What Time Is It?
What Time Is It?
By Nancy Holzner
Case #22-417
Subject: Clifford Farris, age 44. Height: 185 cm. Weight: 97 kg
Subject status: Blood pressure: 90/52. Pulse: 50. Relaxation stage 4.2 of 5
Investigator: ID #844; Rhodes, Kurt
Date/time: 7/6/2068 14:02. Investigation commencing in 10…9…8…7…
The entry is always the worst part. They strap you down on a table next to the subject, almost like you’re the one under investigation. I don’t know why the straps are necessary. They tell me it’s for safety. They say sometimes an investigator thrashes around or goes into convulsions, but I’ve never seen it happen.
After they’ve got you strapped down tight, they start in with the electrodes and the wires and the monitors. I used to be able to tell you what all that shit is for—how each piece connects the investigator to the subject or monitors one thing or another—but that was back in school. And believe me, the theory’s got nothing on the practice.
The damn countdown always makes me tense up, gets my heart racing. They tell me that makes it worse, but what do they expect? The subject, lucky bastard, gets pumped full of all kinds of nice sleepy-time drugs. It keeps the guy calm and clears the terrain for me—it’s a lot harder to hide the truth when your conscious mind has been deactivated. I don’t have that luxury. The investigator has to be wide awake, sharp. Can’t overlook whatever evidence lurks in the shadows. And so I brace for the moment they blast me into the subject’s mind. It hurts. It feels like my entire body gets ripped apart into molecules and then reforged by some cosmic blacksmith pounding me back into shape on a red-hot anvil. How’s that for a work commute?
Hell, maybe I do thrash around.
But it’s the only way to get inside. And inside is where I do my job. Kurt Rhodes, investigator #844. Human lie detector.
Time: 14:07:42
Entry confirmed
Subject status: Blood pressure: 88/50. Pulse: 48. Relaxation stage: 4.3 of 5
Investigator status: Blood pressure: 140/88. Pulse: 156
Action: Hold. Recheck stats at 14:10:00
I’m in. The last of the pain subsides like water swirling down a drain. I take a few deep breaths to steady myself. Breathe…breathe… Take it easy, Rhodes. Breathe…
Time: 14:10:30
Subject status: Blood pressure: 88/52. Pulse: 44. Relaxation stage: 4.3 of 5
Investigator status: Blood pressure: 120/78. Pulse: 84
Action: Send commence signal
My smartwatch buzzes and lights up green. Time to do what I do.
I look around to get the lay of the land. Mindscapes are as different as the people who inhabit them. Some are organized and tidy, with a memory like a carefully curated museum or a giant filing cabinet. Others are chaotic, and looking for evidence is less like going after the proverbial needle in a haystack and more like trying to find that needle in a massive landfill crammed with rusty cars, rotting garbage, and toxic waste.
Lucky for me, today’s subject is the neat-and-tidy type, with a warehouse-style memory system. Shelves full of neatly arranged archival boxes stretch up to the ceiling and down a long aisle. Totally fits the profile, which is a good sign. Welcome to the mind of Clifford Farris, who stands accused of a string of thirteen killings stretching back over half a dozen years. It’s a strange case. There’s no obvious connection between victims—men, women, young, old, rich, poor, every skin color, ethnicity, and religion you can think of. But they were all killed in a frenzy of stabbing at six-month intervals. Every January, every July, another stabbing. And for no apparent reason. Strange for a guy with such a well-organized memory. But there’s something, somewhere in here, that will tie it all together. There has to be.
Farris’s profile shows him to be a planner, meticulous, and most likely a souvenir collector. The team hasn’t been able to find those souvenirs out in the physical world, so I’m in this warehouse rummaging around for clues. Until the day hell freezes over and the courts finally accept memory mining as admissible, it has to be paired with concrete evidence from the physical world. Doesn’t matter, though. What I find in here will lead us straight to what we need to put this son of a bitch away forever.
Assuming he did it, of course. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.
Farris claims not to remember anything about the dates in question. Any of them. We’ve got a couple of “fairly certain” eyewitnesses and some grainy video footage placing him near three of the crime scenes. No tracking data, though. The guy’s one of those neo-Luddite analogpunk dudes who refuses to carry any kind of comm device. He even wears a mechanical wind-up watch, an old-school chronometer that looks like a relic from the 20th century. That might make him a weirdo, but it doesn’t make him a killer.
