“You worry about your job,” Ross says, “and let McDennon worry about his. Come on, we’ll talk in the hall.”
A smile twitches the corners of my lips as I follow him out of the room. Ross is hands-down the best agent on the squad. Don’t get me wrong—he can be as abrupt, demanding, and critical as all the other cops, but Ross, unlike any agent I’ve ever heard of, always shares the details of a case. And not only that, he even asks my opinion.
As soon as we’re out in the hall he starts talking.
“Chief said the person who called it in claimed to be the bomber himself. From what Chief told me about the call, McDennon is right. The guy’s a total whack job.”
“Why would the bomber report his own crime?”
Ross shakes his head. “Why would he give the video camera the finger? Clearly, he doesn’t care about getting caught. Either that or he thinks we won’t catch him. In the call he ranted about the ineptitude of the police department. He thinks all cops are crooked and that our reliance on spinners is a perversion of nature.” He glances at me. “Sorry.”
I shrug. “That’s nothing new. What else did he say?”
“That the reason Sikes has never been caught is because Chief Graham is accepting bribes to cover up his crimes.”
I lean against the wall. If that part of the call leaks out, it’s not going to go over very well. Sikes is the name the press has given to the city’s most notorious criminal and the police department’s Achilles heel. Ten years in and no one has a clue who the man is or how he manages his operation. Or if he’s even a man. Sikes is blamed for the theft of at least fifty million dollars. He steals from banks, high-end jewelry stores, elegant homes, and flourishing businesses. He leaves no clues and always manages to time the thefts so no one discovers them for at least three days—too late for a spinner to rewind the crime. Although there are a few outliers who call Sikes Robin Hood—even spreading rumors that he gives all his riches to charity—most of the city is furious about the police’s failure to catch him.
“Do you think it’s true? That Chief is helping Sikes?” I ask.
“You know my opinion,” Ross says. “I don’t know if it goes all the way to the Chief, but there is no way Sikes could have avoided capture all these years without some inside help.”
The headache building in my skull throbs. Ross is fanatical about unmasking Sikes. Before he was an agent, Ross was a regular police detective. He and his partner, Salvador Rodriguez, were the main investigators on the Sikes case. One day, when Ross was out with a nasty flu, Sal called him up to say there had been a breakthrough in the case. He’d gotten some new information and now had three likely suspects he wanted to interview. Ross asked him to wait, but Sal was too impatient, so he followed up on the leads by himself. The next day, a Friday, Sal disappeared. On Tuesday, his body was found floating in the Willamette River. Ross swore he’d catch Sikes and make him pay. Instead, Chief sent him on leave for a few months. When he came back, Chief said the case had become too personal for Ross and that it would be better for someone else to handle it. Ross was transferred to the Time Department. He’s supposed to have let the case go, but he still works it on his own. He and I have spent many hours in the car talking through evidence.
“What would the suspect gain by bombing city hall?” I ask Ross.
Ross frowns at the floor as if there might be answers in the linoleum’s abstract swirls.
“Given that he called it in, I don’t think he planned to actually hurt anyone. Probably just wanted to show how powerful he is. Did you notice the schedule outside the room where he put the bomb? The meeting this afternoon was about the precinct’s budget. Chief would have been there, along with the mayor and lots of upper level staff.”
I rub my temple, trying to think like a psycho bomber.
“Maybe he really does have information about which cops are working with Sikes. He could have known about the meeting and set the bomb as a warning to them.”
“If he did have information about Sikes, this kind of attention would not make our master thief very happy.”
“There must be a pretty clear image of the guy on videotape. Surely the cops will be able to identify him.”
Ross’s frown deepens. “I wonder …”
I know what he’s thinking. If he could get a chance to question the bomber, find out who on the force was working with Sikes, it might give him a lead to crack the case. The pounding in my head bounces up to match the spike in my pulse. All the spinners at the Center tease me about my dedication to time work, but none of them would laugh if I helped solve a case this big.
