3 Time to Steele (12 page)

Wyle clenched his fists and released them. “Look, how many times do I have to tell you people, I didn’t murder anyone!”

“To be honest, I don’t particularly think you did,” I said. “At least not Gill. Not based on the evidence we found. But unless you explain what the hell is going on, I plan on implicating you in everything I possibly can. You ever heard of aiding and abetting?”

Wyle took a deep breath and clenched his teeth. I could envision the gears in his mind churning.

Steele tapped a finger on the table and cupped her chin with her off hand. “Look, Harland? You said you were trying to prevent Darryl and Anya’s murders. You said we needed to work together. So, let’s work together. Tell us what you know. We’ll do what we can to help.”

Wyle shook his head. “You’re not going to believe me.”

“Try us,” said Steele.

Wyle sat in his chair, shifting his gaze from Steele to me and back. Eventually, he spoke. “Ok. But what I tell you can’t leave this room. I mean it. I don’t know what the effects of this will be, but we have to keep as tight a lid on this as possible.”

I glanced at Steele. She shrugged.

“Very well,” I said, not really understanding Wyle’s concern. “Tell us what you know.”

Wyle leaned forward and glanced at the door, perhaps to make sure we were truly alone. “Alright. Here goes. That man, the murderer in the sketch? He’s a member of a radical anti-technology group bent on preventing the rise of the industrial age. And if we don’t stop him, he might just succeed.”

“An anti-technology group?” I said.

“Yes,” said Wyle. “Citizens for Simplicity. We’ve been keeping an eye on them.”

“And who is we?” I asked.

“My organization. SPTM.”

“SP what?” I said.

“SPTM. The Society for Practitioners of Time Magic.” Wyle spread his hands as best he could. “I’m from the future.”

19

I wiggled a finger in my ear. “Sorry, I think I misheard that. You’re from where?”

Shay apparently trusted her sense of hearing. “That’s impossible. There’s no such thing as time magic.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Wyle, with a raised eyebrow. “Are you an expert on magic?”

“Sort of, yeah,” said Steele, crossing her arms.

“Well, then, tell me,” said Wyle. “How do you use fire magic to form ice? And how do you transfer a psychic conduit from a medium to a normal?”

“The former is impossible,” said Steele. “And I’m not entirely sure I understand what you mean by the latter.”

“The former
isn’t
impossible,” said Wyle. “You merely haven’t uncovered the art of inversion in this age yet. Nor do you understand the fundamental mechanics behind psychic conduits. And, thankfully, you haven’t discovered time magic at all.”

“Thankfully?”
said Steele.

Wyle snorted. “Oh yeah. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m surprised the sentient races even made it to my time. I don’t know how civilization didn’t collapse on itself from the weight of its incompetence.”

I stuck a finger in the air as I found my voice. “Hold on. I need to get this down.” I pulled a spiral bound notepad and a pencil from my jacket interior, then flipped the pad open to a free page. “So let me make sure I heard this straight. You claim you’re from the
future?”

Wyle sighed. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. I don’t know why I bothered.”

I waggled a finger. “Now, now, hold on. I haven’t passed any judgment yet. But I need to hear this story. And I mean the whole thing.”

I felt the weight of Steele’s blink on the side of my neck. “You’ve
got
to be kidding me, Daggers.”

I glanced at my partner. “He’s our only suspect. Let’s hear him out.”

I got another eye roll in response, but at least I knew what this one meant. I turned my gaze back to Wyle. “So, as you were saying…you’re from the future?”

“That’s right,” said Wyle.

“And you were sent back to stop this man from going on a killing spree?” I tapped the sketch of Scar Face.

“Yes.”

“What’s so important about him?” I asked as I scribbled notes in my pad. “Who does he kill? Just Gill and Anya, or someone else, too?”

“I don’t know,” said Wyle.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I said. “If this guy is as important as you say he is, shouldn’t he be infamous? I imagine he’s all over your history books.”

“No,” said Wyle. “I don’t know because he hasn’t done it yet. At least I don’t think so. He’s from the future, too.”

I blinked and shook my head. “Wait, what? Scar Face is
also
a time mage?”

Wyle frowned and furrowed his brows. “Scar Face?”