Weirdo, yeah. But here’s what’s really weird. The guy brought himself to our attention, stumbling into the West L.A. station and demanding to be arrested. According to the report, he yelled that he was the killer and kept waving his arms around and screaming, “Don’t you know what time it is? Look at the time!” Then he passed out cold. When he woke up, he denied killing anybody. West L.A. made two referrals: they sent Farris to the psych ward and the video of his confession to homicide. The homicide analysts did an image search and came up with a couple of possible matches from surveillance vids. Farris, freshly sprung from the psych ward after a few days’ observation, kept denying everything, but when we got the warrant to search his mind he seemed almost relieved. You’d expect someone from the anti-tech crowd to lawyer up and try to make some bogus argument about privacy, but Farris didn’t go that route.
Time: 14:12:00
Request status report
My nudge to get to work. I speak into the microphone: “Memory system is archival. Subject relaxation level appears adequate. It’s quiet as a tomb in here.” I pause to appreciate the aptness of my simile. “Will update when I’ve got something.”
Status report received. Continue.
Behind me, the entry portal glows like a bonfire, throwing a weird yellow light and heating my back. I mark my current coordinates on my watch, then look around. Where to start? Farris must have one hell of a memory. Archival boxes are crammed onto shelves that stretch up farther than I can see, and I quit craning my neck before I injure myself. I peer at the nearest box. It’s labeled in thick black handwritten letters: Year: 2047; Month: May; Day: 27. Like I said, neat and tidy. Organized. If I’m lucky, all I’ll have to do is pull up the dates of the murders, peek into a few boxes, and get the hell out of here.
I doublecheck to make sure my location coordinates are correct. It’s way too easy to get lost in a place like this. Then I send a data request to the techs back in the lab.
Time: 14:12:16
Investigator request received
Action: Uploading data, case #22-417
My watch beeps and shows the information I requested. Thirteen lines, each with a name and a date. Thirteen victims, one every six months, give or take a few days. Where should I start? Is it true that you never forget your first kill? Or would the most recent be freshest in the mind? I decide to start with the latest murder, from six months ago, and I flick my finger on my watch screen to scroll to that entry. There. Kira Stone, 26 years old. Went out for a run in Griffith Park on January 3—part of her New Year’s resolution, I’d bet—and was found the next day with nearly a hundred stab wounds. Ninety-two, to be exact. What kind of a monster would do that?
I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know. All I need is some clues about where we can locate some physical evidence. The sooner I find those clues, the sooner I can get out of here.
The boxes are arranged by year, then month, then day. Typical for this memory type. I walk along the aisle, keeping my eyes on the dates. A stroll down memory lane. Except these aren’t my memories, and I’ve gotta steel myself to peek into the box of horrors I’m looking for.
Soon, I’m at the end of 2067. There’s Christmas; there’s New Year’s Eve. How did Farris spend that evening, I wonder. Is he a party guy, or is he the type to sit at home alone, perched on the edge of his bed and watching other people celebrate on TV? Can’t say I care. But maybe it’s worth a look to evaluate his state of mind in the days approaching the murder.
I grab the handle and slide the box from its shelf. It’s heavier than I expected, and I lose my grip. The box lands hard on my right foot. Damn, that hurts! The monitors in the lab must have picked up my reaction, because the yellow query light shows on my watch. Report status reads the screen, in letters big enough for me to read. “Status OK,” I dictate, “I dropped something on my foot.” I hit Send. I wait for a few seconds, then the light switches back to green. Exercise caution the screen advises. Yeah, thanks. Good idea.
“So, Mr. Farris,” I say to the box on the floor, “how did you ring in the new year?” I lift the lid.