“Agent Ross,” McDennon calls. Ross’s head jerks up, and we hurry back into the room. The bomb expert is standing in the middle of the small office, his face split with a Cheshire cat grin. Wires and bits of plastic are strewn all over the desk.
“I got it,” he says. He wipes his brow against the shoulder of his shirt. I rub my head, too. Time is pulling at me hard now, a current with definite intentions of dragging me downstream. McDennon starts packing things back into his bomb squad bag. A tiny screwdriver. A magnifying glass.
“There’s no need for that,” Ross says. “Let it go, Alex.”
I release my hold on time with relief. The scene around us blurs. Ross told me once that the melt made him momentarily dizzy, like missing a step off a curb. For me, the sensation is more violent. Scenes from the freeze swing crazily in my head: the suspect placing tape, manicured nails waving in a crowded hall, the janitor’s bouncing mop. I try to relax the way we’re trained, to let time wash over me, but it still feels like the seconds are being forcibly ripped through my chest.
The world steadies. I am standing on the steps in front of City Hall, staring into Ross’s ocean-blue eyes. He blinks and lets go of my hand.
Chief starts. “You’re back?”
McDennon’s neatly packed bomb bag slips from his fingers and hits the ground with a thud. The leaf he’d shredded during the freeze, once again intact, floats past his feet on its draft of wind. The squirrel completes its journey to the neighboring tree. The flag on the rooftop flutters.
Chief looks up at the building. “Did you find it?”
“Yes, sir,” McDennon answers, scrambling to recover his bag, “and I know how to dismantle it.”
“Quick,” Chief says. “Go.”
McDennon races back up the stairs. Chief turns to Ross and hands over my leash.
“How long were you inside?” Chief asks him.
“I’d guess twenty, twenty-five minutes.”
Ross refastens the leash around my arm. I wish he’d been less prompt. My head is still swimming from releasing the freeze, and adding the leash’s hum makes me queasy.
Ross walks over to stand next to Chief. Neither man speaks. Chief keeps glancing at his watch, then back up at City Hall. The cops waiting down the street mutter together, the sound echoing the buzz in my head. I want to go over and stand with them, just in case, but the effort is beyond me. Instead, I sit on the steps and lay my head on my knees. Time headaches usually fade after a few minutes.
“All clear, Chief!” McDennon yells.
He bursts through the front door, arms raised as if he’s just won a championship race. When he waves pieces of the bomb, cheers break out from the waiting police. Chief rushes to shake his hand. He’s smiling so widely I catch glimpses of silver on his back teeth.
I stand up and instantly regret it. This is the worst time headache ever. It feels like someone is squeezing the back of my eyeballs.
“Agent Ross.” Chief is back, one arm draped over McDennon’s shoulders. “You did all right today, you and …” He nods over at me, my name clearly gone from his memory.
The other cops flood around them. They’re laughing and shoving each other, all eager to congratulate the new heroes. I slump back down onto the step, grateful for once to be ignored. If this was the time someone actually came over to thank me, I’d probably puke all over their shoes.
&n
bsp; The steps grow crowded. Nervous sweat taints the air with bitter perfume. People yell, cell phones jangle. The noises bounce around my head like a mistuned orchestra. And it isn’t just the noise, it’s the light, too. Everything around me seems too bright, the edges so sharp they hurt. I put a hand up to shade my eyes and touch clammy skin.
Nausea, fever … Realization thrusts me back to my feet. It’s normal for me to get a headache from freezing. This is different.
“Mr. Ross!”
I must have shouted. Heads turn, confusion interrupting their celebration. I don’t care. Panic is drowning me in a way time never does.
Ross hurries over.
“What is it?
I clutch his proffered hand. “I’m sick.”
“A headache?”
“No! I’m sick, Mr. Ross. Time sick.”
Ross’s face crumples.
“Come on,” he murmurs, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“Where are you going?” Chief calls. “I need you for the press conference. It’s set up for four o’clock.”
“I’ll be there,” Ross says over his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he tells me as he shepherds me to his car. “It’s going to be OK.”