“This guy. The murderer.” I tapped the sketch again. “I like to give people nicknames. You were Cheeks until I learned your name.”

Wyle gave me an odd sort of look. “I’m not going to ask. But no, Scar Face, as you call him, isn’t a time mage. He’s just a psychotic nut.”

I leaned back and squinted. “I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t think you would.” Wyle tapped his fingers on the table and leaned a little closer over the table. “There are multiple branches of time magic, and people who excel at one discipline usually don’t exhibit any ability in the other branches. The most common discipline is temporal dilation. That involves manipulation of the rate at which time passes for either the mage or the party being manipulated, either in terms of a rate increase or decrease. Much less common are the temporal distortion skills. Some people excel in psychic or kinetic temporal distortion, people who can influence thoughts or object motion in the near past or future.

“Then, there’s temporal reconstruction. This involves the manipulation of the time streams to send objects, or even people, backwards or forwards in time. It’s how Scar Face made it here. A reconstructionist sent him. Temporal reconstruction is a very rare skill, but even it’s common compared to tempomorphy. Tempomorphs can move backwards or forwards in time themselves, and, as far as I know, there’s only one of those who’s ever existed, at least though my time.”

“And what’s this tempomorph famous for?” I asked. “Anything we’d remember?”

“Well, nothing yet,” said Wyle. “The tempomorph isn’t responsible for any changes to the history streams. Unless…Darryl and Anya’s deaths changed things.”

“Wait…” I said.
“You’re
the guy?”

Wyle shrugged. “I’m the guy.”

Steele leaned back in her chair, arms still crossed. “How convenient.”

“Hey, you think I
wanted
to go back in time to stop a murdering psychopath?” said Wyle. “I’m useless in a fight, and I don’t know the first thing about tracking, except what I’m able to accomplish through observation of the time ripples. But I was the only one who’d be able to travel back to the present. Or future, for you two.”

I madly jotted down notes in my pad. “Ok, so let me get this straight. Your story—” I looked at Steele and reemphasized the word.
“story,
of course—is that you used an as yet undiscovered form of magic to travel back in time and stop a psychotic, anti-technology nutbag from changing the course of humanoid events for the worse. Correct?”

Wyle nodded. “Yes.”

“Ok,” I said. “Let’s assume this is all true. Answer me this: why did this madman murder Darryl Gill and his sister Anya? What do they have to do with the advancement of science? And if they’re dead, why hasn’t anything changed?”

“I have no idea how Gill and his sister are important,” said Wyle. “Honestly, there’s no mention of any Gills in our history books referencing this time period. They’re nobodies. I don’t know why Scar Face would want to kill them. But regarding your last question—I’m not sure, but I have a few theories…”

“Go on,” I said, letting my pencil hover over the notepad.

“Well,” said Wyle. “Our society is split in thought between two theories regarding time travel. One is that events in time are set in stone. They can’t be changed. If Gill and his sister are murdered, then they’ve
always
been murdered, and it’s part of the set time stream. But we don’t know if that’s the case. It’s possible events in time
can
be changed. We don’t know which theory is true, but the latter theory is frightening enough that we had to try to stop this temporal reconstruction attempt from Citizens for Simplicity.

“Now, there’s two additional possibilities. It could be that Scar Face’s actions have already irreparably damaged the time streams, and the world as I knew it no longer exists. I’m not much of a fatalist, but I admit that’s a possibility. Not a strong one—the ripples in the time streams have been small so far. But if so, that means Darryl and Anya’s lives didn’t matter, which means they weren’t Scar Face’s ultimate target. Which is why we need to work together to find him, and we may not have a lot of time, so…” He nodded toward his handcuffed wrists.

I set my pencil down on my pad, leaned back in my chair, and used my now free hand to stroke the stubble on the sides of my mouth and on my chin. I glanced at Shay, and she returned my gaze with an eyebrows raised, lips puckered, stone eyed, I’m not amused sort of glance. I knew the look from my married days.

I looked back at our prisoner. “So, tell me Wyle, does everyone in your time period have as unique a flair when it comes to fashion as you do?”

Harland looked at his robe. “What? This? No way. This was a mistake. We thought this was what mages in your age wore. Apparently our history texts aren’t quite as
complete
as we thought they were.”

