The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller

by Edward W. Robertson

  As long as I was in the park, I took pictures of everyone there, then drove back to the motel and pawed through the phone book for the school district. The woman on the other end informed me it would take 5-10 business days to process and mail the records.

  Wonderful. That would only leave the boy dead for two to seven days. I checked the map at the front of the phone book and drove to the county seat forty minutes outside town. The land was dry and earth-toned, pale green sagebrush speckling hills of yellow grass and brown-gray dirt.

  The seat was a quaint farm town and I found the district office in just a couple minutes. The receptionist went to pull and copy the files while I sat in the little lobby reading the sports section. Griffey, Jr. wanted a trade. The woman brought back my papers and I thanked her and drove back across the desert to the cities on the river.

  I stopped at a gas station. It took me a minute to locate the fuel door release and a minute after that to understand I had to pay inside first. I gassed up and drove to the park, where I searched the list of school employees for everyone hired within the last few months. At Stephen's school, the list was just four names long. Kendra Wilkins, 26, aide. Ernesto Morales, 44, custodial. Nina Berks, 55, teacher. And Leonard Amsel, 34, administration.

  The Berks woman sounded like a nonstarter, but the minute you start imposing patterns on your data is the minute you start losing victims. Berks was in the phone book. I drove by her place to give it a look. Her house was a little yellow place on the edge of town. Lawn ornaments of a man and woman bent over to garden, backsides showing above their pants. Wash lines in the back yard. Welcome sign with her name on it beside the front door. The paint was sun-faded and the wood was wind-worn.

  Kendra Wilkins lived in the Oceanside Apartments in the middle of town. Shabby three-story walkups. Three Camaros in the parking lot. Window-mounted AC units. Housing where the residents stayed no longer than they had to. Lots of turnover. The sort of place an intruder could set up shop and then disappear without raising an eyebrow.

  Leonard Amsel wasn't in the book. Ernesto Morales lived across the river. I drove across a white suspension bridge into a small downtown with bilingual signs fronting the shops. His house was an average place. Chain link fence. Grass was a little long. The phone book listed a wife, too, but I sat in my car and watched the house. An hour later, a shirtless kid ran out the front door, giggling, pursued by a grinning golden retriever. A woman came out the door and watched the dog tackle her child into the grass. She smiled.

  A marriage can be as poisonous as anything else; it wasn't unheard of for Primetime couples to skip out together and have a little fun in the other worlds. But having kids? A cover job as a janitor? It wasn't impossible, but it would be obsessive. Diabolical. A cover story that would require the sacrifice of years of both their lives.

  Even so. I popped the door, got out, walked a few blocks down the sidewalk, then looked around in obvious confusion.

  "You lost?" Mrs. Morales called.

  "Afraid so," I said. "Is the post office near here?"

  "Oh yeah," she laughed. "You're lost."

  She provided detailed directions. I thanked her, got in the car, and followed them. They led straight to the post office. I scratched the Moraleses off the list.

  I drove back across the river. It was early afternoon. I waited until school got out, then called the front desk from a payphone and asked to be transferred to Kendra Wilkins. A moment later, an old woman picked up.

  "Hello?"

  "Who am I speaking to?" I said.

  "Irene Kleitz. May I help you?"

  The back of my neck tingled. I knew the name. She was Stephen Jaso's teacher. "I'm calling about Kendra."

  "Yes?" A note of concern entered the woman's voice. "Are you a parent?"

  "No," I scrambled. "An old friend. I think I am, anyway. Did she go to school around here?"

  "High school?"

  "Yeah."

  "Oh yes, she's a local. Kannekut grad. Would you like me to leave her a message?"

  "Kannekut," I said. "No, sorry. I have the wrong person."

  I hung up. I watched the kids pile onto buses and their parents' cars. I couldn't keep hanging around the school like this. I don't care what era it is, people have never looked kindly on grown men hanging around elementary schools. I waited for Stephen to get on the bus, then drove off.

