Time After Time (26 page)

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Authors: Karl Alexander

BOOK: Time After Time
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There was a loud bang.
At first, Amy thought that it was a gunshot. Then she felt the car pull to the left and knew differently. She fought to remain in control of the car just as she tried to ignore the swell of panic, the sick feeling that was building inside.
“What the devil?” H.G. exclaimed.
The left front tire flapped wildly. Very quickly, the rubber was shredded by the rough concrete. The car veered farther left and scraped along the retaining wall that separated the north and southbound lanes. Amy jerked the wheel hard to the right and braked. The car finally stopped on the freeway's left shoulder.
She stared straight ahead, unable to move. Her heart pounded, her hands shook badly.
“What's happened?” His face was ashen. He knew that something had gone horribly wrong.
“We had a flat!”
“A flat? Can it be repaired?”
“We have to fix it!” She sprang from the car, opened the trunk, grabbed the tool kit and jack, then struggled to get the spare tire out of its well. H.G. tried to help her, but the spare seemed permanently lodged. It was as if the car manufacturer had neglected to make the well large enough and had thus unwittingly placed the tire in the enemy's camp. Finally, H.G. pried it loose and lifted it out of the trunk. He barked his shins on the bumper, howled with pain and dropped the tire. It started to roll across the freeway, and Amy had to chase it down.
Eyes wide with fear, she brought it back, then began the tedious process of jacking up the car.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“Nothing!”
He looked around wildly. “If only there were a telephone! I could tell the police to go to McLaren Park!”
“If you go down the freeway”—she worked rapidly—“there's a call box on the side of the road every half a mile!”
“Right.” He started off, then suddenly turned back to her, his hands clenching and unclenching. “I have to know! Flats! Do they happen often?”
“They happen.” She unscrewed lug nuts.
“Frequently?”
“I can't answer that!” She gestured at the ruined tire. “Look! It still has tread on it! It was still in good shape! I don't know why it happened!”
He stared at her a moment longer, then turned and hurried away.
She went back to the flat tire. She lifted it off the axle with a grunt and threw it to the side. She tried to place the spare on the
axle only to discover that she had to jack the car up even higher for it to fit. She whimpered while pumping the handle and imagined that the blowout had been a sound heard along the entire length and breadth of the fourth dimension.
 
 
H.G. hurried along the shoulder of the freeway. Frequently, motorcars hurtled past, flashing their lights at him, their tires howling.
A simple twist of fate.
Was that what it had been? Or had destiny retaliated? And hence was omniscient? No, no, he told himself, let the priests think along those lines. The tire could have been cast from defective materials. The stress points could have been improperly tested. The tire could have hit something sharp on the roadway, a jagged rock, perhaps. After all, hadn't Amy said that flats did happen? Then he frowned. Yes, but why then? Why not before on the drive to Fisherman's Wharf? Or to the museum? He could not answer. He cursed his pessimistic speculations, his vacillations from the tenets of free will.
He was spared further self-doubt by a “Call Box.” He quickly read the instructions on the yellow face and deposited the inevitable coin. (Unconsciously, he wondered how he was ever going to get along in the nineteenth century without this marvelous communications device.)
Eventually, he was connected to a desk sergeant in the Homicide Division. He identified himself as a Mr. Wells from London and explained the emergency nature of his call.
“Would you repeat that, please?”
“Tell Lieutenant Mitchell that a girl is going to be murdered by the lake in McLaren Park at any moment! Please get there as soon as possible!”
“Your name again, sir?”
“Wells! W-e-l-l-s.”
 
