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Yuletide 2008: Just In Time (Quantum Leap)
Just In Time
Fandom: Quantum Leap
Written for: Delilah_Kelley in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge
by Jewels
The challenge was to set this in the very recent past. Hope this is recent enough. :) Not quite a crossover, since I know nothing about the two suggested fandoms, but hopefully an homage is enough.
**
The girl's blood was hot and slick beneath his fingers, but it was the ashen look of shock on her face, the first thing Sam Beckett saw as he leapt into this new body, that caused him to stop moving. He'd been rocking forward as he leapt in, as if he were performing chest compressions, and his eyes slid from her almost startled, slightly parted and nearly blue lips, and down to his hands, where they were laced together and pressed against her ribcage.
Being confronted with such grievous injuries was apparently enough to kick start his brain into remembering key things about how to treat injuries like the ones he was seeing - wounds, small, but bleeding copiously, a gruesome series of decorations adorning her torso - but even as he made the assessments, struggling to cope with the sudden need to make decisions so soon after the mind-screwing aftermath of a leap, the girl breathed her last, and quietly expired, eyes staring vacantly up at the ceiling, no sign of life left in them.
He sat back on his heels, only now realising that he'd been kneeling beside her on a hard floor, linoleum, now he saw it. It had been a dirty off-white once, but was now stained with a rapidly spreading puddle of blood. It was a storeroom that he was in, fluorescent tubes lending everything a ghastly cast, and thin metal shelves stacked with plastic wrapped goods.
He pulled his hands away from her body, stared at them, at the blood. "Oh boy," he whispered, and tried to desperately control the urge to vomit.
He took a deep breath, through his mouth, hoping to avoid smelling the blood any more than he had to and making himself sick. Nothing would be gained by panicking, however appealing that option seemed.
His first urge was to run, to get out and away from this horrible scene until Al showed up in all his holographic glory to tell him what was going on. But that might be a bad idea in and of itself. If someone caught him running out of the room, they might assume he was the murderer. And where would he go anyway?
He looked down at the girl, and debated searching her for a purse, ID or anything that might help him identify her. He looked helplessly at her, not knowing where to start, or if he should, when he caught sight of a small black rectangle lying discarded on the floor nearby. It was within arms reach. He wasn't immediately sure what it was, but had a pretty good idea, and it also gave him a loose idea of the timeframe he'd leapt into. That sort of technology was, by Sam's own, and admittedly skewed reckoning, very recent stuff.
He leant forward, and tapped the rectangle with a nail, wary of putting bloody fingerprints all over the shiny casing. The touch brought the device out of its power saving mode, and the screen lit up. It was a personal organiser of some description, but Sam was more interested in what was displayed. It was contact details, for a man named Jack Marche, and showed the first line of his address. Sam was about to try to figure out how to scroll down, to get as much information as he could, when he heard loud and agitated voices coming closer.
He turned towards the door in time to see it fly open. Half a dozen cops, all armed and looking belligerent, burst into the room, scanning it with their eyes suspiciously. Then they saw Sam.
"Sir!" one of them yelled, and suddenly all guns were pointing at him.
A man came to the front of the pack, took one look at the scene and blanched. He had a detective's badge clipped to his waist, and a receding hairline. "Jesus," he said, "Mindy." He turned to stare at Sam. "What happened here, man?"
"I don't..." Sam stared helplessly from the detective, to the girl - no, a woman, she looked to be in her twenties at least - whose name he now knew was Mindy. "I don't know, I just..."
The detective stepped forward, set his hands on Sam's shoulders and said, gently, "Come on, man, let's get you out of here."
Sam rose, somewhat unsteadily and desperately trying not to put his foot in the blood and slip on it, and felt an unfamiliar tug at the waist of his pants. He looked down, and saw a detective's shield, not unlike the one the stranger was wearing, clipped to his belt.
He really hoped Al was going to show up soon.
**
Sam wasn't surprised at what happened next. Fortunately, he wasn't required to say much as he was briefly seen by a paramedic in an ambulance that was standing outside what turned out to be an all-night convenience store, then he was politely read his rights by the detective who'd taken him out of the storeroom (in the process learning that the man he'd leaped into was named 'Eric Barnes'), and was taken to a brightly lit police station, where his clothes were taken from him, and a forensic scientist with a bored expression and cold hands methodically combed his hair, checked under his fingernails, and took swabs of the blood on his hands, saliva from his mouth, and so many photographs that if it had been under any other circumstances, Sam might have joked about what he had done to deserve the paparazzi treatment.
He was feeling thoroughly cold, and slightly violated, by the time he was left alone in cell, dressed only in burgundy scrubs-style clothing and a pair of soft slipper shoes that had no laces. But then again, he wouldn't have expected any better treatment, given that he was apparently under arrest for the murder of Mindy Coleman.
Sam dwelt sourly on the fact that he'd managed to experience exactly how law enforcement treated its suspects over the course of several decades, and it always seemed to get more and more impersonal, the more recent the arrest was.
"I don't think red's your colour."
Sam had been so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he hadn't heard the distinctive noise of the imaging chamber door, or the projection of it at least. He jerked his head, breaking off from his contemplation of the ceiling, and glanced at Al. He sat up, ignoring the blood rush from moving so quickly out of a lying-down position.
"Thank god you're here," he said, earnestly.
Then he blinked, realising that there was something off about his friend. At first thought, he wondered if there was a fault in the imaging chamber that was preventing a full transmission of colour, but then he shook his head, and he realised that he hadn't seen Al dressed so sombrely, in a black suit and plain black tie, in many years. "I'm not the only one with a new look," he said, pointing to Al's outfit.
Al looked down at his suit, and flicked an invisible speck of lint off the lapel. "You caught me coming back from a funeral," he said, looking a little subdued.
Sam shifted, and glanced down at his hands. It was pretty damned easy to forget that Al wasn't just his holographic companion, but that Al still had a life, back in what Sam would have thought of as the 'present'. Al never talked about it, though, and Sam had decided a long time ago that there were reasons why.
"Anyone I know?" he asked. He'd lost track of how long he'd spent, leaping from body to body. He felt a sudden chill as he wondered at the possibility that he might actually outlive - in some fashion - the people at Project Quantum Leap.
"No," Al said quickly, "No one you know." He stabbed at the handlink, which whirred and chirruped in what could only be described as a disgruntled fashion. "You're Eric Barnes, and according to this, you're a police detective, not a jail bird."
Sam's mouth twisted. "I leaped in kneeling over a woman who was dying and, unsurprisingly, the cops who found me thought that arresting me was a good idea. Mindy Coleman, that was the victim's name."
Al made a small sound of mirthless laughter. "Well, I guess that explains the new digs." He poked the link some more. "Mindy Coleman, murdered December 11th 2008. Your, or Eric Barnes' rather, sister, as a matter of fact. Coleman was her late husband's name."
"Late?"
"Her husband was a soldier, killed over a year ago on a tour of duty in the middle east."
"Poor woman," Sam murmured, then took a deep breath. "Did he do it? Eric?"
Al squinted at the readouts on his screen. "According to the original history records, no one was ever prosecuted for Mindy's murder. There's a record of Eric Barnes getting arrested, but he gets released when security camera footage from the convenience store is reviewed, which clears him."
Sam nodded thoughtfully, standing to pace the cell. He'd glimpsed the small camera in the corner of the ceiling and took care to keep his face turned away so that there wouldn't be footage of him talking to himself like a madman. "I take it I'm here to find the actual killer?"
Al nodded and tapped the link with a little flourish. "According to Ziggy, that's right, with a 99.2% certainty."
Sam smiled ruefully and scratched the side of his face. "One of these days, it's going to fall into that point eight of a percent and then we'll all be screwed."
Al snorted in agreement, then looked down at his suit and grimaced. "Hey, Sam," he said, "I'm just gonna go get changed out of this monkey suit." He gestured with a finger at his shirt front, "They should be releasing you in a couple of hours, I'll be back before then."
As Al tapped the handlink, and a door of brilliant light opened in the air (Sam avoided looking directly at its glare out of habit), Sam gestured to the cell with both hands. "I'm not going anywhere."
**
They led him down the hallway to an interrogation room, the only chairs in there being uncomfortable plastic affairs, and the air conditioning was set slightly too low, leaving Sam to shiver in the inadequate garments he'd been given. He didn't have to wait long. Moments after he'd sat down, the door reopened, admitting a tall brunette in a smart business suit, who gave him a genuine smile as he sat down.
"Eric," she said, warmly. She dropped the file she was carrying on the table between them. "Before we go any further, I want you to know that we reviewed the security camera footage from the convenience store, and we can see that you were inside the store, in sight of the camera, at the time of the murder. You'll be released soon as we corroborate it."
Sam knew how to act, but the relief he felt was somewhat genuine. His shoulders dropped as the tension went out of them, and he heaved a sigh. "I'm glad," he hesitated, "Mindy..."
The woman leaned forward, resting his hands on his, where he'df olded them on the tabletop. "I'm so sorry, Eric."
