The Eighty-eighth Key Ch. 48

Part VI

Chapter 48

Delgetti was, as promised, waiting for them at the gate; Carl Stanton drove with them around the airport to the general aviation ramp -- where a CAT Huey piloted by 'Mickey' Rooney waited. Everyone boarded the Huey; Callahan went to the front left seat, while Fujiko sat in a jump-seat behind Rooney. After taking off the helicopter made for the coastal range and crossed over to the beach, from there it turned north and flew directly to Sea Ranch. They landed in the street in front of Callahan's house; CHP officers and the county sheriff were waiting for them.

"What do we know?" Frank asked the gathered law enforcement officers as he got out of the Huey.

A CHP captain spoke first, and at first, Bullitt assumed this officer was in charge: "First thing," the captain said, "she's either not real smart, or she wants to be caught."

"How so," Frank said.

"Well, she's using charge cards, usually a Visa, for one thing. She's been driving north on I-5 and not making any effort to hide, for another."

"Is anyone following her?" Callahan asked.

"Yeah, a guy from your outfit, Pattison I think his name is, and he has her, though he's following in some kind of helicopter. Someone from the PD is with him."

"Who?"

"Al something, starts with a V. The suspect is in Portland right now. Been there two hours, just checked into a hotel south of the city."

Callahan turned to Rooney: "Okay, the three of us will head north now..."

The CHP captain interrupted: "The FBI is in charge of the case, gentlemen. You'll need to clear any-and-everything with them before you take any action, and I repeat -- any action at all."

Callahan looked at the captain: "Gotcha," he said, smiling, then he turned back to Rooney: "We can gas up in Redding, then head north from there. We'll contact Pattison when we cross into Oregon."

"Here's the agent in charge's number," the captain said. "You need to call him, really, I mean it..."

"Don't worry about it," Bullitt said with brooding malice in his eyes -- enough to make the captain take a few steps back. "Harry, would you go and take a look at the house? I'm not sure I want to see anything in there right now."

Callahan nodded, then walked over to someone in a dark suit. "You the CSI?"

"Yeah. Who are you?"

"Callahan, SFPD Homicide. I need to go look around the house."

"Okay, come with me."

There hadn't been much of a struggle, but it had all gone down in the living room. Cathy had eventually gone down on the hardwood floor by the sofa and bled out there; there were other tell-tale signs of a struggle, too...end tables knocked askew, books knocked from a bookcase scattered on the floor...

"Did you find a murder weapon?"

"Large kitchen knife. Some defensive wounds on the hands and forearms, five deep wounds on the torso, two were most likely fatal, unrecoverable."

"What, do you mean the aorta?"

The Investigator nodded. "I don't think she suffered too much if that's what you're getting at."

Callahan nodded. "Anything else I need to know?"

"Suspects fingerprints are all over the place, and, well, she tried to get into the house at the end of the street."

Callahan turned and looked at the investigator. "Show me."

They walked past Frank and Fujiko, still standing beside the Huey, on their way to his house, and the investigator showed him three places where Evelyn had tried to force her way in. "She used a mason's trowel to try and defeat the locks out back; apparently she gave up. Do you know whose house this is?"

"Mine."

"Oh. Wow, I had no idea they paid you guys so much..."

Callahan ignored the man, took out his key and they walked inside; everything looked in order -- or did it? "Could you sweep the place for prints?"

"You sure? Doesn't look like she gained entry..."

"Something doesn't feel right. Like..."

"Yeah? Like what?"

Callahan went to the piano and looked around; everything looked okay, nothing appeared disturbed -- but something was wrong. He pulled out the music to his mother's Second Concerto and sat at the piano...then he took a deep breath.

"Come here, would you?" he said to the investigator. When the man was beside Callahan took another deep breath. "Put your hand on my shoulder and close your eyes."

"What?"

"Just do it."

He felt the man's hand resting on his upper arm and took one more deep breath. "I'm going to play a few chords on this piano, and I want you to think of the crime scene in the other house while I do. Then I want you to imagine, in your mind, that you can somehow follow the suspect...while I'm playing the piano. Understand?"

"No, not really..."

"Okay, here we go. Clear your mind, then think of the murder scene...and no matter what you think you see, don't panic, and don't say a word..."

Callahan closed his eyes too, then played the first chord...

