City of Shadows

Chapter 36

15 September 2001, Arlington, Massachusetts

Rosalin Kellerman stared at the man in a smart business suit standing on her doorstep, and a woman beside him. A striking young woman, with startling grey eyes, wide and intense, wearing a loose gentleman’s checked shirt, several sizes too big for her but tucked into tightly fitting jeans. Athletic. But striking… in that her head was shaved almost down to the skin. And yet somehow she was still quite beautiful. Just like that Irish rock singer-songwriter from the eighties… what was her name? Sinead something or other.

‘This is number 45?’ he asked again.

Rosalin shrugged and pointed at the brass number plaque on her green door. ‘Uh… well, there’s the number right there! See it?’

‘And this is your residence?’ asked the man.

Rosalin narrowed her eyes. This was already becoming a peculiar encounter. And not the first one she’d had in the last few days.

‘Have you received a visit from a stranger recently?’ The man seemed to immediately realize that was a stupidly vague question. He pulled something out of his jacket pocket. A photograph. Held it up so she could see it. ‘A visit from this person?’

Rosalin recognized the face. The oval-shaped chin, the glasses, the frizzy, strawberry-blonde hair. Oh yeah, she remembered this girl all right.

‘You mind telling me what the hell this is all about?’

The man smiled. ‘You’ve seen her, haven’t you?’

‘Yeah… she came knocking a couple of days ago.’ Rosalin shook her head. ‘Crazy. I was pretty stupid. I really shouldn’t have let her in.’

‘You spoke with her?’ asked the intense young woman in the checked shirt.

‘You kidding?’ Rosalin snorted a laugh. ‘I couldn’t get a word in.’

‘Mom!’

Rosalin heard the alarm in her daughter’s voice and put down the tray of cakes on the counter, vaguely aware that the oven-hot tray was going to leave marks on the Formica, but Nadine’s shrill cry sounded unsettling.

She stepped into the hallway to see that a girl, a teenager, pale and scruffy, had pushed her way into the house past her daughter Nadine.

‘ What the hell do you think you’re doing? ’

‘This is my… my home!’ cried the girl.

Oh my God… maybe she’s a drug addict. Maybe she’s after money?

‘Get out! Get out of my house right now! Or I’ll call the police!’

The girl ignored her. Turned to the left and took the stairs up to the landing, three at a time.

‘Hey!’ called Rosalin after her. ‘Get back down here!’ No answer. ‘OUT! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!’

Nadine was looking frightened. ‘Mom? Who is she?’

‘It’s all right, honey. You stay down here.’ She started up the stairs after the teenager.

‘Mom? Don’t go up there. Please!’

‘It’s all right, honey. You stay down here.’ The young woman — no, not a woman, a kid still, really — didn’t look dangerous as such. Just confused and frightened. ‘Stay down there, Nadine. I’ll just go up and speak to her.’

At the top of the stairs she could hear the teenager had gone into Nadine’s bedroom. She could hear movement from in there. Movement… and now, what was that? Sobbing?

She approached the open door, spilling afternoon light out from Nadine’s room across the hallway carpet. And there, sitting on the end of her bed, was the teenager, rocking gently, her face buried in her hands.

All of a sudden bellowing at this kid to get out before she set the cops on her seemed like overkill. She clearly wasn’t a danger to anyone. She certainly didn’t need to be cuffed like a gangster and rough-handled into the back of a squad car.

‘Hello?’ Rosalin said softly. ‘Can I help you?’

That had happened two days ago. Now Rosalin looked at the smart young man and the striking, shaven-headed woman sitting side by side on her couch. The young man had shown her an FBI pass and said his name was Agent Cooper. The young woman he’d introduced as Agent Faith.

A cafetiere was steaming on the coffee table in front of them, untouched. Rosalin had no idea why she’d offered them coffee. Maybe she was just as curious about that poor girl as they were.

‘And what did she tell you?’ asked Agent Faith.

‘All sorts of crazy nonsense really. I thought she was drunk or on drugs or something.’

‘What specifically did she tell you?’ asked Agent Cooper. Rosalin preferred him asking. At least he smiled kindly. The woman on the other hand, Agent Faith, was like a goddamned robot. Face like an emotionless psychopath.

