow. “We could take care of him and leave him back there.”

  “Whoa, wait.” This wasn’t something Ben envisioned. Murder? Of a public figure? “Are you saying—”

  “The man has committed genocide, in essence. Economically if not in actuality,” Vere said. “And we now know he’s also committing serial murders throughout all of history.”