Belated Witness: Watchbearers, #6

By James Litherland

It's never too late to uncover the truth.

 

In a Seattle suburb in the summer of 1989, someone saw a woman pushed out a window and plummet to her death. Unable to identify the killer, the witness chose not to come forward. And Dorothy 'Ace' O'Reilly's death was written off as an accident, the murderer never brought to justice. But when time-traveling sleuths Sam and Bailey are asked to investigate, they can change the rules and discover what really happened. And in the process put more lives at risk…

 

This is the second Sam and Bailey mystery. The first is Uncertain Murder, but their story starts in Watchbearers Book 1: Millennium Crash. And their next adventure after Belated Witness is in Book 5: Temporal Entanglement. That's time travel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outpost Stories
• Release date: Jun 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393775164

James Litherland

James Litherland is a graduate of the University of South Florida who currently resides as a Virtual Hermit in the wilds of West Tennessee. He’s lived various places and done a number of jobs – he’s been an office worker and done hard manual labor, worked (briefly) in the retail and service sectors, and he’s been an instructor. But through all that, he’s always been a writer. And after over thirty years of studying and practicing his craft, he took the plunge and published independently. He is a Christian who tries to walk the walk (and not talk much.)

Book preview

Prologue

What He Saw

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University Heights in Seattle, Washington

8:10 p.m. Wednesday, August 30th, 1989

TURNER CHECKED HIS watch as he climbed, saw the leader device he was tracking remained due north, and wished this city were flat like Dallas. All these hills made it hard to walk fast, despite having kept himself in pretty good shape. And while it was cooler here and now than it had been this afternoon in Texas, it was still too hot to charge up hills. Time was slipping away though, leaving him little choice. So the exertion, the excitement, and the anxiety had him sweating as he hadn’t in decades.

Whoever was wearing the other watch, they had yet to become a blip on his screen. Which meant he remained outside the range of the Travel field. And if they left before he got close enough, he would stay stranded in the past.

At least there weren’t a lot of people about. The sun had dipped below the horizon ten minutes ago, but between the ambient glow and the automatically activated street lamps, he could see clearly. Most of the people who lived around here must’ve settled in for the night or have gone out. Leaving this area feeling fairly empty at dusk.

Not too quiet, as the bustle of the city—together with a hum of activity coming from those indoors—gave the neighborhood life. As did a few people going in or out or moving about. But the relative lack of pedestrians kept his path clear, and should make it easy to identify the other Traveler. If he managed to get close enough.

After twenty-seven years of waiting and watching as he took the slow path, this was the closest he had come to catching one of his colleagues and getting a lift back to the future. The main problem was the inexplicable inability of the tracking function on these devices to say how far away another might be. Unless and until you got in range of the field, it only indicated direction.

So every time a red bar on the locator screen of his watch flashed to alert him to another Traveler in his timeline, someone wearing one of the leader devices capable of generating a field, as far as he knew that colleague might be merely across town or halfway across the country. Or in China.

Circumstances permitting, he’d searched in the direction indicated when another Traveler appeared in his time. And inevitably become frustrated when it became clear they weren’t anywhere near. Working for tech billionaire Brandt Keener provided lots of benefits, but the ability to jet around the globe on a whim—a whim of his own, anyway—wasn’t one of them.

Even becoming Brandt’s right-hand man, while giving him more freedom in many ways, had limited his opportunities to take off whenever he wished, go wherever he wanted. So for over a quarter of a century, chances had come and gone without his being able to pursue them. Until today.

A light breeze ruffled the leaves in the trees and prompted Turner to check his watch again. Still too far. But they had to be close.

He’d been enjoying a rare day off when that bar on his watch had first started flashing red. And the chauffeur who drove him around in one of the company cars all the time now had delivered him to the airport with admirable speed. And by the time he’d arrived at the hanger where Keener kept the corporate jet, it had become obvious that his fellow Traveler wasn’t in the city. Since the direction indicator had stayed steady the entire trip.

Of course, knowing the leader device was somewhere northwest of Dallas still left a lot of possibilities, but only a few likely locations. Seattle was one of the more prominent. And as it happened, Turner had the perfect excuse to fly there.

Even better, because the private plane often flew him or Brandt or various company executives up to the new corporate headquarters in Seattle, it hadn’t taken long to get in the air and headed here.