There was a distinctive noise that the woman didn't react to and that Sam pretended not to hear, through ease of long practice.
"Amanda Lichfeld," Al supplied, as he stepped through the imaging chamber door, "She's your partner on the force."
"Do you have any leads on the suspect?"
Amanda sat back and shook her head sadly. "I'm afraid not, but I promise you that we're doing everything we can to investigate." She drew back, and opened the file. "I need to take your statement on what happened."
Sam tried not to grimace, and started racking his brain. He could draw some conclusions about what had happened when Eric Barnes had found his sister, but that wasn't certainty, it was supposition. He might be wrong, but he couldn't get away with saying "I don't remember" to someone who clearly knew him well and would expect him to remember some important detail.
"Whatever you do, Sam, don't implicate yourself." Al stepped into view, standing behind Amanda. He had changed into his usual attire, a more enthusiastic blending of colours than the suit.
Sam rolled his eyes, but, fortunately, Amanda didn't notice, as she was busy retrieving a pen from a pocket. "It's all... a little hazy," he said, injecting a little uncertainty into his voice. "I mean, I think about it and all I see is Mindy..." he trailed off.
Amanda smiled sympathetically. "Anything you can recall would be helpful, you know that."
"Will I get to work on the case?" he asked. He had no real expectations, but it certainly would be useful if he could poke around with the backing of the police's authority.
Amanda shook his head. "You know it's not gonna happen, Eric, I'm sorry." She settled her hand, pen poised, over some sheets of blank paper that she had brought in the file folder. "Why don't you start by telling me what happened when you walked into the convenience store?"
Sam's mind went abruptly blank. They clearly had the CCTV footage, so any deviation would be seen easily. Al's handlink beeped and chirruped as he started frantically tapping it.
"Uh..." Al's eyes were scanning the information relayed to him by Ziggy. "The footage showed Eric Barnes entering the convenience store at 2106..."
Sam fixed his eyes on his hands, pressed them flat against the table, as if remembering. "I went into the store at about nine pm..."
"He looked at some magazines, picked up some oranges, apples and milk, went to the cashier to pay for it at 2113..."
"Spent ten minutes getting stuff, I think. I went to pay for it..."
"The cashier was just making change when Barnes looks like he's reacting to a noise..."
"I heard something..."
"He leaves the desk, goes over to the storeroom door, asks the clerk something, then barges his way in. At that point he moves out of sight of the camera, but you can see Mindy's feet, and part of a blood pool. It's clear from the footage that she's already dead. Clerk picks up the phone in response to Barnes yelling at him and calls the cops."
"I went to investigate, and I opened the door to find Mindy just... lying there." Sam didn't have to fake the slight shakiness in his voice. When he thought about it, all he could see was Mindy sightlessly staring upwards, and the warm stickiness of her blood. He could still see some of it, lodged under his fingernails.
"Then what did you do?" Amanda prompted, when he fell silent.
Sam took a deep breath. This was where his practice in making up such stories came in handy. "I... I don't really..." He reached up, rubbed the back of his neck. "I yelled at the clerk to call the police. She was barely breathing, and there was blood everywhere. I don't know, I thought I could maybe do CPR or something, but she just... died. And then uniformed cops showed." He shrugged. "The rest, you know."
Amanda nodded, the scratching of the pen against paper filling the gaps between speaking. "Did you know your sister was at the convenience store?"
Sam shook his head, and wished, briefly, that he had some insight into what Eric Barnes had been thinking at the time of Mindy's murder. "No. I was just getting some fruit, milk, that sorta thing."
"Did you see anyone nearby? Any suspicious individuals or vehicles?"
"No..." Sam said, quietly. "Why would someone want to murder her?"
"I don't know, 'Ric," Amanda said, sadly, "She was a good girl."
"Better than her brother," Sam said. The self deprecation seemed appropriate.
Amanda laughed softly, and picked up a pen.
"Had she spoken to you at all recently about anyone that might have anything against her?"
Al shook his head. "No record if Mindy had any enemies. Investigation never came up with anyone likely."
"Don't think so," Sam said.
"Was she seeing anyone new?"
"Doug Brady. Boyfriend. Works in D.C.."
"There is a guy..." Sam made a show of thinking hard. "Doug something or other. I don't think he lives in town though."
"We'll look into it."
As Amanda bent over her pieces of paper, writing quickly, Al stepped around the table, and into Sam's line of sight. He'd paused, some new piece of information on his handlink troubling him. "Uh Sam," he said, uneasy, "According to Ziggy, in three days time, Amanda Lichfield disappears and she's never heard from again. No one knows why, or how, but the assumption is that she died and her... body was never recovered."
Sam looked at Amanda's bent head, the way her hair spilled over her shoulders with her position and realised with dismay that there was a serial killer on the loose, and no one knew it.
**
Sam pushed his jacket sleeves up over his shoulders. It was a weird quirk of how he moved from body to body that in his own mind, clothes always fit properly. Eric Barnes must have enjoyed having an oversized jacket.
He got out of the cells in the morning after his interview with Amanda. They'd been triple checking their information, holding him as long as possible. Sam gathered from Al that, a few years earlier, there'd been a pretty intense corruption investigation in the department. As a result, no one was taking a chance at anyone pointing fingers and saying they'd been too lenient because their suspect was a cop.
He contemplated going back to Eric Barnes's place, but felt restless after being stuck in a cell for two days. Two days, in which time god only knew what had been happening. So, the moment that he got out, he stopped there only long enough to get into a change of clothes that weren't scrubs, and he set about his investigations.
He returned to the convenience store, and interviewed the clerk. He had been the same one as had been on duty the night of the murder. Unfortunately, the man had been scared out of his wits by the glimpse of the body that he'd seen through the storeroom door that night. His memory was patchy and hazy, and all that Sam could get out of him was that there had been a murder.
He'd asked for access to the storeroom, but looking around revealed nothing but a brown patch on the floor where the blood hadn't been completely scrubbed away. Any evidence and trace had been thoroughly investigated and removed by the police. There was nothing left for Sam to find.
So then it was down to investigating Mindy herself. According to Al and Ziggy, Mindy was a staff journalist at one of the largest newspapers. They maintained an office on the other side of the city, and took far too much time to get there.
Mindy's editor was helpful, even though Sam was playing a police officer in an unofficial capacity. He seemed genuinely fond of Mindy, and honestly saddened at her death. He explained that Mindy had been doing some investigating into drugs smuggling. Since the city had an extensive docks area, with cargo moving around daily, there was a small and hard-to-root-out core of drugs smugglers. There were rumours of officials on the take.
Al sat next to him in the car. "Maybe one of the smugglers caught on," he said, as Sam wove his way through afternoon traffic.
"Maybe," Sam said, though that theory didn't sit right.
He sighed. "Mindy's attack was personal. Someone stabbed her, more than once, long after the point where it was obvious she would be dead. Smugglers would just want to get rid of her."
"That reduces the suspects," Al said.
"So far," Sam said, "I'm the only suspect. That doesn't help us."
**
Late in the day, when Sam got to Eric's house, his eyes lit on the phone on the side table near the door. The message light was flashing, and the information on the small LCD display indicated that it had been left earlier that day.
"Hey man." The voice was male, and not one that Sam recognised from any of the people he'd met so far on this leap. "It's Jack."
Jack. The name scratched impatiently at Sam's mind.
"Heard what happened. We need to clear things."
Sam frowned.
"Meet me tomorrow," the message continued. "Corner of fifth. Near Dunkin' Donuts."
Sam had a feeling it was one appointment he ought to keep.
**
"Hell, man, heard you got arrested."
"You heard right." Jack Marche looked awfully familiar to Sam, though he couldn't place the man immediately. He had known it was indeed Jack Marche after he'd gone digging around Barnes's house and found a business card that matched the phone number that had been used to call and leave the message.
He'd also found a stack of bank statements, a series of payments made from Jack Marche to Eric Barnes over a period of four years. There was no notations regarding what it was for, and there was no way for Sam to guess.
"Saw that Mindy wound up dead," Jack continued.
"Yeah," Sam said, watching Jack warily for his reaction.
Jack's mouth twitched. "You sorry?"
Sam blinked. "Of course," he said, "She's my sister."
He didn't expect the snicker he received in response. "Sure man," he said, "So everything's slick, right?"
"Slick?"
"Cool. Tight." Jack scowled. "Everything's good, right? Between us."
Sam jerked his head up slightly, responding to the tightness of Jack's voice with an implacable expression of his own. "We're 'slick'," he said.
Jack immediately relaxed. "Good," he said, "Because if not, I have all these useful bits of paper. I'm pretty sure little Mindy's friends at the paper..." He trailed off significantly.
"You don't need to worry," Sam said sharply.
Jack folded his arms and smirked. Sam wondered how to get more out of the man, but even as he was trying to think of what to say, Jack shook his head. "I gotta get gone. Nightshift over down by the water."
Sam nodded, saying nothing.
