What Time Devours Read Online Free

wondered vaguely when he would see her again.
    “Anyway,” Escolme was saying, “I didn’t get real friendly with the faculty there.”
    “What about Randall Dagenhart?” said Thomas. “Is he still there?”
    “I guess,” said Escolme, a little too quickly. “I had a class with him but it was one of those huge lectures. He didn’t even grade my papers. In the end, I spent more time with the theater guys. Anyway, I trust you.”
    There it was again, that edgy nervousness. Thomas didn’t like it.
    “Thanks, but . . . ,” he began.
    “I’m serious,” said Escolme. “ This is serious.”
    And then he inserted a little autobiographical news to prove it was serious. Escolme’s news—that he had since completed a master’s degree in English, then worked for a boutique literary agency before being head-hunted into one of the largest literary management companies in the country—was surprising only because it made clear what such conversations always made clear, that the time had slipped unnoticed away. Thomas knew nothing about the world of publishing, but he had heard of Vernon Fredericks Literary, if only for their movie division whose agents were routinely thanked on Oscar night.
    “I don’t understand what that has to do with Shakespeare,” said Thomas. “Or with me, frankly.”
    “Mr. Knight,” he said. “I promise. This is not like anything you’ve dealt with before. Honestly. I want it to be you.”
    Thomas paused.
    “To do what?” he said.
    “I have to show you. I’m at the Drake. Room 304.”
    Thomas suddenly felt weary beyond words. He wanted to say that he had spent a miserable and horrific day dealing with the corpse he had found propped up against his kitchen window, but even the idea of saying such things made him want to forget them. He paused and then said simply,
    “When?”

CHAPTER 5
    As soon as he had hung up, he Googled “Escolme, Vernon Fredericks Literary.” Thomas wasn’t sure what he expected to find: a story in the Tribune , perhaps, local boy makes good. Something like that. What he found was a professional-looking website, all cool blues and grays, surrounding a similarly professional blurb about the literary awards won by its (unnamed) “talent” along with a set of submission guidelines. At the bottom of the page, it listed VFL’s locations: New York, London, Beverly Hills, Tokyo, and Nashville. No Chicago branch. Thomas clicked the New York link and found a roster of agents.
    David Escolme was two-thirds down the list.
    There was a picture. The boy Thomas had known was still recognizable, but only just. The acne was gone, the eighties glasses had been replaced by sleek black frames with oblong lenses, and the boy was now a man, smiling confidently into the camera. He looked comfortable in his elegant suit, a man for whom the slings and arrows of adolescence had long since glanced off and been forgotten, a man immune to the future. It was the face of a businessman.
    Nothing wrong with that , he reminded himself. And let’s see if we can spare him your tiresome lectures on the state of the arts in America, shall we?
    He grinned sheepishly to himself and his gaze fell on the kitchen window. The evening light was dwindling fast and the window was like a hole into the swelling night, a picture frame whose canvas had been slit out. For a second he saw the dead woman’s face as clearly as if she was still there, her staring eyes (one green, one violet) turned blank upon him.
    He turned abruptly away and checked his watch. He had time for one of his slow, pounding runs around Evanston’s twilit streets before going on to meet Escolme. Anything to get that face out of his mind.
    His phone rang once and he snatched it up.
    “Hello?”
    “Mr. Knight, this is Lieutenant Polinski. We spoke this morning. You have a second?”
    “Sure.”
    “We’re still trying to get an ID on the victim, but I need to ask you again if you’re sure you didn’t know her.”
    “I’m