Timecaster (21 page)

But I didn’t. The TEV still paused, I zoomed in on Vicki’s face. She appeared businesslike, perhaps even a bit bored. Not flushed or smiling, like she did after we had sex.

How did I feel about that? Should I even be feeling anything? Vicki had been telling me, for years, that jealousy was a useless emotion, and that I acted like a caveman whenever I brought up her job. Just because I married her didn’t mean I owned her body, or could dictate what she could do with it.

But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t want to fully possess Vicki. Nor did I look down on her profession, or think less of her because of it.

So what was my problem?

My problem was I had an emotional connection with sex, and I didn’t want her to have that emotional connection with anyone else.

Looking at her face, it didn’t appear she had any emotional connection at all to skinny old Barney the dentist. It was just business. It wasn’t intimacy.

I unbunched my shoulders, feeling like a great burden had been lifted off my back. All of my petty jealousy vanished. Earlier, I’d had sex with three women, with zero attachment to any of them. Apparently, it was the same with Vicki. Like she said, this was no more personal than a massage.

Sighing with relief, I let the TEV play in reverse, watching as Vicki and skinny old Barney undressed, watching as they climbed into bed, watching as they switched to doggy-style, then standing up, then her on top, then him on top, then sideways . . .

Skinny old Barney was a stallion. He was also a few inches bigger than me in an area that mattered.

I paused again, zooming in on Vicki’s face as she was getting fuct silly. She was flushed, sweating, her mouth open in a scream.

It didn’t seem businesslike at all. Not one little bit.

I kept rewinding, and Barney kept humping. When he put my wife’s legs up over her head and executed a pr0n-star position called the
brass clown
, I had to turn it off or else smash the TEV against the wall. Then I left, resolving to never go into my wife’s bedroom again.

“Dude! Thanks, man!”

The cops were shoving chips into their mouths, missing at least half of their attempts. They both waved at me. I walked into the kitchen and tuned in to spacetime once again, starting over.

Once I pet the bunny, I adjusted the speed and buzzed past the argument I’d had earlier with Vicki. I stopped and let it play out, syncing the sound to my headphone.

“If you love me, you’d quit,”
I said. I looked angry when I said it.

“I shouldn’t have brought anyone here while you were home.”
Vicki also looked angry.

“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?”

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

I paused, zooming in on her face.

Her eyes were tearing up. I’d been so into winning the argument I hadn’t even noticed.

Okay, so I was an asshat. In a way, that was good, because being angry at myself overrode any feelings of jealousy I had. I loved her. She loved me. We’d make it work. In fact, once we got through all of this, I would actually mention my issues to my therapist. Vicki was right. I was acting like a Luddite. Jealousy was so twentieth century.

“Got any dip?”

I glanced at the cop, and pointed to the fridge. Then I continued rewinding.

I stopped at four days ago, seeing a man in the kitchen next to the stove.

Barney again. And he was bending Vicki over the stove, his flabby old hips a blur, gripping her waist and driving into her like a jackrabbit.

I glanced at the stove—the stove where I made my eggs every morning—and seriously wanted to kill this old bastard.

“Dude! You got Jell-O! You mind, man?”

“Help yourself,” I told him.

He took the bean dip and the Jell-O mold. Two steps away from the fridge, he fell onto his face. I pulled his head out of the Jell-O so he didn’t drown, and decided I’d try planting some white rhino next season. Maybe, if I atomized enough of it, I’d be able to forget the image of Barney the Fucking Machine, which was now permanently burned into my cerebellum.

More rewinding. Vicki making breakfast. Me cooking dinner. Coming and going, going and coming. I slowed down whenever I saw one of Vicki’s clients, but none of them planted any bugs, and thankfully none of them bent her over the stove.

As time raced backward, I was getting close to the two-week cutoff. The TEV couldn’t go more than two weeks into the past. If the listening devices were older than that, this was a dead end.