Jack gave him a speculative look. "You gonna give me my jacket or not?"
"Oh." Sam slipped the jacket off his shoulders, handing it over without complaint. The night air was unpleasantly cold, and his shirt on its own wasn't enough. "Right. Sorry."
"No worries. Fucking shame the cops had to make off with the one I gave you. But this'll do. Thanks for the trade, man." Jack swung the jacket over his shoulder. "I'll see you around, right?"
"Sure," Sam responded easily, and watched Jack as he strode off, disappearing off down the street in ground-eating strides.
He realised suddenly why Jack Marche seemed familiar. In the darkness of the night, he was startlingly similar to Eric himself. Same colouring, similar height. They could almost be brothers.
**
The next day was the day Amanda Lichfeld disappeared.
Amanda lived in a fairly well-to-do area, though not so upscale that she appeared to be a cop on the take. She lived in an apartment in tidily maintained building, and the surrounding streets were relatively free from crime. Sam had gotten the address from Al and then used the car's navigation to find his way there. There was something to be said for the march of technology. He didn't miss struggling with maps in earlier time periods.
Unfortunately, it wasn't helpful in locating her apartment inside the building, and he wandered in circles until one of her neighbours helpfully directed him to the right door, and he found himself confronted with the deep purple paint she'd used for decoration.
He'd spent the day fruitlessly trying to get information on Jack Marche. He'd gone down to the docks, found that the man was a security guard who worked the early morning shift. No one knew him well, and he kept to himself. A few workers remembered Mindy nosing around, asking questions, but no one knew anything about her death, or, if they did, they weren't talking.
Sam knew that Amanda hadn't disappeared until the evening, given that she was at work most of the day. He had Al keep an eye on her, and when his friend reappeared to let him know that she'd left for work late in the evening, Sam got in his car, making a short stop-off on the way to her apartment. He had to make sure she didn't go anywhere. He had to make sure she was safe.
She answered the door in workout gear, a pencil shoved behind her ear, and a pair of glasses held loosely in her hand. She blinked as she saw who exactly was hammering on her door at nine at night.
"'Ric?" she said, looking surprised. "What are you doing here?"
He held up the carrier bag in his hand. "I brought chinese," he said. "You're working on Mindy's case, right?"
Amanda bit her lip. "Eric, I really shouldn't-"
He lowered the bag to his side again. "Amanda, I..." He couldn't afford to have her kick him out.
"You're off the case," she reminded him. "I shouldn't share anything with you. You especially shouldn't be here. 'Ric... your sister just died, you should take some time."
"Exactly," he snapepd, "She's... she was..." He sighed, and continued in a more subdued tone. "She's my sister. I owe it to her. Please, Amanda, we've been partners for years." Four years, three months, according to Al.
She pursed her lips, and stepped back, allowing him entrance. "I hope you bought spring rolls."
He had, as a matter of fact, but not because he knew Amanda would like them. "Don't I always?" he asked, with a grin. The way she laughed softly and shook her head, he knew it was probably a familiar statement for her.
He found his way into the lounge. Amanda had clearly settled in for a night of reviewing evidence, and was taking it very seriously. There were files and folders spread out all over the coffee table that sat in the middle of a large persian-style rug. He spent a few minutes looking at it, at the woven illustrations in the panels on the rug, and then realised that, lying open on the floor were crime scene photos. Mindy's eyes stared lifelessly at the camera, a halo of blood surrounding her head, soaked into her hair.
Amanda reappeared with plate and forks. "Haven't got any chopsticks," she said, "I hope-"
She realised where he was looking. "Oh," she said, faltering. She put down the plates and bent to pick up the photos. "I... I wasn't expecting you, obviously. I'm sorry. I don't..."
Her voice faltered, and Sam shook himself, trying to dispel the memory of Mindy's death. "No, don't worry I mean, I want to know. I want to help."
"You can't help," Amanda sat, gently. She tucked the photos under the files sitting on the table. "You're not allowed."
"At least tell me what happened," he said, "Please." He smiled, weakly, and held up the bag in his hands. "I'll share the chow mein."
Amanda sighed, gestured for him to sit on the sofa, and gave him a plate. Between them, they quickly unpacked the chinese food, made a space in between all the files. It was three spring rolls gone before he broached the question that was burning, unspoken.
"So what do you know?"
Amanda looked briefly uncertain.
He tried a different tack. "Pretend this is any other murder," he said.
Amanda bit her lip again, and then seemed to come sort of decision. "The cause of death..." She started slowly, watching him carefully, and when he didn't flinch, continued, "... was the blood loss caused by multiple stab wounds. There were defensive injuries on her hands, and an impact fracture to the back of her skull."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning she hit her head somehow. Probably on the concrete ground. From the angle of entry, forensics determined that she was stabbed, hit the ground, and was stabbed a few more times for good measure."
Sam grimaced, and looked into his chicken chow mein. Unfortunately, his imagination was all too willing to conjure images of exactly what had happened.
"Can I?" he gestured to the evidence scattered around.
Amanda looked like she might argue, but relented after a moment, looking sympathetic. "Don't tell the Captain I let you look," she said. "He'll have my guts."
"I won't tell him." He wasn't entirely sure where to start. He started to look at the materials nearest me. He slipped off the couch, sitting cross-legged on the floor as he rummaged around. A flash of silver caught his eye, and he pushed aside some pieces of paper to come up with what looked to be a DVD.
He held up the disc, squinted at the handwritten label on the front. 'Camera footage' it said, in loopy handwriting. He glanced at Amanda, and waved the disc, raising an eyebrow questioningly.
"The security footage from the convenience store," she said, "I burned a copy off the master in the office. It's the stuff that cleared you."
"Any sign of the murder on it?"
Amanda sighed, and shook her head. "Unfortunately, no." She gestured with her pen. "Just shows you entering the store, then going into the storeroom."
Sam looked at it thoughtfully. "Mind if I take a look anyway?"
Amanda nodded, pointed to the TV and the DVD player tucked underneath it. "Go ahead," she murmured, and bent over one of the files, making notations with a freshly sharpened pencil.
It took Sam a few minutes to figure out how to work the machine. Eventually, he had to get Amanda to help him switch on the TV and select the right input, though he got a quick flash of two men in black suits dancing as a man played piano before she directed him to the correct channel and dropped two remote controls in his hands.
Sam settled in to watch the footage, the only sound the soft scratching of Amanda's pencil. He didn't know what he was supposed to get from it at first. He watched carefully, frowning at the grainy nature of the footage. It was monochrome, and the resolution was poor. But the build, height, hair and jacket matched Eric Barnes, or at least what Sam had seen of him when he'd looked in the mirror.
He wandered around, picked up milk, fruit, then headed to the counter. He suddenly reacted to something that wasn't picked up on the footage, there was no sound on the track, and started over to the storeroom, flashing what was likely a police badge at the clerk. He reached for his gun, and flung open the door.
Just visible from the camera's perspective was a leg, female and with the shoe hanging off it, knocked free. There was blood also visible as a black patch on the image. The rest of the body was out of shot, hidden from sight by virtue of being in another room. Eric turned back, said something to the clerk, who reached for the phone, dialling 911. Eric stepped into the room, the door swinging shut behind him from its own weight. There was nothing much else happening until the cops showed up.
Sam sighed, ejected the disc. It seemed to corroborate what the history said had happened.
Amanda looked up at him sympathetically. "Doesn't help much, does it? Unfortunately, the back entrance to the storeroom wasn't covered by cameras. That's probably where the murderer got in."
Sam leaned back. "Mind if I borrow this?" he wasn't sure what drove him to ask. Something didn't sit right, and over thousands of leaps, Sam had learnt to trust his instincts.
Amanda shrugged. "Sure. It's just a copy. Not sure what good it'll do you."
Sam nodded, shoved the disc and its case into his pocket. He started to rummage around the files and photos lying on the floor by his feet. He picked up one that caught his eye. It was the shirt he had been wearing when he was arrested. There was blood splashed all over the front and all over the sleeves, especially soaked in around the cuffs.
He sighed, and dropped the photo to the pile. Amanda smiled at him sadly.
"We'll get the bastard," she said, "All the informations here. I'm going to put it together."
"I hope so," Sam murmured, and thought again of Mindy's startled expression as she died, and his own sense of helplessness when it happened.
**
"Amanda wasn't in any danger," Sam said, staring at the ceiling. He had returned to Eric Barnes's house, and hadn't even bothered trying to sleep.
Al stood by the side of the bed. The handlink stood out brightly in the dark, and cast an eerie light onto his shirt. The light didn't reach beyond Al, didn't splash onto the walls or bedspread. It was a discontinuity that Sam had gotten used to over the years.
"Well," he said, thoughtfully, "In the original history she disappeared. Ziggy rechecked, and now she didn't. She lives, grows older. Gets pretty high up in the police force too."
Sam flicked his eyes towards Al, took in his tired appearance. "Older, huh," he said, "What year is it for you, Al?"
