A Question of Time d-7 Read online

  After a few moments of looking about him, he had to admit to himself that he could pin down nothing really wrong with sky or sun. But both were disturbingly different.

  Still following the directions given him by Cathy, and pondering what seemed strange alterations in weather and time of day, in half an hour Bill Burdon came in sight of El Tovar. So suddenly and unexpectedly did this discovery occur that he endured a moment of serious disorientation. On topping what he had thought was only a minor ridge, he found himself actually standing on the South Rim after all. At the same time the unmistakable landmark of the great log hotel popped into view, less than half a mile to the east.

  With a sense of relief, mingled with shame at having got lost like a rank tenderfoot, Bill strode toward Canyon Village.

  … and yet today the central building looked somehow different, strangely smaller, than the hotel he'd seen at close range only last night.

  Thoughtfully he scratched his chin—and then stopped in his tracks. He could distinctly remember shaving, just yesterday morning, before setting out from Phoenix. And yet now he had, he swore he had, what felt like a three days' growth of beard.

  Shaken, Bill walked on. Then again he paused, squinting even though his eyesight was ordinarily excellent for distance. Now he could make out a handful of antique cars, of thirties vintage, in the shrunken and unpaved parking lot beside El Tovar. No other vehicles were to be seen.

  Bill rubbed his eyes. Maybe he was just tired. Maybe it was just the heat-shimmer of the atmosphere making the automobiles look strange. But—heat-shimmer in December? Come to think of it, the air did seem unseasonably warm…

  * * *

  He hiked on, entering a portion of the rim-trail that took him briefly back in among the pine and cedar, out of sight of El Tovar and its attendant marvels. During this interval he managed to convince himself, despite the continuing warmness of the air, that he had really managed to find his way back to the mundane world he had left last night, in late December of 1991.

  But in a few moments the trail brought him out of the woods again. There, unarguably there, was El Tovar—but, disturbingly, it really was a smaller version of the hotel he thought he could remember from last night.

  All Bill could do was push ahead.

  He passed, and recognized, the Bright Angel trailhead, though the fences here looked different than the fences he'd passed last evening, and there were fewer guest cottages overlooking the Canyon than he seemed to remember.

  Moments later, Bill arrived at the Tyrrell House.

  It was a warm day, yes, all right, a summer afternoon—with the sun threatening to set much too far to the north for December—but Bill didn't want to think about that just now—and he had first unzipped his jacket and then taken it off.

  Some tourists, their numbers much diminished from those of yesterday—as Bill recalled yesterday—were moving toward Bill along the rim trail, which now ran at a somewhat greater distance from the house than he remembered. Today's sightseers, Bill had to admit, were dressed for summer. If he looked at them carefully, and allowed himself to think about what he saw, he would have to admit something much more disturbing. They were very strangely dressed indeed. You would have to say they were costumed like people out of his grandfather's photo album from the thirties… Some of them, who glanced at Bill, also appeared to be impressed by what they saw.

  Bill turned his back on the costumed sightseers. His feet dragged to a stop in front of a building that had to be the Tyrrell House. No doubt about it, this was the same location, and the same house. He could recognize the familiar outlines of the structure, practically unchanged from yesterday evening.

  But…

  Today the front door of old Edgar Tyrrell's dwelling stood ajar. From just inside, Bill could hear children's voices, toddlers it sounded like. At least a pair of them.

  And the area just in front of the house was no longer paved with a Park Service sidewalk, as he was sure that it had been last night. Now there was only a little un-paved footpath worn in the hard earth, leading to the front door.

  Even as Bill stood gazing at that door, it opened wider. Out came a young woman and a little girl of four years old or so, in toddler's overalls. The young woman was garbed in a thirties dress, and a wide-brimmed gardening hat.

  The little girl, thought Bill, had remarkable eyes. Their soft blue-gray reminded him much, very much, of the eyes of the girl named Cathy whom he had just left.

  Both of them looked at the strange man who had stopped near their front door.