I stumble along beside him. I know Ross is lying. Things are not going to be OK. Time, that invisible essence I control with a twist of my mind, always takes its revenge. Once a spinner gets sick, the end is inevitable. A few months, a year at most, and then … Sixteen is young, but not unheard of.
No spinner lives past twenty.
02
I WENT ON MY FIRST MISSION WITH CARSON ROSS SIX months ago. I’d been certified to work missions as a fully qualified spinner since I was thirteen, and had been through three different agents already, enough to learn that since rewinds make most people uncomfortable, the cops assigned as agents aren’t always the city’s finest. My first agent, Amanda Spruce, worked vice, so we unwound a lot of prostitution cases. In between, she’d tell me stories about her teenage daughters—their clothes, soccer clubs, boyfriends, and parties. She’d laugh about the time her eldest got caught skinny-dipping with her boyfriend in a city reservoir, or when the youngest was found with a joint. Later, we’d round up another drug-addicted hooker and rewind her day before arresting her pimp and any of the johns we managed to ID. Ms. Spruce called the girls whores when she questioned them and once shoved one so hard against the side of the police car she broke the girl’s tooth.
Tito Marquez was a beat cop in a neighborhood known for gang violence. He drank gallons of coffee and spent a lot of time intimidating witnesses before we got around to the rewinds. I’d sit in his car wishing I could speed time up instead of slow it down. The only upside was that we did work some interesting cases. It was with him that I first tasted the grim pleasure of uncovering a murderer.
The last guy was the worst. Jonas Saul was about fifty, with graying hair and a gut he had to wedge under the steering wheel in order to drive. He called me honey and tried to put his arm around me during rewinds. Frozen time doesn’t count, he’d tell me, then laugh his disgusting smoker’s hack as if this phrase might be considered original. Or funny.
That first mission with Ross involved a dead baby. The probable verdict was that the death was natural. SIDS, they called it—Sudden Infant Death Syndrome—but the cops thought something might be off, so they brought in Ross to check it out. I was not supposed to be there. Calvin had been Ross’s first spinner, but he’d gotten sick a couple months before, and Ross had been reassigned to the oldest—and theoretically most experienced—spinner at the Center, nineteen-year-old Jack. In his typically loud fashion, Jack had been annoying everyone all week, crowing about how he’d won the agent lottery. That morning, though, Jack got caught making out with another spinner in the second-floor bathroom—a cardinal, if frequent, Center transgression. They were both given extra chores, and I got pulled for Jack’s mission.
Ross and I drove out through an unseasonably hot spring afternoon that even the air conditioning in his car couldn’t tame. Ross asked me lots of questions, which at the time I found disconcerting: What did I like about the Center? What jobs did I do there? Did I think Dr. Barnard, the Center’s director, treated us fairly? None of my other agents wanted to know anything about me except my name. I answered him in monosyllables while surreptitiously studying his profile. I pegged him at late thirties, still fit, with gray peppering his dark blond hair. He gestured with his hands a lot and had laugh lines around his eyes that crinkled when he squinted into the sun.
As we moved east and the city’s hustle shrank down to streets of tired houses, Ross’s conversation slowed. By the time we reached our goal, Ross was frowning with a focused concentration I admired. The house we stopped at had a falling-down fence around a lawn whose only green spots were dandelions. When we got out of the car, the heat descended like a flaming hand pressing the back of my neck.
Ross rang the doorbell. Twice. No one answered. He had just raised his hand to knock, when the door cracked open to the width allowed by a chain lock.
In the shaft of darkness, the woman looked insubstantial, as if she’d already been rewound. She wore a thin bathrobe without a belt and her feet were bare. Misery wafted from her, mingling with the stench of spoiled milk and unwashed skin.
“Mrs. Montgomery?” Ross asked.
The woman’s face remained so blank she might have been the one who died.
“I’m Agent Carson Ross.” He showed her his badge. “And this is spinner Alexandra Manning. We’re here to look into the death of Rosalind Montgomery. We have a time search warrant.”