Al shrugged nonchalantly. "I forget," he said. "But far enough to know she's still alive after today."
Sam examined a crack in the ceiling plaster. "I haven't leaped. So I wasn't here to save her."
"Like I told you before, Ziggy thinks you're here to solve Mindy's murder. Saving Amanda was just incidental."
Sam sat up. He was still fully dressed, having simply walked into the room and lain down, too lost in thought to consider undressing. "But she wasn't in any danger," he said. "Before I went there, she was settled for an evening in. She wasn't going out investigating. Whoever made her disappear in the first place should have tried to get in or something. But nothing happened."
Al scratched his neck thoughtfully. "Maybe the fact that you were there scared them off."
"I dunno," Sam said. "This doesn't make sense."
He got up, wandered through into the kitchen. There was a flicker, and Al shifted his hologram to follow Sam. Without the benefit of curtains, it was possible to see through the kitchen window that the sun was rising. Sam had been lying staring at the ceiling for longer than he thought.
He put some water in the kettle and set it to boil. "Amanda disappearing right after Eric's sister? Two people connected to him?"
"Maybe someone has something against Eric." Al said, "One of the crooks he's put away in the past maybe?"
"Maybe," Sam said, and opened the fridge. He grimaced at the explosion of light from inside, then looked in the doorway. He blinked, and reached inside. He looked back at Al. "I have milk."
Al looked bemused. "Well that's good," he said dryly, "Wouldn't do to be drinking black coffee."
Sam looked at the kitchen table. The disc from Amanda's house, the one with the camera footage on, was sitting exactly where Sam had thrown it when he'd come in through the door. He slammed the fridge door shut, and grabbed the disc, going into the other room, turning the TV on and sticking the DVD in the drive.
"What are you looking for?" Al asked.
"Just watch," Sam said, as he thumbed the remote control. "I have a hunch."
Al scowled, and squinted at the screen.
Sam played the film twice before he realised he was almost certainly correct in his guess as to what had happened. The third time through, Al suddenly got it as well.
"God, Sam," he muttered, "What sort of person...?"
Sam got up, grabbing his jacket where he'd thrown it, and picking up the car keys.
"Where are you going?" Al asked, frowning.
"The station," Sam said, gathering up his badge and gun and stowing them safely in his jacket. "But while I'm going, there's some files I want you to pull for me."
**
Amanda was crying silently, while Sam was being led away through a suddenly silent office in handcuffs by two well-built police officers. Everyone was staring at him, too shell-shocked to even whisper amongst themselves as the man they thought of as Eric Barnes was led away to a cell.
Sam wasn't surprised. It was no less a reaction than he might have had himself.
He'd walked in, calm as anything, creating something of a small stir as he did so. Amanda looked up from her desk and smiled as he wove his way across the bullpen, and gave him a small wave of greeting. She looked remarkably fresh considering it was first thing in the wee hours of the morning, and that Sam knew for a fact that she'd been awake for most of the night. A cooling cup of coffee testified as to the reason behind her energetic appearance.
"Hey, Ric," she said, "You're not supposed to be here are you?"
"No," he replied, giving her a tight smile, "But here I am."
Amanda looked at him, and frowned. "What's going on?"
Sam wordlessly took out his badge, laid it on the table in front of her. Without pausing he also took out his gun and set it before her, closer to her than himself. He wouldn't be able to reach it easily. She automatically laid a hand on top of it as it was placed directly before her. There was an uncomfortable moment of silence. His entrance and his actions now were attracting a small number of onlookers.
"I killed Mindy," he said simply.
Amandra drew back sharply, looked from the gun under her fingers to his face. "Eric..." she tried.
"Amanda," he interrupted, "Let me..." He waved his hand vaguely. "Let me finish. I killed her. I stabbed her to death when she threatened to expose some rather underhand dealings I had with a man named Jack Marche." He offered up a laugh, short and resigned sounding.
"The man that Mindy was investigating," Amanda said, horror dawning.
"It wasn't me on that security camera footage." He said. "It was Jack Marche. I was the one who crept into the storeroom through the backdoor. Mindy was about to find out about our dealings. I couldn't let her. I stabbed her. Jack pretended to be me for the benefit of the clerk and cameras. When he came in through the door, after telling the clerk to call the cops, he gave me his jacket, and my badge, which he'd been wearing."
Amanda looked at the files which were splayed open before her. "The blood on your sleeves," she said, dully, "Shouldn't have been there if you were wearing the jacket that you were wearing when we found you. There was less blood on the jacket outside."
"He took the knife, probably disposed of it." When the simple fact of the matter, that it hadn't been Eric Barnes on the security tape, was realised, the rest fell into place with startling simplicity. In the original history, no one had ever figured it out.
"I killed her." He looked at her for a long moment. "But then, you'd already worked that out, hadn't you?"
There were tears in Amanda's eyes, but there was no surprise on her face. Maybe she'd been trying to deny what Sam knew she'd already figured out. When Amanda had gone missing in the original timeline, Sam was willing to lay good money that Eric Barnes had worked out the same thing as Sam, realised she had everything she needed to uncover the truth, and had killed her for it. Even if she hadn't known for certain, she must have had her suspicions, maybe aroused by Amanda rewatching the disc when Sam had put it in the TV.
Maybe Eric had gone to her apartment the same evening Sam had. If he had truly been Eric Barnes, Amanda wouldn't have survived the apparently innocent meeting of coworkers.
"Why did you do it?" she asked, sounding betrayed, and unhappy. "She might not have found anything. You could have run. Why kill her?"
Sam straightened. Now that was something he couldn't speak to. He settled for giving her a small, tight smile. "Maybe I'll tell you some day." And maybe Eric would.
**
The courtroom smelt of cleaning fluids that barely covered the smell of a couple of dozen people sweating profusely in the under air-conditioned heat of the day. Sam sat in the defendants chair, contemplating the handcuffs about his wrists. His lawyer had turned away to talk to one of his colleagues, ignoring Sam for a moment. He was still watched by a burly looking guard, but only to make sure he didn't make a break for it. He was able to whisper to Al, who was standing by the desk poking on his handlink and chewing the end of a cold cigar.
"Well?"
"Hmm?" Al looked at him blankly for a moment, before grabbing the cigar from his mouth. "Oh, right, those records you wanted me to pull."
He shook the handlink briefly, causing it to whir in electronic distress. Sam risked a glance at his counsel. The man was still distracted, going through sheaves of paper with a man who looked barely old enough to have started shaving.
"Took a bit of digging, but Ziggy managed to find out that in the time between Eric Barnes leaving the force and his death twenty three years later, there were eight unsolved murders of young women matching Mindy's description in the local area." Al grimaced slightly. "There were also three missing persons incidents where the women were never recovered."
"Eleven women," Sam murmured, and closed his eyes, reaching up to rub the lids. Eleven.
"Eleven that we know of," agreed Al, quietly. "I'm guessing that killing Amanda and Mindy gave him a taste for it. The later victims were sexually assaulted before their death."
"It shouldn't have even been one," Sam whispered, fiercely, "Why did Mindy have to die? Why couldn't I have leapt in five minutes earlier and saved her too?"
Al looked thoughtful for a moment, rolling his cigar in his fingers. "If Eric hadn't murdered Mindy, he would never have been caught. Sooner or later, he probably would have murdered someone else, gotten a taste for it again, and carried on killing." He looked at the cigar, not quite able to look at his friend. "She saved them, Sam. Mindy might have died, but she saved twelve other women from the same fate."
And that, Sam decided, was how he'd remember a woman he'd only known for the last seconds of her life.
There was a stir, and Sam raised his head to see the judge enter the courtroom, robes swishing about him as he walked with what could only be described as a 'no-nonsense' step.
"All rise," the bailiff said, loudly.
Sam was on his feet before his lawyer, and stood quietly, staring at the wooden desk in front of him as the charges were read out, and all the legal preliminaries were run through. Sam didn't have the need to listen. In the past he'd sat where the judge was, where the bailiff was, and where the lawyers were. He felt no real need to listen to the legal blurb that preceded the most important statement.
The judge looked up from his files as they came to that point, staring over the rims of his glasses at Sam and his lawyer. "How does the defence plead?"
His lawyer turned his head to stare at him. Sam nodded, and offered a small smile. The man had tried to talk him out of the plea he was offering, but Sam had stood firm.
"Your honour," his lawyer said, "The defence pleads guilty on all charges."
Mutterings went up around the courtroom, murmurs of surprise at the plea. Al nodded.
"That did it, Sam," he said, sounding pleased, "Those eleven women never go missing. Eric Barnes spends eight years in prison, before..." Al faltered briefly. "Well, before he's killed during a prison riot. Can't say I'm very sorry."
"Me neither," Sam said, then turned his head to look at the bench behind him. Amanda Lichfield was sitting behind him, fingers laced so tightly together that her knuckles had turned white. He smiled at her. "You did good," he told her. "Never would have worked it out without you."
Her eyes widened, and that was the last thing he saw before the light of the leap took him away and washed away the vision of her.