  "How do," said Bill to the young woman, in his best mild country manner, and bobbed his head.

  "How do," the young woman answered softly, as if perhaps she thought straight imitation was the safest course. Then she did a mild double-take as something in Bill's appearance appeared to register with her. "Can I help you?" she asked slowly.

  "I didn't know," he said after a pause, "that anyone lived here. Beautiful place to live." That was certainly inadequate. "Oh, my name's Bill Burdon, by the way."

  The young woman studied him for another ten or fifteen seconds. Then she introduced herself: "I'm Sarah Tyrrell." Pause. "If you're looking for my husband, he won't be back until after dark."

  Chapter 10

  On the morning after Bill Burdon's disappearance, Joe Keogh was awakened in his hotel room by a discreet tapping on the door. Cursing, Joe reached for his watch and learned that the time was eighta.m. He rolled off the bed, only to find himself barely able to stand. His twisted ankle had swollen and stiffened since last night, notwithstanding the fact that he had eventually applied ice packs. He was worse off now than when he'd taken off his shoes and thrown himself down on the bed barely four hours ago.

  The tapping was repeated, and Joe muffled his curses and somehow hobbled to the door. Last night at the Tyrrell House he'd taken the next-to-last shift of waiting for Bill to call in again. Eventually, some time after midnight, he had abandoned that vigil and, at his client's urging, allowed John to help him back to his own room.

  He reached the door, and called, "Who is it?"

  "Maria." The answer was barely audible, but Joe recognized the voice. He relaxed and let her in.

  The young woman, who had been up practically all night, naturally enough looked tired, but she said that in a couple of hours she'd be ready to go again. There wasn't much to report, she added, since nothing had happened at the Tyrrell House after Joe's departure. While delivering these remarks Maria was taking off her boots and unrolling her sleeping bag on the sofa.

  "Mrs. Tyrrell didn't offer to let you sack out over there?"

  "Nope. In fact, a little while ago she started hinting pretty strongly that I ought to go to my own hotel room, if I had one, and get some rest. Of course I said I had one."

  Joe grunted, and stumped over to the window. Last night's clouds and fog were gone, and the sun, now about half an hour high, was having things its own way. At least, he thought, we ought to get a look at the scenery today.

  Two seconds was all he could spare for scenery just now. Joe ran fingers through his hair. "I'm going to have to talk to John."

  Maria, on the point of disappearing into her sleeping bag, hesitated. "Want me to get him on radio?"

  "I'll do it. You'd better get some rest. We're going to need you later."

  But Maria delayed again. "Boss? When do we go looking for Bill?"

  "Soon. I promise, you won't miss out on that."

  "And how come that person, or those people, whoever it was, was able to get past us last night?"

  "I have some ideas on that. Ideas I want to talk over with you and Bill—as soon as he gets back."

  "Sure." Maria, sounding really tired, had put her head down again and was already drifting off.

  Trying to let her sleep, Joe moved into the next room, where he soon reached John on the radio.

  In five minutes John Southerland entered the suite. He had nothing further to report regarding Bill. "Brainard was unhappy to see
me leave. But I figure we're working for Aunt Sarah, and she seemed all in favor. Say, where'd Mr. Strangeways get to?"

  "England, he said."

  "What?"

  "You heard. I have no real explanation. Why don't you get some sack time while there's a chance?" Maria's faint snores came drifting from the other room.

  "At the moment I'm more hungry than tired."

  "Okay, order up some room service. For three, I guess. I like pancakes."

  Moments later, Joe was shutting himself in the bathroom. There he swallowed a couple of aspirins, and enjoyed—if that was the right word—a shower, conducted largely while balanced on one leg.

  Emerging in fresh clothing, he found both Maria and John sleeping, she in her sleeping bag and John, boots off, stretched out on the floor, where he had wasted no time in creating a kind of padded nest with jackets and chair cushions. Joe, keeping as quiet as possible, established himself in a chair, where he silently cursed his injured ankle.