The woman stared vaguely at the paper in Ross’s hand. No spark showed even the faintest hint of comprehension. Ross stuffed the papers back into his pocket. When he spoke again his voice was gentle.
“May we come in?”
The door closed. I thought Mrs. Montgomery had dismissed us, but a moment later I heard the slide of the lock, and the door swung open. I had to force myself to follow Ross inside. Mrs. Montgomery was already shuffling over to a forlorn sofa. She must have been there a while. An open pizza box displayed congealed pieces of barely eaten pie while a television flashed images through a muted screen. Somewhere nearby, a diaper pail needed emptying.
Ross cleared his throat. “Can you show me where Rosalind died?”
Mrs. Montgomery pointed vaguely toward a closed door. Ross thanked her. I tripped over a stroller in my eagerness to get away from the unresponsive woman.
The bedroom was worse. For one thing, it turned out to be the home of the overflowing diaper pail. The cloud of ammonia that hit us when we entered the room made me gag. Ross put a hand up to his nose.
“Give me your arm,” he said.
“What?”
“Freeze time, quick, so we can lessen the smell.”
I held out my arm and he unlocked my leash. As soon as the metal left my skin I touched two fingers to Ross’s bare wrist and stopped time. Ross grabbed the door, waving the wood back and forth to make enough breeze to disperse the stench-laden molecules. It didn’t erase the smell, but at least my eyes quit watering. I blinked, taking in a blanket-strewn mattress on the floor, a sagging dresser, and window blinds that didn’t close all the way. Only the far corner showed signs of care. Here, the wall was painted a soft yellow. On the floor, a makeshift changing station made of a stack of towels rested next to a pile of neatly folded baby clothes. Above that, someone had taped up three photographs. The first showed a dozing infant in a stretchy pink-and-blue hat. The second was a studio portrait of a startled-looking child with a flowered band around her bald head. The last was a snapshot of a laughing woman holding the baby tight against her chest. The girl’s fat cheeks were split by a gummy smile, one little hand wrapped around a strand of her mother’s hair. The mother was a barely recognizable version of Mrs. Montgomery.
“Let’s get this over with,” Ross said.
I nodded, grabbing time so
hard the rewind spun backward with a force that made me sway.
“How far back do I need to go?” I asked.
“A neighbor called it in this morning. I gather the child died sometime the day before. We’ll have to go back at least twenty-four hours—will that be a problem for you?”
“No, sir,” I said.
The phantom police backed in first, quickly followed by a guy from the morgue, who replaced a tiny body into a coil of blankets in the center of the bed. Rosalind’s rosebud mouth hung open, relaxed far beyond the temporary release of sleep. I kept the rewind moving at a fast clip. Police wandered in and out, poking in drawers and un-taking pictures. Their rewound voices kept up an incomprehensible hum, punctuated by ugly squawks from their radios. Mrs. Montgomery never appeared. Presumably she’d already taken up residence on her sofa. Light leached away from the afternoon until last night’s darkness settled an overlay of gloom, though the fetid air around us kept its real-time heat. Sweat tickled the edges of my hairline. Rosalind lay alone in her blankets, unmoving and definitely dead. I spun the rewind harder. Light returned. I pulled faster still, racing a growing tiredness as we moved farther back. The sun brightened, receded.
In the rosy light of dawn, Mrs. Montgomery staggered backward into the room. She moved like a barely animate china doll, as if any fast movement might shatter her. My grip on time slipped. The image stuttered to a halt.
“Is this as far as you can rewind?” Ross asked. “I understand. This is much farther than I expected.”
“No.” I pressed my lips together, barely giving my words enough room to slip out. “I can go further. It’s just …”
Mrs. Montgomery’s body strained with a barely suppressed scream. The idea of seeing her turn around and face the dead baby terrified me.
Ross put an arm around my shoulder.
“Hey, it’s OK.”
I stiffened beneath his touch. He let me go.
“You don’t have to watch,” Ross said. “Close your eyes. I’ll tell you what to do.”
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