27
Knox drove slowly down the treelined street, his head swiveling. He already had his cell phone in his hand and he keyed it. “Get me the registration on this license plate.” He recited the number, then said, “ASAP.”
To Nikita he said, “Take a look at that car, the dark green one. Is that the one you saw last night?”
She gave it a quick look, but she didn’t need to do that. “No, the one last night was a light color, either pale gray or white.”
“That would be Ruth’s car, then.”
“What’s wrong with the dark green car?”
“So far as I know, it doesn’t belong to anyone on this street.”
She wasn’t surprised that he would recognize all his neighbors’ cars. Cops simply
noticed
things. Without thinking about it, they registered clothing, body language, their surroundings. If she and Knox had been driving down a busy freeway, he could probably have described every vehicle he’d passed in the last five minutes, plus all the vehicles around him, and some of the ones on the other side of the freeway. Working the streets developed that kind of hyperawareness. She had a form of it herself, not so much when it came to vehicles, but in analyzing evidence and reports. She knew what rang false, and what was important.
Law enforcement in her time relied too much on technology, she thought. Traffic was monitored by cameras almost everywhere, except for the long, empty stretches of highway out west; as a consequence, she didn’t know a single cop in her time who really paid attention to traffic. They still noticed people, could expertly read body language, but part of their vigilance had been abandoned to the unblinking cameras.
Mankind had to learn the same lessons over and over; many battles in the decades-long war with terrorists in this century had been waged in cyberspace. Information and communication satellites had been targeted, not with missiles, but with spammers, jammers, and technoviruses. Secure defense sites had been hacked. When the computer networks went down, commerce had been first disrupted, then shut down. Having great technology was wonderful; completely relying on it was stupid.
Knox’s cell phone beeped and a woman’s voice said, “That license plate is registered to Enterprise.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Enterprise was the name of the rental agency where Nikita had gotten her car. “It’s a rental?” she asked.
“Yeah, and I’m going to find out who rented it.”
Nikita sighed. She didn’t think she would be having breakfast soon, after all. On the other hand, something was disturbing Knox, and she had just been thinking how his instincts were probably much sharper than those of law enforcement officers in her time, so it followed that she should pay attention to those instincts. Probably one of his neighbors had guests or a family vehicle was in the shop, but it had to be investigated.
Not to her surprise, the rental office he went to was the same one where she had rented her car; it must be the only one in town, she thought. A town as small as Pekesville, without a commercial airport, wouldn’t do a booming business in car rentals. The neat single-story building was of yellow brick, with a halfhearted stab at landscaping in the form of some sort of bush planted on each side of the door. The small parking area in front was shaded by large trees, while a fenced area in back held the vehicles available for rental. Unfortunately, from what she could see, the back lot was empty.
Knox pulled off his sunglasses as they went inside, and Nikita did the same, hooking one of the earpieces in the neck of her T-shirt.
“Hey, Dylan,” he said to the diligent young man behind the chest-high counter. “Troy around?”
“He’s in the back, Mr. Davis. Want me to get him?” Dylan gave a quick glance at Nikita, then another one. She smiled at him, and he flushed as he looked away.
“Yeah, I got a question I think he can help me with.” Knox leaned on the counter, all lazy grace. “Won’t take but a minute.”
Dylan disappeared through a door. Nikita leaned against the counter beside Knox. “You know him, obviously.”
“Yeah, I busted his ass for smoking pot back when he was twelve or thirteen. Scared the shit out of him. Never had any more trouble with him, either.”
“Good job,” she said, patting his ass in appreciation.
One eyebrow hiked up as he gave her one of those long, blue looks of his. “You keep doing that. You fixated on my ass, or something?”
“It’s a fine ass,” she murmured, because she could hear Dylan returning. She propped both arms on the counter, the picture of decorum.
Dylan was followed by a stocky man who was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and a tie, and drying his hands and arms with a towel. “I was cleaning up one of the cars,” he explained, making Nikita wonder why the manager was evidently doing menial labor, but maybe he was the sort of person who preferred doing things outside rather than sitting at a desk. “Dylan said you have a question. Come on back to my office and I’ll see if I can help you.”
It couldn’t be that easy, Nikita thought as she and Knox followed Troy back to his office. In her time, not one shred of information or evidence was given without the proper authorization. No matter how insignificant, no matter if a cop was talking to a member of his own family, everything had to be authorized.