But then, at thirteen days and seven hours ago, I got lucky. Neil, my old friend who led me to Aunt Zelda’s and started this whole mess, opened up the utensil drawer, but didn’t take anything out. He followed that up by opening the cabinet under the sink, sticking his head inside, and then standing back up, hands empty.

I checked the utensil drawer, finding nothing but sporks and knives. Then I ducked under the sink, tapping my eyelid three times for night vision. Besides the dishwashing detergent, plunger, and various cleaning chemicals, I spotted something round and metallic, roughly the size of a hyperbaseball, under a box of sponges. I brought up my DT and took a picture of it, then ran the picture through uffsee.

I got zero hits.

“Hey, man, don’t hoard all the Jell-O.”

Another cop stumbled over, snagging the bowl. He brought it to his lips and slurped.

I ignored him, studying the object. It obviously wasn’t a listening device, because the cops would have found it when they did their transmitter sweep. A bomb?

I flipped the air sensor on my DT, letting it have a digital sniff. It analyzed the air around the object, finding standard atmospheric gases, traces of cleaning agents, and a decent amount of atomized marijuana. But nothing caustic, flammable, or potentially explosive.

So what was this thing?

Then I scanned it, revealing the interior guts. Circuits and servos, unrecognizable to me.

I threw caution to the wind and picked the ball up. It was smooth, heavy for its size, and in the light of the kitchen it appeared to be many colors all at once, like an oscillating prism. I turned it over in my palm and noticed a panel, along with a button. Next to the button were the engraved words PRESS ME.

That didn’t seem like the wisest idea. Especially after watching Boise implode. This didn’t look like the device Alter-Talon had used, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Cool! Hyperbaseball!”

The cop snatched the ball from my hand. I reached for it, slipping on green Jell-O, falling onto my face.

“Hey! A button!”

Before I could yell, “Don’t press it, you fool—you’ll kill us all!” he pressed the button.

It didn’t kill us all.

In fact, it didn’t do anything. The cop stared at it, puzzled, and then looked at me. “You got any cereal?”

“Last cabinet on the left. Milk’s in the fridge.”

“Thanks. Trippy ball, man.”

He tossed it to me. I caught it. While the ball looked exactly the same, I noticed the prism effect had sped up. There was also a very faint buzzing noise coming from inside. But other than that, it didn’t seem to be doing anything.

I went to my TEV, and saw Vicki boffing somebody on the kitchen table. Where I ate my eggs every morning. I really needed to tell her to keep her clientele in her bedroom.

I got ready to fast-forward to see where Neil had gone, when I noticed Vicki had a black eye and was sobbing uncontrollably. The sex was violent, and hardly looked consensual.

I clenched my jaw, panning left to see the face of the son of a bitch doing this to her.

The son of a bitch turned out to be me.

THIRTY-FOUR

The Mastermind listens as Talon watches the timecast. The incompetent cops hadn’t found all of the bugs. He wishes he could see Talon’s face, wishes he’d used video cameras instead of listening devices.

Watching half a million people disappear with the press of a button was a heady experience. But they weren’t real to him. They were numbers. Statistics. The first hash mark of many.

But Talon . . .

The mouse is personal. Being able to see him suffer will be a treat for the Mastermind.

Not now. But soon.

The Mastermind is interrupted by a knock at his door. The cops? Did they know?

No. It’s reporters. They want him to comment. He declines with a smile.

Later, when they realize how close they were to the real Butcher of Boise, they’ll want to hang themselves.

If they aren’t already dead by then.

He resumes listening to Talon. It has taken the mouse longer than expected, but he’s followed the trail of crumbs.

Soon the trail will end. And the cat and mouse will meet.

Watching half a million vanish from a distance won’t be nearly as much fun as watching one man die up close.

THIRTY-FIVE

I stared in disbelief as Alter-Talon violated my wife. He had one hand on her throat, squeezing hard, a sick grin on his face as he pumped away. I’d been angry before, many times. But seeing this filled me with such absolute rage I would have killed the guy if he were in the room.

And he had been in the room. Almost two weeks ago, according to the TEV. But how? And why hadn’t Vicki told me?

