Sand City Murders (14 page)

 “My parents, my brothers, gone... not a sign of them no matter how much I searched. My house was gone too, or at least the building was unrecognizable to me. Soon enough, I came across a large group of soldiers encamped along the banks of my beloved paradise. And this army? Not a gang of friendly Hoplites... the sort I was well used to. No, these men wore a different sort of armor, and carried short broad swords, wrought from a new kind of iron. Moreover, they were chattering in a tongue I had never heard. They were certainly not Dorians. I thought at once we had been invaded by barbarians. What I did not understand at the time, was that some three hundred years had slipped by in a single instant. My classical age life had given way to the Roman Empire.”

I wasn’t sure if that was the end of his story, but Fynn took a breath and continued:

“I was captured by these Centurions and sold into slavery; shackled and shipped off to work the copper mines in Cyprus... for nearly twenty years, coming close to death many times. And there, I earned my new name, Tractus, which has stuck with me ever since.”

“Tractus?”

“A latin word.”

“Meaning?

“It’s difficult to translate exactly. And it’s definition has altered somewhat with time.”

“Three hundred years? You traveled that far?” I asked despite myself. “This seems very different than what you talked about in the restaurant.”

“How so?”

“You were talking about slipping back to a previous consciousness, like a memory. Now you’re talking about…well, physically teleporting to some future time.”

“Yes, exactly so. These are the two modes of travel. When I travel to the past, I re-visit a previous consciousness. When I travel to the future, a new version of myself is created.”

“A new version?”

“It’s as if my present self is suddenly thrust to some future time.”

“That’s a little confusing.”

“I dare say it is…” Fynn said with a smile. “Ah, but before I can properly explain any of this, you would need to understand a bit more about the nature of time itself.

“What, like a brief history of time?”

“No. Not like that at all.”

“What then?”

“Simply understand these things: Time equals motion through space. It does indeed flow forward; what happens in the past always changes the future… a future, I might add, that is always unfolding as it were. It is not a fixed place...”

“That’s it?” I asked, somehow expecting more.

“For now.”

“What about time travel, the two modes, you called them?”

“It is simplicity itself... I jump to the future as you see me now, or I slip back to the past, to a previous consciousness. They are distinctly different experiences.” Fynn paused. “I would call this the concurrency of my existence.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“One is the consequence of the other. One is the vanguard, the other is a residue. I can travel to a new place entirely, or, to a previous me, if you will.” Fynn gave me a glance. There was nothing expectant about it. He didn’t seem to want validation or approval. I didn’t really understand what he was trying to say.

“Of course, in these early days, I was like a skipping stone… I had no control over where I traveled. Willy-nilly, randomly, I skimmed across the still waters of time.” Fynn paused. “In the beginning, I did not even realize what was occurring. I thought I was just moving from place to place.”

I was quiet for a few steps. I noticed the cold sand between my toes again. “Somehow though, you learned how to go back and forth? Through time I mean...”

“You are very astute, Patrick.” He smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. “And yes, I have a certain amount of control nowadays.”

“But you never went back there? To your childhood?”

“I never went back.”

“Is it one of those painful places you mentioned?”

“Not at all. I mostly have pleasant memories.”

“But you just said—”

“Ah, it would be cruel to give a young child a thousand years of memory and experience. Surely he would go mad. I am simply being kind to my younger self. Can you imagine traveling back to the mind of an eight year old with all the memories you’ve accumulated? It would overwhelm him. Drive him insane in all certainty. I would never do such a thing to any child, let alone the child who was me.”

“Okay... A question then… how does this all work? The time travel thing?”

“
Libra
Lapsus
,” Fynn said.

“What does that mean?”

“Free Fall. The mechanics of it, the physics, the science of it. Duration and direction. Quite complicated.”

“This is just too incredible.”

“You don’t believe any of it, do you?” he asked and laughed heartily. “Nor would I, if I were you.”

