Yesterday's Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Sci-Fi Thriller

Yesterday’s Thief
An Eric Beckman Sci-Fi Paranormal Thriller

By Al Macy
AlMacyAuthor.com

Copyright © 2016 Al Macy
All Rights Reserved.
Version: RC04 2016/01/25 11:04

Also by Al Macy:

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The Antiterrorist: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller
Coming Soon:
A Parallel World: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller
(Working title)

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CHAPTER ONE

The naked woman materialized behind the umpire during the first game of the playoffs.

I froze and frowned at the TV.
What the hell’s going on?

The crowd went silent. I paused the live video stream. “Uh … guys?” I pinched the skin under my chin, still frowning. “You’ll want to see this.”

“Double play?” Stan wandered in from the kitchen, digging into a jar of peanut butter with a spoon.

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Hey, Eric, how old are these olives?” Craig’s voice sounded like his head was in the fridge. My condo was small. I could hear him fine.

“Get in here, Craig.” I waited until Stan had flopped down on the couch and Craig stood by the TV with his arms crossed. The smell of pizza hung in the air. I moved the video live-feed back a minute and pressed play. “Watch this.”

Her body appeared all at once. One second: normal baseball game. Roar of the crowd, droning announcers, runner at second, fast-ball pitch. Next second: blip, a body where you wouldn’t expect it, a hushed crowd, speechless announcers. It looked as if she were lying face-up on a high table. A table that wasn’t there. Stretched out in the air, her arms extended above her head as if she were doing a back dive. One hand touched the ump’s head.

Craig gave a little yip, and Stan stopped chewing. He froze for a second, then started chewing again.

Her body dropped to the ground. Whomp! No table, remember? The hand must have been caught in the umpire’s mask or hat, because she pulled him down with her. He was a big man, and his butt landed on her face.

“That’s gotta hurt.” Stanislaw Stanislowski guided the spoon back into the peanut butter. Nothing fazed him. Twenty-some years as a cop will do that. He put another oily gob of my all-natural crunchy into his mouth, getting some on his mustache.

Craig looked at him. “Really, Stan? The weirdest thing in history happens, and you’re joking around?”

Stan shrugged. He had a wide body and a rough face. His five-o’clock shadow usually showed up around noon, and his eyebrows looked like woolly bear caterpillars parading into a cold winter.

Craig got up close to the screen and squatted down. “Hold on. Back up to when she appears and zoom in.”

I made the appropriate gestures to the DigiCast, moved the video feed back, paused it, and zoomed in.

“No, not on her boobs, Eric, sheesh. On her hand. Here, let me drive.” He snatched the controller and panned over to the official’s head. My system had resolution up the wazoo, and I could see the ump’s individual hairs.

“Look here.” Craig tapped the screen five or six times. “It’s not tangled in his hat. Her finger is
in
his head. Her fifth digit is embedded up to the proximal phalange.” Craig Porter was an MD-PhD and the chief neurosurgeon at UCSF. He often talked as if he were on the job.

Craig’s face could star in a skin softener ad on a gay TV channel. Tight curls of brown hair hugged his scalp, giving him the look of a well-groomed Chia Pet. As thin as a jockey on meth, he’d never met a rule he didn’t embrace. He was thirty-eight, and we’d been buddies since grad school.

Stan put the jar on the couch. “Guess she gave him the finger.” We both looked at him, then back at the screen. The game was halted. Bummer. The Giants had been ahead, two-zip.

We watched the replays from three different camera angles. The pitch had been in the strike zone. The catcher threw the ball back to the mound, but the pitcher ignored it, letting it dribble out to second base. He frowned and craned his head to one side, looking behind the catcher. The catcher glanced back and did a double take. He jumped up, threw off his mask, and backed away as if the nude were radioactive.

It was 2020, and the country was finally getting less uptight about nudity, but the station still pixelated the closer views of her infield regions. She was slim but had the kind of curves God and plastic surgeons reserve for porn stars. Her thick black hair billowed out as she fell.

Back in real time an ambulance drove onto the field. EMTs huddled around her embedded pinkie but apparently couldn’t separate the woman from the umpire. They had no choice but to put him face-down on the gurney with the woman on top, her arm was folded back as if winding up to throw a knuckleball. She hadn’t shaved her underarms. Both the woman and the ump were AWOL. Out cold. I should know. My doctoral thesis examined states of consciousness in comatose patients.

Stan’s and Craig’s cell phones rang simultaneously. Craig had the latest in-the-ear-canal model.

Stan finished his call first and looked at me. “Stadium. You?” That’s Stan-Speak for “The department called and wants me to lead the investigation. I’m heading over to AT&T Stadium. Do you want to tag along?” He takes laconic to extremes.

Stan thought I was a lousy private eye. I did, too. Hey, I’d only been doing it a year. You gotta start somewhere, right? But Stan did admit I had some kind of strange talent for solving cases.

Craig finished his call. He was the only person alive who knew what my strange talent was.

He shook his head. “Sorry, Stan. I need Dr. Beckman with me.” He used my title to drive home his point. “They’re taking that woman to UCSF. This is right up Eric’s alley. I need him to—”

Stan held up his hands in a no-problem gesture. Yeah, he looked relieved. He picked his coat off the floor and headed for the door.

