The 13th Hour

CHAPTER 10

7:02 P.M.

NICK FOUND HIS BEARINGS much more quickly this time. He knew it was because he was accepting the impossibility of the phenomenon. The metallic taste was there but less pronounced; the bitter cold was still rising off his skin but all in all, he was in pretty good shape.

He sat on the front steps of Marcus’s house. The front door was in one piece and hung wide open on the warm summer evening. Marcus stepped through it, walked across the slate front terrace, and sat down beside him. The color was drained from his face; his hands trembled in shock.

“The cops are coming, but with the plane wreck and all…” Marcus could hardly get the words out. “They can only spare two guys with everyone so involved with the crash site. They said to not touch anything and thought it best you stay with me.”

Nick nodded. His eyes were fixed on his house, where Julia’s body lay.

Nick reached into his pocket and withdrew the gold watch. He flipped it open, and while he expected what he saw, he was still shocked to see the time was 7:02, two hours earlier than the moments when he had counted down the seconds until 9:00. The cops were not at the house; they had not even arrived at the scene yet. Marcus had just seen Julia’s body, his emotional core rocked with the sight of her gruesome death.

And Nick realized that while he remembered what just happened, that was all in the future. Marcus didn’t know of Nick’s eventual arrest, the names of the cops, or the damage that would be wrought upon his doors. All of which crystallized the rules of the game for Nick.

He was the only one with continuity throughout this ordeal. He was on his own and would have to achieve his goal every hour before being whisked back to where he had been two hours before, while losing the assistance of whoever was helping him in the present hour.

He was thankful it was a Friday, he always worked from home on Fridays and had remained at the house all day, working to complete an analysis related to his week’s travels before the weekend arrived. He hadn’t even ventured out for lunch, which was lucky as each time jump would bring him back home, allowing him the opportunity to stay focused during his investigation and the rescuing of his wife.

Nick closed the watch, shook himself out of his thoughts, and stood up.

“Where are you going?” Marcus asked.

Nick stared at his house. “I need to go in there.”

“Back in there?” Marcus said in shock. “No, I think that is a bad idea.”

“I agree,” Nick said. “But I need to figure out what the hell is going on and I need to do it before the cops start poking around.”

“They said not to touch anything-”

“My wife is dead, Marcus,” Nick said, more to the situation than to Marcus. “I need answers, I need to know who did this. It’s my house, I’m going back in.”

“All right.” Marcus reluctantly nodded. “But I’m coming with you.”

Nick began walking, shaking his head. “I need to do this alone.”

It had taken Nick the better part of the prior hour-future hour now that he thought of it-to convince Marcus of his situation, sending him to see Dance for proof of his clairvoyance. If Nick was going to get the help of Marcus, or of anyone, for that matter, he was going to have to find a way to convince him of the time slip in five minutes or less, otherwise too much time would be wasted, stolen from the limited twelve hours he had to save Julia.

Marcus remained seated on the his front porch. “Please, whatever you do, don’t look at her. It’s not her anymore.”

Marcus’s voice faded as Nick walked across the wide expanse of lawn, battling his mixed emotions. He had been given a gift, a gift he didn’t understand and was not going to waste time pondering. The internal debate on how it was happening, why it was happening, could last a lifetime, and he had less than twelve hours.

But despite the elation that he was being given a second chance, that Julia was being given a second chance, he still feared what he was about to walk into.

Now, despite what he knew he would see, as devastating to his mind as her image would be, he would have to willingly look upon her, if he was to have any hope of saving her, of figuring out who killed her. In order to stop that person, he would have to gather every bit of information, every clue, including exactly how she died.

Nick forced himself to push Julia’s death from his mind; his anxiety, his pain and grieving were selfish acts that would only impede him from getting to the truth. As difficult as the task ahead would be, he clung to the fact that it was all in an effort to save her from fate, to twist the past in order to save her future.

Nick walked across the driveway to the front of his white farmhouse and entered through the 110-year-old front door.