“I see.” I slipped my notepad back into a coat pocket. That last remark had clinched what I’d already suspected. The guy was a total kook. “Look, Wyle, Steele and I are going to see what we can do. In the meantime, hang out, ok?”

“No, please, come on,” he said. “Don’t leave me in here…”

I stood, and Steele followed my lead, but another thought hit me as I approached the door. “By the way, Wyle…what did you take from Gill’s place that eventually led you to Anya?”

“Nothing,” he said, exasperated.

“You didn’t take anything?” I asked.

“No,” said Wyle. “I didn’t know who Scar Face was after.”

“So how did you find Anya?” I asked.

“I followed the time streams,” said Wyle. “I told you, changes in the time streams leave ripples. If they’re large enough, I can follow them. Let’s just hope they don’t turn into a tidal wave.”

I wasn’t sure I understood, but I excused myself from the interrogation room before I let any more of Wyle’s crazy get all over me.

20

“You know he’s bonkers, right?” said Steele.

“Oh, without a doubt,” I replied as we headed back to our desks. “The guy’s wackier than one of those carnival games with the fake moles. But his complete and total craziness doesn’t explain his involvement in the murders, nor does it give us any clue as to the identity of the murderer.”

“Not yet, anyway,” said Steele. “But maybe things’ll start to make sense once we dig into the guy’s past.”

I nodded. “Hopefully.”

I spotted Quinto and Rodgers and we entered the pit, Quinto lounging in his poor, abused chair and Rodgers sitting on the edge of Quinto’s desk. I made a beeline for them. They’d want to be briefed on our findings.

“Daggers,” said Rodgers as Steele and I approached. “We heard about Anya.” His grim face said the rest.

I shrugged. “Can’t save them all. We’ll get the bastard before his third one though.”
Or at least we’d try,
I told myself.

Rodgers and Quinto nodded, which was about the extent of anyone’s ability to mourn in the precinct. Thick skin was a necessary condition for admittance into the brotherhood of homicide detectives, and anyone who didn’t have one coming in grew one real fast, even Steele.

“So, tell us about this guy you brought in,” said Quinto. “Suspect number two, right?”

I glanced at my partner. “You want to field this one?”

“Sure,” she said. “The guy’s completely crazy. Certifiable, even. He thinks he’s a time traveler sent back to our age to save humanity from certain destruction.”

“Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” I said. “He never said anything about the destruction of all the sentient races. More of a…readjustment of his known reality.”

“Close enough,” said Steele.

Quinto and Rodgers shared looks, then the big guy spoke to my partner. “Did you lose a bet to Daggers or something?”

“Oh, no, I’m serious,” said Shay. “You can go talk to the guy yourself if you don’t believe me.”

As if on cue, shouts erupted from the far side of the pit. A pair of bluecoats were escorting Wyle to a holding area for further evaluation, and he took the opportunity to try to get our attention.

“Detectives! Detectives! Hey, there’s been a misunderstanding. Come on, you have to let me out of here! We don’t have time for this. You have to believe me!”

The bluecoats pushed Wyle around a corner.

Rodgers whistled. “Alrighty then.”

“Yeah,” I said. “What about you guys? I’m guessing Gronk didn’t have anything else useful to pen into our tale of misery and woe?”

“Not a single stanza,” said Quinto. “Gill’s Repossessions was honestly run. We didn’t find a single misplaced zero or decimal point in the financial files we sifted through. And Gronk didn’t know anything about Gill’s sister: her last name, her whereabouts, nothing.”

“However,” said Rodgers, “while you guys were interrogating the lunatic in the wizard’s robe, Anya’s husband dropped by. What was his name?”

“Mel,” said Quinto.

“Right. Mel. Apparently a runner tracked him down and told him what happened. He’s over in the sitting room.” Rodgers gestured across the pit to the right of the break room. “He’s pretty shaken. Maybe you should let Steele handle him.”

I crossed my arms. “What are you trying to say? That I’m insensitive? Boorish? Rude?”

“Yes,” said Rodgers.

“Oh. Ok then,” I said, uncrossing my arms. “Just so we’re clear.”

Shay gave me one of her smiles, the kind that made me think she thought I was a huge dork, but that perhaps, just perhaps, she liked huge dorks.