3 Time to Steele

by Alex P. Berg

  “Recent,” I said. “I don’t have Cairny’s expertise, but I’d say—”

  I paused, thinking I’d heard footsteps, when a bloodcurdling scream rent the air.

  33

  A hooded figure, bearded, scarred, and crazy, burst out of the shadows behind Shay with a roar, a bloody claw hammer grasped in his right hand. He lunged at my partner, swinging the hammer in a wide arc.

  Shay screamed and danced to her right, avoiding the killing blow by a hairsbreadth, but she couldn’t avoid the psycho’s following punch with his left. Scar Face clocked Shay in the mouth, knocking her to the ground, and funneled his momentum back into his hammer hand.

  Time slowed around me, not due to anything Wyle or Scar Face might’ve done but due to the gravity of the situation. I saw Scar Face, his teeth bared in a brutal sneer, lift the bloody hammer over his head, his eyes wild and unfocused. Light gleamed off the hammer’s head as it began its descent. Complete and utter emptiness filled my mind—an inability to comprehend the events unfolding before me. Not that it mattered. No thought—mine or hers—could save her now. It was too late for that.

  Thankfully, I’d never relied much on my brain in life and death situations. I didn’t even realize I’d risen and lunged until my shoulder collided with Scar Face’s midsection, driving him at full force into one of the packed bookshelves. I heard a crack—whether of shelving material or ribs, I didn’t know—and felt my own tackling blow reverberate through Scar Face, off the wall, back though him, and into me.

  Scar Face’s hammer rebounded off the floor with a clang, and we both toppled to the hardwood under a rain of leather-bound books and periodicals. I fell flat on my back. Scar Face landed on top of me, driving the wind out of my sails.

  Suddenly, time had shifted. No longer were Scar Face’s movements progressing at the pace of a snail, but rather they came fast and furious, faster than time should’ve allowed. I felt a whistle of wind and twisted my head to the side, narrowly avoiding a heavy punch. Scar Face’s knuckles dusted the floor, and he grunted in pain.

  I grabbed his shoulder with my right hand—where had Daisy gone? I couldn’t remember—and threw my left elbow at his face, but Scar Face pulled his head back, causing me to miss. With his center of mass off from the dodge, I tried to push him off me, but Scar Face twisted and pushed and dug a knee into my kidneys. Based on his size, I was sure I outweighed him by a good twenty pounds, but like a trained wrestler, the crazed killer used his position to its full advantage.

  I dished out a few half-strength punches to Scar Face’s clavicle and midsection, taking an elbow to the chin and a karate chop to the neck in return. Sensing his advantage, Scar Face worked in closer, pressing his torso against me and wrapping his hands around my neck in a chokehold. His beard scraped the side of my face, and the scent of his rotting teeth and stale sweat filled my nostrils.

  I tried to punch him in the back of the head, but I couldn’t generate any power from my position on the floor, and try as I might, I couldn’t shake him.

  His thumbs dug into my neck. Air rasped through my throat as I tried to breathe, and I started to see spots. I needed to change tactics, and fast. Scar Face knew proximity was his best friend, so I decided to use it to my advantage as well.

  I grabbed the back of Scar Face’s skull and pulled it toward me while at the same time straining forward, ignoring the pressure of his thumbs into my windpipe. I bit down, as hard as I could, into the side of Scar Face’s jaw. I tasted blood as flesh tore.

  Scar Face recoiled with a howl, but rather than pressing his hands to the wound as I’d hoped, he whipped his arms forward and drove a haymaker into my temple.

  The room swam. I flailed. I think I might’ve punched Scar Face in the jaw. I heard another howl and grunting. And pounding—footsteps, heavy ones.

  The walls coalesced back into focus, and I caught sight of Scar Face’s shoes, which seemed to me a blur as he sped into the hallway.

  I stumbled to my knees and shook my head, the punch-induced grogginess fading fast. I could discern the footsteps now. They came from the direction of the stairs—Quinto and company if the weight of the sound was any indication.

  I knelt there.