Evelyn, at the front door, ringing the doorbell. Cathy coming to the door, not wanting to let her in. A man is with Evelyn, army field jacket, rough-looking, maybe in his forties, Hispanic. He kicks the door open. Cathy tries to flee, the man chases her to the kitchen. Evelyn goes towards Elizabeth's bedroom. The man takes a knife from a block on the countertop. Cathy runs. He catches her in the living room. They struggle. Cathy is wounded but she has a gun from the bookcase now. She shoots the man once in the abdomen. Evelyn returns, still alone. She takes the knife from the wounded man and attacks Cathy. Cathy falls to the ground. Evelyn stabs Cathy two more times, in the upper abdomen. The man staggers outside to a van, where another man helps him get into a back seat. Evelyn takes something from the man, then she and the second man run down the street. She tries every door, then looks under the front door mat and finds a key. She opens the front door and they both come into the house. The second man puts a black box under the bed in Callahan's bedroom, then he runs a wire between the mattress and the box springs...

And then Callahan stopped playing, just before he slumped over the keyboard.

"What the fuck!" the investigator cried. "What the fuck did you just do to me?"

Callahan shook his head, tried to clear away the lingering fog...

"Goddam! What just..." the investigator shouted.

"Get a hold of yourself, man," Callahan said, standing. "Let's go check the bedroom."

Callahan grabbed a flashlight from a drawer in the kitchen and they went back to the bedroom; there was a bomb under the bed, and a sophisticated looking wiring harness from the device disappeared under the mattress.

"You mean to tell me we just watched the murder?" the man said. "Like...in real-time?"

"Yup. And this is what you call proof, isn't it?" Callahan said, pointing at the device. "Now, I suggest you go and call the bomb squad before this bomb goes off in your face."

"Jesus...I can't use any of this shit in my report, can I?"

"Not unless you want to get locked up in a rubber room. But now that you know what happened, you know what to look for, don't you?"

"How'd you do that? I mean..."

"Yeah, I know what you mean, and no, I have no idea how I do it. All I can tell you is what you just experienced stays between you and me. Got it?"

"Fuck. Yeah, man. You and me, got it."

"Bomb squad. Go."

"Yessir!"

"And send Captain Bullitt in here, would you. Alone."

"Captain Bullitt. Yessir."

Callahan walked through the house, retracing her steps -- and he could still feel her presence in the house, an impossible feeling he'd never experienced before. Like the pure, concentrated evil he'd seen so many times before while working the street, only this was coming from Evelyn...

"What the hell did you do to that tech, Harry? He looks as white as a ghost!"

"Because he's just seen a ghost, Frank. Come on, follow me." They went back to the bedroom and Harry showed him the device.

"Looks like C4 hooked up to a pressure switch. Sit on the bed and boom. Lift the mattress to get at the switch -- and boom again. How'd you...oh no, let me guess. You gave that poor bastard a piano lesson, didn't you?"

Callahan nodded. "Evelyn. She had a, well, two men with her. Hispanic men, Frank. Cathy shot one in the gut, Evelyn -- committed the murder. They were in a navy blue panel van, no markings, a rental plate."

"Where's the wounded man?"

Callahan shook his head. "I'll have to go back in. Deep, this time."

Frank shook his head. "No way, man. You're going to do this one time too many, Callahan, and you ain't gonna be able to get your ass back out."

"Yeah? So? We gotta find out who was behind this, Frank. What if Escobar is behind all this, what if he got her out? What if the men with her were his people? What then, wise guy?"

"Jesus."

"Leave him out of this, would you?"

"You don't have any time to waste," a familiar voice said, and...

...Callahan wheeled around, and there he was -- the Old Man in the Cape -- with cane in hand. "What do you mean?" Harry said.

"Don't worry about Escobar right now. Focus! What's the most important thing -- right now?!"

Frank stepped closer to the Old Man: "Elizabeth. She's the most important thing."

"They're not going to ask for a ransom," the Old Man in the Cape said. "They want you, Harry. But they want the little girl, too."

"How do you know that?" Frank asked.

"You're wasting time, Frank. And -- oh, before I forget. That California Highway Patrol captain? You can't trust him, so tell him nothing. Same with the FBI."

"Why? Are they connected to..."

But in the blink of an eye, the Old Man disappeared...

"Damn, I hate it when he does that."

"He only shows up during, well, in a crisis," Frank said. "At a point, like maybe a fulcrum. Why?"

"Frank? I hope you're not asking me?"

"He's guiding us, Harry. Keeping us on a certain path. But...why?"

