Richard Doetsch - The 13th Hour

Nick had been playing God and was now reaping the consequences.

Lives are set, actions irrevocable, yet Nick was playing chess, running about, moving the pieces on the board of a game already lost. He couldn’t reach forward and save his friends, constantly tossed backward as if he was a character in a Greek myth with Zeus and Athena playing with his life. Only this time Zeus wore a double-breasted blue blazer and gave out mysterious watches that Einstein had never heard of.

Every ripple, every misstep of the last nine hours had led to consequences that compounded his initial situation. His life had been torn apart bit by bit.

Who can predict the paths our lives will take, what fateful detours will steer us either into or away from disaster, what unselfish deed will provoke a war.

Nick had to stop it all from happening, if he was to have any chance of putting things right, but with each step he took, each change he made, he was creating a future that was far worse than the one he had originally been faced with.

Marcus was right, he realized. The unintended consequences of our actions change not just our own future but the future of all of those around us, all those we care for.

NICK RACED DOWN Sunrise Drive, pushing the Audi as hard as he could. He had grabbed his personal cell phone from his desk, having left it in Marcus’s car in the future. He did likewise with his car keys, finding them in the red rooster key box in the mudroom. He had pulled the pistol from his safe and now felt its cold steel at the small of his back. He was amazed when he spun the dial left, right, left and opened the safe to see it sitting there. He had once again left it behind in the future only to find it here in the past. He tried to wrap his mind about the paradox. He thought of the consequences of pulling it from his safe so many times, each removal eliminating it from the possibility of its being there in the future. But as far as he was concerned there was no future if Julia wasn’t alive.

As Nick hit town, he drove right into the center of mayhem. The sidewalks were packed, the streets were filled, traffic was jammed in gridlock, drivers standing beside their idling cars. All eyes were cast skyward at the thick black plumes of smoke, the fiery explosions that lit the dark underbelly of the jet-fuel-created clouds, their ground-shaking rumbles pouring in three seconds later.

It was as if war were being waged in Byram Hills, or as if there was a giant creature on the horizon that would reach out and swallow them whole. Panic filled the air as shopkeepers locked their doors, as parking lots emptied.

Men and women frantically dialed cell phones with shaking hands, forgetting what flights their loved ones might be on. Kids looked up in wide-eyed wonder, unaware of what they gazed upon.

Death had come to Byram Hills.

There were shouts, and screams, and gasps of awe, all directed at Sullivan Field. People raced down the sidewalk, pedestrians jumped into cars. The scream of fire engines en route filled the distance. Police cruisers raced through side streets, their chirping, intermittent wails clearing a path. All were converging on disaster.

Prayers were said, mundane problems forgotten, all concern directed toward the victims and the families left behind.

Nick inched his car forward, caught within the panicked masses. His eye was drawn to the clock on the dashboard, the sight of which made the watch in his pocket feel like a piece of lead: 12:05.

Less than three hours before time ran out.

As the traffic finally abated, Nick turned onto Maple Avenue, heading for Washington House. He flipped on his blinker but quickly flipped it off and hit the accelerator.

He had forgotten about time.

Julia’s Lexus sat parked in the side lot of the building owned by Shamus Hennicot. Julia was alive somewhere inside, coming to grips with the fact that her client had been robbed, entirely unaware of the consequences the burglary would have on the future that awaited her.

He thought of running in, wrapping his arms about her, and holding on forever, but the robbery had already happened. Paranoia was already setting in on Dance and his team. Their search for witnesses, security video, and ultimately Julia had already begun.

He thought of re-enlisting Marcus in his quest, but he had already led him to death once. He thought of whisking Julia away but knew that somehow she would be found, her death inevitable, as he had seen twice already. McManus had yet to arrive on the scene and he had no idea where Paul Dreyfus was.

Nick pulled out and looked at the St. Christopher medal, pulled from the neck of Julia’s killer. He had initially thought it would be the talisman that would lead them to Julia’s murderer, but it had been just another piece of metal weighing down his pocket, a clue that proved useless. He had been so convinced it was Dance’s, but Dance wore nothing about his neck.

He had seen Shannon in his sweat-covered tank top, but again there was nothing there. Brinehart had been killed by Dance before Julia was shot, Randall was the overweight accomplice who had distracted him at his front door. That left Arilio, whom he had yet to see, and Rukaj. It could be either of them, or even someone who had yet to be revealed to Nick. He would remain diligent but had abandoned hope in the necklace’s power of identification.

Nick realized that the St. Christopher medal, the mahogany box, the gold swords and daggers, every hour, every death all pointed back to a single point of origin. All things converged on the robbery of Shamus Hennicot.

Everything, saving Julia, saving Marcus, it would all come down to preventing that singular incident, to seeing that Dance never pulled a job that he would have to cover up. But to do that, he could not impede it now, not after it happened. He would have to wait until 11:00, before they went into the building. Which would give him forty-five minutes to put the pieces together, forty-five minutes to formulate a plan for taking on a team of armed men, a team lead by Detective Ethan Dance, a man who took lives as easily as he took a breath.

THE BYRAM HILLS police officer sat in his unmarked car, his eyes fixed on the white building fifty yards ahead as he nervously drummed his fingers on the wheel. His dark-brimmed hat sat on the seat beside him. He hated that hat, how it flattened his red hair, how ridiculous it looked, wondering why the pillbox, patent-leather-brim style was still in use seventy-five years after its design when the rest of fashion lived in the present.

Nolan Brinehart had longed to be a detective since he was a child, dreaming of being one of those brilliant TV heroes who rights the wrongs, who figures out the impossible crimes from vague, inadequate clues. But he had trouble with figuring out quadratic equations and algebra, not to mention that he could barely do jigsaw puzzles as a kid.

He had gone to Byram Hills High School and had a fair amount of experience with the police as a youth. Of course it was from the other side of the law. Never charged with or convicted of anything, he was your typical delinquent, drunk and disorderly, causing fights, but nothing beyond the wildness of male youth.

Hoping for the fast track so he could begin to earn a decent wage and leave the ridiculous hat and blue uniform behind, he had cozied up to Detective Dance. He knew Dance had helped Detective Shannon along, had taken an interest in the fellow Brooklynite several years earlier, helping him to achieve his promotion in one-third the usual time.

And now, as with all masters and apprentices, Brinehart had found his opening. He was a willing pupil and Dance was a teacher in need of a new student.

Dance told him the romanticized world of detectives, the one that everyone knew so well from movies and television, did not exist. Crimes were usually easily solved or impossible to figure out, and the pay was underwhelming. But if Brinehart was willing to walk a slightly different path, he could not only achieve detective status in a year’s time but have a bank account that would allow him a lifestyle impossible to attain on a detective’s abysmal salary.