For such a heavy box, there’s not much inside. A black-and-gold party hat with 2068 spelled out in glittering numbers. Some confetti. One of those things that unrolls and makes a noise when you blow on it—what the hell are those called? The inevitable tablet that stores a day’s images. It turns on when I pick it up, and I flick through the slide show. There’s the kitchen of Farris’s Silver Lake apartment. The bedroom. Both as neat as if nobody lives there. The television on, showing the Weather Channel. A dry-looking tuna sandwich—lunch? Dinner? Driving along one of the boulevards… Sunset, it looks like. Yeah, going east on Sunset into Hollywood. A heavy oak door with a smiling bouncer reaching for the handle, a gold sign next to it inscribed with the name Minos. Inside the nightclub, Scotch in a rocks glass. A crush of people all dressed in sparkly clothes. No individuals stand out, it’s all crowds. Farris may have gone out looking for a party, but he didn’t connect with anyone there.
I flick through the photos again to see if maybe he’d spotted the victim that night. Lots of sexy young women in short tight dresses—at least a dozen cleavage shots—but no Kira Stone. If Farris had seen her and decided to kill her, there would’ve been a poster-sized close-up. But nothing.
The last photo isn’t a photo at all but a video clip. It lasts for just a few seconds, watching the crowd as everyone counts down to midnight. Just a typical New Year’s Eve scene, like every other countdown happening in every other nightclub across the whole city.
The tablet is getting heavy. I lay it in the bottom of the box, then arrange the other memory artifacts as closely as I can to their original order. I unroll the cheap party favor by hand and watch it snap back into a coil. What are those things called?
Enough. I know what I’m doing. I’m just distracting myself before I have to face the inevitable.
I put the party favor away and fit the lid back on the box. I pick up Year: 2067; Month: December; Day: 31—lift with your legs, Rhodes, not your back—and slide it back into place on its shelf. I’m surprised how much my heart pounds from the exertion.
I check my watch. No query from the lab. I take a few deep breaths before the techs freak out over my blood pressure. I check again. The green light glows steadily. All systems go. Might as well stop stalling and see what Farris remembered of the day he—no, wait, someone. Gotta stay objective here. The day someone plunged a knife into Kira Stone over and over and over and on to 92 times.
Yeah, someone. And soon I’ll—
Wait.
There’s no box for January 3.
That’s odd. Subjects with the archival system of memory storage rarely misplace a box. And by “rarely” I mean “never.” A routine day might preserve only a few artifacts, but gone? And for a big day when he—sorry, when someone—committed a brutal murder that had been planned and anticipated for weeks?
Farris had told interviewers he didn’t remember. Maybe he wasn’t lying about that. Or maybe he was hiding those memories somewhere, like he was hiding the souvenirs that the profilers were sure he had.
I had a sinking feeling as I scrolled to the date of the previous murder. July 15, 2067. Guy named Hector Estrada, age 36. I retrace my steps to the July section. Damn it. There’s an empty slot where the 15th should be.
And on down the list: January 9, 2067; Jenna Hansen. July 9, 2066: Lee Nguyen. January 12, 2066: Thomas Gregory. All missing. Every single box. But I have to check each one. By the time I reach the date of the first murder, a 79-year-old retired schoolteacher named Hannah Murphy murdered in her own home on January 9, 2062—that day’s box also missing from the shelves—my mind is working to figure out where Farris had squirreled away those damn boxes. There’s got to be a memory vault somewhere. And Farris is keeping it hidden.
I hit the mic on my watch: “Subject relaxation level?”
In a moment, my answer flashes onto the screen: Relaxation level 4.5 of 5.
“Request enhanced relaxation.”
This time, it takes over a minute to get a reply. Request denied. Attending physician confirms maximum RL of 4.5.
Damn it! When I saw that Arnie Bisset was the anesthesiologist today, I knew something like this might happen. That guy is too damn careful. Even at 4.5, Farris must be aware enough to hide the memories he doesn’t want me to find. A little more happy juice, just enough to go up another tenth of a point on the scale, and I’d bet a year’s salary those boxes would reappear.
No point in arguing with the doc. And I can’t poke around in here forever. I take off down the aisle, keeping my eyes open for another room, a trapdoor, a switch or button—anything that might lead to the vault where Farris has stashed his deepest, darkest memories.
There’s nothing. Just endless metal shelves stacked with boxes. A little mental math, and I calculate that there are more than 16,000 boxes in this warehouse. No way I can go through them all.