"Well, Elizabeth seems to be one of the most important things to him right now..."

"So...he came here to protect her?"

"He said 'they want you, Harry,' didn't he?" Callahan asked.

"Yeah. So, they're using Elizabeth to get to you. Which means they're using Evelyn."

"Which means, Frank, that somehow they found out we took out their boats. That we took out the boats, and that we killed all their men. This has revenge written all over it."

"Okay," Bullitt sighed, "and we assume the CHP and FBI are both penetrated."

"And we know the department is..."

"Which leaves us...alone," Frank said.

"Not quite. We've got assets in CAT, and right now we have Al with us."

"You're leaving out one critical thing," Frank added. "Fujiko is here now, and once they figure out who she is, and what she means to you, what happens to her? Tell me, what's going to keep them from killing her too. And guess what? She's out there with that CHP captain, isn't she?"

Harry sighed. "Okay, so we take her back to SFO and put her on the next plane home -- until this is over..."

"Harry, you do that and you'll never see her again -- and rightfully so."

"Okay, tell me -- what are you thinking?"

"Let Dell take her to the city, move her around. If they find her and close in, Dell gets her to the Presidio and onto a flutterbug."

"Okay, go talk to Dell. I've got to wait here for the bomb squad."

"Right, I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Lock the front door behind you as you leave, just ring the bell..."

Harry walked back to his bedroom, and the Old Man in the Cape was just standing there like he had been waiting impatiently for hours.

"What's on your mind," Harry asked as he walked into the room.

"This didn't have to happen this way. In fact, it shouldn't have."

"What do you mean...it shouldn't have?"

"There's not much I can tell you in this time, but you need to get Frank and the girl."

"Who? Fujiko?"

"Yes, go get them -- then...bring them both here."

"Alright."

"And find me some paper, and perhaps something to write with."

Everyone was gathered in the room five minutes later; Frank wasn't too surprised to find the Old Man in the house again, but Fujiko looked at the Old Man like he was some kind of mad sorcerer.

"Harry? You and the girl -- Fujiko, is it? -- you stand there. Frank, I'll be back for you in a moment. Stay right where you are and don't move."

And as Frank started to protest, Harry and Fujiko -- and the Old Man -- simply vanished...yet before he could even register surprise the Old Man was back in the room.

"Where are they!" Bullitt shouted.

"You'll be with them presently, but first -- I need you to write something..."

________________________________

Fujiko literally slammed into him, wrapped her arms around his waist; they were both shivering, and Callahan could feel ice melting and running from his scalp down his neck. He felt her hair just to make sure and ran his fingers through more fine ice on her scalp. He looked around, and he thought he recognized the room -- but no! How could it be?

"Where are we?" Fujiko asked, her voice a scratchy, injured whisper. "Have we been here before?"

Callahan nodded. "The hotel room, in Osaka," he said. "Yesterday, I think. Before we left for the airport..."

And in the next instant, Frank was standing next to them. "Harry! Call DD, NOW!"

He knew that voice, knew the urgency it implied, so without question, he moved to the phone and direct-dialed DD's number at the Cathouse.

"DD? It's Harry..."

"Harry! Good -- it's you! Look, we got Frank's note; Cathy's with us here at the Cathouse. Dell and Carl staked out the house with some deputies from the Sheriff's office...they have Evelyn in custody, they're bringing her to the city for evaluation. There were two men with her, one was killed while trying to flee, the other is behind bars at the county jail..."

"Frank and I will need to interview him as soon as we return. Do you have our flight information?"

Harry wrote everything down, then rang off.

Frank was standing right beside him, his head and face awash with melting ice...

"Well, did it work?" Bullitt asked.

Callahan nodded. "Yeah. It worked."

Bullitt grinned, then walked to the window. He leaned a little, put his outstretched hands on the window and looked down at the world on the other side of the glass.

"What on earth did you do, Frank?"

"He had me write out a note. Basically, I told her what was going to happen, where to go and who to call."

"You mean," Fujiko asked, "that you went to Cathy before she was murdered? That you stopped the murder from happening?"

Frank turned and looked at her. "I have no idea what happened. And neither do you, Fujiko," he said, looking directly into her eyes. "What happened before? Well, it never happened, so if you speak about it no one is going to know what you're talking about. Do you understand?"

"So," she added, "Cathy is alive? Is that what you are saying?"

Bullitt nodded. "And please, don't ask me to explain anything, because I don't understand what happened either, let alone why. Okay?"