‘She said some crazy things… like she was from the future. That she’d died in a plane crash or something in 2010, but someone saved her from the plane.’

‘Saved her…?’

‘She said the plane was in mid-air. She said she was “beamed out”.’

‘Beamed out?’ Cooper laughed politely. ‘What? Like Star Trek beamed out?’

‘I don’t know what she meant exactly. It wasn’t making much sense to me.’ Rosalin shrugged. ‘That’s when I figured she wasn’t a druggy, but maybe some sort of sick person, you know? On medication or something?’

‘Indeed.’

‘She said she got beamed back from the future, from 2010, to now. And was working for some sort of time police. Trying to stop people from the future time travelling.’ Rosalin laughed self-consciously. It was the kind of make-believe game her youngest son played with his friends, tearing round the kitchen with plastic laser guns and making whoop-whoop noises.

‘The girl is deluded,’ said Agent Faith. ‘None of this is correct.’

‘Sure, of course,’ Rosalin nodded. ‘But…’

‘But what?’ asked Agent Cooper.

‘But… she was saying things that sounded so…’ She shrugged. ‘ Convincing, I guess.’

Cooper sat forward. ‘Such as?’

‘Well… let’s see.’ Rosalin narrowed her eyes. ‘Oh yeah, she said that we’ll be going to war with Iraq again. And after that with some other country called Afganistan-izan or something. She said some other weird things… can’t remember them, though. Just odd stuff.’ Rosalin shook her head. As that girl had sobbed and told her story, she’d almost found herself believing some of it.

‘Did she explain why she came to your house?’ asked Cooper.

‘Oh yes… yes. That was the strangest thing of all. She said she had memories of living here in this house. I mean… living here right now. In 2001. That she’d lived here as a girl with her mom and dad. That she remembered the house looking very different on the inside and — ’

‘But she’s never in fact lived here?’

Rosalin shook her head. ‘No! We’ve been living here since before Nadine was born. Since 1990.’

‘And this girl is in no way related to you?’

‘No! Look, of course not! I’ve never seen her before!’ Rosalin looked at the coffee. It wasn’t going to get drunk. ‘I told her that. Told her that we’ve been living here for more than ten years… that’s when she went funny.’

‘Funny?’

Rosalin recalled the girl had abruptly stopped mid-sentence, as if something in her mind had suddenly snapped. Discovered a hidden touchstone of truth. ‘She just got up and left. Walked out of the house, sort of in a trance or something.’

‘And she’s not been back since?’

‘No. Like I said, that was a couple of days ago.’

Agent Cooper nodded and offered her another charming smile. ‘Well, Mrs Kellerman, thank you for talking to us.’ He shrugged apologetically as he stood up. ‘And for the coffee. I’m sure it was very nice coffee.’

The woman followed her colleague’s lead and both agents headed towards the hallway and the front door.

‘But one thing I don’t understand,’ said Rosalin. ‘Why are the FBI after her? I mean… you know… if she’s just some kid who needs help?’

Agent Cooper shrugged that question away. But his female partner stopped dead.

‘See, I’m… well, I’ve got a journalist coming over later today,’ continued Rosalin. ‘I called the National Enquirer.’ She bit her lip, slightly embarrassed. ‘I know it’s a stupid newspaper. They run stupid My-Uncle-is-an-Alien-from-Mars stories… but they pay pretty well for them.’

Agent Faith turned to look at her. ‘You will be telling this story to a newspaper?’

Rosalin nodded guiltily. ‘Is that, uh… you know, a problem?’

Faith’s movement was little more than a blur. The dull crack of a single gunshot was reverberating around the home’s hallway before Agent Cooper fully realized she’d reached under his jacket and wrenched out his standard-issue firearm and used it.

Mrs Kellerman was dead before her legs buckled and she dropped to the floor. Blood trickled from a tidy dark hole between her carefully plucked eyebrows and pooled on the waxed wooden parquet slats beneath her head.

‘Jesus! What — ? ’

‘She was a contamination risk.’

Cooper realized he was trembling. ‘You… can’t… you can’t just go and shoot — ’

‘My primary mission parameter is to eliminate the agency team. My secondary mission parameter is to ensure no significant time-contamination events occur.’

She handed the gun back to him.

‘Thank you for the use of your weapon, Agent Cooper.’