  In just over four days, he would be snatched up, used up, and thrown away. My only real lead was Leonard Amsel. Besides him, the crime was a black box. Unless I made progress, I would have to play the dangerous game of sticking close enough to the boy to nab the killer while staying far enough back not to tip him off.

  With that in mind, I didn't want to stroll right in and ask to see Amsel face to face. But this was an elementary school. An old one. Not a lot of young men in the workforce. I parked in the staff lot, keeping both eyes out for cops, got out to take pictures of every plate in the lot, then got back in my car to watch.

  Teachers and aides filtered out to their cars. Almost all were women. A man walked out, smiling to his coworkers, but he wore a button-up shirt and his hair reached his collar. I was looking for admin. Suit. Tie. A proper haircut. I had brought my laptop with me, so I cracked it open to make it look like I was working rather than being a pedophile or a stalker or a man from the future whose job is so dangerous, time-consuming, and alienating that the only people he knows are other employees of the Cutting Room.

  My mark walked out 45 minutes later. About my age, neat blond hair, blue suit, red tie. He got into a black Lexus and twiddled with the mirrors. I turned around in my seat, zoomed in on his plate, and winked, grabbing a picture. As he continued to fool with his mirrors, I closed my left eye and examined the pic. No plate. The car was brand-new.

  My pulse picked up. The man backed out and pulled into the street. I gave him a few seconds before following. He swung onto the main drag, giving me plenty of cover in the mid-afternoon traffic. As the light went yellow, he darted into the left turn lane and accelerated through. I stopped for the light, jaw clenched. He didn't look back. With any luck, he had just sped up to make the light.

  He pulled further and further away, passing a supermarket and a row of shops. Cars swept past, obscuring my sightlines. Traffic cleared and I glimpsed the tail of the black Lexus turning right and disappearing behind the buildings.

  The light turned green. I headed down the road, slowing at the side streets, trying to see where he'd made his turn. A couple blocks past the supermarket, a right turn led to a trailer park.

  I hung a right onto lumpy asphalt, drifting past the gravel drives. There was just one black Lexus in the park, set at the curb in front of a plain white trailer. No plates, papers taped to its rear window. A big white van hogged the driveway.

  It fit. Jump through space, pick out a school in need of an immediate hire. An identity just robust enough to pass the basic tests. Rent a trailer, cash, no questions asked. Same with the car. It's all funny-money anyway. At school, pick out a mark, then take him away. It would require no more than a few weeks in total. Quick enough to jump back out before your lack of a background catches up with you.

  I smiled. I had my killer.

  But you never know until the act unfolds. When it comes to the timeline, first, do no harm: and killing an innocent man would wound this future in ways it would never recover from. I had to be positively, no-doubt certain. Yes: that meant exposing the Jaso boy to a certain amount of risk. But I had a place, a time, and a suspect. It doesn't get much safer than that.

  The trailer park only had one entrance. I parked just down the block outside a laundromat and watched to see if Amsel would leave. If I could catch him sniffing around the Dumpsters, my case might be tight enough to yank him back to Primetime on the spot.

  The sun drooped. So did my head. The only thing consistent about my sleep these days was that I wasn't getting enough of it. It was early evening. If Amsel was going to move, it wouldn't be until dark. That was when
these people felt at home. I jogged around to the grocery store and bought cans of soda and a box of crackers. It's tough to fall asleep when you're crunching something between your teeth.

  Evening retreated and night advanced. I nodded off around eleven, and then again around one. Traffic in and out of the trailer park was light. I didn't see the black Lexus or the white van leave or return. I fell asleep again and woke angry. This was pointless. You can only fight biology so long. I went back to the motel, set the alarm, and picked up a few hours of sleep before waking up to cruise past the Jasos' just in time for Stephen to get on the bus.

  I spent the morning and early afternoon trying to dig up anything I could on Leonard Amsel. Prior to the web, this is never an easy task. Particularly when your goal is to interact with as few people as possible. Every touch in time leaves a ripple.