The flight itself had been long though, and he’d fretted the entire trip. While a watch battery would require close to twenty-four hours to recharge after generating a Travel field before being able to create another, a team leader would likely have a helper or two with them. And a device didn’t use much power incorporating its wearer into a field. So a leader could simply switch the battery in their watch with the one from an assistant’s. Then they could Travel again not long after landing. A rarely used trick and one that couldn’t be repeated right away, but it presented the possibility that whoever he was closing in on could vanish at any moment. Once again leaving him stranded.

So he hadn’t wasted any time when they arrived at Renton field, but immediately taken a taxi north. That had been the direction indicated by his watch, and he’d told the driver to take him to the UW main campus, figuring that as the most likely place to the north. A close eye on his locator screen throughout a frustratingly long ride up I-5, followed by a winding drive east to the university, narrowed his search down to the area immediately northwest of the college. The cabbie had dropped him off there, and he had started searching on foot.

Taking a handkerchief from his pants pocket to wipe the sweat from his forehead, he tried to regain his usual calm and scanned his surroundings again. Whoever was wearing the leader watch remained to the north and out of range, but any assistant they’d brought with them could be closer—and should also be a familiar face. Of course they could all be inside and out of sight, but—

Already alert, his gaze snapped straight to a bay window up and to his left as he heard the sharp cry. A figure was flying out the third-floor opening. And a shadowy form was backing away from it. Then he heard the sound of the body hitting the pavement.

Resisting the urge to glance that way, he peered into the dimly lit room trying to follow the fuzzy silhouette as it hastily retreated. A person, though he couldn’t tell even whether it was male or female, already no more than a shadow shifting on the section of wall he could see. Nothing useful.

Then he forced his head to turn and look ahead and down at the woman whose body lay awkwardly sprawled across the asphalt. The fall hadn’t been so far she might not still be alive and in urgent need of medical attention. But as he stepped closer and got a better look, it became obvious she was beyond any help. With her neck twisted at such an angle, there was no doubt she was dead. At least it’d been quick.

Turner hadn’t seen the actual act itself, but he’d formed—in that one brief moment—the definite impression she’d been pushed, and if she’d been murdered, her killer would likely be fleeing. And it was up to him to stop them.

Surely someone else must’ve heard her cry, but he was probably the only one who had seen her falling and knew what had happened. Right then, only he understood a killer needed to be caught. And he was running over to the building before he began to think things through.

Behind him he heard buzzing and shuffling—of course, there had been people out and about, and if none of them had seen her fall, they’d still be noticing the dead body on the street. Horns honked and raised voices told him someone would be calling an ambulance or the cops—probably both—and he was attracting unwanted attention to himself. And possibly suspicion. He was also imperiling his hunt for the nearby time-traveler. Even so.

Pushing through the door and entering the lobby—in the back of his mind, he’d noted the name of the place was the Square Nine Apartments—a large space empty of people greeted him. A couple sofas, a few chairs, a couple coffee tables, and several end tables filled a lounge to his right. Over to the left, a bank of metal mailboxes was set into the wall and a recess half-hid the door to an apartment numbered 103. Straight ahead of him loomed an old, accordion-style elevator with its gate closed and an ‘out-of-order’ sign hanging askew across the bars. No murderer would be escaping that way.

To the left of the lift, a reception desk ran along in front of the wall, which had no one behind it, and a door that said it led to the manager’s office, which was shut. And to the right of the inoperative elevator, an open stairwell with thinly carpeted steps led to the upper floors. But he didn’t hear the sound of feet thumping down.

Standing there, he started to have second—and third—thoughts. The murderer might’ve left another way. Or, even more likely, they wouldn’t need to leave the building because they belonged here. And either possibility meant he was wasting his time. A fool’s errand.

He should return to searching for the colleague he knew to be near, who he ought to be able to find. Exiting the building and descending the stone steps to the sidewalk, he found a considerable number of people had come out to gawk, though scattered sufficiently to avoid constituting a crowd.

The distant sound of a siren brought home how unwise sticking around might be. So, acting as if he had come out to see what the fuss was about, he resumed his journey up the hill in a halting fashion—walking over to stand close to one small knot of observers then working his way behind them and over to another group. Thankfully no one seemed to pay much attention to him.

He would need to tell the police what he’d seen at some point, but it could wait. He had a more urgent mission. Checking his watch again, he saw the leader device had become a blip on the screen indicating a precise location. Almost directly north and nearly a football field away. And moving closer.

Peering ahead, up the street and over to the opposite sidewalk, he saw them—the big bulk of Bailey first, then short Sam striding at his side. And trailing in the pair’s wake, his head hanging down as he walked, was Turner himself.

