What Time Devours

by A. J. Hartley

  Don’t want to worry her, he decided.

  He had made the Chicago Tribune again—inevitable given his past notoriety—but she wouldn’t see that, and no one else had thought to call her. So far as the police knew, he was still separated and had no next of kin.

  On the phone, Kumi had talked about her ongoing struggle not to be overly aggressive in her karate class and the need for similar restraint at work.

  “I feel like I’m stuck in the middle somehow,” she said. “Of everything. Not Japanese, but not quite American either. People don’t quite know what to do with me. And I’m still tiptoeing around cultural protocols I don’t completely get. Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to do my job in a space suit, or one of those diving helmets, which would be okay if the job had anything to do with space. Or diving. I’m getting better at it, but I’ll never truly belong.”

  He smiled. It helped to hear her voice.

  “So come home,” he said. “Take a vacation. Apply for a stateside position.”

  “Let me master my sushi first,” she said, referring to her cooking class. “I’m still too scared of preparing raw fish for anyone other than me. Let me get some maguro maki under my belt and then we’ll see.”

  “Soon, I hope,” he said. He put his left hand to his right shoulder and rubbed at the ache that wouldn’t go away.

  Why aren’t you telling her? he wondered. Why not just say it: Listen, Kumi, sorry about the sushi and all but I got shot . . .

  But he didn’t. He didn’t lie, but he dodged, and afterward he asked himself again. Why hadn’t he told her?

  Because, he decided, if you told her and she didn’t come, then that would mean she wasn’t ready to throw out her job—however much she complains about it—to be with you, that she doesn’t love you enough . . .

  Sometimes a little uncertainty was preferable to knowing for sure.

  He thought of Julia McBride, the attractive Shakespearean who was also on the list of people he had not told about the shooting. He had not told her either, but he was aware that he hadn’t, and that bothered him.

  Careful there, Thomas, he reminded himself.

  When he had been shot he’d been wearing a bathrobe that they had cut away to get at his wound, so he had nothing of his own but a pair of shorts the hospital had given him. He had asked Peter the Principal to bring him some jeans and a shirt from home, a request his boss seemed to find mortifying and baffling. Peter had shown up the following day with some clothes Thomas hadn’t worn for years, which he must have gotten from the very back of his closet. Thomas concealed his exasperation and thanked him, but protested when the principal concurred with the police.

  “No, Thomas,” he said, patting his blanketed legs awkwardly. “We have all your classes covered. Rest up. Enjoy the summer.”

  After days in bed, Thomas fumed at the prospect of nothing to do even after he got out of the hospital, but for ten minutes after Peter left, he lay where he was, eyeing the ill-fitting clothes draped over the end of the bed. He snapped on the TV to distract himself and scrolled around till he found a West Wing rerun. He was watching it, still thinking vaguely about getting up, when the door opened again and a woman walked in. She was dressed in a businesslike gray pantsuit and her hair was quite unlike the way it had been when he saw her last, but there was no mistaking that unself-conscious giraffe gait. She strode in and put her hands on her hips, looming over him and staring like he’d just cut her off in traffic.

  “You’re just never happy unless you’re getting shot at, are you?” said Deborah Miller.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Hello, Deborah,” said Thomas. “What are you doing here?”

  “In town for a meeting,” she said. “Thought I’d look you up. Say hi, you know? Thought we might have a beer and reminisce about past near-death experiences. But you just keep right on having them, don’t you? The school said you were here.”

  “They were right.”

  “If you were anyone else,” she said, still scowling, “I’d assume you were involved in a mugging or were a bystander at some drive-by, but since it’s you, I figure you’ve been sticking your nose where it isn’t wanted.”

  He told her everything, partly because she was just the kind of person who didn’t take evasion politely, and partly because their relationship—such as it was—had always been surrounded by intrigue, conspiracy, and men who wanted them dead. He hadn’t spoken to her for six months, but it felt like they were picking up where they left off.

