Timecaster (2 page)

“Victoria, uh, she said you might be able to help me.”

I didn’t like what my wife did for a living, and didn’t like her clients. Neil was a skinny man with a big Adam’s apple, a few years older than me, a banker or an accountant or something uptight like that. Victoria respected me enough to not talk about her work, but I did routine background checks on everyone she associated with. Call me Mr. Concerned Husband.

“Help you with what, Neil?” I could feel my shoulder muscles bunch up.

“You sound, um, a little angry. Victoria said you weren’t a jealous man, that I could come to you without any fear whatsoever. I have to be honest. I’m feeling a little bit of fear.”

I thought about the Taser, and allowed myself a small grin imagining what he’d look like flopping around on the ground, doing the million-volt boogie. He’d look pretty damn good, I decided.

“That, uh, scowl makes you seem even scarier.” Neil took another step backward. “Sergeant Avalon, there’s no competition here. I’m a thin, homely, lonely little guy who has to pay a social worker for sex.”

I hated the term
social worker
. It sounded like Victoria was helping poor people with their family problems instead of being a state-licensed prostitute. A state-licensed prostitute who made more than double my peace officer’s salary.

“But you,” Neil blabbered on, “you’re a hero, you’re handsome, with large, intimidating muscles, you own a beautiful home, and you married a goddess. There’s no need to be jealous of me, Sergeant Avalon.”

My wife bought the home with her savings, but the rest of what he said was close enough to true. It looked like Neil’s knees were knocking together beneath his robe, so I eased off the throttle a bit.

“What is it you want, Neil?”

“You’re a timecaster, right? I mean, well, of course you are. But do you still do it? Use the machine?”

“Yeah,” I said. “All the time.”

I hadn’t turned on the TEV in about eight months. No need to, with crime practically nonexistent these days. All I used it for was show-and-tell at grammar schools.

“Well, I, uh, wondered if you couldn’t maybe help me with something.”

I let my frown deepen. What errand did Victoria expect me to run for this poor shlub? Find his missing kitty? Discover who was peeing on his doorstep?

“Help you with what, Neil?”

“It’s my aunt, Zelda Peterson.” Neil’s voice got lower. “I think someone murdered her.”

I sighed. Besides being thin, homely, and lonely enough to pay for sex, Neil was obviously fuct in the head. There hadn’t been a murder in the taxpaying sections of Illinois for more than seven years. There hadn’t been a violent crime in more than five. The closest thing to a crime spree these days was a parking ticket followed by pinching an apple from a street vendor.

But since this was one of my wife’s clients, I responded with restraint.

“You’re fuct in the head,” I told him.

Believe me. That was restraint.

“Look, Sergeant Avalon, I know it sounds crazy. I know nobody gets murdered anymore. Heck, there hasn’t even been a fatal car accident in as long as I can remember. That’s because of peace officers like you. Because of timecasters. Since everyone knows there are no more secrets, everyone is more careful. I was serious when I said you’re a hero, Sergeant Avalon.”

If he laid it on any thicker, I could insulate my house with it. And, truth told, he appeared pretty shaken up. Normally, anyone who spent time with Victoria had a happy, satisfied look. A look I normally wore, except on the days she worked.

“Why do you think she was murdered, Neil?”

His eyes got glassy. “Aunt Zelda is the kindest person on the planet. Everyone loves her. I visit her once a day. We have coffee after work. Yesterday, I went to her apartment, and she wasn’t there. I let myself in and waited around for her to come home. She didn’t.”

“Did you call her headphone?”

“Aunt Zelda never got the implant. But she has a regular cell. I called it, and it was in her purse, in the bedroom.”

“How old is your aunt, Neil?”

“She’s in her seventies. But her mind is perfect, Sergeant Avalon. She wouldn’t go anywhere without telling me. She calls me when she goes to the corner download kiosk to buy a magazine, and that’s just a block away. Plus there was blood.”

“Blood?” I was becoming curious, a hazard of my profession. I kept it from showing.

“A few drops. On the sink.”

“Any pets? Cat? Dog?”

“No pets.”

“You’re sure it was blood?”

He began to shift his weight from one leg to the other. “It was definitely blood.”

