by Fuller, Levi
“Kate,” Kyle said, as she pushed him out of the way. “Twenty-three people died last night. In your block of missed time.”
Kate turned to glare at him, fear turning into anger that would fuel survival. “And you think I did it?”
“No. But I think it is important that you remember where you were last night.”
Kate snarled and rushed away, trying hard to tame the fear that was gaining a life of its own.
Kyle followed her out more slowly. He gained nothing from that conversation. [NLS4]He steeled himself and turned his feet for Adams’s office, certain that the other person he wanted to see would be there waiting.
9
“What do you mean, you said nothing?” Jack said, grabbing Kyle’s shoulder and yanking him to a stop. “You had to have said something, or she wouldn’t be avoiding me.”
“I told you already. I only asked her to relate her activities.” Kyle let his face become serious. “In fact, I’d appreciate it if you did the same.”
Jack glared. “I’m not a suspect, and neither is she.”
Kyle sighed. “Jesus, Jack, hasn’t it been long enough for you to realize she isn’t playing a joke? She doesn’t remember. If we can reconstruct her night, maybe we can help jog her memory.”
Jack sighed too, then shrugged. “She came over for supper; it got more serious.”
“Did she try to leave, around ten-fifteen?”
Jack flushed. “Yeah, she spoke about New York, about heading back after all this. I asked for a chance to convince her otherwise—no strings attached, if I hadn’t changed her mind by the time this case was closed.”
“And she stayed?”
“Yes. She turned around, said, ‘Well, it’s your heart,’ and then she stayed.”
“What time do you think you fell asleep?” Kyle asked, then resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and Jack gave him a look. “Come on. We know she left and came back to my house; we also know you didn’t notice. So I assume you were sleeping.”
Jack shrugged. “I guess. We had a drink after, that was around eleven-thirty and then went to sleep.”
Kyle nodded. “Okay. Good. Look. I know Kate better than you. No need to get your hackles up,” he added quickly. “What I mean is, I have dealt with her losing time before. So give me a few days to go through this and think of the best way to use it to jog her memory. In the meantime, treat her just like a friend.”
Jack had been nodding but scowled now.
“Or ignore me if you want,” Kyle said, his tone turning acerbic. “But in my experience, if she’s feeling frightened by what she might have forgotten, she’ll only close up further and it will be harder to get her to remember.”
Jack nodded, his eyes moving past Kyle, and he shot up, as if someone had goosed him.
Kyle turned in time to see Kate approaching, Olsen hounding her heels, and Adams hounding his. Kyle suppressed the urge to frown, Landers’s voice crystal clear.
Don’t spook her. Easy does it until we are all certain and pulling from the same side.
Kyle resisted the urge to glance at Jack. Guilt lapped at his insides, but with all that was going on, he knew the man wouldn’t be an ally.
“I got it,” Kate said, grinning broadly, although her eyes wouldn’t quite focus on Jack. “I got us a lead.”
“I knew you would,” Jack beamed.
Kate seemed to take courage from this reaction that involved no awkward comments or touches.
“Enough,” Olsen said tersely. “Take what Dr. Summers and Dr. Adams have and get it cross-checked against any CCTV and the like. If it works out well, then you two might actually have a new person to interview.”
“What about the shelter case?” Jack asked.
Kyle winced as Kate flinched. He’d tried talking to her about it, but she had refused. She looked away, watching herself in the pale reflection of the glass wall.
“I’ve handed it over to Jackson and Mason. They’ll be good enough to carry on where you left off,” Olsen said, following Kyle’s gaze briefly.
“We’ll get right on it then,” Kyle said, catching the flash of irritation. He hitched on a smile as Kate looked back. “So what did you find?”
“A few fibers and a shoe. The shoe doesn’t belong to either victim. It was custom-made for one Alexander Forbes. I’m checking the other case for any signs of him now.”