“Tina, this is Troy Almond. We were in school together. Troy, Tina.”
If Troy noticed that Knox had omitted her last name, he gave no indication, smiling and saying, “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” and waiting until she extended her hand before he extended his to take it. In her time, no one shook hands anymore; that practice had died out during the great viral pandemics that had killed so many millions of people. She had read about the practice, though, and read that polite men didn’t initiate a handshake with a woman; they waited until she initiated it, because she might not feel comfortable shaking hands. It was the pheromone-transference issue, she thought, that instinctively made some women wary about even casually touching men they didn’t know.
Troy sat down behind his desk, and Knox and Nikita took the other two seats in the tiny space. He said to Knox, “What can I do you for, bud?”
Nikita blinked. She was certain the individual words were English, but once again she was left at sea. Knox, however, had no such problem.
“I’ve got the tag number of one of your cars; might have come from here, might be another location. I need to know who rented it.”
“Knox, you know I can’t give out that kind of information without a warrant,” Troy protested.
Knox rubbed his jaw. “Well, I can go get a warrant; I just thought I’d save some time. It’s a lead I got on these murders.”
Troy gulped. “You think I rented one of my cars to a murderer? A murderer was in here?”
“I have to say it’s possible. I just need a name—and the driver’s license number. Right now I don’t need to see the paperwork, though if this tip plays out, I’m sure a warrant will be coming through to cover your ass.”
“Shit, I can’t believe that,” Troy said in disbelief. “Sorry, ma’am. A murderer!”
“I don’t know that for sure; it’s just a lead,” Knox said patiently.
“Shit, Knox, I know you and how you are. Sorry, ma’am. If you’re chasing something like this down, you’re pretty fu—certain you have something. Sorry, ma’am. Okay, I’ll see what the computer says.”
Troy swiveled his chair around to peck at the keyboard and pull up a program on his computer. “What’s the number?” he asked, and Knox recited the license plate number while Troy tapped it into the program. He hit the enter key, and waited. Another screen popped up, and he said, “I don’t recognize the name. Dylan must have handled it.”
“Who is it?”
“A Byron Hughes. California driver’s license.” He read off the driver’s license number and Knox copied it down.
“Thanks, buddy, that’s what I needed to know,” Knox said, and clapped Troy on the shoulder. “Now, what do you have available? Tina needs some wheels.”
“Nothing right now,” Troy said regretfully. “One is scheduled to be turned in late this afternoon, but that’ll be the earliest I’ll have anything.”
“Can you give me a call when it comes in?” he asked, scribbling a number on a blank pad of paper.
“Sure thing. Uh—I won’t say anything about what you asked.”
“Appreciate it.”
“It’s too big a coincidence,” Nikita said as they got back into Knox’s car. “Hugh Byron, Byron Hughes.”
“Yeah,” Knox said grimly. “And he was sitting right outside my house.”
“He knows I’m there.” Nikita stared through the windshield. “Drop me off at the next corner. If I’m with you, you’re in danger.” Her voice was calm and flat. The chase was on, and she could feel every particle in her beginning to focus, concentrating on the task at hand. Hugh might know where she was, but now she knew where
he
was, or at least where he’d been. And if he’d been watching Knox’s house before, he would do it again, waiting for a clean shot at her. But she knew what his car looked like, and he didn’t know she knew. The advantage was hers, and in fact, she had a better chance of taking him if she was on foot.
“I’m not dropping you anywhere.” He shot a furious look at her. “Don’t even suggest it.”
“I just did, so isn’t it too late to tell me that?”
“Don’t suggest it again, then. I have to get you somewhere safe—”
“Excuse me,” she said gently. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“This is my job. Apprehending him is why I’m here.”
He looked blank for a moment; then he said, “Fuck.” He drove in silence for a couple of blocks before he added, “This sucks.”
From the frustration in his tone, she deduced he had indeed forgotten why she was there and he’d simply been reacting with the protectiveness men were prone to exhibit. She reached over and patted his leg in sympathy. It was difficult when instinct warred with custom. That was why agents married to each other were never allowed to work in the same division.
Once he recovered from the shock of realizing he couldn’t simply stash her somewhere and that, tactically, she would have greater insight into Hugh’s probable actions than he would, he said, “Okay, we know what he’s driving. I should have stopped when I saw the car; he might have been lying down in the seat to hide as we drove by. What’s most likely to be his next move?”