- End -
Fandom: Quantum Leap
Written for: Delilah_Kelley in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge
by Jewels
The challenge was to set this in the very recent past. Hope this is recent enough. :) Not quite a crossover, since I know nothing about the two suggested fandoms, but hopefully an homage is enough.
**
The girl's blood was hot and slick beneath his fingers, but it was the ashen look of shock on her face, the first thing Sam Beckett saw as he leapt into this new body, that caused him to stop moving. He'd been rocking forward as he leapt in, as if he were performing chest compressions, and his eyes slid from her almost startled, slightly parted and nearly blue lips, and down to his hands, where they were laced together and pressed against her ribcage.
Being confronted with such grievous injuries was apparently enough to kick start his brain into remembering key things about how to treat injuries like the ones he was seeing - wounds, small, but bleeding copiously, a gruesome series of decorations adorning her torso - but even as he made the assessments, struggling to cope with the sudden need to make decisions so soon after the mind-screwing aftermath of a leap, the girl breathed her last, and quietly expired, eyes staring vacantly up at the ceiling, no sign of life left in them.
He sat back on his heels, only now realising that he'd been kneeling beside her on a hard floor, linoleum, now he saw it. It had been a dirty off-white once, but was now stained with a rapidly spreading puddle of blood. It was a storeroom that he was in, fluorescent tubes lending everything a ghastly cast, and thin metal shelves stacked with plastic wrapped goods.
He pulled his hands away from her body, stared at them, at the blood. "Oh boy," he whispered, and tried to desperately control the urge to vomit.
He took a deep breath, through his mouth, hoping to avoid smelling the blood any more than he had to and making himself sick. Nothing would be gained by panicking, however appealing that option seemed.
His first urge was to run, to get out and away from this horrible scene until Al showed up in all his holographic glory to tell him what was going on. But that might be a bad idea in and of itself. If someone caught him running out of the room, they might assume he was the murderer. And where would he go anyway?
He looked down at the girl, and debated searching her for a purse, ID or anything that might help him identify her. He looked helplessly at her, not knowing where to start, or if he should, when he caught sight of a small black rectangle lying discarded on the floor nearby. It was within arms reach. He wasn't immediately sure what it was, but had a pretty good idea, and it also gave him a loose idea of the timeframe he'd leapt into. That sort of technology was, by Sam's own, and admittedly skewed reckoning, very recent stuff.
He leant forward, and tapped the rectangle with a nail, wary of putting bloody fingerprints all over the shiny casing. The touch brought the device out of its power saving mode, and the screen lit up. It was a personal organiser of some description, but Sam was more interested in what was displayed. It was contact details, for a man named Jack Marche, and showed the first line of his address. Sam was about to try to figure out how to scroll down, to get as much information as he could, when he heard loud and agitated voices coming closer.
He turned towards the door in time to see it fly open. Half a dozen cops, all armed and looking belligerent, burst into the room, scanning it with their eyes suspiciously. Then they saw Sam.
"Sir!" one of them yelled, and suddenly all guns were pointing at him.
A man came to the front of the pack, took one look at the scene and blanched. He had a detective's badge clipped to his waist, and a receding hairline. "Jesus," he said, "Mindy." He turned to stare at Sam. "What happened here, man?"
"I don't..." Sam stared helplessly from the detective, to the girl - no, a woman, she looked to be in her twenties at least - whose name he now knew was Mindy. "I don't know, I just..."
The detective stepped forward, set his hands on Sam's shoulders and said, gently, "Come on, man, let's get you out of here."
Sam rose, somewhat unsteadily and desperately trying not to put his foot in the blood and slip on it, and felt an unfamiliar tug at the waist of his pants. He looked down, and saw a detective's shield, not unlike the one the stranger was wearing, clipped to his belt.
He really hoped Al was going to show up soon.
**
Sam wasn't surprised at what happened next. Fortunately, he wasn't required to say much as he was briefly seen by a paramedic in an ambulance that was standing outside what turned out to be an all-night convenience store, then he was politely read his rights by the detective who'd taken him out of the storeroom (in the process learning that the man he'd leaped into was named 'Eric Barnes'), and was taken to a brightly lit police station, where his clothes were taken from him, and a forensic scientist with a bored expression and cold hands methodically combed his hair, checked under his fingernails, and took swabs of the blood on his hands, saliva from his mouth, and so many photographs that if it had been under any other circumstances, Sam might have joked about what he had done to deserve the paparazzi treatment.
He was feeling thoroughly cold, and slightly violated, by the time he was left alone in cell, dressed only in burgundy scrubs-style clothing and a pair of soft slipper shoes that had no laces. But then again, he wouldn't have expected any better treatment, given that he was apparently under arrest for the murder of Mindy Coleman.
Sam dwelt sourly on the fact that he'd managed to experience exactly how law enforcement treated its suspects over the course of several decades, and it always seemed to get more and more impersonal, the more recent the arrest was.
"I don't think red's your colour."
Sam had been so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he hadn't heard the distinctive noise of the imaging chamber door, or the projection of it at least. He jerked his head, breaking off from his contemplation of the ceiling, and glanced at Al. He sat up, ignoring the blood rush from moving so quickly out of a lying-down position.
"Thank god you're here," he said, earnestly.
Then he blinked, realising that there was something off about his friend. At first thought, he wondered if there was a fault in the imaging chamber that was preventing a full transmission of colour, but then he shook his head, and he realised that he hadn't seen Al dressed so sombrely, in a black suit and plain black tie, in many years. "I'm not the only one with a new look," he said, pointing to Al's outfit.
Al looked down at his suit, and flicked an invisible speck of lint off the lapel. "You caught me coming back from a funeral," he said, looking a little subdued.
Sam shifted, and glanced down at his hands. It was pretty damned easy to forget that Al wasn't just his holographic companion, but that Al still had a life, back in what Sam would have thought of as the 'present'. Al never talked about it, though, and Sam had decided a long time ago that there were reasons why.
"Anyone I know?" he asked. He'd lost track of how long he'd spent, leaping from body to body. He felt a sudden chill as he wondered at the possibility that he might actually outlive - in some fashion - the people at Project Quantum Leap.
"No," Al said quickly, "No one you know." He stabbed at the handlink, which whirred and chirruped in what could only be described as a disgruntled fashion. "You're Eric Barnes, and according to this, you're a police detective, not a jail bird."
Sam's mouth twisted. "I leaped in kneeling over a woman who was dying and, unsurprisingly, the cops who found me thought that arresting me was a good idea. Mindy Coleman, that was the victim's name."
Al made a small sound of mirthless laughter. "Well, I guess that explains the new digs." He poked the link some more. "Mindy Coleman, murdered December 11th 2008. Your, or Eric Barnes' rather, sister, as a matter of fact. Coleman was her late husband's name."
"Late?"
"Her husband was a soldier, killed over a year ago on a tour of duty in the middle east."
"Poor woman," Sam murmured, then took a deep breath. "Did he do it? Eric?"
Al squinted at the readouts on his screen. "According to the original history records, no one was ever prosecuted for Mindy's murder. There's a record of Eric Barnes getting arrested, but he gets released when security camera footage from the convenience store is reviewed, which clears him."
Sam nodded thoughtfully, standing to pace the cell. He'd glimpsed the small camera in the corner of the ceiling and took care to keep his face turned away so that there wouldn't be footage of him talking to himself like a madman. "I take it I'm here to find the actual killer?"
Al nodded and tapped the link with a little flourish. "According to Ziggy, that's right, with a 99.2% certainty."
Sam smiled ruefully and scratched the side of his face. "One of these days, it's going to fall into that point eight of a percent and then we'll all be screwed."
Al snorted in agreement, then looked down at his suit and grimaced. "Hey, Sam," he said, "I'm just gonna go get changed out of this monkey suit." He gestured with a finger at his shirt front, "They should be releasing you in a couple of hours, I'll be back before then."
As Al tapped the handlink, and a door of brilliant light opened in the air (Sam avoided looking directly at its glare out of habit), Sam gestured to the cell with both hands. "I'm not going anywhere."
**
They led him down the hallway to an interrogation room, the only chairs in there being uncomfortable plastic affairs, and the air conditioning was set slightly too low, leaving Sam to shiver in the inadequate garments he'd been given. He didn't have to wait long. Moments after he'd sat down, the door reopened, admitting a tall brunette in a smart business suit, who gave him a genuine smile as he sat down.
"Eric," she said, warmly. She dropped the file she was carrying on the table between them. "Before we go any further, I want you to know that we reviewed the security camera footage from the convenience store, and we can see that you were inside the store, in sight of the camera, at the time of the murder. You'll be released soon as we corroborate it."
Sam knew how to act, but the relief he felt was somewhat genuine. His shoulders dropped as the tension went out of them, and he heaved a sigh. "I'm glad," he hesitated, "Mindy..."
The woman leaned forward, resting his hands on his, where he'df olded them on the tabletop. "I'm so sorry, Eric."
