Time Line

by Rex Bolt

  “So there you have it laid out,” Mitch was saying. “Any questions so far?”

  “Why do you ask me something like that,” Pike said, “when I know you’re just getting warmed up. And are going to dump a whole lot more on me. Aren’t you.”

  “We can wait,” Mitch said. “At least temporarily.”

  “Except that . . . what you’re slowly but surely telling me . . . is not really.”

  “You got me there kid, I’m not going to lie to you.”

  “Continue,” Pike said. He was sitting down now, there was a sidewalk bench on Peach Street near the mini golf place that went out of business and was now batting cages, and there was a middle-aged woman on other side of the bench, but she looked sufficiently pre-occupied that she wasn’t going to follow along.

  “All righty. Now if you remember back a ways--in fact you told me this, the skeleton details anyway--the first incident that prompted us to raise an eyebrow was a gentleman going out of control in the crowd at an airshow in Ohio . . . That one it turns out was Mr. Willamette.”

  “The last one? The Rhode Island guy?”

  “Correct.”

  “Wow. All the way out there. What was he doing in Ohio?”

  “That’s a fair question, and I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure?” Pike said. “Well don’t you think that’s an incomplete job you’re doing then? How do we judge any of this nonsense, if we can’t even get our facts straight? I mean, come on.”

  Mitch kept quiet, and after a minute Pike said, “Hey I’m sorry, that’s on me.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Mitch said. “Perfectly understandable. And I will try to find out.”

  “That’s okay,” Pike said. “You’re right, the bottom line, who cares, probably, why he was there . . . that’s the one, the guy gets arrested, right? Making threats?”

  Mitch said, “A bit more than that unfortunately. He beat up some of the air show watchers. Their injuries were significant. Everyone has since recovered, thank God. Mr. Willamette had what was interpreted as a psychotic break. What’s more, he was difficult to subdue, is the report I got. It took several security guards and some state troopers to restrain him and apprehend him.”

  Pike and Mitch both knew what this meant, that a weird yet familiar strength component apparently surfaced in the guy, which unfortunately had to have emanated from Don, the cop--either the organ itself, or his blood, or whatever the heck . . . and there was no need to go into it, really.

  What you did know, was that’d be a bad combination. The strength business combined with a guy going slightly nuts.

  “Willamette was then charged with attempted manslaughter and placed in protective custody while awaiting trial,” Mitch said.

  “Back it up for just a second,” Pike said. “This guy . . . was there any, like, previous stuff?”

  “On his record? Not a thing. He’s a blue collar guy, hard worker, spent a dozen years on a spearfishing rig. Guy was happily married, over 20 years, now the wife’s afraid of him, she’s staying away.”

  “Away . . . you mean, he’s back on the loose?”

  “Halfway house. He was ruled incompetent to stand trial. The court system works in funny ways. In the old days he’d probably be confined to a mental health facility. Now it’s not as strict, to say the least.”

  Pike was putting it together in his head, that this airshow guy was the one who got into trouble in Ohio, not some guy at a mall, the way Pike remembered it. So that didn’t matter, that detail--but what did matter was the result was amped up beyond what Pike had thought--that this guy legitimately went after some people, that it wasn’t just threats.

  Pike said to Mitch, “Okay, my friend Dani . . . speaking to her recently . . . she ticks me off, because she doesn’t give me a direct answer, she tends to tease around the subject . . but I asked her had there been any more . . . wrong activity . . . that she picked up from her friend Erline, and she indicated yeah there has.”

  “There has,” Mitch said. “Quite a bit in fact.”

  At this point Pike cut Mitch off, told him he better be at the computer if Mitch was going to be laying a whole lot more on him, if he intended to keep stuff straight.

  “Good idea,” Mitch said, and Pike went back home and by this time Jack had finished the lock and Pike tried his new key and it worked nicely, and dang, the guy worked fast, he had the sheetrock patched too and the joint compound was drying and you couldn’t paint it until that dried, and Jack and Heidi had apparently taken off someplace and that was fine.

