Glen Cook - A matter of time

Cash was saved John's stronger opinion of Railsback by Carrie.

"I'm sorry, Norm. We're going to have to go. It's my head, John."

"Didn't you bring your pills?"

"I didn't think…"

"We've got aspirin, Carrie," said Norm.

"No. Thanks. I'm sorry. With aspirin I have to take so. many I make myself sick at my stomach."

"Okay," said Harold. "Get your coat. I'll be ready as soon as the kids are."

Carrie's headaches were genuine, but Cash suspected they were a psychological convenience. Judging from the past, she had gotten Annie and Nancy going on Michael, real soap-opera stuff. Cash had been through a few of those sessions himself. Carrie was good at starting them. But she didn't like being around the people she made unhappy or depressed.

"All right," he said. "I'll see Nancy and the kids get home. John, we'll talk about it tomorrow."

Thursday they got another negative on cars illegally parked and more silence from Missing Persons around the country. FBI produced nothing. Railsback decided to release photos for television and the papers. John got on the phone and started trying to locate Homicide records for 1921. Friday lunch he disappeared, turned up late with a crusty file, thick, handwritten, almost illegible.

They never got into it. The new case, that had held off longer than seemed believable, finally broke. It was a holdup-murder. Two partners in a cheap used-furniture store had been killed, and an officer wounded. One freelance socialist was dead and two more were fleeing on foot, one of them hit. The whole division was on it till dark, and by then they had another. The weekend had begun. It was Tuesday again before Cash had a chance to worry about the mystery corpse.

On Sunday the story hit the papers. On Monday the Channel Four evening newscast mentioned the case in passing. Tuesday morning, at 8:30, Cash got a buzz from Tom Kurland on the booking desk.

"Norm? Got a live one down here. Voluntary confession on that John Doe stiff from last week."

Ah. The genie from the bottle. Cash brightened. "Hey. Good. Bring him up. You made my day, Tom."

"On the way." Mysterious laughter lurked round the fringes of Kurland's voice.

"Hey, John…" he called from his gym locker of an office.

A florid, gray-haired man with the build of an athlete long gone to seed, who looked like he ought to be traveling in a cloud of flies, pushed through the main door. " 'Lo, Beth," he said.

"Winehead Andy," Cash muttered. "The Prince of Hungary. I'll get you for this, Kurland."

Officer Tavares tried stopping the man. He just grinned and kept coming, with a little wrist-flick of a greeting to Old Man Railsback, who was snoring in a chair in a far corner.

"It's all right, Beth."

" 'Lo, Sarge."

"Hi, Andy. What is it this time?" As if he didn't know. The man, who claimed to be a deposed Prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (he was neither old enough nor, insofar as Cash had been able to determine, did he speak a word of German or Magyar), was, with a blush, going to admit that, in a fit of madness, he had slain the mystery man. Andy swore that he was the Jekyll-and-Hyde type.

"Can't live with it anymore, Sarge. Had to turn myself in…"

The man had confessed so often that Cash no longer found him amusing.

Neither did Lieutenant Railsback. "What the hell is that wino doing in my squad room?" he thundered from his office.

"The usual," Beth replied, returning to her work.

Rather than come out looking for trouble, Railsback slammed his door.

"All right, Andy. You know the routine," said Cash. "How'd you do it?"

"Knife. In the back. Grabbed him from behind and stabbed him in the heart…"

"Wrong-o, Andy. You lose again. Think it out better next time. That's hard for a right-handed man."

"Just testing, Sarge." He stopped smiling. "I really strangled him…"

"Missed again." Cash shook his head. He didn't understand. Andy's sole ambition seemed to be to get himself put away.

There had been a time when he was a semipermanent resident in the holdover downstairs, especially in winter, but these days every room with a lock on its door was packed with genuine bandits.

"Shot him?"

"Andy, here's two bucks. Go over to the Rite-Way and tell

Sarah I said to give you the breakfast special."

Andy took the money. "Sarge, one of these days you're going to catch me red-handed. Then you'll believe me. It's my mind, see. I can't remember afterward…"

"I know, Andy. Till I do, you'll keep getting away with it. Meantime, I've got to go by the book. Now do me a favor. Go eat breakfast."

Andy stood tall as he left. A wino, yes, but he walked like a prince.

"Beth, remind me that Tom Kurland is one up on me."

"Us." Her dark eyes sparkled mischieviously. "I'm working on it already."

"Make it vicious." He walked to a window. "He's out the door already."

Below, Andy scampered through traffic.

"Liquor store?"

"You must be part Gypsy. Anything on my corpse?"

"No. No ID. No claim on the body. FBI says they've given up trying to locate prints."

"Norm," said Railsback, "you get rid of him yet?"

"He just needed the price of a bottle, Hank."

"About your mystery corpse. 'Bout time you got it certified nonhomicide, isn't it? Get it off our backs? I don't like it. I want it pushed back, out of the way."

"Not yet. Maybe in a couple days."

It's really bizarre, Cash thought, the way this is affecting us. Railsback would not have let go of any other case for weeks or months. But with this one even the marginally involved people, like Beth, were behaving strangely.

Once Railsback did get it shoved back, little happened.

Events elsewhere devoured Cash's attention and emotions.

IV. On the X Axis;

Lidice, Bohemia, 1866; A Minor Event during the Seven Weeks' War

A wise man once observed: The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.

Fiala… Marda… Fiala tossed her head violently, battered her temples with her fists. What was happening? Was it the Prussians?

The pain broke the grip on her mind.

Father lay sprawled half in, half out of the doorway. Mother knelt before the Virgin, moaning.

Fiala was having a fit. He heaved on his pallet, shrieking.

Her brother? She was an only child… And her mother had died in the Uprising.

Couldn't be the Prussians. The armies were north of Lidice.

Lidice? What the devil was Lidice?

Who was Marda?

"Uncle Stefan…" Oh, Lord, her mouth wouldn't shape the words right.

Mother whirled, stared in horror.

Where am I? What's happening to me? Who are these people? What's wrong with my mind?

What's wrong with my mind? God help me! Something's in my head. Possessing me.

German. That was it. Only no one spoke German anymore. Not outside a classroom.

It was a strong demon. "Mother… Priest… "Mother ran from the house. Would Father Alexander believe her?

What was this mumbo-jumbo? Only recidivist subversives believed that nonsense anymore. Only stupid, ignorant country people…

"Oh blessed Jesus, help me!"

Slap! "Marda!"

The blow floored her. And terminated the contest. The terrified thing in her mind twisted away with a fading shriek, as if sliding off round the treacherous curves of a Klein bottle.

Who was this ragged brute? The man who had been lying in the doorway.

"Father?"

"Yes. Come on. Get up."

The words were butchered by lips and tongue that had never spoken Czech.

"What happened?"

"I'm not sure. There's no time to worry about it now. Just accept it. Help me with Stefan."

His absolute calm enveloped her, included her. The thing inside her, the other, momentarily gave up trying to reassert itself. Numbly, she seized the feet of the hovel's remaining, now silent tenant and helped swing him onto the rude table. He was just a boy, yet his face was a land on which several bad diseases had left memorials.