  I dropped by the courthouse. Called the state colleges for a record of Amsel's attendance. Nothing. This was wholly circumstantial—he could be from out of state, or an alumnus of a private college—but wherever I looked, there was no trace of the man's history. He was as much a ghost as I was.

  Stephen wasn't supposed to go missing for three more days, but my presence could have changed things. I drove to the library and was browsing the shelves by the window in time for the afternoon bell. He walked by himself to the bus and sat near the front. I waited for it to pull away, then walked past the staff lot to make sure the black Lexus was there. Its location confirmed, I drove to the entrance to the trailer park and pulled into a spot outside a video store.

  Amsel cruised home less than an hour later. Thirty minutes after that, a bald clerk came out of the video store to tell me it was time to move on. I nodded agreeably and drove out.

  I'd put off the gun for too long anyway. It's a bit convoluted, but it's just not a great idea to jump into a strange place with an unlicensed weapon. The Pods are good enough to spit you out somewhere where the chances of being seen mid-transfer are virtually zero, but they don't have anywhere near the data to account for who you might run into when you're walking out of the woods or the hills in the middle of the night.

  Better to play it safe. Send the gun to another spot. Isolated, but nearby. Go pick it up once you've got the lay of the land. At least a damn car.

  In just a couple of weeks, of course, all these precautions would be flung far out the window. At the time, however, it was just another job. I wasn't above bending the rules, but I always played by the book until that was no longer an option.

  But I'm getting ahead of myself. At that moment, I figured Stephen should be safe for the time being. I went to the motel to sleep off the rest of the day, then grabbed the location from my laptop. Hills south of town. Nothing there but a few powerlines and a couple of farms. We weren't yet in the GPS era and my directions were essentially a treasure map: the site Xed onto an old satellite photo of the area.

  The road climbed into the hills. The last of the houses stopped, replaced by dead land tinted bone white by the moon. Short basalt bluffs overlooked the road. The city spread out behind me, ten thousand points of light clustered around the wide and endless river. The pavement ended and I slowed to navigate the bumpy dirt road. After half a mile, I eased onto the narrow shoulder and killed my lights.

  I took a printout of the map with me into the yellow field. A hundred yards in, I almost fell headlong into a natural ditch creasing the dirt. I found a slope gentle enough to climb down, dirt crumbling around my shoes, then followed the ditch to two big, jagged rocks. I started digging.

  The gun was as era-appropriate as my clothes. Nothing fun, nothing caseless or explosive. Just a simple, black, antique pistol. I checked the safety and the magazines and brought it back to the car.

  Wind shifted the grass. A red beacon stood on a high hill to the south, but besides that, I was alone in a peopleless place. It could have been ten thousand years in the past or ten thousand more into an apocalyptic future. Something rustled in the weeds. I jumped in the car and drove back to the trailer park.

  The next day was a Saturday. No school. The Jasos drove to the park and then drove home. I went to stake out the trailer park. I had barely pulled into the laundromat when a big white van lumbered onto the road.

  I followed it up to the main street. Amsel coasted to a stop at the light and made a slow right turn. He drove down the righthand lane, smaller cars passing on the left. I had to travel well below the speed limit to stay behind him. I didn't like this. It had the feeling of a trap, the cold contempt a man like Amsel feels for those who presume to hunt him. I half expected him to pull off the road and stay there, as if he had no better way to spend a weekend than sitting in his car, or to drive in aimless circles until I could have no doubts he knew, or to rumble up into the bare hills, hop down from the driver's seat, engine still running, walk into the yellow grass, and disappear.

  What he did was far worse. A half mile past the park, he headed left into winding residential streets, pulled up in front of a pretty blue house, opened the garage and the front door, and began unloading boxes from the van.

  I felt as if I were being dissolved. My case was dead. Obliterated. Leonard Amsel was simply new in town. He'd probably gotten the job before he had a home. Rented a trailer until he found the right house. If the boxes were full of scalpels and ropes and garbage bags, sure, it could still be him, but otherwise, there was no way the killer would bother moving into a new home less than 72 hours before he planned to leave this world.