There was a distinctive noise that the woman didn't react to and that Sam pretended not to hear, through ease of long practice.
"Amanda Lichfeld," Al supplied, as he stepped through the imaging chamber door, "She's your partner on the force."
"Do you have any leads on the suspect?"
Amanda sat back and shook her head sadly. "I'm afraid not, but I promise you that we're doing everything we can to investigate." She drew back, and opened the file. "I need to take your statement on what happened."
Sam tried not to grimace, and started racking his brain. He could draw some conclusions about what had happened when Eric Barnes had found his sister, but that wasn't certainty, it was supposition. He might be wrong, but he couldn't get away with saying "I don't remember" to someone who clearly knew him well and would expect him to remember some important detail.
"Whatever you do, Sam, don't implicate yourself." Al stepped into view, standing behind Amanda. He had changed into his usual attire, a more enthusiastic blending of colours than the suit.
Sam rolled his eyes, but, fortunately, Amanda didn't notice, as she was busy retrieving a pen from a pocket. "It's all... a little hazy," he said, injecting a little uncertainty into his voice. "I mean, I think about it and all I see is Mindy..." he trailed off.
Amanda smiled sympathetically. "Anything you can recall would be helpful, you know that."
"Will I get to work on the case?" he asked. He had no real expectations, but it certainly would be useful if he could poke around with the backing of the police's authority.
Amanda shook his head. "You know it's not gonna happen, Eric, I'm sorry." She settled her hand, pen poised, over some sheets of blank paper that she had brought in the file folder. "Why don't you start by telling me what happened when you walked into the convenience store?"
Sam's mind went abruptly blank. They clearly had the CCTV footage, so any deviation would be seen easily. Al's handlink beeped and chirruped as he started frantically tapping it.
"Uh..." Al's eyes were scanning the information relayed to him by Ziggy. "The footage showed Eric Barnes entering the convenience store at 2106..."
Sam fixed his eyes on his hands, pressed them flat against the table, as if remembering. "I went into the store at about nine pm..."
"He looked at some magazines, picked up some oranges, apples and milk, went to the cashier to pay for it at 2113..."
"Spent ten minutes getting stuff, I think. I went to pay for it..."
"The cashier was just making change when Barnes looks like he's reacting to a noise..."
"I heard something..."
"He leaves the desk, goes over to the storeroom door, asks the clerk something, then barges his way in. At that point he moves out of sight of the camera, but you can see Mindy's feet, and part of a blood pool. It's clear from the footage that she's already dead. Clerk picks up the phone in response to Barnes yelling at him and calls the cops."
"I went to investigate, and I opened the door to find Mindy just... lying there." Sam didn't have to fake the slight shakiness in his voice. When he thought about it, all he could see was Mindy sightlessly staring upwards, and the warm stickiness of her blood. He could still see some of it, lodged under his fingernails.
"Then what did you do?" Amanda prompted, when he fell silent.
Sam took a deep breath. This was where his practice in making up such stories came in handy. "I... I don't really..." He reached up, rubbed the back of his neck. "I yelled at the clerk to call the police. She was barely breathing, and there was blood everywhere. I don't know, I thought I could maybe do CPR or something, but she just... died. And then uniformed cops showed." He shrugged. "The rest, you know."
Amanda nodded, the scratching of the pen against paper filling the gaps between speaking. "Did you know your sister was at the convenience store?"
Sam shook his head, and wished, briefly, that he had some insight into what Eric Barnes had been thinking at the time of Mindy's murder. "No. I was just getting some fruit, milk, that sorta thing."
"Did you see anyone nearby? Any suspicious individuals or vehicles?"
"No..." Sam said, quietly. "Why would someone want to murder her?"
"I don't know, 'Ric," Amanda said, sadly, "She was a good girl."
"Better than her brother," Sam said. The self deprecation seemed appropriate.
Amanda laughed softly, and picked up a pen.
"Had she spoken to you at all recently about anyone that might have anything against her?"
Al shook his head. "No record if Mindy had any enemies. Investigation never came up with anyone likely."
"Don't think so," Sam said.
"Was she seeing anyone new?"
"Doug Brady. Boyfriend. Works in D.C.."
"There is a guy..." Sam made a show of thinking hard. "Doug something or other. I don't think he lives in town though."
"We'll look into it."
As Amanda bent over her pieces of paper, writing quickly, Al stepped around the table, and into Sam's line of sight. He'd paused, some new piece of information on his handlink troubling him. "Uh Sam," he said, uneasy, "According to Ziggy, in three days time, Amanda Lichfield disappears and she's never heard from again. No one knows why, or how, but the assumption is that she died and her... body was never recovered."
Sam looked at Amanda's bent head, the way her hair spilled over her shoulders with her position and realised with dismay that there was a serial killer on the loose, and no one knew it.
**
Sam pushed his jacket sleeves up over his shoulders. It was a weird quirk of how he moved from body to body that in his own mind, clothes always fit properly. Eric Barnes must have enjoyed having an oversized jacket.
He got out of the cells in the morning after his interview with Amanda. They'd been triple checking their information, holding him as long as possible. Sam gathered from Al that, a few years earlier, there'd been a pretty intense corruption investigation in the department. As a result, no one was taking a chance at anyone pointing fingers and saying they'd been too lenient because their suspect was a cop.
He contemplated going back to Eric Barnes's place, but felt restless after being stuck in a cell for two days. Two days, in which time god only knew what had been happening. So, the moment that he got out, he stopped there only long enough to get into a change of clothes that weren't scrubs, and he set about his investigations.
He returned to the convenience store, and interviewed the clerk. He had been the same one as had been on duty the night of the murder. Unfortunately, the man had been scared out of his wits by the glimpse of the body that he'd seen through the storeroom door that night. His memory was patchy and hazy, and all that Sam could get out of him was that there had been a murder.
He'd asked for access to the storeroom, but looking around revealed nothing but a brown patch on the floor where the blood hadn't been completely scrubbed away. Any evidence and trace had been thoroughly investigated and removed by the police. There was nothing left for Sam to find.
So then it was down to investigating Mindy herself. According to Al and Ziggy, Mindy was a staff journalist at one of the largest newspapers. They maintained an office on the other side of the city, and took far too much time to get there.
Mindy's editor was helpful, even though Sam was playing a police officer in an unofficial capacity. He seemed genuinely fond of Mindy, and honestly saddened at her death. He explained that Mindy had been doing some investigating into drugs smuggling. Since the city had an extensive docks area, with cargo moving around daily, there was a small and hard-to-root-out core of drugs smugglers. There were rumours of officials on the take.
Al sat next to him in the car. "Maybe one of the smugglers caught on," he said, as Sam wove his way through afternoon traffic.
"Maybe," Sam said, though that theory didn't sit right.
He sighed. "Mindy's attack was personal. Someone stabbed her, more than once, long after the point where it was obvious she would be dead. Smugglers would just want to get rid of her."
"That reduces the suspects," Al said.
"So far," Sam said, "I'm the only suspect. That doesn't help us."
**
Late in the day, when Sam got to Eric's house, his eyes lit on the phone on the side table near the door. The message light was flashing, and the information on the small LCD display indicated that it had been left earlier that day.
"Hey man." The voice was male, and not one that Sam recognised from any of the people he'd met so far on this leap. "It's Jack."
Jack. The name scratched impatiently at Sam's mind.
"Heard what happened. We need to clear things."
Sam frowned.
"Meet me tomorrow," the message continued. "Corner of fifth. Near Dunkin' Donuts."
Sam had a feeling it was one appointment he ought to keep.
**
"Hell, man, heard you got arrested."
"You heard right." Jack Marche looked awfully familiar to Sam, though he couldn't place the man immediately. He had known it was indeed Jack Marche after he'd gone digging around Barnes's house and found a business card that matched the phone number that had been used to call and leave the message.
He'd also found a stack of bank statements, a series of payments made from Jack Marche to Eric Barnes over a period of four years. There was no notations regarding what it was for, and there was no way for Sam to guess.
"Saw that Mindy wound up dead," Jack continued.
"Yeah," Sam said, watching Jack warily for his reaction.
Jack's mouth twitched. "You sorry?"
Sam blinked. "Of course," he said, "She's my sister."
He didn't expect the snicker he received in response. "Sure man," he said, "So everything's slick, right?"
"Slick?"
"Cool. Tight." Jack scowled. "Everything's good, right? Between us."
Sam jerked his head up slightly, responding to the tightness of Jack's voice with an implacable expression of his own. "We're 'slick'," he said.
Jack immediately relaxed. "Good," he said, "Because if not, I have all these useful bits of paper. I'm pretty sure little Mindy's friends at the paper..." He trailed off significantly.
"You don't need to worry," Sam said sharply.
Jack folded his arms and smirked. Sam wondered how to get more out of the man, but even as he was trying to think of what to say, Jack shook his head. "I gotta get gone. Nightshift over down by the water."
Sam nodded, saying nothing.
Jack gave him a speculative look. "You gonna give me my jacket or not?"