  Pike went upstairs and squared himself away at his desk and got back to Mitch, and Mitch said, “K now. Update No 1 is--”

  “Hang on. How many total updates do we got here?”

  “4.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Why would I kid. We have Mr. Willamette, and we have the other 4 . . . We technically have 5, but I’ve already briefed you on the Missoula, Montana, case. So we’ll set that one aside.”

  Pike took a second. “Part of me wonders,” he said, “how a lot of this might have turned out differently--my own business included--if you weren’t such a dang picky researcher.”

  Mitch laughed a little but he didn’t have his heart in it, and it was clear he wanted to outline the rest of the updates. “So again, No 1,” he said. “What happened there, he behaved normally for a while, by all accounts, until--”

  “You know what?” Pike said. “Those, like summary deals, where it’s all lumped together real simple? And brief? Just go with one of those.”

  Mitch said, “An abstract I believe is what you’re referring to. Essentially an acute summary, such as when a politician gives a lengthy speech.”

  “I’m thinking more like Cliff Notes. We had to read The Grapes of Wrath, and I’m not ashamed to tell you I took the easy way out.”

  “You used the condensed chapters version, or the three-page summary?”

  “The short chapters . . . you’re telling me there’s less I could read? To get enough of the idea?”

  “Absolutely,” Mitch said. “In my youth--and you know I walked on as a wide receiver at Michigan State. Though of course naturally, ball was a lot different back then.”

  “So you said,” Pike said, and he wasn’t sure even the first time he believed the guy, not that it mattered. “But get back to the point.”

  “Only that I was busy and relied on the late-night C Notes many times, to maintain my eligibility.”

  “Come on, what’s wrong with you, why you need to keep going? . . . Give me the bottom line. Leave out the who and when, and most of the whats.”

  “If that’s your preference,” Mitch said, and he was adjusting his paperwork again. “The conclusion, if I were pressed to establish one--all four of the other recipients have had issues. Internal ones.”

  Pike said, “See now, you use the word internal--is that, like, the transplant not working entirely right--or internal, meaning brain.”

  “Brain.”

  “So just say so, don’t get fancy on me . . . Jeez . . . Fine, you better give me a few whats.”

  “All right, lets see . . . One with a domestic abuse call, following 30 years of marital bliss.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. I mean it’s not good, obviously, but people get those who aren’t alien-transplanted. Or whatever the hell might be going on here.”

  “You’re right. But the call led to an assault on the responding officers, and an attempted attack on a bailiff in the subsequent court hearing.”

  “Oh,” Pike said. “What else?”

  “One with an attempted kidnapping charge. There was a family gathering, as in a backyard barbeque, and when people were distracted enough he took his 6-year old nephew to an amusement park without telling anyone. The family freaked out of course, but charges were later dismissed. The sticking point there though, they’re all afraid of him now. Not just from the one incident. They’ve got restraining orders in.”

  “Uhm. Wha
t else?”

  “One with--”

  “Please stop saying one. You’re getting on my nerves with that, bad.”

  Mitch restarted. “There was a bird calling contest.”

  “A what? . . . Forget it, keep going.”

  “More common a generation ago, perhaps. Contestants recreate bird sounds orally. The more difficult renditions typically earn more points on the judges’ scorecards . . . but let me finish. Our gentleman, he enters the competition, completes his performance, and comes in 3rd.”

  “Out of how many?”

  “That’s the thing, there were 25 finalists, whittled down from over a hundred earlier applicants.”

  “Then what?” Pike said, since something was coming, obviously.

  “He receives his 3rd place ribbon and jumps up on stage challenging the judges. There was one specific one who rubbed him the wrong way. Later that night he goes on social media and threatens that judge’s life . . . Then you had the FBI involved and so forth.”

  “They picked him up then, or whatever they do?”

  “They may have. Briefly. The talking point here--this guy was by all accounts a wholly gentle soul. In fact he’d been entering bird contests for years, and this was by far his strongest finish.”

