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A Time for Every Purpose
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Fictionwise Contemporary Science Fiction
Nebula Award(R) Finalist; Year's 25 Best Mystery and Crime Stories
Pick
Shaunessy sat on the step leading into the laundromat. His jeans were
faded, his hair tousled, and he clutched a superball in his slender, unlined
right hand. He wore a ripped Moetley Cruee T-shirt that made him feel
less than he was. He repeated his title to himself for reassurance:
Shaunessy. Detective. Homicide. Time Force.
The summer heat, thick with humidity, surrounded him. He
remembered the neighborhood well. Throughout his childhood, they had
called it Willy Street. Its run-down buildings were home for the city's poor,
the counterculture, and the vagrants. By now, 1994, the renovation project
that had started in 1986 had blossomed into a revived neighborhood:
rejuvenated Victorian homes stood beside houses that hadn't seen paint or
repair since the mid-1930s. The residents of the redesigned homes now
called the area Williamson Street. In another decade, only the aging
hippies who had never been able to leave Madison would use the area's
nickname.
He remembered the neighborhood well. But he hadn't remembered
what it was like to be fourteen.
Shaunessy ran his hand through his soft hair, feeling the dampness of
sweat at the roots. His heart seemed to be beating twice as fast as normal,
and he knew that it wasn't caused by waiting for Rothke. A
fourteen-year-old's body felt different from a seventy-year-old's. That was
what Kaiser had tried to warn him about.
You were just a kid, Michael,
Kaiser had said.
A kid's body doesn't react like an adult's.
How well he was learning that. He had gotten an erection watching a
woman walk down the street — not a very attractive woman, slightly
 obese, but wearing a sundress so small that he saw her breasts straining
against the fabric.
His pants were getting tight just from the memory. He stretched out his
legs and tugged at the hems. Then he took a deep breath and went over
the plan in his mind.
Rothke would arrive at six with a bag of laundry. He had been explosive
all week — the heat combined with his particular mental unbalance. At
six-fifteen, Connie Grayson would walk in. She was a college freshman
whose parents had bought her a condo in one of the renovated buildings.
Her washing machine had broken down, and she had a date at eight. She
would strike up a conversation with Rothke, ask him if he was a student.
He would later say it was like a bomb going off in his head — of course he
wasn't a student. He wasn't a pampered rich boy who had money and
brains and looks. He was a hard-luck kid who lived in a $400 studio next
to those nice expensive homes. He would scream at her and bang her
against the washing machine, over and over, until the blood ran down its
white side. Then he would drag her over to the dryer and shove her inside,
close the door, and plug the machine with as many dimes as he had,
leaving it to run until Kathy McGill would arrive a half-hour later to
discover the body.
The only thing Shaunessy could do, he figured, was stop the
conversation. His fourteen-year-old body wasn't strong enough to stop a
twenty-two-year-old man from beating a woman to death. And he had to
stop Rothke, otherwise the man would go on to commit twenty-four other
murders. The Time Force had discovered long ago that if the first murder
was prevented, the others usually were too.
Shaunessy bounced the superball, watching its colors spin as it traveled
from his hand to the sidewalk. At two minutes to six, the digital watch on
his left arm beeped. He sat up and leaned against the painted yellow brick
near the door, scanning the sidewalk and waiting.
It took a minute before he realized that Rothke was standing at the
crosswalk. This Ray Rothke had neatly trimmed black hair and was
clean-shaven. He wore a pair of brown shorts and tennis shoes. His tanned
legs were muscular, and his bare chest was covered with scars. He
clutched a blue duffel bag in his right hand.
Then the light changed and Shaunessy spotted the abnormality.
Rothke's movements were sharp, jerky, too tense. He looked like a man
who was wound so tight that a snip of the string would send him whirling
out of control.
 Rothke bounded up the two steps leading into the laundromat, leaving
behind him the faint scent of sweat and aftershave. This was the closest
Shaunessy had ever been to Rothke; when they finally brought him in,
after the Beverly Martin murder, the chief wouldn't let Shaunessy in the
same building.
Shaunessy clutched the superball so tightly that the bones in his hand
hurt. Goddamn bastard. If his body had more strength, he would go in
there and kill Rothke right now, put an end to it before it even began. But
he had to follow the rules of the Time Force. Killing Rothke would divert
the timestream onto the wrong path. Preventing Connie Grayson's death
would have no negative effect whatsoever.
He hunched forward, listening as Rothke banged washer doors. Finally,
Shaunessy heard a click and the sound of water running into a machine.
He glanced through the open door. A fan was blowing hot air into the
street. Rothke sat on a folding chair, his feet propped on one of the
washers. He was thumbing through the newspaper someone had left on a
table.
"You okay?"
Shaunessy's heart exploded in his chest. He backed up against the wall
and found himself staring at a young woman resting a laundry basket
against her hip. Almost instantly he had another erection, and he crossed
his hands in front of his lap. How had he survived fourteen?