The foyer was dark. All the lights were out from the power failure caused by the plane crash. He opened the front hall closet and pulled out the oversized Maglite, switching on its blinding beam. Though the sun was still above the horizon, the light of late day was fading fast and would not provide the illumination he would need.

Nick had debated getting a generator like Marcus’s but thought it to be a waste of twenty thousand dollars for that one annual moment when the lights didn’t work for an hour. Now, as he walked around his house in search of a clue to why Julia had been murdered, he would gladly have paid double to make the light switches respond.

MARRIED EIGHT YEARS this coming September, Nick and Julia had spent their time focused on only two things: their careers and each other. They had resolved to put away a healthy nest egg and own their house free and clear, unencumbered by a mortgage, by the time they elected to have children. Plans were made, schedules outlined, budgets created and adhered to, their life set on paper like a playbook for the Super Bowl. Their vacation expenses were kept to a minimum, forgoing Europe, Asia, and world travel until their later years. Wherever possible, trips were taken via car; camping, museum visits, and overnights at the shore were not only the simplest and cheapest getaways but the most fun. They both knew that a true vacation was not a destination of location, but rather a destination of the mind. So as long as they were together, their vacations were better than anything that could be provided by Paris, Monaco, or any exotic locale.

So their shelves and tables were littered with pictures of them fishing the lakes of Maine, surfing the shores of Huntington Beach, hiking down into the Grand Canyon, scaling the rocky peaks of Wyoming. They cherished the outdoors, the simple amenities that nature had to offer, and always returned home with refreshed, focused minds to tackle their flourishing careers.

While they had only been married eight years, they had been together for sixteen, having dated through high school and college. They had fallen in love at the age of fifteen, while their friends and parents laughed at the fact that they were so sure of their future together. But the laughter fell away when they said “I do” in St. Patrick’s Church on that late May day. Neither ever said I told you so to the naysayers; they never needed affirmation or votes of confidence from their family and peers in something their hearts told them was right.

They had met at a swim meet. He was the star of the team, with a handful of school and county records by tenth grade in both long distance and sprint races. Julia had been a last-minute substitution for the 4 X 200 meter relay. As she had spent her brief swim career in the shorter sprint races, the two-hundred-meter leg she would be responsible to anchor was something she had never prepared for. To say she was nervous would have been an understatement. So the coach sent her to talk to Nick, who, as the school’s youngest captain, possessed a quiet air of confidence that managed to infect all around him.

As Julia sat down, Nick smiled and told her not to worry, explaining the key was the pacing, conserving your energy, saving it for the final kick on the last few laps.

Of course, when Julia dove in, she took off like a bat out of hell and nearly choked up a lung by the time she got to the last lap. She never told Nick, she never told anyone that she never heard his advice, she never heard a single word he said, as she had gotten lost in his blue eyes, something she found far more intriguing than the strategies of swimming races.

And as she touched the wall, finishing last while seeing stars and heaving for breath, he was standing there with an outstretched hand to help her exhausted body out of the pool. He pulled her out with one hand and nary an effort, wrapped a towel around her, and led her over to the bleachers. As the evening turned to night, as they sat together on the three-hour bus ride home, they became lost in the most relaxing conversation either had ever experienced.

Nick never once asked why she didn’t listen to his advice, instead steering the conversation to everything but swimming.

They both loved camping, Led Zeppelin, the New York Giants, and the Detroit Red Wings. They shared a love of spare ribs and fried chicken, Oreos and Coca-Cola. She was a dancer, something he found alien and fascinating. He had a passion for skiing and music, which she insisted on hearing more about.

Simply put, they fit. They fit perfectly. And as the years went on, as they each headed off in different directions-she to Princeton, he to Boston College -their love never waned. In fact, it continued to grow past college and in each and every year of marriage.