“Um... it’s a very imaginative tale, chock full of details, and believable in some ways. But it proves nothing really. It’s just a story in the end.”

“I am deeply offended,” Fynn replied, and with a rather large grin.

“
It is just a story then?
”

“No, this is the truth.”

“How can you be thousands of years old?”

“I am rather well preserved, don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t believe any of this.”

“There is much to understand, much to say… the nature of time, one’s awareness, the persistence of memory and the quantum of change. It will take more than one long walk to explain.” Fynn smiled at me pleasantly. “How can I say this simply? I live many hundreds of lives, more or less concurrently.”

“That’s impossible.”

“It would seem so, yet this best describes my existence.”

“How can you live more than one life?”

“This is most difficult to explain. I travel from one to the other. It is a shifting of my awareness. It is only the present, the flux of the now that matters.”

“Do you remember them all?”

“No… this is too much for one person to remember.”

The beach curved up ahead, angling sharply east, out into the ocean. We were approaching South Point. Fynn quickened his pace again but said nothing more for the moment. We walked up to the breach and stopped, the place where the Atlantic was rushing into the salt marsh. It never looked drastically different from day to day, but it seemed ominous. A swift current dug a widening trench to the west; the water was flowing quickly, streaming up against the sand. Week to week, it didn’t appear much different either, but month to month did make a difference, the channel was wider, deeper and inexorably closer to the dunes. Who could guess what years of this would do? Both of us just stood there watching the water rushing by. I resumed my pace and followed the breach up about thirty yards to its narrowest point. Fynn followed as well. There was still one place where you could leap across at low tide. On the other side you could continue south to Oldham. I jumped over easily. Fynn observed but declined to do the same.

“Okay, so say this story of yours is true,” I said from across the narrow channel. “It leaves me with a lot of unanswered questions.”

“Such as?”

“I’m not sure where to start.”

“I’ve said enough for now. Perhaps we should go back?”

I jumped over the water again. We returned pretty much in silence. I’m not sure who was more embarrassed: Fynn, who had told such a preposterous story and now had regrets, or me, who had listened to the whole thing without interruption. That wasn’t necessarily a fair assessment though. Anytime I glanced over at the inspector, he showed no sign of embarrassment. In fact, he seemed totally at ease with himself. I know I have a knack with people. They seemed to trust me. They like to tell me their stories… That’s why I became a reporter. But no one had ever been this trusting; nor had anyone ever had such an outrageous tale to tell, or made such an outlandish claim. It was very strange. For whatever reason, Tractus Fynn had made himself an open book. He was completely vulnerable to any evil intent I might harbor. Lucky for him, I had none.

Inadvertently, we chased a small flock of gulls down the beach. Every time we got within a few yards of them, they would caw, and rise up into the air at about eye level. They’d ride the ocean breeze, veer to the left and land a few yards further up the shoreline to settle down and wait. The inspector and I would approach again and it was the same ritual; they’d rise, wing over to the north and up the beach again, directly in our path. I was almost annoyed by this behavior. Stupid birds. Why didn’t they just swoop up to an unused part of the beach, or fly down to our right and behind us? The plovers, or the other weird little terns, who spent their time digging in the sand for food were pretty much the same; only they didn’t fly; instead they scurried along on their tiny stick legs. I had no right to be annoyed, really. It was their beach more than ours.

Fynn turned to me and said, “In a few days more or less, you will have forgotten everything.”

“What, the story you just told me?”

“No, no, my story is quite memorable. I mean the three murders. Your memories of them will fade… you’ll be left with just the one at present.”

“That kind of sounds like a dare.”

“A dare?” He turned to look at me. Maybe he was having trouble gauging my reply. “Nothing of the sort. I’m just saying memory, even the best memory, is fleeting.”

“I’m not likely going to forget you.”

“No. We will continue on for the time being. Yet, by next week, you will only recall the one murder of an unknown victim, as we found her this morning.”

“What, like revert to a Durbin?”

“Exactly this.”

