The Curiosity Killers (21 page)

Ben and Violet exchanged a look.

“Oh, come
on
,” Kris said. She picked up the other piece of toast. “I’ll find out anyway. I already know things are badness with a capital B.”

“Cob thinks Claudio Florence isn’t just Jack the Ripper but also murdered the Black Dahlia,” Ben said.

“We should just generally start looking at unsolved serial killings,” Violet said. She sat down next to Kris, a heavy book in her hands. “You said he found the Zodiac?”

“On one of his trips last year, yeah,” Ben said. “But that wasn’t Florence. That was a guy who’d been stalking one of the first victims. A normal psychopath, not a psychopath time traveler.”

“Still, it’s like he has a keen eye for that stuff,” Kris said. “Might even kinda attract it, in a weird way.” She took a bite of the toast.

Ben pointed to the teacup. “Anybody care if I take this?”

Both women shook their heads.

“You might have a point,” Violet said to Kris. “I mean, not in any mysterious way, just that if he’s the thrill seeker you all describe him as, solving unsolved serial killings is about as thrill-seeking as it gets.”

“There a lot of folks in the bureau like that?” Kris asked.

Violet shrugged. “I guess I have a little streak of that in me, even. Not as much as some of my colleagues.”

Kris noticed Ben studying his tea a little too carefully. Thrill seeker was not a term that came to mind when she thought of Ben Jonson. “Repressed,” “nerdy,” “awkward,” plus all the normal boss terms like “inflexible” and “not willing to see my creative potential.” But Ben knew these things about himself—Kris was willing to tell him, in fact, when he was being geekier than usual or indulging in his sad sack propensities. So why should the idea that Cob and Violet shared a common seeking-of-thrills bother him?

She glanced from Violet to Ben and back again.
Oh!

A giggle escaped Kris, and she quickly clamped her lips together and worked to stifle it.

“What’s so funny?” Ben asked.

Kris shook her head and waved a hand at him. “Nope. Nothin’. Carry on.”

~

Fitzhugh shut the door of his office before crossing the room to greet Vere and Cob. “Gentlemen, I’m afraid the news isn’t great,” he said. He withdrew several sheets of X-ray film from a file folder and pinned them to the light box on the wall behind his desk. He switched the light on and rubbed at his beard as he pointed to a spot on the first image. “This is the place in Mister Cob’s brain that troubles me.”

“What is that?” Vere asked.

“Well, it’s not supposed to be there, for one thing,” Fitzhugh replied. “Are either of you familiar with the Charcot-Bouchard-Rillsman scale?”

The patient’s face was blank, but Vere frowned. “It’s been a long time since I took neuroscience, Allen.”

Fitzhugh nodded. “Of course. It’s a measure of the severity of a type of cerebral aneurysm. Vogel Rillsman discovered the minute sub-subtypes of traumatic brain events back in 2050, and—”

“
Allen
.” Vere looked impatient. “Can we dispense with the history and more complicated science?”

Fitzhugh gave his old friend a sad smile. “I always was a bit more of a researcher than a practitioner, I’m afraid, Eddy.”

“I’m sorry,” Cob said, “but we gotta cut to the chase if I’m about to die. Am I?”

Fitzhugh pointed to the spot again. “Someday, of course, Mister Cob. But discovering your aneurysm’s place on the scale is important in telling me when. If it’s a certain grade, we can halt its progress with drugs, even shrink it down to nothing. If it’s a different grade, we may be talking surgery, and if it’s still another…” He sighed.

“If it’s another, I’m dead,” Cob finished.

“Son, it may not be—”

Cob held up a hand to Vere. “No, it’s cool, doc. I get it.” He smiled up at Fitzhugh. “You wanna do more tests, I bet.”

“As soon as possible,” Fitzhugh confirmed.

“We’ll let you know.” He stood and shook Fitzhugh’s hand. “C’mon, doc, let’s you and me have a talk.” Cob headed for the door.

~

Violet handed Ben the legal pad she’d been using. “That last one is what I’m curious about,” she said.

Ben canted his head to one side. “Hmm. That doesn’t ring a bell.” He held out a hand. “Do they talk about it in that book, or one of the ones we left in the conference room?”

Violet picked up the book she’d been looking at. “No, it’s in here.” She flipped through several pages, not finding the section. “It’s in here. It’s not a long article, though I don’t know why. The case was gruesome enough to be interesting, if you’re into that sort of thing.” Frustrated, she checked the index and found the passage. “Here you go.” She tapped the page and handed the book over. “Left side, halfway down.”

