3 Time to Steele

by Alex P. Berg

  “Shit.” I reached into my coat and wrapped my fingers around Daisy’s cold, hard body. “Stay behind me and keep your eyes peeled. And stay quiet.”

  I pushed the door open with my free hand, slowly, hoping the hinges wouldn’t squeal. To my right, an artificially distressed entrance table leaned against the base of a set of stairs. To my left, sunlight filtered in through the doily-clad window, painting a sitting room with bright, flowery shades. Nothing seemed out of place.

  I stepped in further, past the staircase and toward the back. I gripped Daisy hard, my muscles tense. I scanned my eyes from side to side, taking in the home, preparing myself for action but expecting the worst.

  The kitchen came into my field of view. Natural wood cabinets and marbled backsplashes. Pots and pans hanging from a rack over an island, gleaming in the mid-morning sun. A cup of tea, devoid of steam, sitting on an otherwise empty butcher’s block.

  I turned to my right, pushed through a door, and found, presumably, Anya. The similarities between her and Darryl were immediately apparent—the curvature of her nose, the color and wave of her hair, the shape of her jaw, all similar to her brother’s—but unfortunately, the similarities didn’t end there.

  Her body sagged, lifeless, in a chair, secured to it with a length of rope just as Gill’s had been. Bruises and welts marred her otherwise lovely face, toothless gaps loomed in her mouth, and blood darkened her light brown hair. I glanced at her fingers, then at her temple. Same method of torture and murder as her brother, based on the mangled stumps and fractured skull, but the blood near the wounds glimmered, wet and fresh. Anya had died recently.

  Still tense, I cast my eyes around the room—a guest bedroom, if the furniture was any indication, though I doubted anyone would stay there in the near future. Blood spatters on the floor, walls, and across the bed’s dainty, crocheted coverlet gave the space an air of the macabre.

  I thought I heard a rustling to my right. Shay must’ve heard it, too.

  “Daggers,” she hissed almost inaudibly. She tilted her head toward the sound.

  I nodded and followed both of our instincts to another door, this one heading back toward the front of the home. I paused and held my breath, my ears staining. Another rustle. Definite, this time.

  I kicked open the door and lunged into the room, Daisy held out before me and ready for action. A young man jumped at the sound of the splintering doorframe, papers flying out of his hands and fluttering across a desk over which he’d been leaning. His thick eyebrows shot up in surprise, and he brought his hands up, placing them palm forward at the sides of his oval-shaped face and wavy black hair.

  “Don’t move a muscle,” I said.

  We’d found our intruder, the guy from the second sketch, Cheeks. The wharfie at Gill’s place had depicted him perfectly, though he’d sold him short on the dressing gown bit. It was more of a monk’s robe than a bath robe—it didn’t open in the front, for one thing, and the weave of the cloth was heavier—but its deep violet color was interspersed with yellowish-white star and moon emblems, just as described.

  Cheeks glanced at me, then Steele, then Daisy. He tried to keep his voice steady when he spoke, but he couldn’t quite keep a bit of a nervous warble from creeping in. “This…isn’t what it looks like.”

  “Really?” I said. “Because it looks like you’re rifling through the belongings of a dead woman. A woman who was alive very, very recently. A woman whose brother was found dead yesterday morning and who you robbed posthumously, according to eye-witness accounts. You think I’m going to find a bloody claw hammer underneath those stylish robes of yours?”

  The young man shook his head. “No. No, you’ve got this all wrong. I didn’t kill Anya, or her brother.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

  “The same thing you are,” he said. “I’m looking for their killer.”

  I scowled and raised a suspicious eyebrow. I didn’t know what the young punk’s game was, but given that I could implicate him in the gruesome murder of multiple citizens of my jurisdiction, I planned on pulling out all the stops to find out.

  18

  I sat in my hard-backed desk chair at the precinct, another cup of hot coffee grasped between my hands. Steam rose from the surface of the mug in lazy curls, and ripples pulsed out from the center of the dark liquid rhythmically as my leg bounced up and down.