Farris is guilty. It’s no coincidence that the memory box is missing for each and every date of each and every murder. But a blank memory isn’t evidence. All it does was corroborate what he’d said in every interview. If I can’t find something to make the case out in the physical world, Farris will walk free.
I pull out a random box: October 23, 2055. The box weighs practically nothing, and inside are the memories of a not-particularly-memorable day. A few colored leaves. An empty coffee mug. A handful of snapshots—not even enough visuals to store on a tablet. A sign that reads Welcome to Vermont: The Green Mountain State. A white church with a tall steeple. A clapboard house with a B&B sign out front. A hiking trail disappearing into the woods. Some vistas of rolling hills decked out in autumn colors. So Farris had gone leaf-peeping. Big deal. I’m wasting my time.
As I pick up the box to put it back on the shelf, I notice again how light it is. It doesn’t hold much more than the New Year’s Eve box. Why is that one so heavy?
I go back to the section that housed last December. My feet pound the cement floor, the footsteps echoing throughout the cavernous building. Along the way, I pause and pull out a few boxes that held the memories of other New Year’s eves. Not a single one of them weighs more than a pound or two.
There was more to December 31, 2067 than a few party favors and some ogling of young women. The weight of that tablet in my hand wasn’t because I’d been holding it for so long. Something was weighing on Farris’s memories of that date.
By the time I reach the box I was looking for, my heart’s pounding. My watch buzzes, requesting another damn status report.
“Fine. I’m fine. No evidence yet. Following a hunch.”
The box seems even heavier than I remember as I ease it out and set it on the floor. Inside, everything is as I left it. I push aside the party favors and grab the tablet. There’s something on here. There must be.
I scroll to the video and hit Play. Everything looks the same. The same loud dance music, the same sweaty bodies bouncing around in time. The flashing lights, the disco ball. A break in the music, then the hyped up, amplified voice booming, “Hey, everybody—what time is it? Time to count down to a brand new year! Get ready… Ten…”
The crowd starts counting in unison. There’s something…a feeling, a mood, that takes hold. The swirling lights dim just a little and there’s a momentary blip, like a skipped heartbeat. I pause the video and back up to play it at a slower speed.
The music stops. Everything looks the same but slower, like the same scene playing out underwater. Words crawl out in the DJ’s eerily deepened voice: “Heeey…everyboooody.” Still no blip. “Whaaat…tiiime…” The lights get a bit dimmer. “…issss iiit?” A misty darkness creeps over the screen. And then, a skip in the playback.
I back it up again and slow the video even more. Even at this speed, it happens almost too quick to see. But it’s there. When the DJ shouted out his question, Farris had glanced at his chronometer. I replay that moment in the slowest possible mode, frame by frame. When the image of the chronometer flashes onto the screen, I stop the video. The tablet feels like it just gained ten kilos. I zoom in on Farris’s chronometer: a blue face with gold hands and four smaller dials set into it at north, south, east, and west. How the hell am I supposed to read that thing, all those dials, all those thin gold hands pointing every which way?
I set the tablet on the floor and snap a photo with my watch.
“Analysis required,” I say and send the query and the photo to the lab.
In two seconds I get my answer. Time: 5:39. Date: Tuesday, January 3. Moon phase: Waning crescent.
In the final seconds before midnight on the last day of 2067, Farris’s chronometer showed the date and time of Kira Stone’s murder.
I pick up the tablet again. It’s as heavy as a concrete block.
I restart the video, playing it slowly but not at crawl speed. The view pans across the crowd as the countdown continues.
Five!… A man adjusts his party hat as the woman beside him reaches for her champagne glass. Kira Stone? The image isn’t sharp enough to tell, but this woman looks too short.
Four!… Another man puts his arm around a blonde in a sparkly silver dress. Stone was a brunette.
Three!… Someone steps into the frame and blows a party horn. At this speed, it sounds like a foghorn.
Two!…The crowd is a blur. I can’t make out a single face as partygoers raise their glasses.
One!… Pain sears my hands as the tablet flashes blistering hot. Thick, choking smoke billows out. I let go and it crashes down, so heavy its landing shakes the floor. The screen goes dark.
