Beyond This Time: A Time-Travel Suspense Novel Read online

  BEYOND THIS TIME:

  A TIME-TRAVEL SUSPENSE NOVEL

  Charlotte Banchi

  Beyond This Time ©March 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously.

  Also by Charlotte A Banchi

  Payton Claymore & John Raines Suspense Novel:

  The Whole Enchilada (Book 1)

  Coyote Wind (Book 2)

  Diamondback (Book 3) coming soon

  Time-Travel Novels:

  Window In Time

  Children Of Time (Young adult romance)

  Echoes Through Time

  Our Place In Time

  Beyond This Time

  This book is for Michael. My knight in shining armor.

  Thanks to: Jennifer, Mark, and Angela for your never-ending support.

  The Friday Re-Writes: Peg Lachine, Jeanne Lane, Doug Drummond.

  Couldn’t have done it without you.

  PROLOGUE

  1963

  April 05—Friday

  The enormous oak roots along Brook Street lifted the sidewalk in so many places Lettie Ruth Rayson’s rusty and dented American Flyer wobbled precariously. Her cargo, lilies for the Palm Sunday church service, sat in the red wagon like members of a royal family. The white bell-shaped blossoms nodded to the passing flowers as they rolled along. Unfortunately, with each sidewalk rut half the plants toppled over and Lettie Ruth had to stop the wagon to sit them upright again.

  Lettie Ruth let the handle drop to the ground and blew on her palms to ease the stinging. The blisters, from the constant chafing against the handle, were raw oozing sources of pain. Tiny flecks of rusty metallic paint stuck to the open sores. As a nurse she knew she needed to find something to wrap around her hands before the wounds became infected.

  Knocking on a door and asking the homeowner for several Band-Aids was not an option. One block back she’d crossed the invisible boundary dividing the white and colored parts of town. In fact, by stopping in the middle of the sidewalk Lettie Ruth had most likely broken three or four segregation laws.

  People of her color didn’t parade up and down in this area, and this made her third trip this morning hauling lilies from her house on 3449 Brook Street all the way to Webster Avenue Freedom Methodist Church.

  She picked up the wagon handle, grimacing at the pressure. At the next corner she would cut down the alley. With any luck, she might find some discarded newspapers or maybe a car washing rag to use.

  It was the cleanest alley Lettie Ruth had ever seen. All the trash tucked down inside the aluminum cans, nothing slopped over or littered the ground. Up ahead she spied a cardboard box set out for the Goodwill. That ought to do it, she thought.

  Bent over, with her head stuck inside the box, she didn’t see the three men until they slipped up behind her.

  * * *

  Marlene Stephens found the red wagon filled with lilies when she opened her back gate. She looked up and down the alley, but the only thing moving was a white stake-bed truck turning the far corner. The flowers were pretty, so she pulled the wagon into her back yard. She could give one of the plants to her mother-in-law for her birthday. Exactly what the old biddy deserved—a gift Marlene had found on trash day. With all the money she’d save by not buying a present, she could go to the beauty shop in downtown Birmingham and have a real manicure.

  CHAPTER ONE

  YEAR 2000

  Maceyville, Alabama

  March 02—Saturday

  MACEYVILLE POLICE OFFICER Kathleen Templeton leaned to the right, which allowed her a partial view through the large front window. From the odd angles and disproportional rooms, it appeared someone had laid one house on top of the other. It reminded her of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. According to legend, Sara Winchester designed the house to fool evil spirits. Over the years the structure continued to grow until it held more than one hundred-sixty rooms, two thousand doors, ten thousand windows, and so many secret passageways and staircases leading to nowhere that Sara Winchester required a map to find her way.

  At the moment, Kat wished for a map of her own to explain what she saw. Curiosity finally overruled caution; she stepped in front of the window, cupped her hands, and pressed her face against the glass. Her hope that the new perspective would dispel the sensation of being caught between colliding realities quickly faded. For a second or two the interior looked vacant, and then from the corner of her eye she registered a subtle shift within the shadows.

  The previously empty room now held two different sofas, which overlay each other. In jerky sequence she saw a stone fireplace appear, then just as quickly disappear. And inches from her nose, a see-through table replaced a see-through rocking chair.

  Confused by the conflict between eyes and brain, she felt disoriented. Physics 101: Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Yet wasn’t that exactly what she saw? Two objects … same place. Kat backed away and clicked the button on her walkie-talkie signaling for her partner, Sergeant James Mitchell.

  Moments later Mitch, who’d been canvassing the rear of the residence, turned the corner of the wrap-around veranda.

  She gestured toward the house. “You look through the windows out back?”

  He stopped several feet away, on the opposite side of the large picture window. “One or two, the place appears to be empty. Why?”

  “Because I’ve seen more than enough Halloween tricks for both of us. It’s three o’clock in the morning and we’ve caught another prank call. Let’s get out of here.”

  “What are you yammering about?” he asked.

  “This house is playin’ with my eyes and brain.”

