Back home I drank more coffee and collapsed at my desk, trying to think of something to do. And not fall asleep. I kept glancing over my shoulder, expecting to see Rachel at her desk. I looked at pictures of her on my phone. I tried calling Quinnley again. No answer again.
I didn’t have much faith in the Rosenberger family, but they’d owned the clock in the first place. I found a daughter in Western Springs, a suburb. Evie Larkin. So I called her.
“Right, I remember them telling us there was some trouble with the clock.” She sounded friendly when I explained that I was interested in the clock, without going into the details. “I just didn’t have any idea it was so valuable. We looked it up after the sale. I should have charged a lot more.”
“Do you know anything about it? Where it came from?” Maybe a previous owner would have some idea how it worked, and maybe how I could found my wat to Rachel’s universe without it.
“No. Grandpa just loved old stuff like that. The house was just stuffed with it, and we just couldn’t take all of it, that’s why we had the sale. We did pretty good with the sale, too. Like I said, if I knew how much that clock was worth—but that’s okay. We still have the other one.”
Huh? “There’s a second clock?”
“Yeah, he had two. My husband wanted to keep it. Now that we know how much it’s worth—”
My heart raced into overdrive. “Where is it?”
“In the basement. Are you a collector?”
I hesitated. If I got my hands on the clock, would I be able to do anything with it? I was close to desperate enough, but not yet. My best chance was still Quinnley. If I could ever find him.
“No, just curious. I know both men, the guy who bought it and the other one. They’re both—missing. Along with my girlfriend.”
“Oh my God.” She took a breath. “Do you think—what does the clock have to do with it? One of them killed the other one for it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I just—I’m trying to get all the information I can. Thanks for your time.”
We hung up. I stared at my computer screen for long minutes, seeing nothing. My vision was blurry, my hands were twitching, my stomach ached from being clenched with fear for hours.
I went to the kitchen for more coffee, trying to think.
The coffee didn’t help. I fell asleep.
I was being chased by a serial killer through a circus in the middle of the night, with lighting and thunder crackling around me. The serial killer brandished a long knife and a bouquet of roses, and for some reason I was more afraid of the flowers than the knife.
I was looking for Rachel. She’d save me. Or maybe I was trying to save her. I ran through a tunnel of love, my feet sloshing in the water, lovers laughing at me as they made out in their boats. I raced from the tunnel into a barn filled with the smell of hay, cows peering at me from their stalls, mooing ominously, as chickens pecked at my feet. I found a door, but it was locked. I pounded at it, shouting for help, not daring to turn around to see if the serial killer was behind me. I yelled Rachel’s name, over and over—
Then my phone woke me up. Unidentified number.
Any telemarketer unlucky enough to call me now was going to wish he’d gone into sewage management. “Tom Jurgen speaking.”
“Mr., uh, Jurgen? It’s Raymond, from over at Lakeside Tower? You left your card.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Yeah. What’s up?”
“Well, I don’t know if I should be calling you, but . . . half hour ago, I got a noise complaint on the 12th floor. Sent somebody up, and 1204 was back, and there was a lot of yelling. They knocked on the door, and said Mr. Quinnley looked like he was in a fight—bruises on his face, his shirt torn. They asked if we should call the police, he said no. The noise died down.” Raymond paused. “I don’t know. This is sort of weird. And I looked you up, after you left your card? And it seems like—”
“Weird is my business.” I have a standard, businesslike website, but I also have an online reputation for the weird. “Raymond, this is important. People are missing. One of them is my girlfriend. If I come over, will you at least let me go up to the 12th floor so I can knock on the door? If it’s still there?”
He hesitated. “I guess so. The manager’s out, so I’m in charge. I can’t have problems like this in my building.”
“I’ll be right over.” I gulped some cold coffee, made sure my clothes were on straight, and headed for the door.
Raymond was nervous. “I don’t know if I should let you up. But I don’t know what to do about Mr. Quinnley, if he’s really hurt. Or if the fighting starts up again.”
I nodded, trying to be patient. “We have to do something. Make sure he’s okay.”
“Yeah. I guess.” He picked up his phone. “Steve? Can you meet Mr. Jurgen on 12? Open it up if no one answers. Yeah.” Raymond hung up. “Go ahead.”
I took the elevator up. On the 12th floor I found a man in a maintenance uniform in front of 1204. The door had reappeared, with a peephole and knocker in the center.
“Hi.” Steve was tall and Black, and he wore a thick equipment belt around his waist.
“Hi.” I rapped my knuckles at the door. Waited. Knocked again. Then I looked at Steve.
He pulled a ring of keys from his belt and slipped one into the lock. He knocked again as he pushed the door. “Mr. Quinnley? It’s Steve from maintenance. You there?”
I leaned inside. The apartment was a wreck.