  Scar Face had caught me off guard, but we had him trapped in a boarded up building with a single known exit. I could get up, take off after him, and coordinate with Rodgers and Quinto. We’d catch him in our web.

  And still I knelt there.

  Every ounce of my gut screamed at me to rise, to run, to chase down the murdering psychopath. Every bit of my sense of justice and right and wrong urged me to ignore the pain in my skull and RUN. CHASE. CAPTURE. But for perhaps the first time in my life, my gut got shouted down, and not by my brain or my loins, but by my heart.

  I rose. I turned, and knelt by Shay.

  My chest clenched as I laid eyes on her. My lungs froze, my throat narrowed, and the pressure of ten feet of water pressed down on my brain, but the sensation was fleeting. No blood. I’d remembered correctly. The hammer had missed.

  Her eyes were closed, but her chest rose and fell evenly, and when I pressed a finger to the side of her neck, her pulse pushed back, strong and steady. Her hair, normally styled into a pompadour and pinned back or held in a loose pony tail at the back of her head, now lay partially across her face, loosened by Scar Face’s blow.

  I reached out a finger and brushed it across Shay’s brow, gathering the loose strands and tucking them behind a delicate, pointed ear. A scent of lilacs filled my nostrils, but there were other hints there, too, scents entirely unique to Shay. Soap and freshly-washed hair and clean skin, all combining to form an aroma I’d come to know well and yet had never fully deciphered until now.

  Shay’s eyes fluttered and opened. Rather than drawing my hand back, I let it linger, gently cupping her ear and the back of her head. My partner’s eyes darted to the right, then the left, before coming to rest on me, kneeling before her.

  “Hi there,” I said.

  Shay drew air into her lungs slowly, blinked, and rested her warm, full eyes on me. When she spoke, her voice came heavy and breathy. “Hi.”

  In that instant, there were no walls between us. There was no guarded Detective Steele, no jaded and hesitant Detective Daggers. Only a hurt but not wounded, beautiful, intelligent, compassionate Shay, and kneeling next to her, a concerned but relieved, genuine, caring Jake full of heartfelt emotions and fading worry. Shay’s lips were full and red and inviting. Our eyes locked, and her exhaled breath became my inhaled one. Yearnings and desires filled the cavity in my chest that had once been empty but now threatened to explode. I wanted to lean down and…and…

  Quinto and Rodgers tore into the room, Wyle in tow. They surveyed the room in a few rapid glances.

  “What happened?” said Rodgers.

  With a herculean effort, I tore my eyes away from Shay. “Scar Face. He took off for the far stairwell. Quinto, see if you can cut him off. Rodgers, stay here with me. Watch Wyle.”

  Quinto nodded and disappeared. Rodgers looked displeased, but apparently he understood Shay and I were in no condition to watch over Wyle on our own. Or at least, that’s what I supposed. At the moment, I didn’t care. I turned my gaze back to Shay.

  “You ok?” I said.

  Shay brought a hand up to her face and worked her jaw muscles gingerly. “I think so. I don’t…remember everything.”

  “Scar Face hit you with a hook,” I said. “Knocked you out, though only for a minute or two. I’m not entirely sure how long it was, to be honest. Time wasn’t functioning the way it normally does for me.”

  I heard a confused grunt from Wyle, but I ignored him.

  “Scar Face got away?” asked Shay.

  “For now,” I said. “Maybe Quinto can catch him.”

  “Why didn’t you go after him?” she said.

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. She stared into my eyes, and she knew.

  I felt the heat of Rodgers and Wyle’s eyes on us, and I fe
lt crowded.

  “Can you stand?” I asked Steele.

  “Yeah, I think so,” she said.

  She gave me her hands, but paused before I could help her up. “Daggers?”

  “Yes?” I said.

  She looked deep into my eyes. “Thank you.”

  The look she gave was more of a response than the words. I nodded and helped her to her feet. As I did so, I noticed Wyle staring at the bloody corpse of Buford Gill.

  “You finally hear any bells ringing?” I asked him.

  Wyle looked up at me, confused. “Huh?”

