I’m a time traveler.
That’s what the clients don’t know.
Tried telling one once but it was nothing but “I don’t believe you. How this, what about that, and why don’t you play the stock market?” Boring.
It’s just another skill.
Get a job, go to the past, discover the truth, get paid.
Easy.
My hand was still on the gun. Same gun, different place. Ten minutes in the future and two miles across town. My safe room.
Travel by personal wormhole is handy like that.
I took the pistol from its anchor stand and dumped it in the outgoing items bin near the door, then used my fingerprint on the exit lock. The system beeped, logging the time. I stepped outside.
The hexagonal pavers underfoot were dry but the air smelled like rain. The rumble of thunder threatened from downtown.
Hawk, a gargantuan black cat with a tattered right ear, stared at me from the deteriorating wall that encircled the patio. He gave me a slow blink.
“Good to see you too, buddy.”
The cat’s ears flicked and he raised his eyes to the second story.
Something was up.
There were still a few seconds left on my exit window from the jump room. I opened the door again and snatched my pistol from the bin before the time lock on the door could set. The 9mm Stinger 1911 unlocked in my hand, triggered by a combination of the palm print sensor in the grip and the titanium band on my right ring finger. I kept my index finger on the trigger guard and ascended the steps to my second story garage apartment.
No signs of forced entry. I tried the door and found it unlocked. Not how I left it.
My gun was up as I stepped inside. I scanned the open living area. Kitchen was clear. A sound came from the hallway to the bedrooms. Water running. The sink.
Burglars and hitmen don’t usually pause to wash up before a crime.
The bathroom door opened and a tall, middle-aged man wearing shorts and flip flops stepped into the hall.
I lowered my gun. “Shit, Dad. B and E is a good way to get yourself shot.”
Benjamin Travers stared back at me. “I didn’t B anything. Just needed to wash the blood off. Your ugly cat mauled me.” He held up his forearm and displayed several red scratches that were already turning to angry welts. He also had a chronometer on his wrist.
“Hawk is handsome. All the girl cats love him. What are you doing here?”
“Your mother is a persistent worrier.”
“I’ll visit eventually.” I walked to the fridge, pulled two beers out and handed one to my dad.
He walked around the living room while he sipped his, studied the blinds. “How long have you lived here and you still don’t have curtains? You bring girls up to this? If anything you should decorate for them.”
“I go to your place and insult your aesthetic?” I sank onto the couch with my beer.
“An aesthetic requires some measure of beauty. Like art. Or at least objects that could be deemed artistic. You have blank walls and a doormat.” He took a seat next to me.
“I like things simple. What do you care?”
“I just don’t get why you want to live in this neighborhood. It’s depressing. The decade. All of it. Your mother and I went to a lot of effort trying to raise you somewhere nicer. Better. I don’t get why you came back here.”
“You used to live in this decade.”
“Before I had a choice.”
“You said the first rule of time travel is to not make anything worse.”
“You thought that meant go live in some armpit of a timeline? Who did they elect as . . . you know what? I’ll stop. You gotta live your life.” He drank more beer. “How old are you these days? Thirty?”
“I don’t know. In my prime, obviously.”
“Your mother said to remind you there’s a place for you in our time whenever you want it. You could find a job that isn’t chasing people’s misdeeds all night. Work some regular hours. Maybe see if you remember what the sun looks like.”
“Yellow, burny, sky thing. I’ve seen it. Besides, I like it here. It’s where my cat lives.”
“A cat isn’t a family.”
“Maybe I prefer caring for something that stays where I left it. Doesn’t expect me to do anything but show up with Meow Mix. Doesn’t expect me to be a guy I’m not.”
Dad swallowed hard. “I know you didn’t ask to be born a time traveler. Didn’t ask for the problems that come with it. We did the best we could.”
“I’m good. Don’t beat yourself up. You bring the car?”
He sighed. “Yeah. I’ll drop it by later. You want it in the garage?”
“Leave it out front. I’ll handle putting it away.”
“Still don’t know how you pulled it off.”
“You’re the one who taught me poker. You really ought to blame yourself.”
“Your mom doesn’t know I saw you that night.”
“Who am I going to tell?”
He got off the couch and put his beer can in the sink. When he came back, I stood and he put a hand on my shoulder. “Take care of yourself, all right? Maybe make some friends or something.”
“I’ve got Waldo. And Hawk. I’m already over-scheduled.”
He went to the door. “I’ll drop the car by tomorrow.”
“Tell Mom not to worry. I’m fine.”
“Sure. And I’ll tell this sky not to burst.” He gave me a wave and shut the door. A moment later, lightning flashed across the sky. Storm was settling in.
Good time to get back to work.
It took me several stops, cross-referencing safe jump locations with Waldo, but I got myself to Hyde Park, a trendy neighborhood of South Tampa in the twilight hours of October 20th, 2018.
The night Foster Phillips died.
The evening was cool and the moon was rising. I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my jeans and whistled as I strolled through Hyde Park Village—an attractive, high-end shopping district filled with attractive high-end people. No one can suspect you of being a time traveler if they are too stunned by your whistling prowess.