  “One more,” Pike said.

  “Yes. Unfortunately--or perhaps fortunately--this gentleman is incarcerated at the moment. Pending charges and presumptive trial. A workplace incident, like we all-too-commonly read about in the news these days, though luckily it didn’t quite materialize. He brought a weapon to work one day--a sawed off shotgun--and didn’t point it at anyone but threatened the supervisor who laid him off.”

  “Oh.”

  “The extra-concerning part--if that’s possible--is he hadn’t been laid off . . . This incident, it’s fresh.”

  “How fresh?”

  “Last Thursday morning. ”

  Pike took a hard breath. He said, “So . . . like, another . . . psychotic break type deal . . . like the Ohio thing?”

  “The airshow situation,” Mitch said, “I’m afraid that’s correct.”

  No one said anything for a couple minutes. Pike subscribed to a guy’s channel on YouTube who made woodworking videos, and he noticed a new one came in, and he half-heartedly opened it and watched for a bit with the sound off.

  Finally he said to Mitch, “Anyone . . . you know . . . slip through the cracks? And nothing went wrong?”

  “Not that I’ve discovered, and I’ve been pretty thorough in my dealings with Erline, and another source as well.”

  “So you’re sure. No one else, received, a body part--that we don’t know about?”

  “I’m afraid not son.”

  “Umm . . . And these 5 . . . okay 6 with the Montana one--any of them act bad in the past? Anything going on there?”

  “I’ve only picked up one prior incident. One of the gentleman--he’d been pulled over for speeding--talked back a bit too much for the officer’s taste that day, and it led to the man being booked, temporarily . . . This was a couple decades ago.”

  “Oh,” Pike said . . . and that about wrapped it up, didn’t it.

  Not what you wanted to hear today. Or tonight. None of it.

  Chapter 22

  With all that had gone down since then, it was hard to believe it was only last July--Independence Day to be exact--that Don Pascarella was ambushed and gunned down in that housing project in Yonkers, New York, 20 miles from midtown Manhattan.

  Dani had given Pike the basics some time ago but he didn’t pay real close attention. His deal at that point was more, is this another guy connected to my issue. That of course applied to Dani, and also the guy whose brother was the trucker, who Pike met with that time. That guy, like Don, unfortunately had passed away--in the army, fighting in Afghanistan.

  Pike remembered the trucker delivering that eerie comment, on behalf of his brother . . . that aliens messed with his teeth.

  Either way, this time he’d gotten it straight from Mitch--the who, what, when of what happened to Officer Pascarella, and it more or less jibed with Dani’s version, and bottom line, the date was definitely correct. Pike made sure of that himself now, looking up the incident in the online archive of the New York Post.

  It was an old-fashioned no-brainer at this point wasn’t it. You hated to be involved--this was much more unpleasant, not to mention likely more dangerous--than straightening out Eva’s thing. But however Pike tried to poke holes in these increasing developments, it was hard to find one.

  Even if one guy was better off and living a normal life and not getting in any trouble--as a result of Don giving him an organ--you’d have to think twice about trying to undo it. You’d sort of be playing God then, wouldn’t you?

  But there wasn’t one guy better off . . . they were all screwed up in some new significant way, weren’t they, as a result . . . on top of which, you had Don dead, who hadn’t deserved it.

  So you did what you had to do . . .

  The most comfortable initiation location, hands-down, was the custodian’s closet outside the football locker room at Hamilton. It was barebones, you were on a cement floor, you were dealing with the pretty heavy smell of various disinfectants lingering on mops and rags, but it had always done the job. For the most part.

  So . . . what did we have, 11:40 on Friday . . . Jack and Heidi still off doing whatever, no need to be texting anyone right now . . . and Pike gathered his thoughts. First of all it would be cold back there, winter on the east coast . . . second, you needed plenty of cash this time, the Idaho episode where you were worried about that the whole time was ridiculous. Anything else? There almost certainly was, but now that he was on it, Pike wanted to wrap this up as quickly as possible, and if he didn’t think of it right away it probably wasn’t that important.