"I didn't mean to scare you." She smiled. Her teeth were perfectly
straight and white. Softness eased her face into the photograph that
Shaunessy had stared at for hours.
Connie Grayson.
He didn't even have to look for the mole near her right breast, but he
did, staring at it on the very crest of the swell rising from her white tube
top.
"That's all right," he said.
She swung the basket around in front of her and went in the door. He
scrambled to his feet and followed her. Rothke closed his newspaper and
watched her. Grayson set down her basket near Rothke. She opened a
washer door, grabbed something lacy, and threw it inside. Shaunessy went
over and leaned on the washer on which Rothke was resting his feet.
"Ma'am?" Shaunessy was shaking. The laundry was twice as hot as the
outdoors.
She looked up. Her eyes were big and blue. The photograph hadn't
 captured the wistful intelligence in her face.
"I need to use the phone. Can I borrow a quarter?"
She brought her lips back into a slight frown. Rothke had been right.
The condescending attitude was there. Shaunessy was okay as long as he
was a kid playing on the steps. But now that he was panhandling, he had
gone down a class.
She dug in the pocket of her cut-offs (Shaunessy tried not to watch) and
brought out a shiny coin. He took it. Quarters still felt strange to him, even
though he had been in this time period for nearly twenty hours now.
"Thanks," he said.
He crossed the room and plugged the quarter in the slot, hearing the
ting-ting as it fell through. Announcements plastered against the wall
fluttered in the breeze of the fan. He turned. Rothke was staring at
Grayson with the same kind of interest Shaunessy had shown. She had
nearly finished loading the machine.
Shaunessy picked up the receiver. No dial tone, just as he had expected.
He had disabled the phone around noon. He slammed the receiver against
its holder and jiggled the coin return. With a clatter of metal against
metal, the quarter fell into the little slot. He slipped the quarter out with
his index finger and cupped it. Grayson was pouring laundry soap into the
machine. Rothke had stood up.
Shaunessy hurried across the room. He let all the worry he felt fill his
face. "Here, ma'am," he said, shoving the quarter back at her. "The phone
doesn't work."
She closed the lid on the machine. Water streamed over the clothes.
Rothke's machine began the spin cycle. Grayson took the quarter and
studied Shaunessy. He shifted from one foot to the other.
"Is something wrong?"
"I'm — not sure. My mom was supposed to pick me up two hours ago,
and she's never late." His voice cracked on the word "late," and he
swallowed, feeling an embarrassment rise. That, at least, he remembered
— a sensation nearly fifty-six years old.
"Oh." Grayson frowned. He knew that she would understand trauma
caused by late mothers. Two years earlier, her own mother had missed
picking her up from high school. Grayson had caught a ride home — to
discover her mother unconscious at the base of the stairs. She had
apparently tripped and hit her head coming down.
Grayson scanned Shaunessy. "Come on," she said. "You can use my
 phone."
She put her hand lightly against Shaunessy's back, propelling him
forward. At the door, she turned and said to Rothke, "Will my laundry be
all right here?"
He shrugged. "I ain't got no use for lacy underwear."
The hostility in Rothke's voice made Shaunessy shiver, but Grayson
didn't seem to notice. They went out the door. Ninety degrees with
attendant humidity felt cool after the oven the laundromat had become.
Shaunessy took a deep breath. He didn't realize how nervous Rothke had
made him.
Grayson led him to the light. They stopped for a moment, but the street
was empty, so they crossed on the red. She led him to a remodeled Queen
Anne on Wilson across from the train tracks. As she reached into her
pocket for the keys, he stared at the upper floor. He had seen pictures: the
neat, carefully furnished living room with its turret window; the pots and
pans hanging from a stylish kitchen. The University of Wisconsin was
attracting wealthy students during this period, and Grayson was one of
them.
She opened the door and let him inside. He waited at the base of the
carpeted stairs until she started up them. "Ma'am," he said. "I think you
should probably know that that guy in the laundromat — "
"Yes?"
"He's pretty weird. Kinda scary weird. I'd stay away from him if I were
you."
She looked at Shaunessy, her gaze penetrating, as if she were trying to
tell whether he was referring to Rothke or himself. "I'll remember that,"
she said.
The last two stairs creaked under her feet. She stopped at the landing
and unlocked the darkly stained wooden door.
The apartment was spectacular. Sunlight streamed in the tall rounded
windows. Oriental rugs covered the hardwood floors, and throw pillows
were set carefully but casually on the wide white couch. The room was
cool, even though he could see no air conditioner.
"The phone's over there," she said, pointing to a table next to her
wide-screen television set. A viewer. Something he had not planned on.
He started to dial, wondering how he was going to fake this one.
"The viewer's blown," she said. "Sorry."
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