I tried to remember two weeks back. Had she seemed upset? Had she covered up her black eye with makeup? Why hadn’t she said anything?

I paused the scene and rechecked the date. It couldn’t be right. Two weeks ago, I had the house to myself. Vicki was visiting her mother in New Los Angeles. She wasn’t home when this took place.

So how . . . ?

My eyes drifted to the prism ball, the button still depressed. I thumbed it off.

The TEV monitor went fuzzy, and then showed an empty kitchen.

I pressed the on button.

The monitor showed Vicki being assaulted.

That was when I figured it out. This hadn’t happened to the Vicki I was married to. It had happened to an alter-Vicki, in a parallel universe. Somehow this prism ball made a TEV tune in to past events in an alternate universe.

I flipped the ball off. Had Neil created this thing? Had he been the mastermind all along?

No. This tech seemed way beyond Neil. And he’d passed the voice-stress detector. Neil was involved, but he wasn’t the mastermind. I thought about following him backward, letting him lead me to the person who gave him the prism ball, but the TEV was at its limit and couldn’t go back any further.

Then I realized the obvious. If this prism forced a timecast in a parallel world, then there had to be a prism at Aunt Zelda’s apartment that made me pick up the transmission of Alter-Talon killing her.

I put the prism ball in a pouch on my belt, then tapped my eyelid for infrared. The two cops on the first level were still in the den, lying next to each other on the floor. It looked like they were spooning. I checked the perimeter of the house, and the chatty duo walking the route was passing by the front door.

Time to go.

I snuck downstairs and outside, happy to take the hepafilter off my face and breathe some fresh air. I barely took two steps before I heard a whistle.

It was my dick neighbor, Chomsky, out for a stroll with his genipet—some sort of mini alpaca or llama. He had his fingers in his mouth, producing a loud, shrill tone that could be heard across Lake Michigan and all the way to New Detroit.

“It’s Talon Avalon! The fugitive!”

He whistled again, and his miniature critter seemed to be getting agitated by the sound. It bumped Chomsky with its head, then spit on him.

“Barack O’Llama!” Chomsky chastised, slapping his pet on the snout. “Behave!”

I saw the two cops hauling ass around the corner, Tasers drawn, so I didn’t have a chance to break Chomsky’s nose, like the dick deserved. I began to run.

Chomsky whistled again. “He’s going that way!”

Barack bit him in the nards. I always liked Barack.

I beat feet through the alley, hopping on Teague’s biofuel scooter. My biggest concern was a satellite spotting me. I wasn’t sure if the old Tesla Taser satellites were still in operation, since violent crime was pretty much eliminated in Chicago. They worked like giant, orbiting versions of my Glock Taser, sending lightning from the Tesla field and zapping targets on earth. But unlike a handheld version, TTSs were computer controlled and not subject to human error. If you were moving less than five miles per hour, and a TTS locked onto you, it rarely missed.

Zipping up the street, I heard Chomsky scream as his llama gnawed away. Then I was immediately intercepted by three peace officer scooters. Teague’s bike was also CPD issue, so I aimed the kill switch laser in their direction and gave them a rapid-fire burst. It cut their engines, but they still coasted toward me, shooting their Tasers. I swerved left, merging into traffic, and found six more cops on my tail. Like Teague, they were also equipped with kill switches. And if they killed my bike, I’d be easy pickings for the TTSs.

I weaved through the sea of motorists, listening to the sirens behind me, and then hit my siren and pulled into the frog lane. The kermits freaked out, jumping out of the way, some of them falling over and eating pavement. I tailgated one, very close to running him over, but he saw me in his headband rearview mirror and jumped backward, completely over me, clearing my bike by at least five feet. It would have been a lot cooler if he didn’t look so goofy doing it.

The CPD bikes followed me into the lane. I hadn’t been on scooter patrol in more than a decade, but I remembered kill switches had a range of about twenty meters, so as long as I had a sixty-foot lead, they wouldn’t be able to—

My engine died. Apparently the range had gotten better in the last decade.