“Be glad you didn’t stop,” Nikita said, her blood running cold at the thought of what could have happened. “You’ve seen what a laser can do. He wouldn’t have been there unarmed.”
“I’m surprised he was there himself. I’d have expected him to send his cohort, whoever that is.” He narrowed his eyes. “That shot could have been intended to sidetrack you, and hamper your investigation, which is exactly what it’s done. In the meantime, he’s been free to search for the information.”
She mentally examined the premise and nodded. If hampering her had been his intention, that one shot had certainly worked. She had been forced into hiding, unable to operate in her true role as an FBI agent, because she hadn’t known whom she could trust, other than Knox. If the shot had actually killed her, so much the better, because then Hugh would have a clear field for at least a month before SAR was sent for her.
Abruptly the details jarred, as if something didn’t fit. She rubbed her forehead, as if she could massage her thoughts into place. That didn’t explain Luttrell. Why had Luttrell been sent here, evidently with instructions to kill her? McElroy couldn’t know what was going on here, because Hugh had no way of communicating with him while they were in different times. Probably they had planned to kill whoever had been sent, but how had McElroy known the effort had failed?
Perhaps Luttrell had been part of the plot, whatever it was. At this point she didn’t care why they were doing this; she only wanted to stop them. She’d find out the why of it later. Maybe Luttrell had been insurance, sent to aid Hugh, and it had been his bad luck to transition almost literally on top of her. That would explain his immediate reaction, which was to try to kill her.
This scenario made sense to her, and in a way it was comforting, because that meant she hadn’t killed an innocent man. Luttrell’s death had been weighing on her, even though she’d had no choice.
It made sense that Luttrell wouldn’t transition at the same time Hugh had. If they waited, sent the third conspirator back later, then he could carry messages and report any worrisome developments. But if that were so, then they would have agreed on some means of establishing contact. Hugh must be worried that Luttrell hadn’t yet appeared.
“What?” Knox demanded, as if he could hear her thinking.
“Luttrell must have been part of it,” she said, and explained her reasoning.
Knox nodded, considering. “Makes sense. And since Luttrell didn’t show, Hugh will be getting a bit anxious. He wants you out of the picture. But won’t he realize you’ll have confided in me?”
“No, he shouldn’t. So far as I know, you’re the first person in the past who has ever been told.”
A pleased look spread over his face. “I’m the first, huh? Cool.”
“I wouldn’t have told
you
if you hadn’t been about to arrest me,” Nikita pointed out.
“About to, nothing; I did arrest you. I just let you go without pressing charges.”
He pulled into a drive-through restaurant. “We’ll pick up a couple of biscuits and cups of coffee, and go talk to some people about Howard Easley. We’re looking for the same thing that Hugh is looking for, but we’re ahead of him, so we have the advantage. We don’t want to blunder where he’s concerned, since he has a laser weapon, too, as you so kindly pointed out. We need a plan.”
28
“Course I remember when Coach Easley killed himself,” Max Browning growled. Nikita thought that must be his normal method of speaking. He even looked like some peculiar breed of dog, with his bulldog jowls, bushy eyebrows, and humped shoulders. “I covered the story. January 1, 1985. Cold as a witch’s titty. Sorry, ma’am.”
“There wasn’t any sort of suicide note, as I remember.”
Max Browning leaned back in his chair. They were at his house, in a tiny, cluttered office that was closed off from the rest of the house by a pair of folding doors. His wife, white-haired and neat as a pin, had shown them in, then went off to put on a pot of coffee, just in case they weren’t sufficiently wired for the day. Knox and Nikita sat side by side on a couch that sagged dangerously in the middle, throwing them together and threatening a complete collapse.
“No, no note of any kind. There was no sign of foul play, nothing indicating a struggle. I talked to him that night,” Max said, and heaved a sigh. “Before he did it. Remember when the time capsule was buried?”
“Vividly,” Knox said in a wry tone.
“You said you’d counted them putting in thirteen things, but the newspaper said only twelve things were supposed to go in. I went back and checked, and there were seven itemized out of the twelve.”
“Yeah, I know; we checked, too.”