That was not to say they didn’t have their disagreements. While few and far between, their fights were spectacular, as their passion for each other was equaled by their passion for being right. But the disagreements, always over the mundane things like white bread or wheat, roses or tulips, never lingered and were resolved by spectacular lovemaking.

NICK LOOKED OUT the window of his high-ceilinged great room, at the evidence of last week’s get-together with some friends: the deck chairs scattered around the pool, the tables and grill still a mess, three bags of garbage that he was supposed to have thrown out last Sunday. And amidst all the chaos, the pool was calm, the waters smooth and undisturbed, standing in sharp contrast to his current emotions.

The great room looked to be in its usual order: neat and clean but for the painting that had leaned against the far wall for the past six months, which he promised Julia he would hang, and the host of newspapers and magazines that lay on the ottoman, which he had yet to read. The dining room appeared as it usually did, the table perpetually set for a last-minute dinner party.

As Nick looked around his house, he couldn’t imagine this to be a random murder. He thought maybe it was some opportunistic criminal who chose to profit in chaos. With everyone so focused on the plane crash, the town was collectively distracted, law enforcement stretched thin. But the randomness… something was surely missing, some unseen fact, a key to her death that would also be the key to her salvation.

Nick looked at his home with fresh eyes, searching for anything out of the ordinary, anything out of place or missing, anything that would provide a clue to why Julia was murdered.

He opened the pocket doors to his library and shined the Maglite around. Far smaller than Marcus’s, more like a den, it was filled with the evidence of Nick and Julia’s life together. If this single room were to survive a nuclear blast and were to be found intact five hundred years from now, an archeologist could draw an amazingly accurate picture of the lives of Nick and Julia Quinn. Their history was laid bare by the locked cabinet filled with trophies and medals from swimming, hockey, and lacrosse that they were too embarrassed to display but too nostalgic to part with; by the shelves of pictures and keepsakes, photos from their prom, graduation, and wedding, with dramatically different hairstyles but unchanged smiles; and by the dozens of pictures of their travels and family holidays. But mostly there were the goofy photos, the just-for-fun, what-the-hell pictures of snowball fights, carnival photo booth silliness, and ice-cream-covered faces that showed them unguarded and at their most natural.

Nick turned to his mahogany desk, moving aside the letters and files stacked to the side, and found his personal cell phone still in its charger. He picked it up and tucked it in his pocket. He had taken to carrying two phones: one personal and one for business, choosing to keep the two worlds separate. Having spent the day working from home, he’d left the personal cell in its charger and was thankful that he had done so as the police had taken his business phone along with his wallet and wristwatch when they brought him into the precinct on suspicion of Julia’s murder.

Nick crouched and opened the cabinet behind his desk, shining his flashlight at the small green safe behind the stack of books. There was not a scratch on it, no evidence of a breach.

He headed out of the library and, with the bright beam leading the way, went down the stairs to the lower level. The unfinished basement was his favorite part of the house. A makeshift gym with a treadmill, an elliptical trainer, a stationary bike, and racks of free weights, this was the area that not only kept their bodies tuned but, likewise, their minds. A place to relieve stress, whether by hitting the heavy or speed bags or just by pumping iron, it was a room that was the ultimate detoxification sanctuary. Nick’s flashlight bounced off the old dressing-room mirror that lay against the wall, refracting about the space, at the dance bar affixed to the wall, the mats on the floor. He could still smell the faint odor of Julia’s perfume from her last workout.

The remainder of the cavernous, concrete space would one day become a playroom, maybe a home theater, but that was years from now. For the time being, it would exist as a storage room with boxes of Christmas decorations, forgotten wedding gifts, and unsorted junk lining the gray walls.

Making his way up the basement stairs, Nick continued to the second floor, quickly passing what would one day be the nursery, past the three unused bedrooms, and arrived at his and Julia’s bedroom.

