the 13th Hour (32 page)

It had all started here in the interrogation room of the Byram Hills Police Department when he was brought in on suspicion of murdering his wife. All a setup, as he came to see, by the very man who had interrogated him.

Brinehart had taken everything from his pockets: Paul Dreyfus's wallet, his own wallet, his keys, his gun, Marcus's envelope with his letter and the
Wall Street Journal
page, the letter from the European, the St. Christopher medal, and the thing that struck terror in him, the one thing he had been told not to let out of his possession if he was to succeed, if he was to save Julia: the watch.

He had taken it for granted. Where he had at first been a skeptic, laughing at the insanity, the impossibility, now, after nine jumps, he trusted it implicitly, without doubt. He trusted it like he trusted the sun to rise every morning, no longer holding it in awe, looking at it with reverence or wonder. He hadn't pulled it from his pocket in hours to watch it tick down, believing in its sweeping hand, trusting its inner workings to pull him back through time.

It was his bridge, it was the light that would lead him to save Julia.

And now it was gone.

He looked at the clock on the wall: 12:30.

D
ETECTIVE
B
OB
S
HANNON
came into the room carrying a small, shallow, wicker basket filled with Nick's personal effects and two cups of coffee.

Shannon's dark hair was pushed back, well groomed, his hands clean, no sweat or grime on his body. He looked fit and well rested, far different from when Nick had met him at the crash site several hours from now, when the horror of death could be seen in his eyes, when the stress of the crash had nearly broken his spirit.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," Shannon said, a greeting far different from that of nine hours ago when they sat in this very room, when Shannon verbally assaulted him, accused him of killing his wife. He put a cup of coffee in front of Nick and sat down across from him.

"So you're playing the good cop?" Nick said

"Believe it or not, there's no one else here. Just you and me. I'm both good and bad," Shannon said with a smile, which quickly faded as he became distracted. He ran his hand over his dark hair as he leaned back in the metal chair. "That damn crash is something awful. Every able body is out at the site. I've got the station all by myself, just me and the desk sergeant who's handling phones for the moment. So no, I'm not pulling some cliche cop thing, it's just a good cup of coffee on a really bad day."

"I'd like to know what's going on," Nick said.

"You haven't been charged with anything, Mr. Quinn. I just need to ask you some questions. Officer Brinehart's a little green. With everything going on, we are beyond short-staffed. Detective Dance called, asked me to ask you a few questions before he got here."

"Then ask your questions," Nick said, looking at the clock on the wall, watching time slip away.

"Dance wants to know why you have this guy's wallet."

"You think I stole it?"

"No, Mr. Quinn. I've already checked you out. I know who you are, that you grew up in this town. I'm sure half the people in it would vouch for you. I know you're licensed to carry that pistol--it's locked away for the moment. So, no, despite what Dance may think, I don't think you stole it. Dance said he is looking for its owner, Paul Dreyfus, in connection with some preliminary investigation he's running."

"I found it," Nick blurted out the lie, hoping to get this over with.

"Where?"

"Outside Washington House, on the sidewalk."

"May I ask what you were doing there?"

"My wife's client is Shamus Hennicot, it's his house. She thought his place might have been burglarized; I drove by for her."

"Burglarized? What do you mean? We heard nothing of that." Nick couldn't tell if Shannon was screwing with him, whether he was one of Dance's inside guys, but the surprise on his face appeared genuine.

"She says they may have been burglarized." Nick threw his hand up in frustration. "Look, she was supposed to be on that flight today; she's really freaked out right now. I would like to go find her."

"Okay," Shannon nodded. "I just have one other question."

Nick watched Shannon reach into the basket. He saw his hand drift over Marcus's letter, over the European's letter, toward the watch, but then detour for the St. Christopher medal, lifting it out by its silver chain. He laid it on the table, the necklace dribbling down like water, and pushed it across the counter surface in front of Nick.

"Where did you get this?"

Nick picked it up, turning it over in his hand reading the fateful inscription. "I don't know who it belongs to."

"That's not what I asked." Shannon reached into his own pocket and drew out his hand, he laid it upon the table, looking at it, and finally pulled his hand back to reveal the same medal.

Nick's heart pounded, trying to explode from his chest. He looked up at Shannon, the detective who had interrogated him, had beaten on him, had actually been poised to kill him here in this very room nine hours from now, accusing him of killing his wife when he was the one who actually pulled the trigger. As much as he hated Dance, this was the man who had killed Julia.

The man he had chased from his home, through the streets, forcing him off the road into a tree. The unseen man he had a gun battle with and almost caught. The man who he had ripped this very medal off in the future, whose medal now existed in two separate times. Nick's eyes suddenly burned with hate.

"Whoa, did I hit a nerve? What's with the stare of death?" Shannon asked. "It's just a religious medal."

Nick sat there wanting to reach out and kill the man who sat before him, the one person in this department he had thought he could trust.

"All other things aside," Shannon continued, "I really need to know where you got it."

"Why?" Nick whispered, as he stared at the two medals.

"Because I know who owns that, and I didn't realize it was missing."

Nick's world, for the umpteenth time, turned upside-down.

"What do you mean you know who owns it?" Nick asked. It hadn't occurred to him that there could be more than one medal.

"The inscription on the back," Shannon said as he took the medal out of Nick's hand, turned it over, and did likewise to the one on the table. And Nick saw the difference: There was no engraving on Shannon's.

"He always takes it off, along with all of his rings and his bracelet and watch, when he gets to work in the morning, tucks it in his shoe inside his locker, then puts it all back on at the end of the day before he leaves.