I blow on my hands, shake them hard to shed the pain. What the hell just happened? It was like the memory self-destructed. Something had gone on at midnight that Farris didn’t want anyone to see. Maybe not even himself.
The tablet has stopped smoking. I reach down and pick it up. Light as a feather now, but still warm. A network of cracks makes the screen look like the map of some ancient city. I press the power button. Nothing. I try again. Still nope. I press every button on the damn thing and shake it hard.
“Show me, damn you! What happened at midnight?”
The tablet stays dark. I put it on the shelf while I think.
Midnight. Start of the new year, but also a new day. And a new day means a new box of archived memories. I set the tablet aside and grab the box for January 1. I tug hard, expecting another heavy load, but this one slides off the shelf like it holds nothing at all.
And it doesn’t. The box for New Year’s Day, two days before Kira Stone’s murder, is empty. Like he’s got no memories whatsoever of that day.
That can’t be right. Every day, no matter how long ago or inconsequential, retains something. You might forget a memory that’s buried away, but it’s in there. When someone says, “Remember that time when we…” you can dig through your memories and there it is. You might not have thought of it in years. You might never have pulled up that memory on your own. The artifact may be dusty, but it’s there. Unless you were in a coma or something. And Clifford Farris hadn’t been in a coma.
I check January 2. Same thing. Empty. And of course January 3 isn’t there at all.
I put the useless boxes back in their places. Now what?
The cracked tablet sits on the shelf where I set it down. Just for the hell of it I press the power button. The screen lights up. The first memory of Farris’s day appears on the cracked screen.
I go through the photos, one by one. This time, I pay less attention to the images and more to how the tablet feels in my hand. The memories don’t start to take on weight until Farris arrives at Minos, after he got his Scotch and positioned himself at the edge of the dance floor to stare at the crowd. I’m not going to let the tablet get away from me. I set it on the floor and crouch over it as the timeline nears midnight.
Nothing in the images stands out. It’s what you’d expect from the viewpoint of a lonely guy feeling like he ought to find some fun on New Year’s Eve. A little pathetic, but that’s all. Nothing happens until the last few seconds of the video.
I play the video again, slowly. What strikes me is how out-of-focus the crowd is. Was Farris drunk? Drunk enough to black out a whole day—no, two? The images don’t swoop and slide the way they do through a drunk’s eyes. The crowd is blurry, I realize, because Farris was staring past it, focused on a blank spot in the back wall.
Wait. Not a blank spot. Faint lines form a rectangle, about six feet high by three feet wide, like a door flush with the wall. As the seconds count down, the lines become more distinct.
I minimize the video and return to the photos. In these, Farris watched the crowd: faces, boobs, shiny blonde hair, the occasional well-shaped ass. But as far as I can tell, there’s no door in that wall.
Back to the video. I play it at the slowest speed, starting with the single frame where Farris checked his chronometer. I zoom in to the back wall. Six…five… It’s there, an outline. Each frame defines it a bit more. Four… The tablet grows warmer, and I don’t think it’ll survive another blowup. Three… How far can I get? Two…
There. In the space between the last two seconds of the year, a light appears around the rectangle, like a door that’s cracked open.
I stop the playback and zoom in. Definitely a door.
“Where did you come from?” I mutter. And—more important—what lay on the other side?
I touch the screen.
A hundred lightning bolts blast from the tablet. I can’t see, I can’t hear past the roaring in my ears. My body jolts and buzzes like I grabbed a high-voltage wire. Everything goes black.
Time: 14:32:10
Action: Send status request
Time: 14:32:30
No reply
Action: Resend request in 30 seconds
Time: 14:33:00
Action: Send status request
Time: 14:33:20
No reply
Action: Resend request in 30 seconds
When I come to, the first thing I do is check my watch. To my amazement, it’s functioning, and it tells me I was out for not much more than a minute. Even more amazing is the absence of status requests. Getting fried should have sent the monitors crazy out in the lab, but I feel good. Surprisingly good. No pain anywhere, and my pulse is as calm as if I just woke up from a pleasant dream.