  Two options. One, Amsel was the killer, but he wouldn't know it until Monday when he saw Stephen Jaso and the dark gears of his mind clicked into place; the crime wasn't premeditated, but one of opportunity.

  Or he wasn't my man.

  On his next trips to the van, he offloaded a brass table lamp, three boxes of books stacked on a handcart, a giant box overspilling with comforters, and a cat tree.

  I didn't have time for this. I headed straight to the motel and got out my laptop and stared at it in a daze. I had a little more than two days until the boy was taken and no leads as to who was about to cut him up. Kendra Wilkins? I had no proof she had attended a local high school. She could have told the old woman anything she wanted. Perhaps the fact she'd filled Irene Kleitz in on that detail betrayed a person eager to prove they had a past.

  I let that thought simmer while I combed through my files and photos. There was no order to my search. I was trolling for connections and patterns, letting the lines of my consciousness snag whatever they could. I hooked nothing.

  Wilkins, then. Her dusty sedan was parked right in front of her apartment building. I went to the diner across the street and got a seat by the window. I ordered coffee, took my time ordering a BLT. I hadn't had real bacon since one of my last visits, but my stomach was squeezing itself so hard I had a tough time keeping it down.

  By the middle of the afternoon, I was on my fifth cup of coffee and thinking hard about where to set up camp next. A Jeep rolled into the apartment lot and jarred to a halt. Three young women swung out their legs, hopped down, headed up the stairs, and knocked on Wilkins' door. I covered my face with my hands. Time-hopping pedophile predators don't go out for weekend drinks with their girlfriends.

  I'd seen a pet store just a couple shops down from the diner. I headed there, browsing among the bubbling aquariums, adrift in the musty warm smell of mammals. The employees left me alone. Around five o'clock, four young women left the apartment and piled into the Jeep. Numbly, I followed them down the highway and across another smaller river. They pulled into a bar and grill. I didn't bother to slow down.

  At the motel, I flopped on the bed and stared at the primer-white ceiling. No leads. No suspects. But a lot could come together in the last two days. That's when the snakes slip from their dens.

  I headed to the park. The Jasos weren't there. None of the faces rung any bells. I drove past their house. The car was still in the driveway. I parked at the corner and adjusted my rearview. The sun bloomed red and drained from
the sky.

  There was nothing more to see. I returned to the motel and reread news and police reports that would emerge in the years after the killing. I woke facedown on the keys. The sun got up and so did I. There were no cars outside Amsel's trailer. At his new home, a couple of men wrestled a couch from the back of the van.

  My only real option would be to hang out around the school tomorrow and hope I'd be covering the right door when Stephen got abducted. Instead, I drove to one of the massive department stores across the boulevard from last night's bar and grill and bought the smallest pair of walkie talkies I could find. My hand shook as I handed over the cash.

  Quite possibly, it was already too late to do the very stupid thing I was about to do. The family car was parked in the Jasos' driveway. I parked on the opposite end of the block from where I'd spent most of my time and cracked open my book. Two hours later, Stephen and his mom left the house, got in the car, and drove to the Safeway.

  That spooked me a little. I waited for them to get inside, then passed through the automatic doors. She pushed her cart from aisle to aisle, reading the ingredients on the back of the boxes. She stopped to examine canned pineapple. Stephen wandered further and further down the aisle, trailing his fingers along the bottles of juice.

  "Stephen," I said softly.

  He glanced up. "Yeah?"

  "I need to talk to you."

  "What about?"

  Down the lane of goods, his mom frowned at a can, set it back, and glanced our way. I studied the grape juice. She picked up another can.

  "Does your mom ever let you go out by yourself?" I said.

  He cocked his head. "Sometimes."

  "After you get home, I need you to meet me at the park."

  "But I don't know you."

  "My name's Blake," I said. "And if you don't like me, you can yell and yell until the other people call the police."

  He blinked his blue eyes, puzzled but wanting to please. No wonder the killer would be able to take him away without drawing notice. Well, I was about to take advantage of his trust first.