  Deborah was a museum curator in Atlanta. Thomas had met her briefly in Italy, and they had been thrown together when their shared interest in archaeology had put them at the center of a particularly unpleasant murder case, a case tied to the death of Thomas’s brother and to bigger, stranger things. After she had returned to the States, she had pressed her connections at the FBI in ways that had, he was sure, saved his life.

  “A lost Shakespeare play, huh?” she said. “That’s why you’re full of holes?”

  She had settled into the one armchair, her legs stretched out straight in front of her and crossed at the ankles. She seemed to fill the room, and made the chair look like it was made for a child.

  Thomas nodded.

  “One hole,” he said. “One bullet.”

  “Because someone wants the play,” she said, not even dignifying his remark with a nod, “or because they want to keep it secret?”

  He shrugged.

  “Maybe it contains Secret Knowledge about the Author,” she said, grinning. “I think I read a book like that in college. It was about whether Shakespeare really wrote all those plays or whether it was someone else. The authorship question, they call it, right?”

  “Right,” said Thomas. He remembered it only dimly, but he had never met an academic who took the issue seriously, so he had never given it much thought.

  “I took it to my English professor,” she said, smiling at her own naïveté. “I think I was showing off a bit, trying to engage him in a discussion about Serious Things. He was pretty cute.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Let’s just say that it did nothing for my credibility as a student. And I am now as sure as I can be that the plays of Shakespeare were written by a guy from Stratford called Shakespeare. Imagine that.”

  Thomas laughed.

  On the TV Martin Sheen as President Bartlett was holding a press conference.

  “This is a good episode,” said Deborah, nodding toward it.

  “Always nice to find something literate on the idiot’s lantern,” Thomas agreed.

  “I think that guys who can’t go a full year without getting shot at should be cautious with words like idiot.”

  “Maybe so,” said Thomas. “So what’s this meeting you’re here for?”

  “What are meetings always for?” she replied. “Money. The economy is faltering and when money’s tight, all those high cultural bits and pieces that people think of as luxuries take it in the teeth. The museum, like every other museum in the country, is struggling, and we’re forming a sort of consortium with a couple of others to share resources. The main one is the Archaeological Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, but we’re meeting here to discuss logistics and initiatives. Neutral ground.”

  “Not at the Drake?”

  “The Drake?”

  “It’s a hotel.”

  “Oh,” she said. “No. Nothing so grand. Back to Atlanta tomorrow, then frantic preparation for a trip to Mexico.”

  “Nice.”

  “Should be,” she agreed, “but it’s work. Fieldwork though—actual digging—not meetings with suits who want to optimize earnings by filling my museum with electronic dinosaurs.”

  Same old Deborah, he thought.

  “Is Kumi in town?” she asked.

  Thomas shifted.

  “No. Still in Tokyo,” he said. “Why?”

  “Well, you being shot and all.”

  “Oh, you know how busy she is,” Thomas fudged. “And I’ll be
out of here by the end of the day . . .”

  “You haven’t told her.”

  It wasn’t a question. Thomas looked away, then said simply, “No.”

  Deborah shook her head and drew her knees up.

  “I don’t get you two,” she said.

  “You’ve never met her!” Thomas replied.

  “How could I have?” she fired back. “You’re never on the same continent, except of course when you are running from snipers. I’m surprised she’s not in the next bed.”

  “I don’t want her involved in this,” said Thomas. He didn’t want to talk about it.

  “You’re protecting her?” she said, smiling coolly. “From what I’ve heard, she doesn’t need protecting.”

  “Maybe,” Thomas conceded. “It’s just . . . difficult.”

  He had told Deborah before about his uneven marriage, the miscarriage that had torn them apart, the trial separation that had slid into years of isolation, the bitter long-distance phone calls that had finally dried up, and the years of silence. Deborah knew firsthand of the events last spring that had gone some way to healing the rift, but how do you properly fix a decade of mistrust and alienation when you were never together for more than a few days? Deborah was right: he and Kumi were almost never on the same continent.