"Thing is, I saw him take it off at seven this morning and there is no way you could get into the locker room. This place is locked up tighter than a steel drum, and until the plane crash, it was swarming with cops."

"Whose is it?" Nick said, his voice anxious.

"Ironically, it's Detective Dance's," Shannon said.

"Are you sure it's his?" Nick asked slowly.

"Positive." Shannon leaned forward. "Look at the edge, see the chip? It happened when he was moonlighting on some job down-county. And the note on the back, his mom had that done,
Miracles do happen.
She was a great lady, very religious, believed in God's influence, that it was his hand controlling fate, that we'd all be held to a higher judgment at our demise. Dance was her only child, her miracle."

And everything fell together. Dance was Julia's killer, as he was Paul Dreyfus's, McManus's, and Marcus's. He was as evil and depraved a man as Nick had ever known. Nick's mind took on a sudden focus. He needed to stop the robbery, but most of all he needed to stop Dance from ever initiating the robbery at 11:15. For if the robbery didn't occur, there would be no reason for Julia to be killed, for Marcus, for anyone to die.

But Nick took comfort in the fact that even if he couldn't stop the robbery from happening, at least his search for Julia's killer was over; he knew who he had to kill.

Nick looked up at Shannon, his opinion of him changing for the third time today. "Why do you guys wear the same medal?"

"Dance can be a real ass, but he's family, he got me this job a few years back, we went to the same high school in Brooklyn. He's my cousin."

"He's your cousin?" Nick said in shock.

"Believe me, there's no love lost. Anyway, we went to St. Christopher's Catholic High School in Brooklyn. They gave these out at graduation."

"I hate to interrupt, but my wife . . . she has no idea where I am." Nick knew he needed to get out of here as quickly as possible in order to be in place to stop Dance and stop the robbery from ever happening.

"Right, right," Shannon said. Standing up, he gathered up the two medals, putting his in his pocket and Dance's in the basket, and opened the interrogation room door. "I just need to process you out, get you to sign for all your stuff. I promise we'll be quick."

Nick stood and followed him out of the room, happy to be free, happy to be on his way to finally setting things right, to saving Julia, to ensuring a long future ahead of them.

Shannon laid the basket on a small desk in the hall and quickly set to filling out a triplicate legal-release form. "Your pistol is in our gun safe, I'll get it as soon as we get you signed out."

Nick picked up Marcus's envelope along with the letter he had received from the European, glad that Shannon hadn't peered at either, and tucked them back in his coat pocket.

"Shannon, what the hell are you doing?" Dance called from the corral area of the police station. He was dressed in his blue blazer, white JC Penney shirt, and blue-striped tie, and the rigors of the day were not yet reflected in his appearance.

"Where the hell have you been all morning?" Shannon shouted back. "I can't find you for hours and then you drop a silly Q&A in my lap."

Dance stormed down the corridor, walked right past Shannon, and took Nick by the arm, leading him down the hall.

"Hey," Shannon yelled as he chased after him. "What the hell are you doing?"

Dance continued down the hall, pulling Nick along with him. He opened a large metal door, revealing a large room containing five jail cells.

"Dance, let him go. He's done nothing wrong."

"Shannon here gets all touchy-feely," Dance said to Nick.

Dance pulled the door of the first jail cell fully open, shoved Nick inside, and, with a crash, slammed the iron-barred door closed behind him. The cell was ten by ten feet, surrounded by typical vertical bars with metal cross-hatches. There were two folding chairs in the center of the room and a wooden bench anchored into the wall.

"What the hell you putting the guy in there for?" Shannon asked as he came into the room. "Cut him a break. His wife just narrowly missed getting on that plane. And besides, you actually owe him, he found your St. Christopher medal that you lost."

"What?" Dance tilted his head. "I didn't lose my medal."

Silence filled the air as confusion reigned.

Shannon and Dance stepped out of the room, closing the door behind them.

"What the hell is going on?" Shannon pressed him.

"Do you mind telling me what you were doing letting him go?" Dance said.

"What are we holding him on? The only thing he did was be in the wrong place at the wrong time--" Shannon stopped. "And you never answered my question. Where the hell have you been?"

Shannon was several inches taller and carried twenty more pounds of muscle, but that didn't stop Dance from rushing into his face, staring up at him like a junkyard dog.

"You listen to me," Dance said. "Since when did you become my keeper? You work here by my grace and my grace alone, not the captain's, not anyone but me. I got you the job and I can take it away. And mind you, if I take it away it'll be by blowing the whistle to Internal Affairs."

"Give me a break," Shannon shot back. "Neither you nor they have anything on me. I'm lily-white."

"Really? How about that five grand you took off the drug bust last year?"

"Bullshit. You gave me that money, shoved it in my pocket." Shannon jabbed his finger at Dance. "And I gave it right back to you. I never want anything to do with your scheming bullshit."

"Funny, that's not how I remember it," Dance said mockingly.

"You'd make up a story to have your own flesh and blood thrown in jail?"

"Cousins doesn't make us flesh and blood. Our parents couldn't have been more different, thank God."

"You've done something," Shannon said. "I see it in your eyes. And it didn't go well, did it? If it did you'd be smiling ear to ear even with two hundred people dead in a plane crash. What the hell did you do? And what does this Quinn guy have to do with it?"

Dance opened the door to the jailroom, stepped in, and turned back to Shannon. "You go to the crash site and think long and hard about the future you want." Dance paused. "And remember who controls it."