Convergence Point (10 page)

Donovan put a toolbox at his feet. “Go out to the main road and turn left. I'll give you the directions from there. And, this time, no swerving off the road to hit squirrels.”

The directions Donovan gave led them to a hideous apartment complex that ought to have been condemned.

“Third building on the left,” Donovan said.

“You want me to go up and knock?” Gant asked as he parked the car.

Donovan picked up his toolbox. “What would be the point of knocking?”

They walked up the stairs, and Gant touched the knob; it turned easily in his hand. Grinning, he pushed the door open. “Knock, knock.”

A man sitting in front of a fancy television jumped to his feet. “What? Are you the maintenance guy? The sink's fixed.”

Donovan pulled his gun out as he closed the door. “Are you Henry Troom?”

“Henry?” the man said, eyeing the gun like a rabbit seeing a wolf. “Yeah. Right this way. His room's this way.” He hurried around the corner, and Gant shook his head.

“The idiot's running.”

Donovan sighed, pushed his way past Gant, and fired down the hall twice. The sound of the gun was followed by the sound of glass shattering. “He fell out the window.”

Gant followed him around the corner, but his eye was caught on the metallic lock on a bedroom door. “Go shove the body in the trunk.”

“You go get the body,” Donovan said. “I have a bolt cutter.”

Weighing his options, Gant decided being near the getaway vehicle and away from any chance of booby-­trapped doors was the safest option. If Donovan entered the room without injury, then he'd come back upstairs. If Donovan blew up, well, he had Troom's friend. That would be enough leverage to get a ride back home.

Downstairs, the jumper lay on the grass, still breathing but shaky. There was a crunching sound from the apartment above and a string of curses.

Donovan looked out the window. “Troom isn't here.”

“Is anything there?”

“Bits and bobs, but not enough.”

Gant hefted the shivering man to his feet. “This one's breathing. Let's go find a private place to talk to him.” The man started shaking. Gant checked his shoulder. “Just grazed,” he told the boy. “You'll live. Maybe. If you cooperate.”

The man's eyes were black, pupils dilated with fear. It had been a long time since Gant had seen that look. Too long, really. It made him feel warm all over. This place was wrong, but that fear was right. He smiled. It was good to be back in control.

 

CHAPTER 9

We need no longer fear the future. We need no longer stagger blindly forward grasping after hope and lies. From this day forward, every action will be done with an awareness that the path is set, the future immutable.

~ Dr. Abdul Emir speaking at the inauguration the Future Command Force complex I1–2064

Friday March 21, 2070

Florida District 8

Commonwealth of North America

Iteration 2

T
here wasn't such a thing as a basement in Florida.

Half the potholes along A1A were below sea level, and anyone wanting to plant roses needed to accept the fact that a hole deep enough for the roots would fill with water on any day ending in Y. Still, it was weird looking out the morgue window at a parking lot below him. Mac was used to looking at trees and grass slightly above his head. As his junior agents in Chicago liked to joke, morgue ­people evolved from mole ­people. The bright Florida sunshine filtering through the tinted solar-­panel windows was unnatural in every respect.

He sat down between the two preserved bodies of Henry Troom and Nealie Rho as the computers scanned them. The police forensic team had brought the last pieces of Troom's corpse—­including his head—­over the night before.

There was a beep outside the door before it swung open. “Hey,” Sam said as she stepped in and locked the door behind her. She sat down in the spare chair. “How's your day going?”

“Pretty good. We finally found Henry's head. What's left of it, anyway. I'm doing the postmortem scans now. Should have the autopsies done by tonight.” He tapped his computer stylus on the counter.

“Cause of death: being ripped apart by explosion,” she said in a nasal TV-­announcer voice. “Which I still don't understand, by the way. How does an explosion rip someone apart?”

“Physics,” Mac said, as the computer scan beeped, marking an anomaly on the corpse. “Everything's waves: heat, light, sound—­matter when it comes to it. A sound wave can kill you, but with an explosion like this, it was probably heat and a lack of oxygen that killed him. Probably.”

Sam knew him well enough that she rolled her chair closer. “What are you seeing?”

“An anomaly on the preliminary scan.” He frowned and typed in the command to have the computer redo the test.

“Tell me.” Sam's voice was cold with fear.

“Our theory is that the head was lost in the debris, right? Nice, logical, slightly improbable for a room that size, but not actually impossible. Right?”

“Right.” Sam's lips flattened into a grimace. “Let me guess. The head is colder than room temperature, and much colder than it should be. With . . .” She held up a hand to her closed eyes like a television psychic, “with no evidence of decomposition.” Her eyes opened, and they were flat with anger. “Almost like it magically appeared out of nowhere.”