The tall pictures window with a view of Lake Michigan was cracked. Bookcases had toppled over, a dining room table lay on its side, broken bottles stained the carpet, a TV sat on the floor with a shattered screen.
A man in his fifties, with gray hair and loosened necktie, sat on a leather sofa with dazed eyes and a sweaty forehead, breathing shallowly. Blood dripped from a wound in his neck.
“Mark Quinnley?” I stepped into the apartment, Steve behind me. “Are you all right?”
He looked up at us, getting his eyes into focus. Slowly he nodded. “I’m just—get me a towel or something?” He dabbed at the blood with his necktie.
Steve found a roll of paper towels in the kitchen. Quinnley ripped a few off and pressed them against his neck. “Who—who are you?”
“My name’s Tom Jurgen.” I stood over him, peering down. “Where the hell is Rachel?”
“Rachel. Oh.” He blinked. “She was the cute redhead, right?”
I grabbed his arm, dizzy with fear and anger. “What the hell happened, Mark? Where are the others? What did you do? Where the hell is Rachel?”
He pulled his arm away. “What do you mean, what happened? That little prick got the clock for a hundred dollars, that’s what happened! A Volpano clock! I spent 20 years looking for one! And I would have paid a fair price! But Ronald Fischer, oh, he’s got money, he’s got that big house from his father! He could have paid a lot more—”
“Shut up.” I wanted to slap him. Instead I just leaned down into his face. “Forget about the damn clock and just tell me what happened to Rachel!”
Quinnley groaned. Dropping the paper towels, he levered himself up from the sofa to his feet. “I took the clock.” He staggered as he walked across the living room. “I found out about his little trips, and I got an invite, and paid him, and then, when we were there, and they were all exploring, I went back inside and took the clock out the back door.”
He paused, his hand on a door. “I thought the house would just come back when the clock was gone. It didn’t. I figured it would come back after the hour, so I came home.”
“And you used it here? That’s why the door to your apartment disappeared?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I set it for 1:00. I went—”
He stumbled. I caught him, and he pushed the bedroom door open, regaining his balance. “It was the same place as last night. A jungle. Dark and—really, really smelly. Lots of animals. Monsters. One of them did this to me.” Quinnley ran a finger along the wound on his neck. “I got lost, but then I found the apartment door again and I came back, but one of them chased me, and I had to—”
Quinnley fell to his knees. Steve and I helped him up, and he gestured toward the bed in the corner, sheets and blankets tangled and ripped. We half-carried him and dropped him on the mattress, where he sat breathing hard. The wound started bleeding again.
“I had to kill it. It’s over there.” He pointed.
In the middle of the floor, in a puddle of wine-colored blood, lay a pile of fur and claws, the size of a small dog. Yellowed fangs in its jaws looked sharp and strong.
“It almost got me,” Quinnley wheezed. “It chased me in here. I had to kill it. I don’t have a gun or anything, I just—had to kill it.” He groaned. “Now it’s wrecked. Damn it.”
Next to the creature, the clock lay. Broken.
The wood was dented and splintered, and one side had broken off, revealing the gears of the interior. The pendulum was snapped in half, the bottom piece on the carpet. The gems marking the numbers were scattered around the floor.
Oh hell. “You broke it?”
“It was all I had! I threw chairs at the thing, I kicked it, I stomped it, I tried to get away from it in here but it got through the door, and I just, I just—” He shook his head. “It was going to kill me.”
What now? I couldn’t fix it with glue and duct tape. I wanted to hit Quinnley, punch him in the face, break his nose, kick him in the—but I knew I wouldn’t do it. Damn it. “Son of a bitch,” I whispered.
“You okay?” Steve stood in the doorway. “Should I call 911?”
Quinnley’s eyes were closed. His breathing was shallow. “Yeah,” I said, feeling drained. “Tell them—I don’t know, tell them . . .”
Then I remembered the other clock. The Rosenbergers.
I dropped to my knees and scrambled across the floor. Ronald said something about a crystal the clock needed. It didn’t work until he had the crystal. If I could get it—
I flipped the clock over. The back side was mostly intact. I ran my fingers over the wood, looking for something, anything that would open it. At first I found nothing. Maybe a hammer would get me inside, or a crowbar.
Then my finger felt a tiny catch. A lever. I pushed it up and down, back and forth, trying to figure out how it worked. My fingertip felt clumsy and huge. I pushed with my thumbnail. Something shifted.
I slid the rear of the clock free and leaned down, searching.
There. Inside a springlike device. A small purple crystal, like quartz. Above it I saw a key built into a gold circular mechanism the size of a quarter, marked off into segments around the face.
I took a few quick pictures with my phone Then I carefully eased the crystal out and held it in my hand, looking at it.
“Yeah, call an ambulance.” I stood up. “I have to go.”
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