“If you’re so concerned, why not go to the Peace Department?”

“I did. I spoke to another sergeant there, a man named Teague. He laughed me out of his office.”

No surprise. Teague was a dick.

“Was your aunt chipped?”

“Of course. But she’s not showing up on GPS. Teague said maybe the chip shorted out. But they’re bioregulated, aren’t they? They run organically. They don’t short out. They just cease some of their functions when the host dies.”

I thought about it. Having a chipped person not show up on GPS made this whole thing even more intriguing. A few years ago, a tanker sank, and they were able to find the bodies under four hundred feet of water. Chips eliminated the need for paper money, identification, and keys. Each one was unique to a person’s DNA, and operated as credit and keys only while the owner was alive. After death, they could no longer open doors or buy things. But GPS still worked.

The only way to short out a chip was to destroy it on purpose, like the dissys do.

“Please, Sergeant. I’m willing to pay for your time. Name a price, I’ll pay it. Any price. Ever since yesterday, I’ve been worried sick. I can’t think about anything else.”

Worried sick, but he still managed to enjoy an afternoon with my wife. I glanced back at the raccoon still happily nibbling away. That was a vicious circle going on there. Eat marijuana, get the munchies, so you eat more marijuana. Maybe I’d be lucky and he’d pop.

“Two months’ worth of foliage for my property size,” I said. “That’s my price.”

He frowned. “I live in a condo, Sergeant Avalon. I don’t have a roof, just a little garden on my porch, and some kudzu in the bathroom. I could pay you the equivalent amount in credits.”

“No deal. If you can’t get the foliage, you can come up here once a week and work my roof.”

A fair compromise. He came here to get a little trim. Why not give a little trim back?

“Done. When can we do this?”

“Now is good.”

“Now. Excellent. I’ll go get dressed.” He turned to leave, then turned right back around. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

I shrugged. “Meet you out in front in ten.”

Neil disappeared. I gave my little pot thief one more glance. “If you feel like dropping dead, please go next door to Chomsky’s roof.”

The raccoon’s mouth was full, his cheeks puffed out with weed, but he probably wouldn’t have replied anyway.

TWO

Victoria was in a red silk kimono one shade lighter than her hair, and even though we’d been married for three years and had known each other for five, the sight of her still took my breath away. She was beautiful, sure. And it was natural beauty, not surgically enhanced. But the thing that drew me and countless others to her was how she radiated life. Vicki had something beneath her superficial looks, something she exuded that made you want to be near her. Charisma times ten. And it had nothing to do with her being one of the last real redheads in the country.

I walked to her in the kitchen, where she was at the sink, peeling the potatoes I’d dug up earlier, setting the skins aside. I came up from behind and wrapped my arms around her.

“You’re going to help him?” she asked, dropping the spud and squeezing my forearms.

“Yeah. He agreed to do our foliage for two months.”

“You’re the last of the nice guys, Talon.”

I considered nuzzling her neck, but figured it had been nuzzled only a few minutes prior. The thought made my arms tense up.

“I didn’t mean to bring him over while you were home.” Victoria must have sensed my mood swing. She was good at reading people. “But the reason he wanted to see me is because he wanted to see you. He tried your office first. You weren’t there, so he made an appointment.”

“So you guys didn’t . . .”

“Of course we did. He’s a regular client, obviously very upset. I did my best to relax him.”

I kept the jealousy down. I had no right to judge her. Victoria kept her relationship with her clients businesslike and professional. No kissing. Always protection. And since she married me, she drastically reduced her schedule. Women of her attributes could have been making four times the amount she did, but she worked only two days a week, and picked days when I was at work so I wouldn’t have to see or hear anything that might make me go on a Tasing expedition.

Besides, the only reason I knew Victoria in the first place was because I was a former client.

“Kiss me,” I said.

She turned, my arms still around her. Her green eyes were wide, her pupils huge.

“Sometimes I think that’s the only reason you married me, Talon. Because you knew how much I wanted to kiss you.”

“That, and it was cheaper to marry you than keep hiring you.”

We kissed, and it tasted just as fresh and new as it did that very first time, at our wedding ceremony. Victoria had been extremely rigid on that no-kissing policy.