Kyle nodded, knowing she wasn’t naming her relatives only because Olsen was there. He could see the pain in her eyes. Landers had to be wrong. Plain and simple.
And I’ll prove it.
“Got it. We’ll get photo id, and start cross-checking all footage.”
Kyle watched her leave and drew up his determination. Hopefully, Alexander Forbes wouldn’t be a dud.
****
Kate sat back in her office and let out a sigh. She felt a wave of relief crash over her. Jack had behaved perfectly normally. No odd looks, no attempts to touch her, no pained expression. She wondered briefly if Kyle was the one to thank for the change and then decided it didn’t matter. As long as Jack was back to just being a friend, she’d take it, whatever the reason.
Kate pulled her copy of the file on Alexander Forbes towards herself. She’d been pleased with the find, after working twelve to fourteen hours since the blank memory, looking for the key to this damned case. She no longer simply wanted it wrapped up—she needed it to be. She wanted to leave Asheville and to return to New York. She required the anonymity she enjoyed there. Here, her family’s story and tragedies had left her a minor celebrity, though instead of being hounded by paparazzi armed with flashing cameras, she was hounded by well-wishers, armed with pity.
She looked down at the name and image of the shoe. It was a sturdy thing, designed for surviving rough terrain and bad weather. Perhaps he was an avid mountaineer. It wasn’t unusual, given their proximity to the peaks.
Hopefully, this leads somewhere.
She shook her head at the intensity that thought held. It was a curling discomfort in her mind. She turned to her desk. She was likely just worried that their lead would vanish.
On her desk sat the report that had boggled her mind the day after she had lost a few hours. She shoved it into the bin. It had to be wrong. The results were impossible given its location. She’d simply run the tests again if need be after they’d taken this new lead to its conclusion.
“No sense wasting time going over something unnecessary.” Kate straightened and jumped as she spotted a figure in the doorway. “You again.”
Landers smiled. “You take a lot of pride in your work,” he said, his tone amicable. Kate tensed for trouble. “What would you say your margin of error is?”
She resisted the urge to simply tell him to leave. “I didn’t think we needed you here anymore, Mr. Landers.”
“Avoiding the question. That won’t work on me.”
Kate ground her teeth. “That would depend on the complexity of the task.”
“How about an easy one, entry-level stuff, such as fingerprint analysis?”
Kate’s eyes flickered to the wastepaper basket and back to him. “Is there a point to this?”
“The point, Dr. Summers, is that normally, you are not the type to make errors, or, on the extremely rare occasion that one is made, you are not one to let it sit. You take too much pride in your work for that. Yet here you stand, with more than one piece of evidence, refusing to follow it, blaming error, but doing nothing to verify it.”
Kate caught his glance at the bin and felt herself grow hot. “Are you admitting to breaking the law?”
“I didn’t need to.” He turned abruptly and gestured to their reflection in the glass. “A person’s face can say a lot, if you learn how to read it. One can even read their own face, if they have the courage to be honest. Sometimes, it is almost as if a stranger is looking back.”
Kate, who had met the eyes of her own reflection, looked down to his. “Why are you here?”
“To ask you to be honest and coura
geous. From what I have learned, you truly seek justice. Don’t let the truth stop you from attaining it.”
Kate watched his reflection slide away, as the man left the room, and her eyes fell on the only one left. Her own.
She tilted her head to the left and then the right, watching her reflection mimic her, and was suddenly assaulted by a sense of unease.
Kate put a hand to her head. If she was being honest, she felt rather ill. She scooped up her bag and left her office, popping in briefly to Adams to report that she was heading home, and left the building.
She was pushing herself too hard; that is what it was. She was dealing with too much emotionally and then pushing work through all hours to prevent those emotions from becoming incapacitating. That was why she was losing time or having foggy memories. It was nothing sinister and nothing to worry about. She just needed to rest. So today, she would go home early and sleep. A few of Kyle’s higher-strength pain pills ought to send her right off, easing this pounding headache and knocking her out, where her worrying mind would have no chance to interfere.