I climb to my feet. The cavernous warehouse is gone. I’m standing on plush carpet in a small, dim room. In front of me, a spotlight shines straight down, illuminating a glass display case. As I move closer, I can see the case holds about a dozen wrist chronometers, lined up in a row, each tucked into a slot in the purple velvet lining. The chronometers appear to be various specimens of late 20th-century style: straps made of leather or metal, big round faces in a range of colors: silver, black, gray, white, blue. They fill maybe half the case, with empty slots waiting for more.
I bend over the case. The chronometer on the right, the last one before the empty slots, is the one from Farris’s memory video: gold and cobalt blue with all those crazy dials. I bring up the photo I’d snapped. Yes, it’s the same. All of the pointers are in the same positions.
I look at the next chronometer to the left. This one has an iridescent face, mother of pearl maybe, and a brown leather strap. I can’t read the time, but on this one the date is clear because it shows in two tiny windows: One reads jul and the other 15. The date Hector Estrada was killed.
I count the chronometers: 13 of them, each in a different style. To the extent I can read them, each matches up with a murder. I turn on my video recorder and go slowly along the row, making sure I get a long, clear shot of each, then continue on to the empty slots on the right.
“Memory vault breached,” I say. “Sending video. Not sure how I got here, but this is the place. Continuing search for physical evidence.” I cut off the transmission.
Although the chronometers make a beautiful display that points to Farris’s guilt, the video won’t stand up in court. What I need to do—
My watch beeps. Transmission failed.
Crap. Well, sometimes communication falters deep in a memory vault. What I need to do is find what Farris is keeping hidden. As soon as the secret it holds is exposed, the vault bursts wide open. I’m not worried. Yet.
Beyond the spotlight the room is pitch dark. I shade my eyes but can’t penetrate that blackness. I walk around the display case and peer into the darkness. Can’t see a damn thing. I try the flashlight on my watch, but the beam gets swallowed up as soon as it leaves its source. There’s nothing to do but walk forward. Each step is a cautious shuffle, my arms stretched in front of me. It’s like being in a thick fog on a moonless night. The darkness is icy cold. It swirls. It pulls me forward and blocks my way at the same time. I have to push through it even as it creeps inside me through my nose, my mouth, my pores.
Maybe stepping into this mist wasn’t the smartest idea, but I can’t go back now—not even if I want to. I don’t know where “back” is. I have to believe that this is the darkness that shrouds Farris’s deepest memories, the ones he needs to hide from himself. Only getting through it will give me what I’m looking for.
After what seems like miles, the darkness begins to lighten. It doesn’t press on me as heavily; I feel like my lungs are getting some air. I stop. Not to get my bearings—that’s impossible—but to gauge the change.
It continues, even though I’m not moving. The misty dark is breaking up. A cool breeze touches my skin and thins the black tendrils. A grayish light breaks in. Waving an arm in front of my face, I lean forward as shapes begin to define themselves.
A table. Beside that, a figure seated in a chair.
More mist swirls away. The figure is a woman, young, with gleaming blonde hair and a DDD chest. Behind her, the wall is covered with framed items—a necklace, a hank of hair, a shoe, a bloody T-shirt. Farris’s souvenirs.
I turn my attention back to the woman. She’s wearing a white silky dress that looks like a half-open bathrobe. Nice legs. She regards me with a smile that’s half temptation and half scorn. I guess that this is Farris’s mother—his mind’s distorted version of her. He’d probably spied on her while she was taking a bath or doing it with his father and got scarred for life. That’s how he’d see it, anyway.
“Your theory is not very original.” Her smile tilts toward pure scorn. “As well as completely inaccurate.”
What else would she say? She’s not real. She’s Farris’s rationalization for his murderous behavior.
“Not merely inaccurate but also incorrect,” she says, and I realize she’s replying to words I haven’t said out loud. That shouldn’t happen. In dreams, sure, but not in mind mining. Was this place real? Or was I inside my own dream? What if I was still knocked out from the tablet exploding?
“What if? What if?” Her tone is mocking. “So many possibilities. And yet you’re still incorrect.”
I decide to ignore her. Farris has invented this figure to serve as some sort of guardian of these memories, so whatever she says is calculated to disguise the ugly truth of what he’s done. I walk past her to inspect the souvenirs that decorate the wall. Each is in a fancy gold frame, labeled at the bottom like a painting in a museum. I lean in to look at a single running shoe, speckled with rusty red spots. It’s labeled Kira Stone, 17:39, 3 January 2068.