  “We’re just not there yet,” he said. “We’re getting there, I think, but we’re still very separate people. We’ve had a lot of time to get used to that. It’s hard to change it. I don’t want her to worry. I don’t want her to depend on me,” he said, finding the word. “We’re not ready for that.”

  “Just don’t leave it too late,” she said. “Life is short. You of all people should know that.”

  CHAPTER 22

  A half hour after Deborah left, promising to stay in touch, Thomas threw his few things into a bag and kicked it when it fell off the bed. His shoulder was still bound, if less tightly than before, and it ached when he moved. As he was completing his discharge paperwork, a hard-faced nurse brought him a large manila envelope.

  “This came for you today,” she said, apparently affronted. “Left at the front desk.”

  Thomas’s name was written in careful block capitals. Inside was another, smaller envelope and a handwritten letter.

  I’m sorry, Mr. Knight, it said. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

  There was more, but Thomas’s eyes dropped to the signature at the foot of the second page: David Escolme. Anger surged up in him like a rearing horse, and he wanted to tear the letter or ball it up and hurl it across the room. Instead he took a breath and read on.

  When I heard Blackstone was looking for an agent I tried everything I could to get her to sign with me. I was a no-name agent working alone from his apartment, but it turns out that’s what she wanted. She was a dreadful writer, but I figured her name would sell enough books to get me out of trouble. Fat chance.

  But then she came to me with this harebrained Shakespeare thing. Claimed she had a lost play and wanted to get it published quickly so she could make a lot of money fast. That was why she didn’t want to go through a big agency: too many people would see it. She was talking movie deals and an Arden edition, crowing about what a star she was going to be. I thought it was nuts. Then I saw what she had, and I changed my mind. It was the real deal. I swear it. She wanted someone trustworthy to look it over and I told her who I knew. She was leery of real scholars because she thought they’d poach it. She chose you. Sorry.

  Then she disappeared. I figured she’d cut me out of the deal and I decided she owed me. I thought it would be in her hotel room because she hoarded all this crap wherever she went: boxes of books and CDs and stuff. I was pretty sure she hadn’t spoken to you and I figured that you could tell me what you thought of the manuscript. I mean, since we were friends, sort of, I thought you’d be a safe person to consult. I know that sounds sort of scummy and I’m sorry. I faked the VFL page so you’d think I was legit.

  Anyway, it wasn’t there. When you came I was freaking out. Then I found out Daniella was dead and everything went to hell. I swear I had nothing to do with that. I’ve not been a Boy Scout but I’m not a killer.

  So, I’m hiding now, and not only from the police. The only way I can get out of this is if someone produces that damned play. I know what you did last year in Italy and Japan. That stuff in the Philippines. The firefight on the beach. Figuring out what happened to your brother. I read about it. I know you can help me. Please, Mr. Knight. The quest is worthy of Holmes himself. If there’s money in it, send me a finder’s fee and keep the rest.”

  David Escolme

  I’m sorry I ever got you involved in this, but now you are the only person I can turn to. Meet me in Poets’ Corner at 4 P.M. on Thursday, June 12.

  Poets’ Corner?

  The only Poets’ Corner Thomas had heard of was in Westminster Abbey in London. Thomas stared into space, then opened the other envelope. Inside was an open return ticket to London Gatwick and five thousand dollars in cash.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” he said. He was getting angry, rereading the letter, his teeth set.

  Escolme had lied to him, set him up, left him with a corpse at his back door, and then gotten him damn near killed in his own house. Now Thomas was supposed to put all the pieces together to save his neck? He could forget it.