  Shay rapped her fingers on her desk and stared at me. “Surely we’ve waited long enough by now.”

  I shook my head. “Not yet. Give it another ten minutes. Trust me, I don’t want to sit here any more than you do this time, but we do it for a reason. He’s young. Inexperienced. We need to wait. The lights’ll break him.”

  After arresting Cheeks at Anya’s house, we’d summoned beat cops to take care of the mess and hustled back to the precinct where I promptly put the smooth-faced trespasser in the interrogation room—the same one we’d placed Patterson in yesterday, the one packed with mirrors and lights. We had another interrogation room in the basement, a dark, dingy, depressing space capable of putting even the sunny-dispositioned Rodgers into a funk. We used it on occasion, but its gloom was more useful when paired with a ‘wait and see’ approach, where we’d leave suspects in there for hours on end without seeing another sentient being. Neither Shay nor I had the patience for that strategy at the moment.

  I took another sip of my coffee and noticed a lithe, angelic form clad in all black approaching from the stairs to my right. Cairny. I nodded to Shay so she’d know.

  She turned as the coroner approached. “Hey Cairny.”

  “Hey Shay,” said Cairny.

  I passed my eyes between the pair. “You guys are on a first name basis, now?”

  “Um…yes. We are friends.” Cairny tilted her head toward me and raised her eyes at my partner. “And he thinks I’m batty.”

  “What?” I sat up a little straighter. “I never said—”

  “Don’t worry,” said Cairny. “I don’t take it personally. I know my mind tends to wander. I’m not sure why, really. I suspect genetics, but perhaps its due to an environmental factor, maybe something from my childhood I don’t remember…”

  Cairny’s eyes fogged as she focused on something indistinct, essentially proving her own statement.

  “So, Cairns,” said Shay. “What’s up?”

  Cairny blinked. “Oh. Right. The body you discovered. The woman? She arrived. I haven’t performed my full analysis, but I figured I’d tell you my initial impressions seeing as I heard you have a suspect in custody.”

  “A suspect, yes, though who knows how he’s involved,” I said. “So lay it on us. What can you tell us about Anya?”

  Cairny tucked an errant strand of her long, shimmery black hair behind her ear. “Well, I can’t say this with a hundred percent certainty, you understand, but I’m almost sure the killer is the same as that of the man we found yesterday. Not only was the placement of the blow to the skull nearly identical, but based on the amount of damage to the woman’s skull and the fracture pattern, I’d wager the force applied in the blow was similar.”

  “Anything else?” asked Shay.

  Cairny nodded. “She died about an hour before you arrived on the scene. Maybe a little less, but certainly not more than an hour and a half.”

  “Thanks. You’re the best,” said Shay.

  “If you need me, you know where to find me.” Cairny winked, and she and Shay shared a look. They both smiled.

  I glanced at Cairny as she walked away, then turned my gaze onto my partner.

  “What?” she said.

  “I consider myself a facial expression guru, but sometimes I have a hard time figuring out what the two of you are sharing.”

  Shay regarded me with pressed lips and a single raised eyebrow. “A guru? Seriously?”

  “What?” I said. “I’m great at reading emotions.”

  Shay rolled her eyes. “Yeah… I’d say your skills are very much gender dependent.” S
he tilted her head toward the interrogation chamber. “You ready?”

  As I chewed on that piece of fat, I nodded. “Let’s go.”

  I let Shay lead the way, and not because I wanted to get in a few surreptitious glances at her backside for once. Rather, I didn’t want her to see me flustered, and her comments had done just that. What did she mean my emotional sixth sense wasn’t tailored to the fairer sex? Was that a subtle dig at our whole hanging out but not going out situation? Did she know how I felt about her, and was this her method of conveying her own complete and utter lack of interest? She had rolled her eyes, after all.

  The walk to our interrogation room took all of a minute, and for perhaps the first time in my life, I gladly would’ve exchanged the short jaunt for a much longer one. It would’ve served to help clear my mind, but seeing as I was unwilling to let Shay know her comments had jostled me, I settled for shaking my head vigorously as Shay turned the knob to the room, hoping my own personal doubts might get displaced like a bout of drowsiness.