10
“You’re finally awake. I was beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t call in the doctor after all.”
Kate blinked a few times until Kyle came into focus. “Huh?”
Kyle looked at her oddly, then stood and moved out of sight. He came back a moment later with a glass of water. “You said you were ill, but just needed to rest. Though you were moaning really badly at about three this morning. Thought you were having fewer dreams.”
“I did?” Kate sat up, trying to remember. She had left work because she’d been feeling unwell, but she hadn’t thought she’d get this bad. “How late is it? I should call in.”
Kyle raised an eyebrow. “You already did. Yesterday. You told me, and you phoned Dr. Adams. She then asked me how you were when I got there because you’d asked for three days off.”
Three days? I called in yesterday to ask for three days off? Kate felt her brain clear with alarming speed, leaving only two conclusions behind. One, she had again lost time. Two, she had done things she couldn’t remember doing.
Kate caught the slight tightness in Kyle’s eyes and managed to nod her head, rubbing her eyes as if sleep was to blame. He couldn’t find out she was missing time again, or the memories that went along with it. Until she knew what was going on, no one else was going to know anything was amiss.
“Have you been looking after me?”
Kyle shook his head. “I’ve been at work.”
“How are things going? You guys get a lead on Alexander Forbes yet?”
Kyle shifted away, placing the glass on the table. “Yeah, we found an address for him, halfway up the mountain. We were heading there today, now that the warrants were in and cleared.”
“That’s great. What warrants though? Weren’t you guys just going to chat?” Kate asked, frowning. She’d only missed a day. A whole day. Her mind shuddered, but she fought to keep her face smooth.
“We found enough footage to show that he was in the area at the time of both fires. So we wanted a search warrant in place first, so we could bring him in and check out his place.”
“Both?” Kate bolted upright. Kyle glanced at her, and his eyes dropped down. Realizing she was unconsciously scratching marks into her skin, she hugged the blanket, clutching it tight to stop her hands from moving. “He was there twenty years ago too?”
Kyle tore his eyes from her arms and nodded. “Yeah. Looks like it.”
“Why do you sound so defeated? He’s an even better lead than I had hoped.” As she spoke, she remembered him saying that they were going to head out there today. Were. Past tense.
“He’s dead, Kate. Dr. Adams and the others are out there now, scouring the scene. If there’s anything there, they’ll find it.”
Kate knew all her muscles had locked into place, knew she was making Kyle worry from the way his hands tightened and his lips pressed together. “Why aren’t you there too, talking to witnesses or something?”
“Kate, the man lived in total isolation. No one would have been around. Jack is feverishly checking all the wildlife welfare cameras, but even their footage doesn’t come within two miles of his house.”
Kate leaned back against the pillows. “Is that why you came back?”
Kyle shrugged. “Our case hit a dead end. You weren’t well. I figured I’d come back and see if you were any better.”
Kate nodded vaguely, her mind not really listening to his words anymore. She’d lost a whole day. In that time, Jack and Kyle had pegged down the lead, but before they could get to him, the man had died.
“Kyle,” he obviously heard the tension in her voice because he took her hand.
“It’ll be okay, Kate.”
“No. They’re here, don’t you see? Whoever killed my family, they’re still here, still watching, and are close enough to be a step ahead of us.”
Kyle held her gaze a long moment, then slowly nodded. “Yes. Olsen and Adams have come to the same conclusion.”
Kate shuddered.
“We’ll catch them. Don’t you worry. Now I should get back.”
Kate felt his hand leave hers and looked up as he rose. “Kyle?”
“Yes?”
Kate bit her tongue. She couldn’t tell him. It would raise unnecessary questions, and more importantly, it would get her kicked off the case. “Never mind. I’ll see you later. Tell Adams I’m better and will be in again tomorrow.”