Fujiko turned and looked at Callahan. "Do you know what happened?"

Callahan shook his head, then he went to the bed and sat on the edge. He put his face in his hands, then lay on his side. A moment later he felt Fujiko come onto the bed and lay next to him, and a moment later he felt himself sliding towards sleep -- then it hit him...

"We have an airplane to catch in a few hours," he said.

"God damn!" Bullitt growled. "I'm jet-lagged from the last flight -- and my butt's still sore, too -- and you're telling me we've got to go and get on the same goddam airplane and do it all over again?"

"So it seems." Callahan sighed. "But I don't think I'm going to have any trouble falling asleep this time."

"I am not so sure," Fujiko whispered, "that this old man is not a sorcerer."

Callahan nodded. "I wish I knew the answer to that one..."

_________________________________

Callahan walked through his house -- and this time nothing was wrong. There were no trip-wires, no C4 -- though he did remove the key he'd hidden under the front doormat. Everything now was -- like nothing had ever happened -- because...it hadn't.

Time's script had been erased, and then re-written -- and the Old Man in the Cape had done it.

Fujiko had walked right through the house and had gone to her tree, the tree that looked bent by the wind coming in off the sea. She didn't stop to speak to Callahan. She didn't want to visit Cathy or Frank. She seemed -- to Callahan, anyway -- to have been shattered by the actions and reactions she had seen in the past several hours, and when Harry went to her he found her sitting under the tree, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms around her knees -- and she was slowly rocking back and forth, almost like she was soothing an infant.

He sat beside her, studied her face. Angled down, yet her eyes were focused on the horizon -- as if she was looking for Japan somewhere across the wide Pacific. He did not speak, because he still had no idea what to say, so he sat and watched her, waiting for her to come back to him.

"Nothing is real," she whispered at last.

"What?"

"If such a moment can be undone, if everything you and I see and do in this moment can be rewritten on a whim, what is real? Can you not see that?"

"I can."

"I do not understand this world, Harry Callahan. I do not understand your world."

"This wasn't my doing, Fujiko. Not at all."

"Oh, really?"

"No, it isn't -- wasn't..."

"You could have stopped it..."

"I didn't know what was happening. No one told me what was happening. The Old Man has never done anything like this before..."

"I am afraid, Harry Callahan."

Callahan nodded. "I understand, but I don't think it will happen ever again."

"How could you possibly know that? And if it does, again, please, how will you know? It is like we are trying to swim in quicksand, Harry. The more we struggle with the truth of this existence, the deeper we sink, and reality slips from our reach. I can run and dive off this cliff onto the rocks below, and what will happen? Will I suddenly reappear here, sitting as I am now, yet at the same time will I relive the onrushing rocks in my mind, in my memory, and if so, will I feel my body hitting the rocks, feel my death again and again?"

"I don't know."

"I feel my mind slipping away, Harry. What will I see next? Will I see fish swimming by in the air? Can reality be so easily reshaped? And...what about love? Can love be reshaped?"

"Again, I don't know. All I can tell you is that right now, right here, I love you. I've never loved anyone as much as I do you -- right now."

She turned and looked at him, and he saw the smile.

"Even if everything else is -- conditional -- my love for you isn't," he added.

She nodded. "I know. This I feel, too."

"Is anything else as important?"

"Truly? No, I think not."

"We have a life to live together, Fujiko. You and I. Should we not at least try to do that now?"

"Yes," she said, "but first, I want to go see Cathy. I want to feel her and hear her now. I want to know that she is real -- again -- and that this is not some kind of dream."

He stood, then he helped her to her feet. "You like this tree, don't you? I remember you said something about it..."

"Yes, before all this happened. How strange. It is like things that happened before a certain point remain unchanged."

"Yes, it's almost like the layers of an onion. Memories of two different chains of events, from two different timelines -- superimposed one over the other."

"Yes. Just so," she sighed. "But which is real?"

"Both. They both are real, just different."

She shook her head. "Logically, this cannot be true."

"Tell me, please, what the hell is logical about any of this?"

"Because existence, at some level, must abide by the rules of logic -- unless all existence is mere illusion, or delusion. But Harry -- if this experience was not a delusion then it follows it must be real. Also, I am not so sure a delusion like this one could be -- 'shared' -- by more than one person, but it is here that my logic falls apart. Temporal existence becomes, as I said, almost meaningless when you think of existence as having more than one layer -- yet this is exactly what we have just experienced."