 
H.G. checked his watch as the Accord rocketed down Mandell Street, Amy at the wheel. The time was two thirty-five.
“We can still make it!” he shouted.
The car accelerated up a steep, curving hill, and suddenly they were inside the park, motoring through the black confines of a forest at top speed. H.G. could see the tension in Amy's face. Yet, she did not wax hysterical or say a word, and he admired her strength. He could only hope that he would be as strong when the time came. If only he could have predicted the flat tire; if only they had left sooner; if only … He shook his head. There did not seem any way to know the variables as they were drawn closer and closer to the moment. And yet, if they were to emerge victorious, it seemed imperative that they be aware of all the twists and turns. H.G. did not want either one of them to resemble Cuchulainn, that blustering hero of old Irish legend, the classic picture of tragic irony, who would go down to the shore every morning at sunrise to do battle with the waves of the Atlantic armed only with a heavy broadsword. He had not realized until he was a weakened, wasted old man unable to lift his weapon that the waves were endless and he was not.
Amy turned her vehicle right onto John F. Shelley Drive and slowed down.
“Turn off your lights,” he commanded sharply.
She did so.
“When you reach the entrance of the parking lot that services the lake, stop and let me get out. Then proceed slowly in the direction of a black motorcar. When you get close enough, use your lights as you would an artillery piece.”
She gulped and nodded.
They went around a curve in the road and H.G. heard Amy groan with terror. The car stopped. Then she put her face in her
hands and fell back against the seat. For an instant, he could not imagine what was wrong—until he saw a black and white patrol car stopped next to an automobile at the far end of the parking lot, its red, blue and orange lights flashing. One policeman was frantically shouting into the squad car's radio. The other was down on the pavement, hunched on his hands and knees like a dog, retching out of control. H.G. heard sirens in the distance.
He knew then that they were too late.
Somehow, Amy managed to maintain her composure for the drive back to Russian Hill. Once they parked in front of her building, however, she crumpled against the steering wheel and began to sob, her hands trembling so badly that she could not pull the keys from the ignition.
“Amy, it's all right! We won't be here!”
“You promise?” she whispered.
“I promise! It's very simple. We'll just leave like we originally planned.”
Still, she could not control herself. “I don't want to die,” she moaned. “I don't want to die!”
He took the keys out of the ignition for her, dropped them into his pocket, then helped her out of the Accord and up into her flat. He eased her down onto the couch. Beyond grief, she just huddled there and stared, like a catatonic, at nothing. He paced the floor, trying not to be nervous about his failure to alter the course of human events. There had to be an answer other than the smug, Catholic concept of predestination. There just had to be! There were no more Dolores Clarks with which to test out a theory; no more margins for error; there were only fifteen hours left.
And then he went to her and held her tightly. He felt her pain.
All of us know that we are going to die, he thought, but we can live with the absurdity of our own death because we don't know when it is to happen. Even most terminally ill patients can bear the knowledge that the end will come soon; but to know exactly when? H.G. winced.
Suddenly, an idea began to form in his mind. What if they used The Utopia to go further ahead in time? He scowled. No, that wouldn't work, for they could time-travel a thousand years and still find out that they had not changed the future.
What about the recent past? he thought. If he could not change history, then he could always relive the last few days over and over and permanently dwell on their Utopian lovemaking. No, he would always know that he had perpetually eschewed a showdown with Stephenson and the Fates. That would be downright cowardly. Moreover, if he placed himself and Amy on such a temporal treadmill, he would be prolonging her life in limbo. And that would be absurd, for he would be removing her free will. The only acceptable choice seemed to be to remain on their collision course with destiny.
Suddenly, surprisingly, she spoke. “This is all so mind-boggling, H.G.” Her voice quavered. “I don't feel in touch with reality anymore. Or sanity. You're the only thing that doesn't seem crazy.”
He looked up and saw that the night had lifted; there was a gray fog outside the window. “It's dawn. You should get some rest.”
“You're right, but I'm not sure that I can sleep.”
“I could make you a drink.”
“No. There's Valium in the medicine chest. It'll make me feel better, too. I'll get it.”
She took two, then curled up on the sofa and gazed at him. “What are you thinking?” she asked.
“That I am eternally yours.”
She smiled. “I like that.”
He looked off into the near and distant space. When the thought
was complete, he turned back to her. “What was the term that the Bard once coined, my dear? Star-crossed lovers?”
She became radiant, even though she appeared to be very sleepy.
He chuckled. “Maybe someday I'll write about time-crossed lovers.”
“I like that even better.”
 