"Oh." Sam slipped the jacket off his shoulders, handing it over without complaint. The night air was unpleasantly cold, and his shirt on its own wasn't enough. "Right. Sorry."
"No worries. Fucking shame the cops had to make off with the one I gave you. But this'll do. Thanks for the trade, man." Jack swung the jacket over his shoulder. "I'll see you around, right?"
"Sure," Sam responded easily, and watched Jack as he strode off, disappearing off down the street in ground-eating strides.
He realised suddenly why Jack Marche seemed familiar. In the darkness of the night, he was startlingly similar to Eric himself. Same colouring, similar height. They could almost be brothers.
**
The next day was the day Amanda Lichfeld disappeared.
Amanda lived in a fairly well-to-do area, though not so upscale that she appeared to be a cop on the take. She lived in an apartment in tidily maintained building, and the surrounding streets were relatively free from crime. Sam had gotten the address from Al and then used the car's navigation to find his way there. There was something to be said for the march of technology. He didn't miss struggling with maps in earlier time periods.
Unfortunately, it wasn't helpful in locating her apartment inside the building, and he wandered in circles until one of her neighbours helpfully directed him to the right door, and he found himself confronted with the deep purple paint she'd used for decoration.
He'd spent the day fruitlessly trying to get information on Jack Marche. He'd gone down to the docks, found that the man was a security guard who worked the early morning shift. No one knew him well, and he kept to himself. A few workers remembered Mindy nosing around, asking questions, but no one knew anything about her death, or, if they did, they weren't talking.
Sam knew that Amanda hadn't disappeared until the evening, given that she was at work most of the day. He had Al keep an eye on her, and when his friend reappeared to let him know that she'd left for work late in the evening, Sam got in his car, making a short stop-off on the way to her apartment. He had to make sure she didn't go anywhere. He had to make sure she was safe.
She answered the door in workout gear, a pencil shoved behind her ear, and a pair of glasses held loosely in her hand. She blinked as she saw who exactly was hammering on her door at nine at night.
"'Ric?" she said, looking surprised. "What are you doing here?"
He held up the carrier bag in his hand. "I brought chinese," he said. "You're working on Mindy's case, right?"
Amanda bit her lip. "Eric, I really shouldn't-"
He lowered the bag to his side again. "Amanda, I..." He couldn't afford to have her kick him out.
"You're off the case," she reminded him. "I shouldn't share anything with you. You especially shouldn't be here. 'Ric... your sister just died, you should take some time."
"Exactly," he snapepd, "She's... she was..." He sighed, and continued in a more subdued tone. "She's my sister. I owe it to her. Please, Amanda, we've been partners for years." Four years, three months, according to Al.
She pursed her lips, and stepped back, allowing him entrance. "I hope you bought spring rolls."
He had, as a matter of fact, but not because he knew Amanda would like them. "Don't I always?" he asked, with a grin. The way she laughed softly and shook her head, he knew it was probably a familiar statement for her.
He found his way into the lounge. Amanda had clearly settled in for a night of reviewing evidence, and was taking it very seriously. There were files and folders spread out all over the coffee table that sat in the middle of a large persian-style rug. He spent a few minutes looking at it, at the woven illustrations in the panels on the rug, and then realised that, lying open on the floor were crime scene photos. Mindy's eyes stared lifelessly at the camera, a halo of blood surrounding her head, soaked into her hair.
Amanda reappeared with plate and forks. "Haven't got any chopsticks," she said, "I hope-"
She realised where he was looking. "Oh," she said, faltering. She put down the plates and bent to pick up the photos. "I... I wasn't expecting you, obviously. I'm sorry. I don't..."
Her voice faltered, and Sam shook himself, trying to dispel the memory of Mindy's death. "No, don't worry I mean, I want to know. I want to help."
"You can't help," Amanda sat, gently. She tucked the photos under the files sitting on the table. "You're not allowed."
"At least tell me what happened," he said, "Please." He smiled, weakly, and held up the bag in his hands. "I'll share the chow mein."
Amanda sighed, gestured for him to sit on the sofa, and gave him a plate. Between them, they quickly unpacked the chinese food, made a space in between all the files. It was three spring rolls gone before he broached the question that was burning, unspoken.
"So what do you know?"
Amanda looked briefly uncertain.
He tried a different tack. "Pretend this is any other murder," he said.
Amanda bit her lip again, and then seemed to come sort of decision. "The cause of death..." She started slowly, watching him carefully, and when he didn't flinch, continued, "... was the blood loss caused by multiple stab wounds. There were defensive injuries on her hands, and an impact fracture to the back of her skull."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning she hit her head somehow. Probably on the concrete ground. From the angle of entry, forensics determined that she was stabbed, hit the ground, and was stabbed a few more times for good measure."
Sam grimaced, and looked into his chicken chow mein. Unfortunately, his imagination was all too willing to conjure images of exactly what had happened.
"Can I?" he gestured to the evidence scattered around.
Amanda looked like she might argue, but relented after a moment, looking sympathetic. "Don't tell the Captain I let you look," she said. "He'll have my guts."
"I won't tell him." He wasn't entirely sure where to start. He started to look at the materials nearest me. He slipped off the couch, sitting cross-legged on the floor as he rummaged around. A flash of silver caught his eye, and he pushed aside some pieces of paper to come up with what looked to be a DVD.
He held up the disc, squinted at the handwritten label on the front. 'Camera footage' it said, in loopy handwriting. He glanced at Amanda, and waved the disc, raising an eyebrow questioningly.
"The security footage from the convenience store," she said, "I burned a copy off the master in the office. It's the stuff that cleared you."
"Any sign of the murder on it?"
Amanda sighed, and shook her head. "Unfortunately, no." She gestured with her pen. "Just shows you entering the store, then going into the storeroom."
Sam looked at it thoughtfully. "Mind if I take a look anyway?"
Amanda nodded, pointed to the TV and the DVD player tucked underneath it. "Go ahead," she murmured, and bent over one of the files, making notations with a freshly sharpened pencil.
It took Sam a few minutes to figure out how to work the machine. Eventually, he had to get Amanda to help him switch on the TV and select the right input, though he got a quick flash of two men in black suits dancing as a man played piano before she directed him to the correct channel and dropped two remote controls in his hands.
Sam settled in to watch the footage, the only sound the soft scratching of Amanda's pencil. He didn't know what he was supposed to get from it at first. He watched carefully, frowning at the grainy nature of the footage. It was monochrome, and the resolution was poor. But the build, height, hair and jacket matched Eric Barnes, or at least what Sam had seen of him when he'd looked in the mirror.
He wandered around, picked up milk, fruit, then headed to the counter. He suddenly reacted to something that wasn't picked up on the footage, there was no sound on the track, and started over to the storeroom, flashing what was likely a police badge at the clerk. He reached for his gun, and flung open the door.
Just visible from the camera's perspective was a leg, female and with the shoe hanging off it, knocked free. There was blood also visible as a black patch on the image. The rest of the body was out of shot, hidden from sight by virtue of being in another room. Eric turned back, said something to the clerk, who reached for the phone, dialling 911. Eric stepped into the room, the door swinging shut behind him from its own weight. There was nothing much else happening until the cops showed up.
Sam sighed, ejected the disc. It seemed to corroborate what the history said had happened.
Amanda looked up at him sympathetically. "Doesn't help much, does it? Unfortunately, the back entrance to the storeroom wasn't covered by cameras. That's probably where the murderer got in."
Sam leaned back. "Mind if I borrow this?" he wasn't sure what drove him to ask. Something didn't sit right, and over thousands of leaps, Sam had learnt to trust his instincts.
Amanda shrugged. "Sure. It's just a copy. Not sure what good it'll do you."
Sam nodded, shoved the disc and its case into his pocket. He started to rummage around the files and photos lying on the floor by his feet. He picked up one that caught his eye. It was the shirt he had been wearing when he was arrested. There was blood splashed all over the front and all over the sleeves, especially soaked in around the cuffs.
He sighed, and dropped the photo to the pile. Amanda smiled at him sadly.
"We'll get the bastard," she said, "All the informations here. I'm going to put it together."
"I hope so," Sam murmured, and thought again of Mindy's startled expression as she died, and his own sense of helplessness when it happened.
**
"Amanda wasn't in any danger," Sam said, staring at the ceiling. He had returned to Eric Barnes's house, and hadn't even bothered trying to sleep.
Al stood by the side of the bed. The handlink stood out brightly in the dark, and cast an eerie light onto his shirt. The light didn't reach beyond Al, didn't splash onto the walls or bedspread. It was a discontinuity that Sam had gotten used to over the years.
"Well," he said, thoughtfully, "In the original history she disappeared. Ziggy rechecked, and now she didn't. She lives, grows older. Gets pretty high up in the police force too."
Sam flicked his eyes towards Al, took in his tired appearance. "Older, huh," he said, "What year is it for you, Al?"
Al shrugged nonchalantly. "I forget," he said. "But far enough to know she's still alive after today."