I nibbled her lower lip, dropping my mouth to her neck, and she leaned slightly back.

“I’ve got another client coming in twenty minutes. I doubled up today so I could have tomorrow off. I got us space elevator tickets. How does a day in low-earth orbit sound?”

Unfortunately, my alpha-male mind didn’t zero in on the extra day I’d have her to myself.

“Who’s the client?”

“Barney. The dentist.”

“I hate that guy.”

“He’s a harmless old man.”

I knew I shouldn’t go there, but there I went. “Quit,” I told her.

She pushed me away. “Don’t start. We have bills, Talon.”

“We can move someplace cheaper.”

“I like Chicago. I like our big house.”

“You’re not the one who does the gardening for a property this big.”

“I thought Neil was doing it.”

“For two months. Then it’s back to me.”

Her eyes flashed challenge. “If you hate it so much, we can hire someone. I’ll take on an extra client to pay for it.”

“Boise, Idaho, is nice,” I managed to say through clenched teeth. “Let’s move to Boise. We could each get normal jobs. Maybe we could farm. There’s still affordable land out there. Buy four acres and raise blue-green algae. There’s a new strain that’s almost sixty-five percent lipid.”

“You hate gardening. You think you’d like farming?”

“I would if it meant having you to myself.”

She rolled her eyes. “If I thought you were serious, I’d do it, Talon. But I know you. I know you’re a city guy. If you moved out to the country, you’d go crazy within two weeks.”

She was right, but I wasn’t going to back down.

“If you loved me, you’d quit.”

Vicki folded her arms. Just like she was able to project warmth, she was now projecting anger.

“I shouldn’t have brought anyone here while you were home.”

“You could have gone to his place.”

“You don’t let me go to my clients’ homes. You don’t trust any of them.”

“And why would that be? Maybe because they’re nailing my wife?”

If freeze-vision were possible, Vicki would have turned me into an iceberg right there.

“It’s my job, Talon. Nothing more. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. You promised you’d stop doing this.”

The hurt in her face made me want to take her in my arms again, but I was on a roll.

“How would you like it if I slept around?”

Her temperature dropped even further. “I’m not sleeping around. I’m earning a living. A very good living that lets us have a big house in a nice city. Sex is a natural, wholesome, biological need, and you know the only person I make it personal with is you.”

Now I folded my arms, too. “But what if I did? What if I slept with someone else?”

Victoria’s green eyes narrowed to slits. “Our prenup doesn’t have a monogamy clause. You go right ahead. Just make sure the next time you’re in my bed you have a full medical exam in your hand, and you sure as hell better not kiss her.”

She stormed past me. I shook my head. SLPs. Sex with strangers was okay, but I’d better not kiss anyone else.

Unfortunately, I didn’t want to kiss, or have sex with, anyone but her.

“Sergeant?”

Neil again, standing in the kitchen doorway. He was wearing a rumpled suit that made him look even thinner and wimpier. I might have even felt sorry for him, but he got laid today, and I hadn’t.

“Let’s go,” I told him.

We walked through my admittedly large and beautiful house, each step representing several square feet of very expensive real estate. My background check on Neil showed he didn’t own a vehicle, so I lead him to the garage. Like everyone else who sees my ride, his eyes bugged out when I turned on the overhead lights.

“You have a . . .
car
?”

“A 2024 Corvette Stingray, retrofitted for biofuel.”

“It must have cost a fortune,” Neil said.

“A gift from my wife.” I stared at him pointedly, letting him know his visits helped pay for this baby. But he apparently didn’t need a reminder.

“With biofuel prices these days, it must cost a fortune to run. How many clients does Victoria have?”

I shot him with my eyes, and he cowed. He was right, though. Funny how history repeats itself. During the energy crisis of the early-twenty-first century, desert sheiks artificially inflated the price of oil. Western countries decided they’d had enough, and half the world switched to a renewable energy source. Biofuels, made from cheap and plentiful vegetation. Extract the oil, then compost the rest for methane. But the population kept growing, and soon the foliage grown specifically for biofuel began to compete for space with the foliage grown for human and livestock consumption. That jacked up the prices of both fuel and food, and now everyone in the civilized world used every square inch of land they could spare to grow plants to make more fuel.