  The arrival location of course, and date . . . those did matter, and Pike went back to the NY Post archive and July 3rd, conveniently just a day before, there’d been a tanker truck explosion on the Major Deegan Expressway--which the article told you ran north/south out of Manhattan and Gee, all the way up to Montreal, but this accident happened in the Bronx, near 257th Street.

  Explosion was the wrong word, as he read the NY Post article from July 3rd more carefully--it was one of those toxic spills, caused by a chain-reaction collision of 3 semi-tractor trucks--the result of which messed everyone up trying to use the Major Deegan that day and caused the big news item, that the particular stretch of highway was completely closed to traffic northbound for 9 hours. They had to import federal workers it said, to clean it all up under strict Osha guidelines.

  So you focus on that. You try, anyway. You don’t focus on the roadway, God forbid, just the time frame. For the location, Pike reviewed what Yonkers was all about, it was settled by the Dutch and the name sort of stuck, modified from Jankeers, and they had an old plaza centrally located in a downtown which had been facelifted and now even offered ferry service to New York City down the Hudson River. That was Getty Square and Pike would shoot for that.

  He found a parka in his dad’s closet, and while he was there, checked his dad’s counter for any loose cash--since why not, it had worked once before--but there wasn’t any, so on the way to Hamilton he hit the cash machine for 200 bucks, figuring you leave a little in there, though when he got the receipt showing a $12 balance after the withdrawl that had been a little optimistic.

  With school getting ready to reopen Monday after Christmas break you’d think it would be a little busier at Hamilton, but the place was dead to the world, and the second guessing crept in, what was the best plan B location if he couldn’t get in the building at all--but good old Julio was painting a first floor hallway and that door was open, and after a few pleasantries Julio asked what he was doing, why would he come to back early in a million years--and Pike said he wasn’t sure . . . and Julio laughed a little, but you could tell he didn’t like such a simple answer . . . but fortunately the guy had a job to do and he took pride in his
work and he went back to it.

  The closet was open, though another custodian, Jackson, was on the premises as well, and Pike figured don’t fool around, except he had to move some stuff, just to carve out enough room on the floor. Big green garbage bags jammed full of what smelled like outdoor clippings, and why they ended up in here would be a question mark, but Pike’s main concern was not doing too much rearranging where someone starts wondering . . . and after all that concern it was surprisingly easy--routine almost--he got his legs folded, covered his face with his hands, his could feel his breathing slowing down . . . the focus on the toxic spill on the Major Deegan, the massive traffic jam-up, sustaining July 3rd 2016 like a flashing light inside his forehead . . . and Yonkers, that plaza, the Dutch element, the history . . . and a stillness took over, followed by the bits and pieces of spinning, different each time, but doing the job . . .

  And there was the sound of hoofs on a hard surface, like the cowboy movies he enjoyed as a kid where they over-microphoned the horses for effect . . . and Pike opened his eyes and it was scratchy underneath him and there were some patches of dirty snow that hadn’t melted all the way.

  He was lying in weeds, he figured out quick enough, and coming toward him down the road was a horse and buggy deal, looked like a kid driving it, maybe 14 years old, and some more folks in back, on a high seat, and they were all wearing floppy black garb over white shirts and blouses and were overall pretty dang covered up. The men had suspenders, you could tell, and everyone was wearing hats.

  Pike thought for just a moment, until he came his senses, that he ended up in the 19th century someplace . . . and that you see, Mitch was wrong about the 1956 limitation, because Holy Mackeral look where I am.

  Then he started putting it together, that this was a real road, not a fancy one or busy one but a real asphalt one . . . and that alone would advance the time frame considerably . . . and putting the other aspect together, these people were part of that religious group, most of them farmers he was thinking, who do everything the old fashioned way, without modern machines. Pike couldn’t recall their name but he placed it later, the Amish.