Sam examined a crack in the ceiling plaster. "I haven't leaped. So I wasn't here to save her."
"Like I told you before, Ziggy thinks you're here to solve Mindy's murder. Saving Amanda was just incidental."
Sam sat up. He was still fully dressed, having simply walked into the room and lain down, too lost in thought to consider undressing. "But she wasn't in any danger," he said. "Before I went there, she was settled for an evening in. She wasn't going out investigating. Whoever made her disappear in the first place should have tried to get in or something. But nothing happened."
Al scratched his neck thoughtfully. "Maybe the fact that you were there scared them off."
"I dunno," Sam said. "This doesn't make sense."
He got up, wandered through into the kitchen. There was a flicker, and Al shifted his hologram to follow Sam. Without the benefit of curtains, it was possible to see through the kitchen window that the sun was rising. Sam had been lying staring at the ceiling for longer than he thought.
He put some water in the kettle and set it to boil. "Amanda disappearing right after Eric's sister? Two people connected to him?"
"Maybe someone has something against Eric." Al said, "One of the crooks he's put away in the past maybe?"
"Maybe," Sam said, and opened the fridge. He grimaced at the explosion of light from inside, then looked in the doorway. He blinked, and reached inside. He looked back at Al. "I have milk."
Al looked bemused. "Well that's good," he said dryly, "Wouldn't do to be drinking black coffee."
Sam looked at the kitchen table. The disc from Amanda's house, the one with the camera footage on, was sitting exactly where Sam had thrown it when he'd come in through the door. He slammed the fridge door shut, and grabbed the disc, going into the other room, turning the TV on and sticking the DVD in the drive.
"What are you looking for?" Al asked.
"Just watch," Sam said, as he thumbed the remote control. "I have a hunch."
Al scowled, and squinted at the screen.
Sam played the film twice before he realised he was almost certainly correct in his guess as to what had happened. The third time through, Al suddenly got it as well.
"God, Sam," he muttered, "What sort of person...?"
Sam got up, grabbing his jacket where he'd thrown it, and picking up the car keys.
"Where are you going?" Al asked, frowning.
"The station," Sam said, gathering up his badge and gun and stowing them safely in his jacket. "But while I'm going, there's some files I want you to pull for me."
**
Amanda was crying silently, while Sam was being led away through a suddenly silent office in handcuffs by two well-built police officers. Everyone was staring at him, too shell-shocked to even whisper amongst themselves as the man they thought of as Eric Barnes was led away to a cell.
Sam wasn't surprised. It was no less a reaction than he might have had himself.
He'd walked in, calm as anything, creating something of a small stir as he did so. Amanda looked up from her desk and smiled as he wove his way across the bullpen, and gave him a small wave of greeting. She looked remarkably fresh considering it was first thing in the wee hours of the morning, and that Sam knew for a fact that she'd been awake for most of the night. A cooling cup of coffee testified as to the reason behind her energetic appearance.
"Hey, Ric," she said, "You're not supposed to be here are you?"
"No," he replied, giving her a tight smile, "But here I am."
Amanda looked at him, and frowned. "What's going on?"
Sam wordlessly took out his badge, laid it on the table in front of her. Without pausing he also took out his gun and set it before her, closer to her than himself. He wouldn't be able to reach it easily. She automatically laid a hand on top of it as it was placed directly before her. There was an uncomfortable moment of silence. His entrance and his actions now were attracting a small number of onlookers.
"I killed Mindy," he said simply.
Amandra drew back sharply, looked from the gun under her fingers to his face. "Eric..." she tried.
"Amanda," he interrupted, "Let me..." He waved his hand vaguely. "Let me finish. I killed her. I stabbed her to death when she threatened to expose some rather underhand dealings I had with a man named Jack Marche." He offered up a laugh, short and resigned sounding.
"The man that Mindy was investigating," Amanda said, horror dawning.
"It wasn't me on that security camera footage." He said. "It was Jack Marche. I was the one who crept into the storeroom through the backdoor. Mindy was about to find out about our dealings. I couldn't let her. I stabbed her. Jack pretended to be me for the benefit of the clerk and cameras. When he came in through the door, after telling the clerk to call the cops, he gave me his jacket, and my badge, which he'd been wearing."
Amanda looked at the files which were splayed open before her. "The blood on your sleeves," she said, dully, "Shouldn't have been there if you were wearing the jacket that you were wearing when we found you. There was less blood on the jacket outside."
"He took the knife, probably disposed of it." When the simple fact of the matter, that it hadn't been Eric Barnes on the security tape, was realised, the rest fell into place with startling simplicity. In the original history, no one had ever figured it out.
"I killed her." He looked at her for a long moment. "But then, you'd already worked that out, hadn't you?"
There were tears in Amanda's eyes, but there was no surprise on her face. Maybe she'd been trying to deny what Sam knew she'd already figured out. When Amanda had gone missing in the original timeline, Sam was willing to lay good money that Eric Barnes had worked out the same thing as Sam, realised she had everything she needed to uncover the truth, and had killed her for it. Even if she hadn't known for certain, she must have had her suspicions, maybe aroused by Amanda rewatching the disc when Sam had put it in the TV.
Maybe Eric had gone to her apartment the same evening Sam had. If he had truly been Eric Barnes, Amanda wouldn't have survived the apparently innocent meeting of coworkers.
"Why did you do it?" she asked, sounding betrayed, and unhappy. "She might not have found anything. You could have run. Why kill her?"
Sam straightened. Now that was something he couldn't speak to. He settled for giving her a small, tight smile. "Maybe I'll tell you some day." And maybe Eric would.
**
The courtroom smelt of cleaning fluids that barely covered the smell of a couple of dozen people sweating profusely in the under air-conditioned heat of the day. Sam sat in the defendants chair, contemplating the handcuffs about his wrists. His lawyer had turned away to talk to one of his colleagues, ignoring Sam for a moment. He was still watched by a burly looking guard, but only to make sure he didn't make a break for it. He was able to whisper to Al, who was standing by the desk poking on his handlink and chewing the end of a cold cigar.
"Well?"
"Hmm?" Al looked at him blankly for a moment, before grabbing the cigar from his mouth. "Oh, right, those records you wanted me to pull."
He shook the handlink briefly, causing it to whir in electronic distress. Sam risked a glance at his counsel. The man was still distracted, going through sheaves of paper with a man who looked barely old enough to have started shaving.
"Took a bit of digging, but Ziggy managed to find out that in the time between Eric Barnes leaving the force and his death twenty three years later, there were eight unsolved murders of young women matching Mindy's description in the local area." Al grimaced slightly. "There were also three missing persons incidents where the women were never recovered."
"Eleven women," Sam murmured, and closed his eyes, reaching up to rub the lids. Eleven.
"Eleven that we know of," agreed Al, quietly. "I'm guessing that killing Amanda and Mindy gave him a taste for it. The later victims were sexually assaulted before their death."
"It shouldn't have even been one," Sam whispered, fiercely, "Why did Mindy have to die? Why couldn't I have leapt in five minutes earlier and saved her too?"
Al looked thoughtful for a moment, rolling his cigar in his fingers. "If Eric hadn't murdered Mindy, he would never have been caught. Sooner or later, he probably would have murdered someone else, gotten a taste for it again, and carried on killing." He looked at the cigar, not quite able to look at his friend. "She saved them, Sam. Mindy might have died, but she saved twelve other women from the same fate."
And that, Sam decided, was how he'd remember a woman he'd only known for the last seconds of her life.
There was a stir, and Sam raised his head to see the judge enter the courtroom, robes swishing about him as he walked with what could only be described as a 'no-nonsense' step.
"All rise," the bailiff said, loudly.
Sam was on his feet before his lawyer, and stood quietly, staring at the wooden desk in front of him as the charges were read out, and all the legal preliminaries were run through. Sam didn't have the need to listen. In the past he'd sat where the judge was, where the bailiff was, and where the lawyers were. He felt no real need to listen to the legal blurb that preceded the most important statement.
The judge looked up from his files as they came to that point, staring over the rims of his glasses at Sam and his lawyer. "How does the defence plead?"
His lawyer turned his head to stare at him. Sam nodded, and offered a small smile. The man had tried to talk him out of the plea he was offering, but Sam had stood firm.
"Your honour," his lawyer said, "The defence pleads guilty on all charges."
Mutterings went up around the courtroom, murmurs of surprise at the plea. Al nodded.
"That did it, Sam," he said, sounding pleased, "Those eleven women never go missing. Eric Barnes spends eight years in prison, before..." Al faltered briefly. "Well, before he's killed during a prison riot. Can't say I'm very sorry."
"Me neither," Sam said, then turned his head to look at the bench behind him. Amanda Lichfield was sitting behind him, fingers laced so tightly together that her knuckles had turned white. He smiled at her. "You did good," he told her. "Never would have worked it out without you."
Her eyes widened, and that was the last thing he saw before the light of the leap took him away and washed away the vision of her.
- End -