  Mitch looked at her, his expression shouting he thought his partner had gone round the bend. “Care to expand on that statement, Kat?”

  “See for yourself,” she said, pointing to the window. “Take a peek through the looking glass, Alice.”

  He cautiously approached the glass, out of habit his hand rested on his side arm. After several seconds he turned around and shook his head.

  Kat’s hopes plummeted. Apparently she was the only member of the team to see visions.

  He shrugged. “Empty.” He stared at her for a second longer, and then called the station. “Unit 20, 10-8. Clear on that emergency transmission.”

  * * *

  March 07—Thursday

  “Maceyville Police Department.”

  “Whole peck of ‘em raising Cain. Gonna kill me.”

  “What is your name and address ma’am?”

  “801 Mountain View. I hear them out front!”

  “Officers are on the way. What is your name?”

  “Alice. Alice Carpenter. Gonna burn me out!”

  “Ma’am? Hello? Ma’am can you hear me?”

  Kat impatiently punched Rewind on the tape recorder. “Mitch, this time I want you to listen to her voice. Her tone.”

  “I’ve already listened to that damn tape four hundred times. I told you, it’s another prank call,” Mitch grumbled. “In fact, tonight makes a grand total of three bogus calls in six days.”

  “She sounds scared.”

  “Kat, it’s a snipe hunt. You know
, send all the overworked and underpaid cops racing through the streets, sirens blasting, while the joker sits back in the shadows and laughs his ass off.”

  “Yeah, but what-if this one particular call—Alice Carpenter’s call—was on the up and up?”

  “If that’s true, then explain to me what we found. Or better yet, explain what we didn’t find,” he challenged.

  She shrugged.

  “Exactly,” he continued. “Based on that call, dispatch sent us to Mountain View and did we find a house burning to the ground? No way, Jose. We found a music recital being hosted at the home of a prominent Maceyville newspaper editor. And lucky us, we got to say howdy-do to a couple of county judges as well.”

  “I know all that, Mitch. But if you listen really close, you can hear the woman’s fearful. She’s got problems and she’s spooked. Could be dispatch gave out a different address and I copied it wrong.”

  “Nice try, partner, but I already checked. Mountain View was the right address.”

  Kat ran agitated fingers through her shoulder length corkscrew curls, and then opened her mouth to argue her case, but realizing she lacked the ammo, closed it. Instead of launching another debate, she took the cassette out of the machine and left the room.

  As she waited for the Property clerk, she fumed over the past six days. The whole mess started on March 2, with the call to that spooky ever-changing house on Tenth Street. The caller had clearly identified herself as Gladys Pauley, and reported an intruder.

  When they arrived, all Mitch saw was an empty house with a FOR SALE sign in the front yard. Kat got the double whammy: two houses for the price of one.

  Questioning of the cranky neighbors confirmed the owners had moved out eight months earlier. No one had noticed anyone messing in or around the house in the past few hours, nor heard anything unusual. But Kat had seen plenty of unusual.

  Three days later, on March 5, an unidentified male’s garbled message about a white pickup following him home and how it was now parked outside his door. According to the caller, the men in the truck were talking loud and taking pot shots at his windows.

  En route to 4721 Riverside, dispatch informed them an anonymous caller had just reported an explosion and fire at the same location. This time she and Mitch arrived to find a vacant lot filled with overgrown weeds, flanked on the north by a McDonalds, a gas station on the south, and the Tombigbee River to the west.

  No gunmen.

  No victim.

  No burning or exploding house.

  Tonight had been the coup de gras. March 7: 1303 Hours. 801 Mountain View. Unlucky number three. When they’d rolled up, sirens full on and lights flashing, the circular drive had been filled with expensive automobiles. Sweet strains of flutes and violins filtered through the ceiling-to-floor windows opened onto the veranda. A startled red jacketed valet had darted out of the shadows to open Kat’s door and politely volunteered to park the squad car. Mitch almost shot the poor man.

  At Kat’s request, the trembling valet had gone inside and returned moments later with the owner. Mr. Justin Kolsky, editor of the Maceyville Sun Times, had been less than gracious to the two police officers in his driveway.

  * * *

  Maceyville Sun-Times

  Editorial, Justin R. Kolsky

  It has become apparent to this citizen of Maceyville, Alabama that the annual budget for our Police Department is sorely inadequate. The budget failed to include stipends for up to date city maps.

  On Thursday evening, March 7, a music recital held at my home was invaded by two armed police officers. When questioned regarding this outrage, they admitted the possibility of having responded incorrectly.

  In other words, they were at the wrong address!

  Fellow citizens, if those individuals sworn to protect and serve are incapable of appropriate response to 911 calls, why should we place our lives, and those of our family’s, in their hands?

  Police Chief Arlin Smith personally apologized for this inexcusable faux pas. He candidly admitted the armed invasion of my home was not the first time these officers had erred in recent days.

  Nor was this the second time.