  I nodded toward the body. “You said you didn’t know anything about Buford Gill. That the name didn’t ring a bell. Well, here he is, and in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s dead. So…care to modify your story?”

  Wyle shook his head. “No. In fact…”

  “In fact, what?” I asked. Not that I cared much about his answer, but talking to Wyle gave me something to do other than stare at Shay and wonder how much she suspected regarding my feelings toward her or if anything had changed between us.

  “Well, it’s that…I didn’t feel it.” Wyle lifted his eyes from the body and looked at me. “The fluctuations in the time stream, I mean. I didn’t sense his death at all. Now that I’m here, I can feel some of the expanding ripples, but they’re faint. Indistinct. If Scar Face killed this man, there should’ve been a greater disturbance—certainly if he was important enough to merit being murdered.”

  “So, what?” said Rodgers, nodding at Gill. “Are you saying this guy is a nobody? That he’s not Scar Face’s ultimate target?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wyle. “Honestly, I really don’t know…”

  Quinto’s heavy footfalls gave him away before we spotted his big round mug back in the door frame. I guessed his news before he opened his mouth based solely on the dejected look on his face.

  “Sorry, Daggers,” he said. “I raced down to the basement as fast as I could, but either he already got away, or there’s another exit out of this place we don’t know about.”

  I frowned and sighed.

  Shay stepped up beside me and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder—an especially gentle hand. Intentional, or not?

  “It’s ok, Daggers,” she said. “We’ll find him.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know. The question is if we’ll find him before anyone else dies.”

  No one had any witty remarks to add to that statement. In fact, everyone had developed a sudden interest in the tips of their shoes.

  “Come on,” I said. “It’s time we enrolled some backup. This case is getting out of hand.”

  34

  I gave the Captain a rundown of the day’s events upon returning to the precinct, everything from progress with Wyle to the trail that led us to Buford Gill to me and Shay’s encounter with Scar Face. I didn’t pull any punches. I told the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as I remembered it. I’d expected a reproach for not going after Scar Face when the chance had presented itself, but I’d received none. Maybe the Captain knew more than he pretended to about the chemistry developing between me and my partner, or perhaps not. He’d always been a proponent of the old code, one of the most fundamental mantras of which was to never leave a partner behind, no matter the circumstances.

  I’d also expected some resistance upon asking for help, purely due to the added financial strain of giant manhunts upon the department’s coffers, but the Captain surprised me yet again. He pulled out all the stops. He ordered for an all points bulletin to be issued for Scar Face and sent beat cops to stake out the old Physics and Chemistry building, the flophouse outside Little Welwic, and both Darryl’s apartment and Anya’s brownstone. He sent teams of technicians to the flophouse and the condemned science building to sweep every last nook and cranny for evidence that might help lead us to Scar Face’s next location. Cairny was instructed to double time it on her coroner’s reports. And, in a return to his sensitive, caring form, he growled at Rodgers and Quinto to pour through Scar Face’s journal while yelling at Shay and I to keep leaning on Wyle until he cracked.

  So it was that I found myself standing over Harland Wyle, who sat in my desk chair with his head hanging low, while Shay perched on the corner of my massive desk, overseeing the action. Shadows stretched out from each of us as the sun dipped low in the sky, sending rays glancing at acute angles through the Captain’s office windows and into the pit.

  “Keep talking to me, Wyle,” I said. “We need to work through this together.”

  “I don’t know what else to tell you, man,” he said. “We’ve gone through what I know a dozen times already. My story isn’t going to change.”

  Says you, I thought. “Then let’s go through it once more. Some say thirteen’s a lucky number.”

  Wyle groaned.

  “Tell me again what you know about Buford Gill,” I said. “Surely there’s something important about the man. Some reason he was murdered.”

  With Wyle, I’d kept operating under the pretense that his story held water instead of insisting it was a total crock. It made conversation easier, as I didn’t have to preface each statement with ‘Let’s assume you’re right and…’ or ‘If what you say is true, then…’, but the fact was I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Part of me, the open-minded part, wanted to believe Wyle’s time travel hypothesis—it would explain a lot—but the man made that so hard, with his constant waffling and imprecise descriptions of his own magic. The whole case would be much simpler to understand if I could catch Wyle in a lie, but I’d yet to do so. What was his angle, and how did he know where Scar Face had been hiding?