Ben read for a few moments. “Okay, this is
sort
of sounding familiar. I’ve probably read this before.” He put the book down and stood up, letting out a soft groan. “God, how long have we been at this?”

“Few hours.”

“I’m getting old.” He stretched, bending over at the waist and pulling on his arms. There was a percussive popping sound, and Ben let out a brief moan. “There we go.”

Violet giggled. “You should do some yoga, like your assistant. You’re not very flexible.”

“I am
very
flexible, thank you very much, I just can’t be sitting on the floor all day. Let’s sit on real people chairs. I think I have another book that might talk about this, or we can see if the ’net’s not being suppressed right now.”

Very flexible, huh?

Violet grinned as she stood up. “I could use some coffee.” She headed toward the kitchen. “You want anything?”

“No, let me.” Ben followed her. “So what caught your eye about this case, the Cleveland Torso Killer? Man, what a terrible name.”

“Similar M.O. as the Black Dahlia, which itself is kind of—not identical, of course, but still—kind of similar to the Ripper.” Violet snapped on the kitchen lights. “Where do you guys keep stuff?”

“You know, this has been kind of a terrible day.” Ben opened the fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer. “Is it really coffee time?”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Violet spotted a bottle opener magnet on the side of the refrigerator and took it down.

They clinked bottles. The front door opened. “Who’s got two thumbs and is ready to time travel?” Cob called. A second later he poked his head in the kitchen and pointed his thumbs at his head. “This guy.”

Violet laughed. Behind Cob, she caught sight of Vere, who was frowning and pacing.

“So, clean bill of health?” Ben asked.

Cob stepped into the kitchen and took Ben’s beer from him. “I am ready for some grand-fucking-adventure,” Cob said. He took a long swallow of the beer. “When do we leave?”

Vere opened his mouth but then shut it and wandered away. A moment later, Violet heard the clatter of footsteps on the spiral staircase to the lab.

“Where’s Eddy going?” Ben asked. He walked out to the lobby.

“Is everything really all right?” Violet asked Cob.

Cob took another swig of the beer. “Hey, I’m just happy to be backing you up, agent. It’ll be great.” He followed Ben out of the kitchen.

He never answered us
.

Violet left her beer on the counter, untouched.

Tuesday, August 31, 2100, Avon, Vermont, NBE

Ben finished reading the passage aloud and closed the book with a flourish, causing the pages to thunk together audibly. A tiny puff of dust rose from between the leaves. He studied Vere, noting the other man’s deep frown.

“You have to admit it’s similar, both to the original Ripper and to the Black Dahlia,” Ben said. He sat down in the chair to the left of the loveseat and leaned forward, watching Vere for any change in expression. Bodhi nudged his whiskers against Ben’s hand, and Ben absently scratched the cat behind the ears. “If we can capture him there, somewhere he’s not expecting us to be, I think we’ve got a pretty good shot of getting to him.”

Vere nodded. “It’s also a violent time we’re discussing,” he said. “Cleveland in the 1930s, full of mobsters and whatnot. Big city, lots of strife.” He raised an eyebrow. “We could take care of him and leave him back there.”

“Whoa, wait.” This wasn’t something Ben envisioned. Murder? Of a public figure? “Are you saying—”

“The man has committed genocide, in essence. Economically if not in actuality,” Vere said. “And we now know he’s also committing serial murders throughout all of history.”

“Let’s make sure I’m right first, okay?”

“How do you propose that, Benoy?”

“Send one of us back there, just to investigate.”

Ben held up a hand for Vere to stay quiet. “
Investigate
. That’s all. Stick to the shadows, stay out of Claudio’s sight.”

“But he’s met us all by now at one time or another,” Vere pointed out. “Or knows us all by reputation.”

“Reputation, yes. Sight, no.” Ben fussed with his necktie. It felt like it was strangling him. “I may be the funding around here, but that’s all. I’ve been stuck in my books for decades, not exactly living the life of a bachelor benefactor at social functions.”

Vere stared at Ben. “Son, are you saying
you
want to go?” His expression softened, and he laughed. “Oh, good heavens, I…no, no, Benoy, that isn’t your strong suit.” He patted Ben’s arm. “Stick to the research. We can figure out a way to disguise Mister Cob and get him sent off, if you think this is really important.”