 
Lieutenant J. Willard Mitchell crossed the parking lot, got into the plain-wrap and lit his tenth cigarette of the day. It was not quite nine o'clock in the morning. He gestured at his partner. Sergeant Ray started the car, and they drove away from McLaren Park.
Mitchell rubbed his weather-beaten face as if that would relieve his worried exhaustion. He had been up all night, and he had a feeling that it was going to be quite a while before he got a good night's sleep again. The press was beginning to rumble and clamor, and he didn't have a suspect. He wasn't even close.
He stared out the side window with a jaundiced eye. First, there had been the Chinese hooker, Jade Chang. Then—just hours ago—the girl named Marsha McGee. And now this. A wealthy attorney's daughter. Murdered in her own car and then butchered. Mitchell shivered. He had never seen such vicious brutality before, and yet in all three cases there had been no sign of a struggle. From all indications, the women had been willingly involved in sex when the violence occurred. The killer, then, was smart and dangerous, for he had the ability to come across as a normal, passionate male. The lieutenant sighed. Yeah, this guy made the Zodiac killer look like Robin Hood. He swore inwardly. This was all he needed five weeks before Christmas—a self-styled slasher. What should they call him? He mused sardonically. Sourdough Jack the Ripper?
Sergeant Ray turned left onto Bryant Street and accelerated up the two blocks to police headquarters. When he pulled abreast of the main entrance, his gnarled face opened wide with astonishment. “Look!”
Approximately fifty members of the press corps waited outside the building. When they saw the car, they started for it en masse. Two local TV news “minicam” crews jockeyed for position, and one violently shoved a rival camera operator to one side. The hapless technician stumbled and lost his grip on his Norelco. The sixty-five-thousand-dollar camera did a top-heavy flip and then smacked into the concrete pavement. Broken transistors spewed out alongside the remains of a twenty-to-two-fifty Canon zoom lens. The operator stared down in shock and the entire mob of reporters paused as if in sympathy.
“Christ. They're really out for blood.”
“Take us around back.”
“You'd think they'd had enough.”
They parked in the motor pool and went upstairs to the homicide division. Mitchell shed his coat and tie when he finally got to his mahogany-paneled inner sanctum. His faithful secretary, Ruth, gingerly placed a steaming cup of coffee on his desk as if it were plasma.
“Thanks,” he grunted gratefully, then lit a fresh cigarette. He swilled the coffee, sat down and stared out the window. Ruth left, but before Mitchell had a chance to think, Sergeant Ray slipped into the room and dropped another computer print-out on the desk in front of him.
“The fingerprints lifted off Dolores Clark's Porsche match those found at the Noe Street apartment,” he reported soberly.
“Terrific,” Mitchell replied with unenthusiastic sarcasm. “That means they also match the ones taken at the massage parlor.”
As did the footprints, the blood traces, the bacteria, the sperm count, et cetera. Mitchell scowled and dropped the print-out into a wastebasket. There were no leads; he did not have a shred of evidence. When all the data—fingerprints included—was programed into the department's star computer, there was no answer! Instead, they had received electronic confusion, and the computer (nicknamed “Sherlock”) would print out “x's” and “o's,” then shut down as if to cool its circuits.
Who had ever heard of fingerprints or a sperm count that didn't belong to anyone? Mitchell wondered. It was as if the computer were saying the suspect didn't exist! The hell he didn't.
He was stymied. Maybe he should retire and let some young Turk like Sergeant Ray take over. Maybe there were things that he was overlooking that someone newer and fresher might see right away. No, his pride wouldn't let him.
The phone buzzed.
“Yeah, Ruth?”
“Are you busy, sir?”
“I wish I was.” He grinned ruefully. “Come on in.”
She entered. “Your calls.” She handed him a telephone log sheet. On one side of the sheet was the time; on the other, the caller and message. He scanned it.
“Anything interesting?” asked Sergeant Ray.
Suddenly, Mitchell bolted up in his chair and stared closely at the log sheet. “You remember that Mr. Wells from London? That curious little nut who called himself a citizen of the world?”
“Yeah?”
“He called to tell us about the Dolores Clark murder.” Mitchell leaned back in his chair, dragged on his cigarette, allowed himself the luxury of a broad smile.
Ray grabbed the log sheet and studied it. “At two thirty-five? That was before it happened!”
Mitchell nodded wisely.
“Jesus, Lieutenant! Maybe he was right about that Stephenson dude! Maybe this Mr. Wells really is a psychic.”
“No. He's no psychic.”
“Wait a minute! The computer said that Stephenson didn't exist. Just like the fingerprints!”
“Oh, he exists, all right.”
“Who?” asked a confused Sergeant Ray. “Wells or Stephenson?”
“They're one and the same.”
“Huh?”
“A psychopathic split personality.”
“You lost me.”
“The rational side comes into my office and says that he knows who a murderer is because he wants us to stop him from killing. Meanwhile, the insane part of this guy keeps on cutting up women. I think that this Wells is in reality asking for help. It's your classic case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“I still think he could be a psychic.”
“Believe me, Sergeant Ray, he's no psychic.” Mitchell snubbed out his cigarette. “He called before the murder occurred because he knew that he was going to commit it.”
 