Kyle nodded once and left, his posture an indication of some inner tension. Kate sighed. She needed to get to the bottom of this. The question was how?
She heard the doorbell ring and frowned, as it crashed through her thoughts. She’d been running through the evidence they had and what might lead them closer. She’d obviously been sitting there far longer than the few minutes it felt like to her.
Kate sighed and stepped out of bed, making her way to the door. She opened it to reveal no one, just an A4 envelope, labeled with her name. Suddenly assaulted with the paranoia of a thousand unseen eyes watching her, Kate reached back to grab a glove from the rack and shoved it on, retrieving the envelope and shutting the door firmly.
She moved to the kitchen table and placed it down carefully, then grabbed a boxing knife and carefully slit the top. Inside were a set of stapled papers she knew well, having printed and stapled them herself. The fingerprint results from the microscope found in the ashes of her aunt and uncle’s house. Her fingerprints, and only her fingerprints.
It didn’t make sense. It should be impossible. Her microscope was still boxed up, unopened, in New York. She’d never had one like this down here.
As she pulled the pages all the way out, a small note fell out with them.
I thought you might want these. Remember. Courage and honesty. Time, as I am sure you’ve noticed by now, is slipping away from us. Only you can stop it before it runs out altogether ~ S. Landers.
Kate read the note again and looked at her reflection in the fridge door. The note bent and crumpled as she made a fist. Her eyes hard, they matched her glare.
****
“This still doesn’t feel right,” Kate said, as the lights, screeches of laughter, and discordant carnival music rose to a din around them.
The winter fair looked like a gaudy necklace. All bright, multicolored lights, clashing with each other in a psychedelic competition. Tents and stalls, fairground rides, and picnic tables, all filled with scurrying people.
“Why not?” Jack said, looking around, his eyes alight. “It has been eight days since you got Kyle freed. A lot has happened. Some of it good,” he said, holding her gaze a moment too long. “And some of it not so great. But we’re making good progress overall, and we deserve a little downtime. Heck, even Olsen agreed.”
Kate chuckled and caught Kyle’s frown, which quickly became a forced chuckle. She pushed her own worries away. Maybe Jack was right, and even if he wasn’t, she’d take this opportunity to pretend, knowing that once tonigh
t ended, she’d likely not have the chance again, even if she’d been in a daze when they’d invited her.
She punched Kyle’s arm playfully. “I think he’s right. Look at you. You’re going to go prematurely bald.”
Kyle raised an eyebrow. “Alright then, where to first?”
“How about there?” Jack asked, pointing towards a giant tent with the words Funhouse Mirror Maze scrawled above it in giant neon-green letters.
Kate gritted her teeth against what she was determined to believe was an irrational wave of fear. “Sure.”
They entered the tent.
“First to the exit wins,” Jack said, bounding off down the left-hand lane of mirrors.
Kate looked at Kyle, a plea for him not to leave her alone on her lips, but he was already gone, only a dim reflection racing away to the right.
Kate muttered a curse and took the central row.
After a while, following her reflections became too much, and she shifted her eyes to the floor, unwilling to see them watching, unwilling to give strength to the fear inside her. She had to get out of here. She could hear Kyle and Jack in the distance, laughing together, and clearly free of this maze. Concentrating only on those sounds, she began to move, ignoring the corresponding movements from the mirrors.
There. A slit of light in the dark. A gap in the tent folds. Not an exit, but it would do. Kate spilled out into the night, her breath misting the air, as it came in rapid bursts. She was alone under the starry sky but didn’t care. Alone was good. No reflections. No pending madness.
A shadow shifted, and Kate spun to face it, her heart hammering, then all went still within her.
The small figure of Simon Landers stepped into the pale ring of light cast by the glow along the main thoroughfare, his dark eyes glittering, watching her carefully.
“I see you’ve come out to play. No need to be rash. I’ll play. How about we make a wager?”