The cream-colored room with its tray ceiling had an enormous four-poster bed that faced an unlit fireplace teeming with cut flowers for the summer. Nick checked Julia’s side table, its small drawers, but nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing was hurriedly ruffled or out of place. He checked her walk-in closet, checked his own and the cabinet hidden behind his tie rack, but again, nothing was disturbed. Both their bathrooms were as they’d left them in the morning, towels, toothbrushes, and toiletries in their respective spots. The unused sitting room still had a slight sheen of dust and pollen from the flowers in the fireplace, offering no evidence of an intruder. The French doors to the small terrace were locked, just as he’d left them this morning after Julia surprised him with breakfast.

As Nick walked from room to room looking for anything that might help point him in the direction of Julia’s killer, he realized that they had built a perfect home, every room finished and paid for, the envy of many, but it was missing the most important thing. They had dedicated themselves to work, to money, spending their time on acquiring life and things, but had left out the most important part. While they loved each other, never being selfish, they had no legacy, no children to fill the home they had created. With bedrooms lying in wait, it was always one more year and then we will have it all. Now, Nick was beginning to realize they were always counting on that one more year, but who was to say if it would ever come. All that planning, all that money, and now…

They had forgone what Nick knew to be the most important thing, and now it was too late, unless he could somehow find a clue to her death and stop it before it happened.

Nick took a last look at the bedroom, really the only area of the upstairs they used. It had not been ransacked; nothing was disturbed. If whoever killed Julia came for something, it wasn’t up here.

Heading back downstairs, Nick opened and stepped through his front door. He walked past the open garage bay doors, glanced in at his eight-cylinder Audi, and continued into the driveway proper. Julia’s Lexus SUV was right where she left it. Nick quickly checked it, finding the doors open and the keys in the ignition, a sight that was a confirmation that this was no random act, no snatch-and-grab robbery. Her fifty-thousand-dollar car wouldn’t be left behind by even the dimmest thief.

He walked to the end of his cobblestone driveway, stood between the two stone entrance pillars, and looked down at the skid marks where Julia’s assailant had torn out of the driveway. Nick was smart, and thought he could piece her murder together in time to save her, but he wasn’t an educated detective. The width of the rubber skid meant nothing to him, it didn’t tell him anything about the type of car or about its driver, or give him some great aha moment as in some TV show.

He looked around their cul-de-sac and down the road, one of the wealthiest sections of Byram Hills, with streets filled with million dollar minimansions, perfect lawns and gardens, all tended by massive crews of gardeners, all except Nick and Julia’s home. Nick cut his own grass, planted his own flowers, tilled his own gardens. He enjoyed riding the tractor, cutting the lawn, digging holes. Their house had been Julia’s favorite since she was a child, riding by it on her bike. It had been her fantasy home, and Nick had helped her realize that fantasy.

As he walked back up the drive, looking at their house, he thought of all of the upgrades that had been done by his own hand; the addition built with the help of his friends; the painting done on weekends by him and Julia. Some of his best memories were of the time spent together building their home, laughing at the mistakes and imperfections, the paint fights and hammered fingers. It was the simple things, as clichéd as it sounded, the peaceful times of being alone with no distractions, eating pizza on the floor, that he cherished most.

Nick walked through the garage and glanced at his dirty car. He was not one for car washes; he preferred his Audi to be a bit on the dirty side in the hope that as it sat on the streets of the city, it would not be noticed amongst the shiny BMWs and Mercedes, blending in and being avoided by the car thieves of the world. It was a practice he had adhered to, much to Julia’s annoyance, but it had proven successful to date, so he wasn’t about to change. With the accumulation of dust and pollen atop the dark blue metal surface, the handprint was clearly visible on the car’s trunk lid, and there was no question it was not his, not Julia’s. It was larger, meatier, and out of place.

Nick pulled his key fob from his pocket and hit the button, remotely releasing the hatch. As the trunk lid rose he could see the usual mess: his black duster purchased in Wyoming, the best raincoat he had ever had; jumper cables, a med kit, two coils of rope, all in the event of emergency. There were his hockey skates and pads from the adult league that he and Marcus played in, two boxes of golf balls, an umbrella, and the one object he had not placed there. He’d seen it back in the interrogation room at the Byram Hills police station. Dance had pulled it out, questioned him about it.