“Well, I was standing fairly close; had to, so I could take pictures. But I was busy doing my job, so I didn’t take note of each and every thing put in the box. You had me curious, so that night I called the coach and asked him if he remembered what all had been put in. He said no, he’d just been there to provide the muscle and he never listened to the mayor’s speeches if he could help it, so he’d been thinking about some new plays he could put in the offense come spring training.”
“Do you remember what time you called?”
“Sure. Right before the last bowl game came on at—what? Eight o’clock, maybe? It’s been twenty years. But it was before the bowl game.”
“He’s thinking about new plays for spring training; then four hours later he hangs himself?” What had happened in those four hours, to cause that drastic a change?
“Some people are good at hiding their feelings, I guess. He was divorced, unhappy; it happens.”
“I heard he and his ex-wife were trying to patch things up.”
“Yeah, I heard that, too, but things must not have been working out. I remember she came to his funeral, cried her eyes out. Pissed me off. Sorry, ma’am. If she cared that much about him, looks like she could have given the poor bastard some hope—sorry, ma’am.”
First Troy, now Max Browning. Why was everyone apologizing to her? Nikita wondered. She shifted restlessly, but a quick glance from Knox told her he’d explain later. She wondered when he’d started reading her mind—and when she’d started reading his.
“Anyway”—Max shook his head—“hell of a way to start out a new year.”
“Did you ever ask anyone else what the other things were that were put into the time capsule?”
“Had more important stories to cover. Coach’s suicide put it right out of my mind.”
“Did Coach Easley have any kin around here that you remember?” Knox leaned back, his entire attitude saying that he wasn’t in any hurry, had nothing urgent to do. Nikita had to lean back, too, or the sagging couch would have pitched her into his lap.
“Don’t think so. They moved here from Cincinnati when he was hired.”
“Were you good friends with him?”
“Good enough, I thought. If I needed a story, he’d always make time to sit down and talk to me. We weren’t drinking buddies, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Did he have a drinking buddy? Did he have a drinking
problem
?”
“He’d have an occasional beer, as I remember. Not a heavy drinker at all.”
“What about friends?”
“Well, let’s see. He was closest to the principal . . . What was his name?”
“Dale Chantrell.”
“That’s right. Dale Chantrell. Haven’t thought of him in a coon’s age. He moved on to a school near Louisville. He and his wife, Arah Jean—if you ever saw her, you’d know why I remember her name and not his—were good friends with Howard and Lynn. Lynn was Howard’s ex-wife.”
Mrs. Browning entered the cramped little office then with a silver platter laden with an insulated carafe of coffee, three cups and saucers, a little pitcher of cream, and a choice of sweeteners—one of which was real sugar. She set the platter on a stack of papers on Max’s desk. “Howard and Dale were good friends,” she said serenely. “Lynn hated Arah Jean’s guts.”
“Thank you,” Knox said, meaning the coffee. “Why did Mrs. Easley hate Mrs. Chantrell?”
“Like Max said, if you ever saw Arah Jean, you’d understand. She was one of those good-looking women who can’t help but flaunt it. Everything she wore was just a shade too tight, or too short, or too low-cut. Too much lipstick, too much mascara. That kind of woman.”
“Had plenty to flaunt, too,” Max said, and his wife smacked him on the arm. “Well, she did!”
“I never said she didn’t. I smacked you because, while I don’t expect you to go blind whenever a good-looking woman shoves a set of 38D knockers under your nose, I
do
expect you to act like you have,” Mrs. Browning said with considerable asperity.
Max grinned at his wife, clearly pleased she could still work up some jealousy on his account.
“Thirty-eight-D, huh?” asked Knox.
Because it seemed the thing to do, Nikita smacked his arm. Hard.
“That’ll teach you,” Max chortled, laughing at Knox’s surprised expression. Mrs. Browning was smiling as she left.
“I’m just glad it was my arm and not my jaw,” Knox said. “Do you think there was anything”—he rocked his right hand back and forth—“going on between Coach Easley and Arah Jean?”
“Naw, she was like that with everything in britches. Nothing personal. I doubt Arah Jean cheated; she was too smart for that. And Lynn wasn’t the type of woman to put up with something like that going on right under her nose; she’d have taken a horse whip to both of them. They were polite to each other because Howard and Dale were such good friends, but polite is all they were.”
“Do you know where Lynn lives now?”
“Can’t say as I do. Haven’t seen or heard of her since the funeral. Now, if you could find Dale Chantrell, he might could tell you. Or maybe Edie Proctor.”