  Cheeks sat in the interrogation chamber, squinting in the bright lights while sweat beaded at his temples. Like Patterson, his wrists had been chained to the table keeping him immobile and, more importantly, uncomfortable. His moon and star-encrusted robe looked even more out of place against the sterile white backdrop of the questioning chamber than it had at the scene of Anya’s murder.

  Shay sat across from the young man, and I did the same. Instead of speaking, I stared at the kid, hard-faced and iron-jawed. I’d learned the trick from my ex-partner Griggs, a dour, grumpy, dust-ball of a man who’d rather chew his own lip to pieces than utter a single word. The hard stare I’d stolen from him might loosen additional bits of evidence from Cheeks, and, as an additional plus, keeping my eyes trained on him meant I didn’t have to make eye contact with Steele, who I didn’t trust myself with at the moment. Seriously, what had she meant by that eye roll?

  I reached into my coat pocket and produced a sketch. I slid it across the metal table. “Does this person look familiar to you?”

  Cheeks glanced at the drawing. “Of course it does. It’s me.” He spread his fingers and held his palms toward us, at least as well as he could given the circumstances. “Look. Before you start, hear me out. Yes, I was at Darryl Gill’s apartment. I did break in, and I know that’s against the law. But I needed information, or at least some direction. And I did break in to Anya Crestwick’s apartment, too. But I didn’t murder either of them! I was trying to stop their murders from happening. If we don’t start working together, more people are going to die, and if that happens? Heh, well…let’s just say the consequences might get really dire.”

  I raised an eyebrow. After we’d arrested the kid, he’d clammed up, choosing not to divulge anything as we rushed him back to the precinct. Apparently the application of the lights and mirrors had done the trick.

  “Ok,” I said. “Why don’t we start with something simple? What’s your name?”

  “Harland,” he said. “Harland Wyle.”

  “And what were you doing in Darryl and Anya’s apartments?”

  Wyle sighed. “Look, I already told you. I was searching for their killer.”

  “This guy?” I produced Boatreng’s sketch of the murder suspect from my coat pocket and slid it across the table.

  “Yeah,” said Wyle. “I think.”

  Shay leaned in. “What do you mean, you think? You’re not sure?”

  Wyle shrugged. “He matches the description I was given.”

  “So you don’t know the killer?” asked Shay.

  “No,” said Wyle. “I’ve never met the guy. But I know he’s a bad apple. From everything I’ve heard this guy is a total whack job.”

  “Hold on. Back up,” I said. “You said this drawing—” I tapped it for emphasis. “—matches the description you were given of the killer. Who gave you the description? Why did they send you after this guy? Who are you? And more importantly, why did this guy go after Darryl and Anya?”

  Wyle glanced at the floor, then at the wall, before briefly making eye contact with me. “I, uh…can’t tell you.”

  “What?” I said. “Why not?”

  “Because…it would affect things,” he said.

  “You’re damn right it would affect things,” I said. “It would help us understand what in the world is going on. It would help us find the killer. And it might even absolve you of murder, something which your current testimony is doing a terrible job of.”

  Wyle clenched his fists and released them. “Look, how many times do I have to tell you people, I didn’t murder anyone!”

  “To be honest, I don’t particularly think you did,” I said. “At least not Gill. Not based on the evidence we found. But unless you explain what the hell is going on, I plan on implicating you in everything I possibly can. You ever heard of aiding and abetting?”

  Wyle took a deep breath and clenched his teeth. I could envision the gears in his mind churning.

  Steele tapped a finger on the table and cupped her chin with her off hand. “Look, Harland? You said you were trying to prevent Darryl and Anya’s murders. You said we needed to work together. So, let’s work together. Tell us what you know. We’ll do what we can to help.”

  Wyle shook his head. “You’re not going to believe me.”

  “Try us,” said Steele.

  Wyle sat in his chair, shifting his gaze from Steele to me and back. Eventually, he spoke. “Ok. But what I tell you can’t leave this room. I mean it. I don’t know what the effects of this will be, but we have to keep as tight a lid on this as possible.”