“Not magically,” Mac hedged, “but you're onto something. We should at least rule it out.”

Sam said something in French that he guessed wasn't considered polite. “What else would it have been? You think one of his coworkers smuggled his head past me and kept it in the fridge for a few days? No one would do that.”

Mac turned the screen so he could see what the computer had found. “Maybe not. But . . .”

“What did you find?”

“A bullet hole at the back of the cranium. Henry was shot.”

“N
o one is going to be at the lab,” Mac protested, as Sam parked her rental car, a red Xian Congsun, with a squeal of tires. “Everyone's going to the memorial ser­vice.”

­“People don't matter. I want the security tapes.”

Mac hopped out of the car and jogged to catch up. “I already looked at the tapes.”

“Then you missed something. Henry was shot at the lab before the explosion, and no one saw that? No one heard anything? How is that even possible?”

“A bullet in someone's head doesn't mean there was a gun, not during an explosion. This could have been shrapnel.”

“Because ­people keep random bullets in their desk?”

“Yes!”

Sam glared at him. “No.”

“Yes.”

“Normal ­people don't keep bullets in their desk.”

“But Henry might have. His mentor was shot last summer. He almost died last summer. What if he went and bought a gun for protection?”

“That seems very unlikely.”

“Not under the circumstances.”

She pulled open the door.

The guard looked up at them in surprise. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, I'm Agent Rose, and this is Agent MacKenzie. We're with the CBI, and we need to review the security footage of the day of the accident.” Sam flashed her badge like a shark showing its teeth.

“I can help you with that, ma'am. I'm Earl. Earl Mosely. I work graveyard shift most days and caught the weekend.” He wiped a hand across his forehead. “You want the conference room, ma'am? I can set it up for you.”

“That'd be fine,” Sam said.

Mac tapped her arm as Mosley hurried around the corner. “He's nervous.”

“I noticed.”

Mosely came back and waved them through the foyer. “This way. Conference room two is quiet.” He led them into a room with the security footage already on display on the projection screen. “I've been going over this myself.”

“Oh?” Sam said, as the guard closed the door.

“Young Dr. Troom was a friend of mine. Always came in early and we'd talk. I used to work at NASA, back in the day. I had a stroke and took early retirement. Couldn't quite do the math anymore, but Henry was nice to me. I was worried about him. Real ­worried.”

Sam sat down, datpad in front of her, and gave Mosely her full attention. “Why were you worried?”

Mosely pointed at the chair opposite her. “Can I sit?”

“Be my guest.”

Mac kept his place by the door.

“Henry signed on in late December. Fresh young graduate, usually they come in with stars in their eyes, but he burned. Burned something awful. It's not a bad thing, wanting. That drive got man to the moon and back. To Mars and back! But it was burning him from the inside, and he didn't have any balance. He was coming in earlier and earlier. Sometimes only a few hours after he checked out. Said he was having trouble sleeping.”

“Did Henry tell you anything about his dreams?” Sam asked.

“Lots. He told me about last summer, how some men tried to kill him. He told me about how his mentor died. And he told me he thought he was dying. Kept dreaming about it.”

Sam nodded. “Did you tell anyone about Henry's behavior? Or ask him to see a therapist?”

Mosely shook his head. “He'd been seeing therapists, and I figured it was normal. You have a gun pointed at you, you start thinking about your soul. But Henry wasn't doing it right. He fixated.” The guard took a little book and put it on the desk. “He gave this to me the morning of the incident. Asked me to lock it up in my locker. Said it was important.”

“And you're just showing us now?” Mac asked, but Sam waved him off. She picked it up and flipped it open.

“Did Henry say what this was about?”

“His big project, I guess.” The guard shrugged. “He didn't tell anyone about it. I've been trying to make sense of it. Reading through his notes during the quiet times at work, but the old brain box ain't what it used to be,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “Not since the stroke.”

“What is it?” Sam asked.

Mosley scratched the white stubble on his chin. “Quantum physics mostly. I've heard of a ­couple of the theories, but not all of them. Some of it sounds made up, like a bad science-­fiction novel. The thing that got me was the checklist in the back. He had a calendar with numbers, and each number lines up with a dream he had about dying.”

Sam quickly turned the pages. “Car crash. Car crash. Multicar pileup. Car hits him crossing the street. Car hits him in the parking lot. Gunshot. Gunshot. Multiple gunshots and bleeding out. Execution by firing squad. Explosion. Explosion.” She turned the page. “The last week was nothing but dreams about explosions and guns.”

Mosely nodded. “The boy was real worried. Didn't know it was this bad. It ain't good to focus on how you're going to die. Sucks the life right out of you doing that.”

“What do you think it means?” Sam asked.