  Staring at the phone on the little table at his elbow, he contemplated getting in touch with his home base in Chicago. John's wife Angie ought to be minding the office, and there might possibly be a thing or two that she could do to help.

  Before Joe could make up his mind about the call, room service arrived, inevitably awakening his colleagues. Maria roused herself and stretched, catlike. "Strange dreams…" she murmured, her expression one of remote dissatisfaction.

  The two younger people were glad to join Joe in an experience of white linen and what looked like silver, with food and coffee suggesting anything but proximity to the wilderness. Joe, with one foot propped up on cushions, consumed a delicious though unavoidably gloomy breakfast, then ordered an extra pot of coffee.

  From time to time he glanced at Bill Burdon's unused sleeping bag, which lay accusingly in a corner of the room, still rolled up.

  Over breakfast the three discussed the situation. They'd had only the brief and somewhat garbled radio messages from Bill, assuring them that he was all right, though having trouble finding his way back.

  Maria said: "That just doesn't sound right to me. From the way Bill described his background, his experience, I'd expect him to be able to find his way home from the North Pole."

  Joe looked at his watch. "I think it's still too early to call in the Park Rangers. He said he might have to wait for sunrise to start back, so let's give him a little longer. You two finish eating and get some rest. If we don't hear from him by ten o'clock or so, we'd better start looking."

  Observing the difficulty with which Joe hobbled about the hotel room, Maria suggested that maybe he ought to see the local doctor. But he shook his head, reluctant to do that. He didn't think any bones were broken, and there was probably little any doctor would be able to do for him, except tell him that he ought to rest. He sat down with his foot propped up on the bed. At least the swelling wasn't any worse. John and Maria offered contradictory advice as to whether heat or cold would be best to apply at this stage.

  As soon as they had finished eating, both John and Maria proclaimed themselves ready to get back into action. Joe, silently praising the resilience of youth, grunted approval. In a few minutes the two younger people had left the hotel and were descending in clouded winter daylight to search the slope immediately below the Tyrrell House. They were going to look for some clue to Bill's fate, or, failing that, anything that might help explain last night's strange events.

  Maria and John had hardly left the hotel when another tap sounded at Joe's door. He opened it to discover Brainard, gazing anxiously back over his shoulder in the direction of the lobby, then almost pushing over his aunt's chief investigator in his eagerness to get into the room.

  "Somebody after you?" Joe inquired.

  Brainard affected not to hear that. Staring as Keogh hobbled back to his chair after closing the door, he commented disapprovingly: "That looks fairly serious."

  "I'll manage." Joe eased himself back into his chair. "I've got some young people to handle whatever legwork needs to be done. Who are they and what do they want?"

  "Who?"

  "The people who are after you. I'm assuming there's more than one. I'm assuming also that you're the one who shot off a gun last night."

  G. C. Brainard sat down and closed his eyes. "A federal offense here in the Park, I know."

  "That's right."

  "But there are other things that worry me more." Digging into a jacket pocket, Brainard produced a heavy-caliber, stubby-barreled revolver. "I want your advice on what to do with this."

  "Do the other things that worry you more have any connection with your missing daughter?"

  Brainard blinked at him. He seemed saddened and even injured by the suggestion. "No, nothing directly to do with her. Why?"

  "Because the job your aunt Sarah originally wanted me to do was to get her back. Now everyone, my client, and you, the girl's father, are trying to edge me away from that. Tell me, Mr. Brainard, how did you come to adopt Cathy?"

  "I'm concerned about my daughter. I want her to be all right," said Brainard, in an injured tone. His eyes looked hurt.

  "So tell me about the adoption."

  "All right, if you think it'll help. My late wife and I adopted Cathy in 1978, when she was—four. We were childless, so…"

  Joe probed for more details. As far as he could learn, the Brainards had adopted Cathy largely at Aunt Sarah's urging. Sarah had apparently encountered the girl through some kind of charitable work with which she was then involved, and had been drawn to her. But at that time the old lady had been already in her sixties, too old to be approved as an adoptive parent.