  Thursday’s fiasco at my recital was the THIRD MISTAKE.

  When I asked Chief Smith the outcome of the prior three incorrect responses by these officers, he was unable to provide me with an adequate explanation.

  Does this mean there has been no follow up to a crime report?

  Are those poor victims who made the 911 calls still awaiting a police rescue?

  To the Maceyville Police Department I say: Go out and get yourselves a current city map. Learn your way around our beautiful little city.

  Do your job.

  Protect and serve.

  * * *

  Like the old tale about the store manager who was reprimanded by the big boss, and became so angry the manager then yelled at his clerk. The poor clerk in turn went home and yelled at his spouse, and being dead last on the totem pole, the spouse kicked the living crap out of their spotted dog.

  Since the police station didn’t have a spotted dog … Chief Arlin Smith yelled at his two officers.

  James Mitchell and Kathleen Templeton stood at attention in his office, subjected to an angry diatribe in response to the morning’s editorial. For a good half hour the chief expounded on their less than accurate procedure and how they’d embarrassed a distinguished citizen. He went on to upbraid them for showing up at Kolsky’s home with siren wailing and weapons drawn. Then for good measure, he dragged in the damage their gung-ho style inflicted upon the reputation of the entire department.

  “Hells fire, y’all. Your heads ought to be hanging lower than a hound dog’s right now,” the irate chief concluded. He lit a cigar, and leaned back in his chair. An obvious sign he was confident he’d effectively shifted the blame for the less than flattering editorial onto his two officers.

  Due to Mr. Kolsky’s influence with the mayor and city council, and the fact it was an election year, Mitch received two weeks desk duty in Verification of Employee Records.

  Kat was assigned to the Computer-File Entry Section.

  All because they interrupted a music recital.

  =TWO=

  March 09—Saturday

  “A good evenin’ to you, Officer Templeton,” Dreama Simms said , as she wheeled the cleaning cart into the Computer-File room.

  Kat smiled warmly at the petite grey-haired woman. “Hey, Miss Simms. How you doing tonight?”

  “Lordy, my lumbago is acting up, child. How ‘bout yourself?”

  Kat shrugged and gestured to the files scattered across her desk. “Shift number three, with eleven more to go,” she said, referring to her two-week assignment. “I suppose I really shouldn’t complain, at least the chief didn’t fire me.”

  The first night on the job, she’d defiantly demonstrated her displeasure by refusing to wear a proper uniform and informed all who would listen, “If I’m going to be a secretary, I’m sure as hell going to dress like a secretary!” This declaration, in addition to the red leather miniskirt, earned a second reprimand for her file. Tonight Officer Templeton wore the proper uniform.

  “Well, I liked that red hot outfit,” Dreama said. “You looked good, girl.”

  “Good don’t necessarily mean professional,” Kat said, mimicking Chief Arlin Smith’s nasal twang.

  “Assigning you to this cellar is a pack of silliness if you ask me,” Dreama snorted.

  “Politics is more like it,” Kat grumbled. “But I thank you for the kind words.”

  Dreama nodded and returned to work.

  Kat sorted through the manila folders and entered the information in the computer, punching the keys with force. She hated the job. This was not her idea of police work. It was bad enough to be taken off patrol, but the Computer-File night shift was humiliating.

  However, her current assignment offered one bonus. In the late fifties and early sixties Miss Simms had been a star performer in black night clubs all over
the United States. Her record albums adorned store windows and one achieved the Gold status. The reasons for the abrupt end to a very promising career remained a mystery to this day because Miss Simms discouraged anyone from prying into her past.

  As Kat worked through the mountain of paper work, Miss Simms plugged in an old portable record player and gently placed an LP album on the turntable. With the first note, Kat closed her eyes, spellbound.

  Dreama Simms’ recorded voice was smooth as expensive Kentucky bourbon. The silky notes melted into each other, filling the cavernous dungeon with rich melodic sounds.

  “You know,” Dreama said, interrupting her heart wrenching rendition of Angel Eyes. “I recall another house set afire on Riverside.”

  This statement caught Kat’s attention and she sat up in her chair. The second prank call she and Mitch caught had been for Riverside. What was going on in Maceyville?

  “You mean there’s been another one? When?”

  Dreama chuckled. “Child, you can unclench those fists of yours. I’m talking about way back in the springtime of 1963. ‘Round the time of all that civil rights trouble up in Birmingham.”

  Kat knew what Dreama Simms meant by ‘the trouble in Birmingham’. Her own parents, Alvin and Dolores Rayson, had been active supporters of Martin Luther King’s campaign for equality.

  Her Pop had taken part in demonstrations at the Woolworth five-and-dime stores to integrate the lunch counters. He’d even been arrested and jailed because of the Birmingham sit-in.

  Her mother had been hosed by the Birmingham police as she left the 16th Street Baptist Church.

  Kat often wondered, in the same circumstances, if she’d have had the courage her parents displayed. By comparison, the bouts of racism she encountered today were minuscule.