“I don't know,” Mosely said. “I know there's no such thing as precognition. ­People don't see the future.”

Not like this they didn't. Unless Henry had been bouncing around other iterations trying to catch a glimpse of his future, there was no way he could have predicted his own death. At least, there wasn't one she knew of, but a year ago she hadn't believed in time travel, either. Her fists clenched as she offered a silent prayer for protection from the fools of the world.

“There's a pattern, though,” Mac said, drumming his fingers on the table. “His dreams came in sets. Maybe he was influenced by something he saw.”

“Like what?” Sam looked up at him, eyes dark and focused.

“Television show? Movie? Internet video? When we get to the office, I can run a scan of available media and see what was available for viewing.”

“Showtimes mean nothing. He could have watched something from six months ago, or ten years ago.”

“Then we'll get a warrant for his house and check the television and his cloud network. If he was storing schedules and movie listings, we can find them.”

Mosely turned to look at both of them. “How long have you two been together?”

Sam frowned at Mac in confusion. He shrugged, not sure why the guard was asking. “We've worked a case together before,” he said

“One case?” Mosely asked.

“Yes, we just . . .” Sam floundered.

“Think alike,” Mac finished for her with a wink. “Great minds and all that.”

“Right.” Mosely crossed his arms. “You two think you can find out what happened to Henry?”

“Yes,” Sam said, as Mac said, “Probably.” They both shrugged.

“We'll find Henry's killer,” Sam said.

“Killer?” It was Mosely's turn to frown. “What killer? I thought there was an accidental gas leak in the lab. No one said anything about its being intentional.”

“T
hat could have gone better,” Sam said as she strode to her car.

“It's nice that Dr. Morr is keeping everything low-­key. A natural-­gas explosion seems innocent. Accidental.”

“A bullet to the head is murder.” The car lock unclicked, and the plug retracted from the charging station. Water in the engine gurgled as the rental car turned on. “There wasn't anything on the security footage, though.”

“I know.”

Her heart sank. “I think I know what happened.”

“Yeah?”

“It's a lousy guess, though.”

“Does it involve a time dilation or time travel?” Mac asked.

“It does.” Her worst nightmare come back to haunt her.

“That's a lousy guess.”

“It's a lousy situation. No one's going to believe me. The regional director isn't even cleared to know what happened in Alabama.” Ninety percent of her current bureau files were sealed. It didn't make her popular at district mixers.

“So we sort it out ourselves and don't tell anyone,” Mac said. “You broke the stupid machine once, all we need to do is find it and break it again.”

“And I know where to look. Let's go pay Henry's roommate another visit.”

“B
asilwood Apartments?” Mac peered out the rental-­car window at the faux-­wood buildings. “Mechatrees and biogen grass. I wonder if they included a mechanical alligator in the retention pond, too.”

“It doesn't look that bad,” Sam said, as they pulled to a stop in front of building twelve.

“It's so fake, it makes my teeth hurt.”

“But it's hurricaneproof.”

Of course it was. The trapezoidal brown buildings squatted under engineered southern pines like squashed mushrooms. Crabgrass had been replaced by a pollution-­absorbing lab-­created monstrosity with leaves like razor blades. Not that crabgrass was very soft, but at least it didn't throw shrapnel when it was time to trim the lawn.

“Apartment B on the second floor,” Sam said.

Mac looked around at the mostly vacant parking lot. All the cars were over five years old, most of the apartments had the blinds closed, and there was a notable lack of kids' toys or barbecues. “This isn't a family apartment complex, is it?”

“It's unofficial student housing for the local colleges. One-­ or two-­bedroom apartments only. No pool. No playground. No pets allowed. I looked into it when I moved down here 'cause the rent's right, but even if Hoss could have come, I didn't like it.”

“There's a sort of Pacific Northwest vibe,” Mac said, as they walked up concrete steps and a faux-­wood shingle caught at his pant leg. “Pine trees and alpine shacks.”

“I think it's meant to be European.”

“Circa 1970?”

Sam shrugged and knocked on the door. It swung open.

Mac raised an eyebrow and reached for the gun at his hip. “That's not a good sign.”

“Time to put gloves on and get the recorder out.”

“You get the gloves, I'll have the gun.” He frowned at the recorder. “When did you start using that?”

“Standard policy down here. All law enforcement officers or agents entering a crime scene must use a visual and audio recording device.” She held up a Commonwealth flag pin he'd mistaken for decoration. “Yay for button cams?” With a click, the little device turned on, and Sam pinned it back on her blouse. “This is the home of Devon Bradet. We are here to speak to Mr. Bradet about his deceased roommate, Dr. Henry Troom, and have found the door open.”