“Edie Proctor,” Knox said. “She was school superintendent back then.”
“That’s right. She’s the one who hired Howard for the job. The board of education should still have his application somewhere, though if it’s like all those other old paper records, they’re boxed up in a basement somewhere. His application would probably list next of kin, but that would be Lynn, and you already know that.” Max paused. “So. You gonna tell me why you’re so interested in Howard Easley, after all these years?”
“It’s part of our investigation into Taylor Allen’s murder,” Knox said smoothly. “I can’t go into details; you know that. It’s just a thread I’m pulling on.”
“Uh-huh,” said Max. “In other words, you’re not saying. Okay, I understand. But when you figure out what’s going on, I get the story. You better not call anyone else.”
“It’s a deal. By the way, do you know if Howard had any hobbies?”
“He was a football coach; he didn’t have time for hobbies.”
“Model airplanes,” said Mrs. Browning as she breezed past the open door.
Knox turned to look at her. “Model airplanes?”
“That’s right,” Max answered, “I remember now. He built them in his garage. He built little motors for them, and radio-signal controls. Damndest thing you ever saw, back then. He’d get out in the field behind his house and fly those little airplanes. Crashed a few of them, too. What spare time he had, he was always fiddling with those things. He and some buddy he went to college with had this ongoing thing, to see what all they could come up with.”
“What happened to his stuff when he died? Did Lynn get it?”
“Now, that I don’t remember. The house stood empty for a while; then someone moved into it, lived there for a couple of years. It was empty off and on for about ten years; then finally it got in such bad shape no one would live there. It’s about fallen in now, yard all grown up around it. You can barely tell there’s a house there, the trees and bushes are so thick around it.”
“Do you remember the address?”
“Not exactly. It was out on Beeson Road, past Turner Crossroads. About four miles down, on the left.”
As they walked down the sidewalk toward the car, Nikita said, “Do we talk to Edie Proctor next?”
“I’m afraid so. She’s here in town, so we might as well. Then we’ll hunt up where Coach Easley lived. I know the general location; we’ll just have to look for the place.”
“You think something might still be there?”
“Probably not, but you never know. People leave all sorts of crap behind in a house when they move.”
“Whoever packed up his things should have cleaned out the house.”
“We won’t know until we look. There might be an attic space, or a partial basement.”
And Knox wouldn’t rest until he’d checked it out. Even when logic told him there wouldn’t be anything left, he still had to see for himself.
Mrs. Edie Proctor was reluctant to open the door to them, even when Knox showed her his badge. She scowled at them through a latched screen door. “How do I know that badge is real?”
“You can call the sheriff’s department and ask,” he said without any hint of impatience.
“Humph,” she said, staying where she was. From what Nikita could tell through the screen, Mrs. Proctor’s mouth was drawn down in a permanent frown.
“What is it you want to ask?” she finally said. She didn’t open the screen door, but she didn’t close the wooden one, either. Cool air poured out of the house, evaporating the light film of sweat on their skin. The day promised to be another hot one.
“It’s about Coach Howard Easley. He committed suicide twenty years ago—”
“I know how he died,” she snapped. “What’s that got to do with anything now?”
“You hired him, didn’t you?”
“He was qualified.”
“Yes, ma’am, he was. He had a masters degree in physics from Cal Tech. Any idea why he settled for coaching football at a little high school in eastern Kentucky?”
“I didn’t ask.”
That line of questioning was unproductive, Nikita thought. Knox must have thought so, too, because he smoothly changed course. “I’d like to see his application, if you know where it is after all these years.”
“I didn’t keep papers like that here at my house. I don’t know why you’re bothering me with all this. If you want to know something, go to the board of education. Likely all those old papers are still there in the basement.”
Then she did shut the wooden door, leaving them standing on the sidewalk. Knox scratched his jaw. “That went well, don’t you think?”
“Reasonably. We still have all our parts. Do we go to the board of education now?”
“Let me make a phone call first. It’s summer; there may not be anyone there.”
He had a phone book in his car and he quickly located the number. Thirty seconds later he ended the call. “Summer hours are eight to twelve, Monday through Thursday. No one’s there at all today.”
“You could call the present superintendent.”
He tried that, and ended the call without speaking. “Another answering machine. Okay, that’s a dead end for right now. Let’s go see what we can find at Coach Easley’s house.”