Already with his fellow Travelers—and with no memory of being with them—that had to be a future version of him. Watching a second self strolling toward him, Turner felt increasingly uneasy. It had to be wrong, two of them here at the same time, and it would be worse if they actually met.

So he ducked down an alley, thoughts whirling, eager to get away. Back to Dallas and the slow path.

Chapter 1

Time for a Confession

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Pioneer Square, just south of downtown Seattle

5:45 p.m. Wednesday, August 30th, 1989

SAMANTHA SIPPED HER tea and suppressed a sigh as she listened to Turner’s story. Though this city was supposed to be famous for its coffee, calming chamomile was what she needed now, had realized was what she required the moment Turner had told her he had something to confess. It had been a long day already—catching a couple of killers in the morning, then motorboating back to the mainland. And now this.

She interrupted him. So that’s the real reason you suggested we travel back in time three years instead of jumping ahead, however anxious you are to reunite with your wife. He hadn’t explained everything earlier. Afraid it might affect her decision? I suppose you want my help. Hers and Bailey’s.

Turner splayed his hands in supplication. It is one of the reasons. But I thought it would be better to wait and share this story after we’d arrived here. Not because he worried she wouldn’t come, since he knew she would. Because he’d seen her with Bailey and himself. But he thought she might refuse to investigate, which only showed he didn’t know her.

Of course, she was still discovering herself. But chasing Kirin down and confronting her over killing Harold had awakened something in Sam. A craving for justice? A calling to expose the truth of murders that had gone undetected or unsolved. And as she’d ended up, somewhat accidentally, with the ability to travel through time as she liked, the authority to research whatever she wanted, that’s exactly what she had decided to do.

Bailey, a retired enforcer, had proven himself a huge help in her quest. Together they’d caught—or at least stopped—three different killers already, and she doubted she could’ve done it without him. Persuading the man to accept her leadership had been difficult, but well worth the effort. He’d been sitting beside her, listening with an expression which grew stonier every second.

Sam’s new, temporarily appropriated assistant nodded. You obviously have a talent for getting to the truth. He sounded bewildered about that. As well as the desire to dig until you can get justice for people like Ms. O’Reilly. And I want to see that she gets that. By the end he was pleading.

Clearly he needed this—for himself, to salve his conscience, and presumably for the victim also. To put things right. What do you mean by ‘people like Ms. O’Reilly’? Apparently the name of the woman who’d been pushed out that window.

Those who slipped through the cracks. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I checked the papers when I got back to Texas and they were reporting her death as an accident the next day. Hinted it might’ve been suicide. His head drooped. No one was ever charged with her murder. Much less tried and convicted. Apparently the cops didn’t consider it suspicious, even—

At least you found out her name, Turner. Bailey spoke, for the first time since the other man had begun his tale, and his tone oozed disapproval. So what did you do after you ran away? You obviously didn’t go to the police and tell them what you saw. With a witness as respectable as the person Turner had become in this time saying the woman had been pushed, surely her death would’ve been handled as a homicide. Clearly Bailey believed so.

The bustle of the busy coffee shop made it hard to hear each other—though that would also make it more difficult for anyone to eavesdrop, should anyone be interested in their bizarre conversation—but Turner kept his voice low regardless. "I got to a pay phone and called a cab. To take me back to the airfield. I’d told the pilot to wait a few hours, in case I missed you and wanted to return right away. While I was waiting for the taxi to arrive, I called the cops and left an anonymous tip, said I’d seen her fall and thought she’d been pushed, so they’d treat it as suspicious. It wasn’t like I’d actually seen that much."

Sam let herself sigh this time. "Yet clearly your conscience is bothering you. And if you had stayed, described everything you saw and heard and did to the cops, I think they’d have found that information far more useful than an anonymous tip." She could understand his getting spooked seeing another version of himself from the future. Even so, his behavior had been far from admirable.

The man was still beating himself up and rightfully so, but what was done was done. Only, he had been handed an opportunity to make up for his lack of action and was asking for her assistance.

And she couldn’t say no. For Turner’s sake, but more for this Ms. O’Reilly’s. "Well, at least now you have told us the details. And you can add whatever you discovered later, from the digging you did."

He shook his head. I didn’t look into the case, any further than reading a couple of articles—those didn’t have a lot of details—because I didn’t want to know too much. In case I could come back.

Sam sighed again. Once she’d decided to spend her time in the past trying to solve unsolved crimes and