I press the record button on my watch. I get video of the whole wall. Each victim is represented, of course. The slashed, blood-soaked T-shirt had belonged to Hector Estrada. There’s Jenna Hansen’s pearl earring, Thomas Gregory’s fingernail, a gold tooth from Lee Nguyen. A random assortment of objects, as random as the victims Farris selected. I record them all. Now all we have to do is find out where he stashed them.
“They’re in a storage unit on La Cienega Avenue.” I haven’t forgotten the woman in the chair. Her presence is too unsettling. But I’m still surprised when she speaks. I turn to her, my recorder still on. “Mr. Farris rents it under the name Joe Clifford. With all of the surveillance resources police have today, I’m surprised you haven’t discovered it yet.”
I speak into my watch in case it doesn’t pick up this figment of Farris’s imagination. “Check out storage facilities on La Cienega. Look for a unit registered to Joseph Clifford.” I don’t like how the woman is looking at me, the way my cat does when I open a can of cat food. “Use caution. Could be booby-trapped.”
My watch beeps. Transmission failed.
“There’s no trap,” the woman says, crossing her legs. “But by all means check it out. I’m done with Mr. Farris.”
Something doesn’t feel right. This figment should be protecting Farris. But he did try to give himself up. If she represents some kind of mental tug-of-war between sin and absolution—luscious body, white robe—she might have useful information. Worth a try.
“So tell me. Why these victims? What’s the connection?”
“They’re not victims. They’re sacrifices. The connection is that I required them.”
I can see I’m wasting my time. I’m stuck in some twisted part of Farris’s mind and his reasons are never going to make sense outside of this vault. It’s always nice to get motivation, but in this case the physical evidence will be plenty to put Farris away. If she’s telling the truth.
“Don’t worry. All of this will make sense.”
“Now you’re the one who’s incorrect.” I start looking for the door out of here. Behind me, the black mist is gone, replaced by a blank wall. Panic surges as I look around the room. Four solid walls. No door. There has to be a door. Once you’ve found your way into a memory vault, there’s always a way out.
“Quite a puzzle, isn’t it? Your problem is that you believe you’re still inside Mr. Farris’s mind.”
I ignore her as I feel along the wall, fingers searching for the slightest crack.
She keeps talking. “You won’t find it that way. You’re not looking for the right door.” Her laugh is as cold and as sharp as icicles. “The door to hell is one you don’t realize you’ve walked through until—”
She cuts herself off and just sits there, smiling her nasty smile. She’s waiting. I want to keep ignoring her, but I can’t help myself. “Until when?”
“Until it’s too late.” She sits back, looking pleased, like she’s won a tricky point in a debate.
I snort. “Where’d you get that from, a fortune cookie?” I tune her out again and try to remember how I got in here. The black mist…but before that. The room with the chronometers on display. Farris’s New Year’s Eve memory—the door that appeared in the blank wall and then cracked open. I start counting down, shouting each number: “Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!” Nothing. Surely the outline should be appearing by now.
“You’re starting at the wrong place.” The amusement in her voice makes me want to turn around and strangle her. I don’t want to listen, but she’s right. That blip in the video—it came before the countdown began. When was it? I should know, I’d watched the video so damn many times.
I concentrate. The music stopped. The DJ spoke. What did he say? It was a question. I remember now, and I shout it as loud as I can. “What time is it?”
Behind me, a calm female voice: “Time for you to leave.”
When I open my eyes, I’m lying on a concrete floor, pieces of exploded tablet all over me. Something is beeping. It sounds like a truck backing up but in double time. How long have I been out? I lift my arm to check my watch, and I realize that’s where the beeping is coming from. Status requests are scrolling down the screen at ten miles a minute.
I feel around my head, my torso, my limbs. No blood, nothing broken. “I’m okay. Now,” I say into the mic.
The response is immediate. Return to portal STAT!!!
