"No need, you guys go ahead. I'll just watch from here." She waved them off and followed toward the black sedan. At first it was too dark to see clearly, but when they carried the body to the police cruiser's back compartment and the lights hit it, she recognized the face.
"It's him." Wendy couldn't help but exclaim. What a coincidence—she hadn't expected to see him again. But come to think of it, he was supposed to die around now.
"You know him?" Leo asked.
"Oh, a customer. He was at our bank this afternoon making a scene about being overcharged one second of time. Running into him here—it's kind of sobering."
"Overcharged by one second?" Leo stopped what he was doing and looked at Wendy. "When did this happen?"
"Today, I think. It's really nothing—our bank deducts a one-second service fee every year. Why? Is something wrong?" She noticed an unusual expression on Leo's face.
"That shouldn't happen. You might not know this, but because the police handle natural death arrangements, the terminal patient's last twenty-four hours are jointly monitored by the bank and the police."
"Unlike regular people, terminal patients' time is fixed by regulation. It's to prevent them from doing something desperate to extend their lives, but it also guarantees they can't be charged additional time. Are you sure the deduction happened today?"
"I'm sure—the exact time would've been around one-something this afternoon. He came in raising hell the moment he noticed." Wendy spoke with certainty. "But if what you're saying is true, how was that one second deducted?"
Leo didn't answer immediately. Instead he turned to Harry: "Remember those reports we got a while back about abnormal time deductions?"
"Vaguely. What about them—there's a connection?"
"I looked into those cases—they were all just one-second overcharges. Nobody thought much of it at first, but soon afterward the bureau set up a special task force to handle them. That kind of overreaction struck me as odd, so I asked a classmate on the team. He told me they suspected a large-scale time theft."
"The police think it's an inside job at the bank. The bank, of course, insists their systems are perfectly secure. The politics are complicated, and the stakes are enormous, so after investigating for a while, they hit a stalemate—no progress to this day."
"Time theft? How does that even work? I've heard of time fraud and robbery, but never someone stealing time. And just one second—what's the point of that?" While the two men talked, a scream suddenly cut through the night.
"Blood!" Wendy's trembling finger pointed at the corpse's face. Only then did they notice that a thread of dark purple blood had seeped from the dead man's nostrils.
Leo and Harry exchanged a quick glance, then wordlessly turned the body over. The first thing to check was the head—intracranial hemorrhage was a common cause of postmortem nosebleed, and it usually meant the victim had suffered a severe blow to the skull before death. Sure enough, they quickly felt a raised lump on the upper right side of the back of his head.
"Murder?" Leo frowned. Things were getting more complicated. But complexity wasn't necessarily bad—it brought clues and possibilities.
"No way—who'd want to kill a terminal patient?" Harry shook his head. "Maybe he hit his head himself?"
"Right—who'd want to kill someone who's about to die anyway?" Leo glanced at Wendy, a plan already forming in his mind. "Lily, you said this man was at your bank around one this afternoon. Do you know where he went after that?"
"After that? He wanted to see all his past deduction records. I told him only the main branch could access those, so I imagine he went there."
"Do you know anyone at the main branch? Could you find out if he actually went?"
An ordinary natural death might be turning into a homicide—and while that should've been trouble, Leo seemed almost excited. Wendy could guess why.
With his ability and drive, Leo should have been in the major crimes unit long ago, not doing logistics. Under his current circumstances, the only way up was through results. And this case might be a rare opportunity.
Since she could help, Wendy immediately agreed and started making calls.
The person she contacted had been in the same hiring cohort—they'd done orientation together and exchanged numbers. Her colleague had since been assigned to the main branch, which Wendy had envied at the time. Now when she called, the colleague confirmed that while a different clerk had handled Trevor Cruz, his disruption in the lobby had been so loud that everyone knew about it.
Trevor Cruz had indeed gone to the main branch after leaving Wendy's station. He'd pulled all his records, which confirmed a duplicate one-second deduction. He'd abruptly left around four or five that afternoon, his problem unresolved. Most importantly, the commotion had been public enough that the entire branch knew about it.
Leo organized what Wendy had told him. Though rushed, he outlined his theory:
"Let's assume the task force is right, and the time theft is an inside job at the bank. The thief would be monitoring developments closely. Today this man raises hell at the main branch—our thief might have found out, or might even work there and witnessed the scene firsthand."
"Harry, you asked who'd kill a terminal patient. Fair point—how much threat can someone with only hours left pose? But what if this person had stumbled onto a crucial lead about the theft, one that could expose the criminal's identity? Wouldn't that be motive enough?"
"You're saying the victim knew who stole his time? But based on what we heard from the bank, nobody mentioned anything like that." Harry pushed back.
"Just a hypothesis. I think he might have discovered something—otherwise it's hard to explain why he left so suddenly and why he was attacked."
"But he's already dead. If we're going to investigate, we need to take the body back to the station and have the forensic examiner look at it. Pulling surveillance footage and dashcam recordings and everything else—at the earliest, we'd need to wait until tomorrow when we can apply through the team leader. Why don't we head back to the station?" Harry scratched his head, not understanding Leo's hesitation.
"You have another idea?" Wendy knew the answer was yes.
"I'm just thinking—this person is probably the closest anyone's come to the truth. If he could talk, if he could tell us the criminal's name, or even just one other clue—we might crack this whole case."
"Leo, tell me you haven't been drinking. The man is dead. You think he's going to resurrect?" Harry pointed at Trevor Cruz's body.
"Why not? Do you two remember—about twenty years ago, there was a death in our city caused by a time anomaly?" Leo looked at them. "The victim was a researcher at the XR Institute."
"I remember that—our teacher mentioned it in school. Something about them researching a new energy source, and the radiation from it affected the victim's Lifespan Ring and zeroed out his time. He died instantly." Wendy said. Harry nodded beside her—it had been big news at the time, frightening enough to stay in the public consciousness for years.
"Do you know what happened afterward?" Leo asked.
"I think the research was shut down, and the XR Institute was disbanded. Why—was there more to it?" The sudden question made Wendy suspect there was a hidden story.
"Nothing dramatic—the research was indeed terminated. But the government had invested enormous funds, so before shutting it down, they tried some last-ditch measures."
"Besides radiation shielding, they developed a calibration machine that could reverse abnormal changes to a Lifespan Ring. Later, when another researcher died under similar circumstances, the hospital used this machine to bring her back to life."