Moments after I input the Lexus’s license plate number, I am presented with the name Vincent Kane and an address not in San Diego, as I’d hoped, but in Los Angeles. To be sure I have the right person, I look up Kane’s driver’s license information and am presented with a picture of my unwanted shadow. The address listed matches the one on the car registration.
I’ve seen Kane in San Diego for a few weeks now, and it makes me wonder if he’s made a move south but has not yet reported a change of address. That would complicate my task. If I’m going to find out why he’s so interested in me without tipping him off, I need to get inside his home and see what I can learn. If that place is now in San Diego, I’ll need to follow him to find it, a task far from easy, even with my chaser.
The logical move is to check out the Los Angeles address first.
When the world rematerializes around me, I am standing on a hiking trail in Griffith Park, with the city of Los Angeles sparkling in the night below me. The time difference between my last location and here is only five minutes, so it’s still the early hours of morning.
The park is a few miles from Kane’s address, but as I’ve been trained, I always choose a place I’m confident will be unoccupied for my initial arrival point. The home is located in an area just northwest of downtown that the map on my chaser tells me is called Myer Hills. But that map is of my old world. According to the one on the smartphone, here the place is referred to as Echo Park.
The quick route would be to follow Sunset Boulevard, but even at this hour there is traffic and my chance of being seen is too great. So I take a more circuitous route, making a series of what are called visual jumps — meaning I can actually see the place I’m jumping to before I hit go. Short hops, in other words, and safe. I pass through backyards and empty lots and quiet side streets. It takes me thirty actual minutes to get there, but I alternated between jumping forward and backward thirty seconds, so, by the clock, I arrive in Kane’s neighborhood at basically the same time I left Griffith Park.
While I did spend a considerable amount of time in downtown Los Angeles several months ago when I first realized I’d changed the worlds, I have never been in this specific area before. It’s a small valley bisected by a road called Echo Park Avenue. The home is near the east end of the valley on a street halfway up the north side.
As I approach, I see that it sits on a lot a good fifteen feet higher than the level of the road, and is reached via a stairway that runs up the side of the street-accessible garage. There’s a mailbox at the bottom of the stairs — no name on it, only the house number.
I move to the other side of the street so I can actually see his place. Even then, it’s only a partial view, but it’s enough to see that the place is a two-story Spanish-style home. Like in the other homes in the immediate vicinity, I see no lights on inside.
Cautiously I return to the stairs and make my way up, then sneak through the small front yard to the house. Much to my relief, the night remains quiet. In my world, people often had small plaques mounted beside their front doors engraved with their family name. It would be nice if Iffy’s world also embraced this practice. I would hate to jump inside and find that it is not Kane’s home. I maintain an oddly stitched-together set of morals now, I guess, that includes it’s okay to steal from criminals, that sometimes it’s acceptable to enter someone else’s personal property without permission and sometimes it’s not, and, top of this list, it’s okay to erase untold numbers of lives to be with the woman I’ve fallen for and to save my sister.
Yeah, there’s a lot of gray area in my life.
One more jump puts me on the other side of the door, in a living room filled with old, overstuffed furniture. A large television sits on a cabinet against one wall, while mounted to another are shelves filled with books and framed photographs.
On the other side of the room is the opening to a hallway that appears to go all the way to the back of the house. I know I should probably check to make sure no one is there first, but the photos draw me over.
I turn on my phone’s flashlight and narrow the beam with my hand so that no unnecessary illumination escapes. Immediately I can confirm that I have not made a mistake by coming here. In many of the pictures is the man who’s been following me, meaning I can officially label him as Vincent Kane.
There are other people in the shots, too — friends, I suppose. There is an older couple who both, in differing ways, bear a resemblance to Kane. His parents most likely. In three of the shots is an even older woman, who is always accompanied by the woman I assume is Kane’s mother. She looks as if she could be a hundred years old. I’ve never seen a face so wrinkled and worn, like it’s long overstayed its welcome. Only her eyes, blazing with keen awareness between her aged lids, speak of a life not yet ready to give up.
The thing I take most from the pictures is that if the couple are indeed Kane’s parents, then he was born in this world and is not, as I feared, another rewinder. While on the one hand that’s a relief, on the other it begs the question why would a person from this time line be interested in me?
Hoping I will find my answer somewhere in this house, I begin searching.
The back hall leads to an open room that is part kitchen and part second living room. The furniture and television are newer than what’s in the front room, leading me to believe this is the space Kane uses most. Along the back wall are several large windows, one of which appears to be able to slide open. Though it’s too dark to see much of anything beyond them, light from a handful of homes on the hillside glows here and there. The view during the day must be beautiful.
The only thing of any real interest I find, though, is a note on the refrigerator door held in place by a “See Grand Canyon” magnet. On it is written the name Vince, followed by a phone number. And below this is what appears to be a schedule:
Monday — Lorna
Tuesday — Lorna
Wednesday — Theresa
Thursday — Theresa
Friday — Peggy
Saturday — Lorna
Sunday — Lorna
I have no idea what it could mean. The phone number, however, is the prize here. I take a picture of the note and then return to the front of the house and take the stairs to the second floor.
Along the upper hallway are five doors — two on either side and one at the far end. The two nearest me are closed. I leave them for now and check the ones that are open. The first I come to leads into a bathroom that — from the items I find on the counter — appears to be used by a woman.
The next open door is on the other side of the hall. Technically it’s probably considered a bedroom, but it’s been converted into an office and is cluttered with more of the white boxes I saw in the back of Kane’s Lexus.
I remove the lid from one of them and find it stuffed with files. After a quick look through a couple of folders, I get the sense that Kane is involved in some kind of financial work.
This guess is confirmed when I find a business card in his desk with his name on it and the job title of: CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANT. There is no company name, and the address given is a post office box. It makes me think that it is likely Kane is self-employed. I pocket the card, and as I start to leave the room, I see a large, six-month calendar pinned to the wall. There are over two dozen dates circled. When I realize the day I saw Kane at the library is one of them, I try to recall all the other times I’ve noticed him. To the best of my recollection, every single one of those dates is circled. To say that realizing this is upsetting would be an understatement. But what troubles me even more is the fact that there are other dates marked for which I don’t remember seeing him. Was he watching me those days, too?