  I glanced at Steele. She shrugged.

  “Very well,” I said, not really understanding Wyle’s concern. “Tell us what you know.”

  Wyle leaned forward and glanced at the door, perhaps to make sure we were truly alone. “Alright. Here goes. That man, the murderer in the sketch? He’s a member of a radical anti-technology group bent on preventing the rise of the industrial age. And if we don’t stop him, he might just succeed.”

  “An anti-technology group?” I said.

  “Yes,” said Wyle. “Citizens for Simplicity. We’ve been keeping an eye on them.”

  “And who is we?” I asked.

  “My organization. SPTM.”

  “SP what?” I said.

  “SPTM. The Society for Practitioners of Time Magic.” Wyle spread his hands as best he could. “I’m from the future.”

  19

  I wiggled a finger in my ear. “Sorry, I think I misheard that. You’re from where?”

  Shay apparently trusted her sense of hearing. “That’s impossible. There’s no such thing as time magic.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Wyle, with a raised eyebrow. “Are you an expert on magic?”

  “Sort of, yeah,” said Steele, crossing her arms.

  “Well, then, tell me,” said Wyle. “How do you use fire magic to form ice? And how do you transfer a psychic conduit from a medium to a normal?”

  “The former is impossible,” said Steele. “And I’m not entirely sure I understand what you mean by the latter.”

  “The former isn’t impossible,” said Wyle. “You merely haven’t uncovered the art of inversion in this age yet. Nor do you understand the fundamental mechanics behind psychic conduits. And, thankfully, you haven’t discovered time magic at all.”

  “Thankfully?” said Steele.

  Wyle snorted. “Oh yeah. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m surprised the sentient races even made it to my time. I don’t know how civilization didn’t collapse on itself from the weight of its incompetence.”

  I stuck a finger in the air as I found my voice. “Hold on. I need to get this down.” I pulled a spiral bound notepad and a pencil from my jacket interior, then flipped the pad open to a free page. “So let me make sure I heard this straight. You claim you’re from the future?”

  Wyle sighed. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. I don’t know why I bothered.”

  I waggled a finger.
“Now, now, hold on. I haven’t passed any judgment yet. But I need to hear this story. And I mean the whole thing.”

  I felt the weight of Steele’s blink on the side of my neck. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Daggers.”

  I glanced at my partner. “He’s our only suspect. Let’s hear him out.”

  I got another eye roll in response, but at least I knew what this one meant. I turned my gaze back to Wyle. “So, as you were saying…you’re from the future?”

  “That’s right,” said Wyle.

  “And you were sent back to stop this man from going on a killing spree?” I tapped the sketch of Scar Face.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s so important about him?” I asked as I scribbled notes in my pad. “Who does he kill? Just Gill and Anya, or someone else, too?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wyle.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” I said. “If this guy is as important as you say he is, shouldn’t he be infamous? I imagine he’s all over your history books.”

  “No,” said Wyle. “I don’t know because he hasn’t done it yet. At least I don’t think so. He’s from the future, too.”

  I blinked and shook my head. “Wait, what? Scar Face is also a time mage?”

  Wyle frowned and furrowed his brows. “Scar Face?”

  “This guy. The murderer.” I tapped the sketch again. “I like to give people nicknames. You were Cheeks until I learned your name.”

  Wyle gave me an odd sort of look. “I’m not going to ask. But no, Scar Face, as you call him, isn’t a time mage. He’s just a psychotic nut.”

  I leaned back and squinted. “I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t think you would.” Wyle tapped his fingers on the table and leaned a little closer over the table. “There are multiple branches of time magic, and people who excel at one discipline usually don’t exhibit any ability in the other branches. The most common discipline is temporal dilation. That involves manipulation of the rate at which time passes for either the mage or the party being manipulated, either in terms of a rate increase or decrease. Much less common are the temporal distortion skills. Some people excel in psychic or kinetic temporal distortion, people who can influence thoughts or object motion in the near past or future.