We weren’t rocket scientists or quantum theorists, for crying out loud. When had we ever discussed time?
We did know filing this case meant we were in it for the long haul. We knew we weren’t up for a quick win. So the end of time meant. . . what?
The literal end of time? Surely not.
I flicked my flashlight around the room, stopping at the grandfather clock. I rushed over to it, opening its cabinet and poking around.
I found nothing.
What else?
I went back to the desk and went through the drawers. I found a pocket watch and opened it up. Nothing. I grabbed a pair of scissors and pried open the case. The thing fell apart. Still nothing, except a freshly ruined watch.
Frantic, I rushed to the bedroom, examining his watch case, his bedside clock, anything related to time.
Nothing.
Frustrated, I went back to the office and stared at the note once more, silently willing it to tell me its secrets. There was nothing else on it except for the bare block print. I even shined the flashlight on it, looking for watermarks or smudges or anything else except the uninformative words neatly printed in black ink.
I sat in Schaeffer’s desk chair, debating about whether or not to turn on the light. Maybe if I could see properly, something else would come to mind.
I decided against it, but flicked the flashlight around the room, hoping something would stand out.
A gleam of red caught my eye.
Yes! Not time, but TIME with a capital T! As in, the magazine! An entire row of Time magazines filled the second bookshelf down on the south wall. It was not an external wall. This wall backed up to the bedroom, if I was not mistaken.
I stepped out into the hall and peered into the bedroom, trying to gauge the distance between the door and the wall that divided the bedroom from the office.
It was dark. But either it was my imagination, or there was a slight discrepancy in the distance to the end of the room and the distance down the hallway to the office.
Could the boxes be in a chamber be behind the shelves somehow? But if so, where was the switch? These shelves felt like they were miles long. They covered the entire length of the wall, which was not insubstantial. The house itself, being ranch style, was unusually long to start with. The trigger could be anywhere, assuming there was a trigger at all. It would take me all night to empty the shelves. There had to be a better way. Think! I told myself. Brains over brawn. The only way a girl could survive.
In the distance, I heard a dog bark. But it wasn’t Lucy, so I figured I was still okay.
I checked the windows again, and seeing no car lights, I crept back to the office and went back to the magazines. They were organized by date, the earlier ones to the left and the most recent ones to the right. I pulled out the last chunk of magazines—the ones to the far right. The “end of Time.” When I stuck my hand into the bookshelf, I felt nothing out of the ordinary.
I pressed the back wall.
Nothing.
I pressed in various other places.
Still nothing.
Plopping onto the floor, I propped up my light and paged through each of the magazines, hoping to find a dog-eared page, a piece of paper. Something. Just something.
Finding nothing, I started to work my way backwards through all of the magazines, pressing in various places on the shelf, paging through each copy. I worked my way all the way through the very first issue of the magazine on the shelf—the January 1991 copy—before I finally admitted to myself that I had reached a dead end.
Now what?
I scrupulously replaced all of the magazines in the correct order.
As I bent down to pick up the last magazine, I noticed an old copy of a family Bible crammed into the corner of the bottom shelf. Unlike all the other books around it, it wasn’t covered in dust.
Surely not. But there it was. Revelation, I wondered? A book about the literal end of time?
I pulled out the old Bible and flipped to the last page of Revelation. Tucked inside was a small scrap of paper that read: “A Scandal in Bohemia.”
Was he kidding? Sending me on a goose chase like this just for the files that were already mine?