Something’s wrong. I climb to my feet, feeling dizzy as shards of plastic and glass drop away. I pull up the coordinates, but the frantic beeping starts again. I find my direction and run. The portal shimmers at the end of the aisle. It flickers, then blinks off and back on. I put everything I’ve got into reaching it. The portal goes dark again. Don’t go out now, I’m almost there. It comes back, but fainter. I hurl myself at the unsteady light.
Time: 14:40:26
Subject status: Blood pressure: 0/0. Pulse: 0. Relaxation stage: N/A.
Investigator status: Blood pressure: 140/90. Pulse: 184.
I can’t move. “Somebody get these damn straps off me!”
No one pays any attention. All of the techs are gathered around Farris on the next table. I can barely turn my head enough to see what’s going on. “Three…two…one. Clear!” Farris’s body jumps in its restraints. There’s a pause, like everyone’s holding their breath.
I hold mine, too, willing my pulse to quit galloping.
“Damn,” someone says. “He’s gone.”
“Oh man, oh man.” It’s Dr. Bisset’s voice. “This is gonna send my insurance rates through the roof.”
“Hey!” I shout. “I’m still here. Let me up.”
Fingers loosen my left wrist restraint. A face appears over me. Susan, one of the lab techs. “Hell, Kurt, you barely got out of there.” She works the buckles on the other straps and helps me sit up. “Another two seconds, Doc Bisset would be crying twice as hard about his insurance.”
The anesthesiologist isn’t crying, but he sits beside Farris’s motionless body, rubbing his own jaw like he’s trying to erase the stubble. “Oh, man,” he mutters.
Too bad for him. At least I made it out. And I’d gotten what I went in for.
“I had some communication trouble in there. Did the video come through?”
Susan shakes her head. “Nope, no video.” She consults a tablet. “We got a still image of a chronometer at 14:27, before we lost contact. Then nothing until we reestablished contact at 14:38.”
I look through the files on my watch but don’t see a recording. So I give the watch to Susan so one of the analysts can look. As I do, I tell her about the storage unit on La Cienega registered to Joe Clifford.
“We’ll check it out,” she says. “Not sure how much it matters, though.” We both glance over at Farris. Someone has already covered him with a sheet. Dr. Bisset is gone, probably to call his insurance agent.
“It’s always good to tie up loose ends,” I say. “Restores a sense of security to the population.”
“It is July. People will calm down and stop expecting another stabbing in the next few days.”
I head to the locker room to change back into my street clothes and Susan goes the other way with my watch. “Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to scan,” she says over her shoulder. “I’ll have it for you by the time you’re done changing.”
“Make sure you do.” My wrist feels naked without it. No, not naked. More like I’ve lost a limb.
Susan is true to her word. Ten minutes later, as I push open the locker room door, she’s waiting across the hall. She holds out my watch.
“Any luck?”
She shakes her head. “There are a couple of video files from the time you were inside, but both are corrupted. Cheer up, though. Dispatch sent a team to the storage facility and they’re finding all kinds of goodies out there. We were right about Farris collecting souvenirs.”
Good. I’m more than ready for this case to be closed. I reach for my watch, and Susan whistles.
“Look at you, going all retro. My grandfather had one of those.”
What is she talking about? I go to put on my watch, but there’s something in the way. Strapped around my left wrist is a chronometer, with a big round face and four inset dials. I don’t know how it got there. I’ve never seen it before.
I tug at the black leather strap, but it doesn’t give.
Susan keeps chattering at me. “Hey, I thought you couldn’t read analog.”
“I can’t.” Why won’t the damn buckle let go?
She leans toward me. “Looks complicated. So tell me, what time is it?”
A jolt hits me, and suddenly all of those pointers and dials make perfect sense. But they’re not showing the current time. The chronometer shows 11:04 on July 7. Tomorrow.
She’d said I’d understand, and I do.
“Susan, help me,” I try to say, but different words come out of my mouth: “The time is set.”
“Oh, you mean it’s stuck?” She steps back. “Well, it’s a beautiful piece of jewelry.” She wanders off down the hallway toward the lab.
The time is set. I understand.
There’s no need to scan the wall for a door. I’ve already walked through it.
I quit fumbling with the strap and my arm drops to my side. I understand. This chronometer will never come off. Not until it’s time.