  “Look,” said Wyle, “I’ve told you. To the best of my knowledge, Buford Gill isn’t an important historical figure. His death, which barely altered the time streams, supports that.”

  “But then why did Scar Face kill him?” I asked. “Why torture Darryl and Anya to find him if he’s not important? Is it possible this isn’t about changing the fate of technology? Could there be a deeper connection between Scar Face and the Gill family?”

  Wyle wiped a hand across his face. “Look, I don’t know, ok? It doesn’t make sense to me, either.”

  I tapped my fingers impatiently against the desk. “Give me something, Wyle.”

  Wyle spread his hands and looked bewildered. “Look, maybe…things are more complicated than they appear. Maybe Scar Face isn’t who we think he is. Maybe he knows more than I gave him credit for. Citizens for Simplicity is a pretty radical sect. Maybe they’re operating on a fringe theory of temporal reconstruction.”

  Shay rolled her eyes. “I’m going to brew some tea. You want any?”

  I shook my head. “Grab me a coffee, though, will you?”

  Shay nodded, hopped off my desk, and walked off toward the break room. My mind threatened to wander as I watched her sway, but I wrestled it back to the case at hand.

  “What fringe theory?” I asked.

  “There are a couple unpopular hypotheses,” said Wyle. “One’s known as period accurate temporal reconstruction. Which essentially means you can change the past, but only if you do so in a manner that doesn’t directly contradict it.”

  My brow scrunched up in thought. “I’m not sure I understand. How’s that even possible?”

  “Let me give you an example,” said Wyle. “Let’s say someone came back in time and tried to kill, oh…I don’t know, the mayor of New Welwic. Well, he couldn’t just pop back and blast the guy with a heater in front of a huge crowd of people.”

  “A what now?” I said.

  “A, uh…never mind,” said Wyle. “The point is, he’d have to make the death seem possible, even likely. Maybe poison the man, or fake a cancer or, I don’t know…hit him with a hammer, I guess.”

  I frowned. “And the other theory?”

  “The other one’s called anti-event temporal reconstruction,” said Wyle.

  “Say what now?”

  “It’s the idea that you can’t change the past th
rough direct action,” said Wyle, “and that only by preventing established events from unfolding can you impact the future. Look, they’re both convoluted theories, but they both operate under the assumption that to effect real change, you can’t just do things, you have to…nudge the past in the direction you want it to go. I don’t know how Scar Face would know what to tweak, but maybe that’s what these murders are. Nudges.”

  I tried to see how many creases I could fit in my forehead when I noticed the Captain gesturing to me from the doorway to his office, a mug of coffee grasped between his thick, blacksmith-like hands. I sauntered over.

  “Get anything?” asked the bulldog.

  “Not really,” I said. “But I’ll keep trying. I just need more time, and maybe a fresh strategy.”

  “Well, don’t take too long,” said the Captain.

  “Trust me,” I said, “I know all too well with every passing second, the chances increase that the murdering SOB who took out the entire Gill family line will strike again.”

  “Yes, but that’s not what I meant,” said the Captain, taking a gulp from his mug. “We can’t keep Wyle in custody forever.”

  “What?” I said. “Why not?”

  “You know damned well why not,” said the Captain. “Despite his lunacy and his apparent involvement with the Gill murders, you can’t implicate him in any of the slayings, can you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Exactly,” said the Captain. “And while we can charge him with a couple counts of trespassing, we have nobody left to pursue those charges. And as far as we know, he didn’t even steal anything, so burglary is off the table.”

  “Just give me a little more time, Captain,” I said. “We can hold him for twenty-four hours without anyone batting an eye. Then we can figure out what to do with him.”

  The Captain drew the mug of coffee back to his lips, but before he said anything, I heard the front doors to the precinct bang open. A panting bluecoat entered, spotted us, and jogged over.

  “Captain…news,” he said.