I’m the Michael Phelps of whistling.
After doing my best not to ogle a group of fit thirty-something women exiting LuluLemon, I turned down a side street, cruising the sidewalk in front of beautified Old Florida bungalows with wooden porch swings and lawns of verdant St. Augustine grass.
The slice of Americana where Foster and Isla Phillips lived had an oak tree in the front yard and a garage apartment in the back. The porch swing was green and the front door was sunshine yellow. I strolled by slowly, then crossed the street, pulling my wallet out at the corner before circling back. I slipped a business-card-sized sheet from my wallet and punched out one of my eight micro-cameras. They resembled the googly eyes kids stick on kindergarten craft supplies to give them personalities. My cameras were similarly adhesive and I stuck one to the pole of a NO PARKING sign opposite the Phillips’ residence. A tree a dozen yards down got one too.
Lurking in a car on stakeouts for hours is an honored tradition of the private investigator trade, but the Impossible Burger with extra guac I’d had for lunch was already sending me toward a siesta. I figured I’d make this quick.
I made a lap of the block and cruised down the alley to check the rear access, depositing another two micro-cameras. I checked my phone to make sure all of the cameras were transmitting, then browsed through a few mugshots Waldo had found of Foster Phillips.
The police department isn’t known for flattering photography but Foster presented as a handsome man in his late twenties. He had a sharp, eager face. Isla had described him as determined. I could see it in his eyes. He’d been arrested a few times. Car theft and attempted robbery. Did a couple years but was paroled early for good behavior. Employed by some kind of security firm but had been let go six months ago.
It was on my return lap from the back alley that I spotted the truck. The Mercedes Benz G-Class SUV was black on black from its window tint to the color of its rims. It was parked on a side street but had a clear view of the Phillips’ house. The engine was idling and a steady drip of condensation had created a puddle beneath the air conditioning system. Attempting to see inside was like staring into the nothing.
Hyde Park was a nice neighborhood, and it was home to plenty of money-savvy millennials, and probably a few of their parents, but not Russian mafia. Even a half-decade-old G-Class SUV was an eighty-thousand dollar ride. On a woke street full of Mini-Coopers and Priuses, it stuck out like a Mercedes G-Class SUV.
This was one downside to getting around by time travel. I didn’t have my own lurker mobile around a corner with which to surveil the suspicious SUV. But I did have my sparkling personality. I tugged my sunglasses from the collar of my shirt and slipped them on, pressing the record button on the in-frame camera, then jaywalked across the street to the driver’s side of the Mercedes. I rapped on the window and gave my reflection a winning grin.
I rested my hand on the side-view mirror. The window came down halfway.
“The fuck you want?”
The driver of the car wore sunglasses too, but not as cool as mine. Obviously jealous. He was a hulk of man whose shaved head and abundant neck folds meant he probably didn’t have my outstanding hair genes or low cholesterol numbers. A second man was in the passenger seat. He had excellent hair but a pinched, constipated tension to his features. He might be able to compete on the cholesterol front but I doubted Isla Phillips had ever told him he had classic movie star appeal.
“Excuse me, gents. You happen to see a little dog run by? It’s a shepherd-yorkie-schnoodle-chow. Goes by Barkley.”
“We look like dog catchers to you? Get lost.”
The window went back up.
“I’m just gonna keep looking around then!” I shouted to the closed window. I gave my reflection a wave, then wandered back past the Phillips’ house, periodically calling for my dog who stubbornly refused to exist.
My hunt for Barkley was so intense that I almost missed the dented Volkswagen Golf that cruised by. But the driver’s face caught my attention. The car swung into the narrow driveway and pulled alongside the bungalow with the yellow door. The engine cut off and the brake lights went out.
Foster Phillips had arrived home.
I was around the corner and out of sight by the time the man climbed out of his car. I pulled my shades off and watched the action with my phone via the micro-cameras. Foster Phillips wore jeans and a Tampa Bay Lightning jersey. He carried a shoulder bag—the kind used for hauling a laptop—and some kind of hard-sided crate, size of a suitcase. He hurried up the steps, ignored his full mailbox, and went directly inside. I toggled between cameras and made sure each was recording.
Whatever happened from here had already happened. It wasn’t my job to stop it. But the circumstances did have me curious. I lingered in the alley midway down the block, watching the clock. Took about twenty minutes. I was close enough to hear the gunshot when it went off.
I watched for fifteen more minutes—till the second car pulled into the driveway. Isla Phillips. She took her time getting out of the white Volvo, checked something on her phone, then gathered the mail. Not the actions of a woman who knew she’d find her husband dead in their home.
She entered the front door and disappeared.
No one else came in or out of the Phillips’ house. I rewound the recordings and double-checked. Nobody but Isla.
Evidence said suicide.
The camera I’d surreptitiously stuck to the Mercedes’ side-view mirror had shown no movement, but now the vehicle started rolling. They passed a police cruiser on its way in. The video feed only lasted another half block before it was out of range. That camera disconnected from my screen.
“Where did you make your fun friends, Foster Phillips?”
I pocketed my phone and took the long way back to Hyde Park Village.
The trip had given me answers, but now I had more questions.