Nick was looking at the murder weapon, the exotically styled 134-year-old Peacemaker, the collector’s weapon that had taken Julia’s life.

There was no question now. He had known it before, but had had no confirmation: He was being set up.

As he looked at the gun he knew there was nothing he could do about it. He could hide it, but it would surely be found. He didn’t want to pick it up. The cops had said his fingerprints were on the gun, though he thought it to be a detective’s ruse to get him to confess, as there had not been time or personnel to examine the prints, but he would not give them the satisfaction of putting the prints there himself now.

He took a cloth and, wrapping his hand, closed the trunk. Whether the gun was found was irrelevant. If he found a way to save Julia, there would be no accusation, no murder investigation, it would be a moot point. And if he didn’t save her, he didn’t care what happened to himself.

Nick braced himself for the next five minutes. He knew that what he was about to do would haunt his dreams for all eternity. He was going to look at Julia’s body willingly and dreaded what he would see.

MARCUS SAT ON his front steps, his heart breaking, as he stared over at Nick’s home. He watched his friend walk up and down his driveway after spending over a half hour in the house. Seeming to wander aimlessly, looking about the neighborhood as if he would happen upon Julia’s killer, Nick looked to be chasing ghosts.

There had been an odd look to Nick’s eyes when he had rejoined him on the front steps after calling the police. While they looked sad and troubled, they were not filled with the agony he had first seen when he found him sitting with her. There was such heart-rending grief in his face, such an inhuman cry of pain in his voice when he found Nick huddled with Julia’s body. It was a sight that Marcus would never shake, a sight that would invade his thoughts till he passed from this earth.

But as Nick walked away from Marcus, heading toward his house, insisting on investigating a murder he could not possibly solve, Marcus’s concern for his friend shifted.

There was something in Nick’s eyes, something he couldn’t identify, it almost appeared to be hope, an emotion completely contrary to a moment in which one’s future had been lost, in which the woman one loved had been so violently snatched from among the living.

To Marcus there was only one explanation, only one thing that would cause all the agony to vanish from his eyes.

As he watched Nick step through his garage, on a course to see Julia’s shattered body, he knew Nick was no longer in possession of his judgment.

Nick’s mind had retreated to a false reality,

Nick’s sanity had slipped away.

NICK WALKED THROUGH the door from the garage and entered the mudroom. Whitewashed wainscoting covered the walls, and the floor was of earth-toned Spanish terra-cotta tile. The room was designed with nooks for shoes, racks for coats, and storage closets, all in wait for their family yet to come. They had debated family size since the day they fell in love: Nick wanted two boys and girl, Julia preferred a Brady Bunch mix of three boys, three girls.

As part of their life-planning playbook, they had both gone to the doctor a year earlier to confirm there would be no unseen hurdles to Julia’s getting pregnant when the time came. The doctor had actually laughed at the preciseness of their approach to life, telling them not to worry, that their reproductive systems wouldn’t fail them. He assured them that when they were ready, if they knew what they were doing, and practiced enough, they would be pregnant in no time.

As Nick stepped around the corner, he saw Julia’s Tory Burch shoe protruding at the bottom of the rear stairs. Slowly approaching, he ran his eyes up along her long, lithe leg, up past the black skirt she had worn to work that morning. As he moved closer, his eyes continued their slow travel up her body along the white shirt that was no longer white. The front was flecked with red, as if she had been caught in a rainstorm of blood, the shoulders were crimson, the silk blouse having wicked blood from the puddle of blood she was lying in. Nick stared at the red halo that circled Julia. He had never imagined there was that much blood in a body.