 
Amy had fallen into a deep, drugged sleep.
H.G. sat beside her on the bed, gazing at her delicate, relaxed features. He was awed by the tenderness that they shared. He was certain that he loved this girl now more than he had ever loved anyone or anything before. He vowed to himself that he would protect her and save her life no matter what. If he lost her, he would lose everything, including his own will to live.
From her closet he took down a quilt that had been hand-sewn by her grandmother and covered her.
In the dining room, he stared out the bay window at the overcast sky. The grandfather clock across the room bonged once, reminding him that destiny was inexorably coming closer.
“Blast,” he muttered softly. He did not like the idea of leaving. It would mean that Stephenson would win by forfeit. He would remain at large, free to carry on his career of atrocities. True, Amy's life would be spared, but he, H. G. Wells, had not Leslie John Stephenson back to the nineteenth century to face justice.
He glanced at his chronometer and pushed a button. It read precisely half-past eleven. He had six hours left. That should be time enough to do something, he thought. As opposed to passively waiting. Dalliance did not seem worthy of him, Amy Robbins or The Utopia.
Suddenly, an idea took shape. He must try, he told himself. To give up now would be to drown the hopes for an enlightened mankind in the Sea of Tranquility. As Huxley had once said, Above all, a man must be true unto himself; if not, then he becomes vanquished and can be true to no one.
If to no one else, he owed it to Amy.
He left the flat, his mind fresh and clear despite his body's lack of sleep. He flagged down a taxi.
“Where to, sir?”
“The San Francisco Public Library.”
He was going to the library to find out if the legendary Jack the Ripper had ever been caught. If he had, then that meant that he, H. G. Wells, had successfully taken the villain back to 1893 London and remanded him into the custody of Scotland Yard. Such knowledge, H.G. deduced, would have tremendous bearing on what he did this evening.
He got out of the cab and was pleased to be near a library again. He briefly recalled the many hours that he had used the library in South Kensington as a refuge during his first marriage.
At the desk, he requested every book on Jack the Ripper. After an agonizing, twenty-minute wait, an assistant librarian returned and placed a stack of books in front of H.G. He took the books and hurried into a far corner of the large reading room. He spread them out on a table, and began reading.
An hour later, H.G. slammed shut the last of the books and cursed under his breath.
“I failed,” he said out loud.
He looked at the book again and reread the inescapable conclusion. Jack the Ripper was never found, never captured and never identified. To this day, his identity remains one of the great, unsolved mysteries in the history of crime.
What did that mean?
Quite simply, that events had occurred as it now seemed like they were going to occur. Destiny had triumphed. H.G. and Amy had fled and Stephenson was left free to prowl the twentieth century. Or, H.G. could have stayed at the apartment and confronted Stephenson and then lost. In that case, Amy would die as reported in the newspaper.
Wait. There was a third alternative. What if he stayed and confronted Stephenson and Amy lived? Of course! He would send Amy away and he would stay. Then he frowned and looked at the book again. “ … one of the great, unsolved mysteries in the history of crime.” He had not taken Jack the Ripper back to the nineteenth century. Therefore, if he had defeated destiny, then Stephenson had been vanquished in 1979.

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