  Thomas remembered the note he had posted on the Drake’s conference message board and figured he had done the right thing after all. He wanted nothing more to do with David Escolme. If he ever saw him again, it would be too soon, and if the guy wound up in jail for the rest of his life, that seemed no more than fair to Thomas. Escolme wasn’t a kid anymore, which meant that Thomas hadn’t been responsible for him in any way for a decade.

  The phone rang. Thomas answered it.

  “It’s Polinski,” said the cop. “You still planning to check out today?”

  “I’m on my way out the door right now.”

  “Good. Can you come down to the beach at the end of Church Street?”

  “Are we going to picnic to celebrate my discharge?”

  “No,” she said. “I need you to look at something.”

  Her tone was businesslike, clipped. Thomas felt a sudden chill.

  “Something?” he said.

  “I think we might have found David Escolme.”

  CHAPTER 23

  “A couple who came down here to watch the sunrise over the lake found him,” said Polinski.

  He’d been in the water about six hours, they thought, and dead a little longer than that. He had been shot through the heart at close range with what looked to be a .38.

  “The same gun?” asked Thomas.

  “Too early to say,” said Polinski, “but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Thomas frowned. An hour ago he would have greeted Escolme with a volley of insults, maybe more if his temper got away from him. The guy had exploited him, made a fool of him, and put him in firing lines both metaphorical and literal. But looking at him now, half wrapped in a tarp, his boyish face pale, wet, and shrunken, Thomas could see only the bond that had connected them in the first place. Escolme was, after all, still a kid, and a screwed-up kid at that. He had done some stupid things, even some scummy things—the word floating up in Thomas’s mind from the letter—but he didn’t deserve this. Thomas’s rage drifted away on the waters of the lake, and he felt unaccountably guilty, as if this is what he had wanted.

  And then there was the note you left, the one including his name and LLW. There wasn’t a Shakespearean in the world who wouldn’t guess what those three letters stood for . . .

  Thomas stared out over the water, his left hand stuffed into his pocket, his right in a simple sling to keep his wound from reopening. He was suddenly tired beyond words.

  “Any chance it’s self-inflicted?” he heard Polinski say to a man Thomas took to be the coroner or medical examiner.

  The man muttered doubtfully in response.

  “It’s not suicide,” s
aid Thomas. “He wasn’t ending anything. He was in the middle of it.”

  “And how would you know that?” said Polinski.

  Thomas could feel the envelope with the ticket in his pocket, but he didn’t draw it out.

  “Just a hunch,” he said. “Am I done here?”

  “You’re done.”

  “You need me around—in town, I mean?” said Thomas. “I’d like to get away.”

  Polinski considered him, her eyes narrow.

  “Like where?”

  “Don’t know,” Thomas shrugged. He avoided her eyes. “I just need to be . . . away. I’ll check in.”

  “You’re not a suspect,” said Polinski, matter-of-fact. “You were under guard at the hospital when Escolme died.” She sighed. “Yeah, you can go. Just make sure I can reach you.”

  Thomas nodded and turned, tramping wearily up the beach, then turned back to the cop.

  “Polinski,” he called back.

  She turned, shading her eyes from the glare off the water.

  “You know anything about where Blackstone had been before she came here?”

  “Is there a reason I should tell you?” she said.

  “No,” said Thomas. “Just trying to help.”

  “Just take it easy, Mr. Knight. Rest up.”

  He nodded, but before he had a chance to turn away she seemed to think better of her decision.

  “You know she was a Brit, right?”

  “I figured that, yeah.”

  “Her passport says she flew here from Paris.”

  “Huh,” said Thomas, thinking of the champagne bottles in the room he had thought was Escolme’s.

  “That mean anything to you?”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  It could have been a mistake, that suggestion that it might mean something to him in the future, that he wasn’t done with this case, and he caught a watchfulness in her face. She opened her mouth to say something and he pretended not to notice, raising a hand in farewell and turning up the beach. He walked purposefully away, his strapped shoulder aching, his right hand still clutching the airline ticket in his pocket.