But his eyes halted at her shoulders, his vision mercifully obscured by the lowest step. Nick avoided her face; he couldn’t bear to look at what was left of his wife, of the person that was his better half. As shallow as it sounded, he couldn’t help thinking that when you destroyed the face you destroyed the person, robbing her of her identity, of her true self. He kept his head tilted down, averting his eyes as he scanned the ground looking for something, anything that would provide a clue to who committed this violation, this act of horror.

He was fighting his emotions, trying desperately to dissociate himself from the moment, trying to keep his mind from collapsing, trying to look at the room, at “the body,” with an analytical eye.

Julia’s purse lay wide open on the floor next to her, its contents strewn about the terra-cotta tile. It usually hung on a coat hook, the same place that Julia placed it every day when she came into the house. She had a habit of misplacing things, so, with a gentle persuasion, Nick had gotten her in the habit of putting it in the exact same spot every day, something she had done for over a year now, day in, day out without fail.

Nick pulled out his pen and used it to sort through her things: her eyeliner and honey rose lipstick, the menu from David Chen’s Chinese restaurant, a birthday card from The Right Thing, her laminated ID from work. A set of keys and a security pass for one of her clients. But three obvious things were absent, things that should never be missing, the things she, like most people, accessed constantly: her wallet, her cell phone, and her personal data assistant, her PDA, made by Palm. A storage device not only for email, phone numbers, and appointments, but also for word, data, and picture files. It was, in point of fact, a small portable computer, an electronic lifeline to her office and personal life.

And then it happened. As much as he had tried to avoid it, he looked at her face, at what was left of the beauty that he often gazed upon while she slept, the eyes that he looked into when he held her, the same eyes that revealed her soul. Her face on the left side was gone, chewed up by the blast of the gun. His eyes rose up to the white rear wall where pieces of her skull were embedded with the bullet in the broken wainscoting, a cascade of blood flowing down like a waterfall.

The bile rose quickly in his throat, his head began to spin, he retched in agony, but it all paled next to the pain in his heart. He felt as if it was being torn from his chest. He couldn’t breathe; he could no longer think straight.

And a cry emanated from his soul, rising up through his heart, roaring out through his broken mind. It filled the room, filled the house. It was primal, the world hearing his agony, a cry to heaven, a cry to God of rage and suffering and anger at the evil that had snatched his wife from this life.

He fought what he had do next. It was something no grieving man or woman should ever be called upon to endure. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, hating himself for what he was about to do. He flicked it open and thumbed the camera button. And with tears rolling down his face, he held it up, both hands necessary to still his quavering nerves. He pointed it at Julia’s lifeless body upon the floor, and snapped a picture.

He collapsed to his knees, overcome with grief, too weak to stand. He leaned back against the wall, his body shaking. It all came pouring out. The impossibility of the task before him, the ridiculous hope he placed in a stranger’s written word and timepiece. Julia was dead, there was no question about that, she lay before him mangled and lifeless. There were no miracles, no gods to wave their hand and bring her back. There was simply the fact before him of her dead body, and he was sitting across from her having failed her, powerless, helpless, chasing the impossible.

He didn’t know how long he had sat there, lost in pain, his head spinning, trying to right himself, to find a reason to live, when all at once Marcus stood above him. Nick looked up through distant eyes that seemed even more broken than Julia’s, confused about where Marcus had come from. Marcus extended his oversized hand, helping Nick to his feet, and then…

IT HIT HIM harder than a shovel to the face. The world grew instantly black. What little air there was, was like an iceberg in his lungs. An empty silence filled his ears.

And suddenly, Nick was alone in the kitchen, standing before the fridge, a cold can of Coke in his hand.

He couldn’t remember getting up or walking in, though he remembered Marcus leaning down, offering his hand with total sympathy.

Nick’s breath was heavy, coming in great gasps, his skin tingled, he was disoriented from seeing Julia’s shattered face, her body dead upon the floor.

And just as suddenly, beyond all reason, she stepped in the room.

She looked at Nick, her eyes confused at his troubled state.

“Honey,” Julia said, softly. “Are you okay?”