Cob chatted with Kris and Violet in the foyer, regaling them with stories he now remembered from his adventures. Kris was unimpressed, Ben could tell, for more reasons than that she’d heard these stories before. But Violet…Violet lived adventures of her own in her daily life. This would all be far more impressive to her than his research, however vital to their cause. He thought of her gentle smile and her courage in the face of all she’d learned in the past few days. He wanted to save the future for her. He wanted her by his side during the fight.
His
side, not Cob’s.

I could die, though. Something could go wrong, and I could die in the past and none of them would even know. I spent my whole life protected from danger, reading about other people’s lives and never living my own…

“It’s me,” Ben said, his voice low and gravelly. “It has to be me. I’m doing it, Eddy.” He sounded older to himself, brusque and practical, like his father. He stood up. “I’m going to get supplies and wardrobe. Meet me in the lab.”

“Wait,
now
?” Vere rose. “Benoy, you have to tell the others, see if anyone else has an idea here. This is
rash
, what you’re doing.”

Ben shook his head. “I’ve spent over three decades never doing anything rash. Maybe it’s time I did.”

“I don’t like this one bit.” Vere wasn’t meeting Ben’s eyes now. “There are complications that…well, I’m not pleased about.”

Ben frowned. “Complications?”

Laughter floated from the foyer. Ben took a few steps out of the parlor to get a better view of the group congregated there. Cob looked every inch the silent film hero, all wavy hair and bright white teeth. Beside him, Violet was tucking a strand of golden hair behind her ear.

Ben turned back to Vere. “What do you mean complications?”

“It isn’t Miss Lessep,” Vere said.

“Cob?”

“It could be nothing.”

Ben sat back down. “But it could be something.”

“Perhaps.”

“So the clean bill of health?” Ben asked.

Vere shook his head. “I think once we’ve solved this current conundrum, we should indeed shut down as we’ve discussed. Temporarily, until I can work out studying side effects.”

“But Alison and Wil, all our other clients,” Ben said. “We haven’t had any trouble before.”

Vere’s gaze slid away from Ben. “Mister Cob’s got more stamps in his passport than the average traveler,” Vere said. “And it could be simply his constitution.” He placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “I give you a bit of a tough time, son, but I…” Vere’s voice trailed off. There was a hint of a shimmer in his eyes.

“I know,” Ben said. “Thank you.”

“So you’ll rethink this?”

“No,” Ben replied. “If I’ve been endangering my clients all along, I can’t let any of them go anymore.” He rose. “No, this is my trip to take.”

Saturday, September 21, 1935, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

The sensation of falling over a century into the past was eerily like a roller coaster ride. One moment Ben was sitting on Vere’s table in the lab and the next he was falling, his stomach seeming to leave his body like the lurch of the first drop of a coaster. But this ride did more than just plummet his body down a drop—it also plunged him into darkness, a darkness so total it made Ben worry he’d died. The only thing keeping him grounded was pain, a nebulous, numb, fleeting ache. It was over quickly; Ben soon felt his body slam back to something resembling normalcy before he dropped into a crumpled, rag doll heap.

He blinked and regarded his surroundings. Boarded-up windows in a brick warehouse, rusty railroad tracks, and shallow, mud-gray water running under a short bridge. It was neither warm nor freezing but a chilly in-between. The shrubbery surrounding the tracks was lush and full, but it held the cold, depressed look of greenery after a rain. Ben looked up at a late-afternoon sky full of dark clouds. The ground beneath his knees and palms was wet. He suspected the rain was leaving rather than arriving, but that made the weather no less miserable.

He scrambled to his feet and pulled his tweed sport coat closer around his chest. It was too big—purchased, most likely, for Cob, who was more muscular around the shoulders—and the whole suit taken together gave Ben the rumpled look of a teenager borrowing his father’s clothes for a job interview.

As he looked across the water at the opposite side of the stream bank, Ben spotted a collection of dirty white rags clinging to the side of a bush.

No, not rags.

He flashed back to the history books he’d been reading just before leaving, the sepia-toned photographs showing crime scenes and blanket-covered corpses.

That bush is familiar
.
Those aren’t rags.

Oh, God.

Ben looked around, trying to spot a simple way across the stream. The railroad trestle had no pedestrian ladder. The stream ran as far as the eye could see in both directions. With a heavy sigh, he rolled up the legs of his trousers and splashed across. Midway, he sank deeper into unpleasant muck to his waist. He felt a biting cold all the way to his bones and hastened his journey across, now desperate to be free of the dirty water.