I grabbed the peanut butter jar from the couch. “Hey, Stan. Wait. Take this with you. It’s yours now.”

He shrugged, came back over, and dropped the open jar—and my spoon—into his big overcoat pocket.

For me, no contest. Hunt for clues with San Francisco’s deputy chief or meet the mysterious lady from who-knows-where?

Craig held up a finger. “Hey. I’ve got an idea. AutoCab.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “No way. My car’s right down in the garage.”

Craig unfurled his tablet. “Look, Eric. It can be at the curb by the time we get downstairs. And—”

“You know what usually happens. We—”

“And …” He held up his hand. “And, I can use my emergency clearance to get through traffic.”

That stopped me. We couldn’t beat the ambulance, but if we were lucky … “Okay, set it up.” I got my jacket.

“We need to get there fast. You’re our best hope for figuring her out. Plus, we can both talk to the ER as we go.”

“Hey, Doc, I already agreed. Let’s get going.”

Craig likes to run through all his arguments even if he’s won his case. Or maybe he just likes to talk. He put on his speaking-to-the-computer voice. “Okay, Google. AutoCab to this address. Medical personnel emergency.”

“
What is your personal emergency?
”

“Person
nel
emergency. Medical person
nel
, not personal.” He rolled his eyes.

I kept the I-told-you-so look off my face.

“
Authorization?
”

“This is Craig Porter,” he said.

“
Voiceprint confirmed. Your AutoCab will be at 775 Front Street, San Francisco, California, in two minutes.
”

We heard the siren immediately. He raised his eyebrows, looked at me, and nodded. No effort to keep the I-told-you-so look off his face.

* * *

After a fifteen-floor elevator ride to the street, we found the AutoCab at the curb. Its door popped open, and we jumped in. It snapped into traffic the instant we sat down.

The AutoCab looked more like a teacup ride than a car. Five bucket seats around a central table. No driver, of course. The siren was noise-canceled inside. Maybe technology was okay after all.

Craig called ahead to the ER on speakerphone. “What have we got, Chuny?”

Chuny has a Puerto Rican accent, and there’s always a smile in her voice. “They’re about eight minutes out. He’s Marco Garcia, Hispanic male, forty-seven, unconscious, BP one-fifty-two over ninety, pulse forty-nine. Massive hematoma where her finger is embedded in his skull.”

Craig made a rolling motion with his hand, obviously wanting to hear about the woman.

“She’s a Caucasian female, thirty-ish, unconscious, BP one-ten over seventy-five, pulse seventy. Broken nose, finger attached to the ump. You ready for the kicker?”

“What?” Craig looked like a kid finding out about a Christmas present.

“Her heart’s on the right.”

“Whoa. On the right? Dextrocardia or full situs inversus?”

Chuny laughed. “All I know is the EMTs kinda freaked when they tried to listen to her heart.”

“Whoa. Thanks. We’ll be there in three minutes.”

I looked out the window. Apparently the AutoCab had its own ideas about which hospital we should go to. We were nowhere near the UCSF med center. “Twelve,” I said.

Craig frowned and turned to me. “No. Look, Eric.” He tapped on the FastTrack’s time-remaining display. “Three minutes.”

I pointed out the window.

Craig slapped his forehead. “More like twelve minutes, Chuny.” He hung up.

Craig squawked to the AutoCab like a flustered chicken and got things straightened out. I watched the scenery and looked forward to meeting the materialized girl.

“Situs inversus?” I asked.

Craig played with the vehicle’s screen. “Reversal of the organs. Heart, spleen on the right, liver on the left. Pretty rare. But it could just be that her heart is over too far to the right.”

“And that’s dextro—”

“—cardia of embryonic arrest, yeah. You got it.” He finished futzing with the controls, sat back, and started tapping out a rhythm on his knee.

I smiled. “Didn’t think this could get any stranger.”

“Can’t wait to get there.” Craig’s normal leg-fidgeting was in high gear. “Do you think you’ll be able to read her?”

I nodded. Time to tell you about my strange talent.

I don’t look like a freak of nature. I’m thirty-nine and a bit taller than most. Not so tall that people ask whether I play basketball. My unruly, surfer-dude hair matches my stylish stubble, but it’s not a fashion choice. Combing and shaving just slip my mind sometimes.

I have a crooked nose that pulls attention from my curiously large forehead, but my face is saved from the ugly bin by intense blue eyes and a six-thousand-dollar smile. That’s how much the orthodontist charged.

So, I don’t look like a freak. But what only Craig knows about me, and what helps me solve cases, is this: I can read minds.

Weird, right? Now you can appreciate why Craig wanted me along. Even if the magic woman never regained consciousness, I might be able to read her thoughts and find out what the hell was going on.

Jane Doe beat us to the hospital. When we arrived, I had to squeeze my way into the observation gallery. This room, perched above OR Two, had sloping windows with an excellent view of the operating table. Jabbering physicians filled both rows of seats, with more standing in the back. Wide monitors above the windows gave a close-up view of the action.

Craig had scrubbed in but wouldn’t be performing the surgery. Just observing. Someone else beat him to it. The surgeons paced around below us, waiting for the results from the pathology lab. They’d sent off a biopsy of the finger from its point of entry into the skull.