  Brainard suddenly blurted, "I can't believe I'm actually carrying a gun."

  "Can I take a look at your weapon?" Joe asked.

  When Brainard gingerly handed over the gun, Joe broke it open and inspected the loading.

  "What're you looking for?"

  "I was wondering," said Joe, "if your bullets might be made of wood."

  "What?" No comprehension showed in Brainard's face.

  "Never mind."

  The stocky man shook his head. "It was dumb of me to carry that thing; I hardly know one end from the other. I'm liable to kill someone I'm not aiming at. If you're willing to help me out, maybe you can get rid of it for me?"

  Joe put the pistol down carefully on the arm of his chair. Later, he thought, he would unload and disassemble it, and pack the pieces away separately in his own luggage.

  Then he faced Brainard. "If you expect me to help you," he said to him, "you'd better tell me why you're carrying a gun. Who are you afraid of, and why?"

  The other closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. A pulse beat visibly in the side of his throat, just below his unshaven jaw. "I owe some people a lot of money. Jesus, how did I ever get myself into such a mess."

  "What kind of people?" Though to Joe it seemed fairly obvious from the way Brainard was behaving.

  Brainard's eyes came open, and he lifted his head slowly. "Mainly a man named Tuller. Ever hear of him? But why should you, I suppose there are a thousand like him. I think he's in with some branch of the New York mafia. Loans out money at a nice clean fifty per cent per month. I thought I had a chance to make a killing, clean up a lot of old debts…"

  "How much?"

  "I borrowed eighty thousand. He wanted a hundred and twenty back by the middle of December, about two weeks ago. I couldn't pay, I couldn't come close to paying, and so here I am. Aunt Sarah won't hand out that kind of money, and I don't blame her."

  "Maybe you're here hoping to get something from her, or from Tyrrell, that you can sell."

  "Hoping to stay alive until I can do something like that." Brainard tried to smile. "But no such luck. Now I'm on the edge of dead." He did smile. "Get me out of here, somehow, Keogh. Get me away from this bottleneck and give me a running start somewhere. There won't be any conflict with what you're doing for my aunt. You'll be well paid, I've got enough cash stashed away for that."


  "No thought of going to the police?"

  The other made a sound somewhere between a moan and a laugh. His soft hand bounced on the chair-arm as if he were testing the hardness of the wood. "That would really put the seal on it. They'd really kill me, then. So far, I don't think they're actually quite ready to do that. It's just that I have this prejudice against having my balls smashed, or my kneecaps broken."

  Joe nodded thoughtfully. "If you help me out a little first, then I'll see what I can do for you."

  "Help you how?"

  "To begin with, tell me all you can about Tyrrell."

  "There's not a hell of a lot I can tell you." Brainard shivered slightly. "We do business, we don't have long, chatty visits. He never talks about himself. And he's definitely not looking for publicity."

  "I don't suppose this Tuller knows about Tyrrell? That the old man is still alive and doing business?"

  "No way. He's never heard about it from me… and Tyrrell is not a man I'd want to appeal to for help."

  "I see." Joe thought for a minute. "Does your aunt know about this Tuller and his people being after you?"

  "She knows I'm in some trouble of that kind. I don't think she realizes how bad it is. I've told her that people are actually here looking for me, but I don't know if Sarah believes that."

  "All right. Stay here in my room for the time being. Make sure who's at the door before you open it."

  Joe's next move was to dispatch a hotel bellhop to bring him a cane, or failing that, a crutch. Both items, the youth assured him, were available in the general store near the park's Visitor Center, and he would deliver a cane shortly.

  Joe thought the next knock on his door, a few minutes later, might be the bellhop, having established some kind of a land speed record; but a cautious opening of the door revealed Sarah Tyrrell.

  A few moments later, old Sarah, her nervous nephew, and Joe were all seated at the small conference table.

  Sarah wasted little time in preliminaries. "Mr. Keogh, the disturbance at the house last night was caused, at least in part, by my husband. I did see him."