“I’m thinking otherwise…”

“We shall see.” He looked at me again. “You may surprise me.” Fynn reached into his jacket pocket and produced an old polaroid, colors fading. It was hard to tell for sure if it was Lorraine Luis, just a head and shoulder shot of a pretty girl at the beach, smiling.”

“May I keep this?”

Fynn thought about it for a second. He seemed hesitant. “For the moment you may, but I would like it back.”

“Of course…”

I ran our conversation— if that’s the right word— in my head over and over. I wasn’t sure what to think. Part of me wanted to believe Fynn, most of me did not. I started to convince myself that he was living in some sort of delusional state, a mental illness even. Somehow I had got caught up in it all. Still… there was the car— damn, that was hard to explain… and Roxy too…  I decided it was best to put the whole thing out of my mind for now and would head back to the office.

I dropped Fynn off at his hotel along the way and felt oddly relieved. I guess it all was rather harmless… time travel, alternate realities… But darker thoughts filled me: what if Fynn was fixated on this new victim… his wife, really? Well, I’d have to talk to Durbin, maybe just a friendly warning for now. I felt sad, I have to admit. Such a sweet old guy caught up in some weird delusion… harmless, I hoped. For some strange reason, Evan came to mind— Evan James, the stringer for the
Chronicle
. I glanced up at the Blue Dunes Hotel as I was pulling out. One, two, three floors.
Wait, is that right?

chapter 12

morgue me down

I pulled up in front of the Sand City
Chronicle
and it was later than I thought. They had turned the clocks back and I was still fooled. How could it be so late? It was still light out. The sun had not even set over Great Bay. Miriam was at her station, at reception, and it didn’t look like she was going to float off anytime soon. She barely looked up when I came in, intently staring at her screen, and typing slowly, deliberately, on her keyboard, make that the loudest keyboard on the planet. It didn’t tap silently, it didn’t click quietly, it clanked and rattled with every keystroke. I knew without asking it was Wednesday. The legal ads had just come in from Village Hall. They had the obligation to print public notices and since we were the only game in town, they came to us. A small but important source of revenue. Miriam’s job every Wednesday was to format these for the paper.

I breezed by her, knowing better than to interrupt her concentration, and walked back to the break room. The coffee pot was empty as usual. Hmm, out of filters now. I searched the drawers and cabinets without success, but thought better of asking Miriam. Instead, I improvised, using paper towels torn in half and piled up in the basket. I poured in the water and the machine started its gurgling.

The door to the back studio was closed but I still could hear Herb Pagor yelling at paste-up Amy. He wasn’t at all angry or anything. That’s just the way he talked. I tried to ignore the muffled shouts. I knew they were laying out the ads and stuck my head through the door.

“Patrick…” Pagor called out and somehow made it seem like my name had more than two syllables, many more.

“What’s the count, Herb?”

“Sixty-eight percent,” he shouted back in his deafening voice.

“Wow,” I replied and closed the door again.

“Patrick…” Eleanor Woods said as soon as I entered the main office. “Where were you all day?” she asked, though not in an accusing sort of way. It was just healthy curiosity.

“Working on the Treasure Hunt. Scouting locations.”

“Really? That’s good news… it’s about time too.” Eleanor put down her marking pen. “So… where are we going to bury the treasure this year?”

“Haven’t decided yet, but I was up at the breach… South Point.”

“Not there, surely.”

“No…”

“Well?”

“Looks pretty much the same. But it got me thinking about a feature on what we’d be like as an island.”

“An island? Sand City Island... I like that. When do you think that will happen?”

“The story or the geology?”

She laughed with a raspy cackle. “I’ll take the story.”

“Sooner than you think… on both counts. I still have some research to do.”

“For this week?”

“Okay…”

“A feature or an op ed?” she asked.

“Good question. Which do you think is better?”

“We’re running pretty tight this week. I’d say an op ed.” Eleanor looked at me, waiting expectantly, I could tell.

“Of course, we’ve got another murder for the front page,” I said.