He walked away without waiting for an answer, so I spoke instead to Katherine, placing the diaries on the desk beside me. “Civil rights? Like Martin Luther King?”
“Yes,” said Katherine, “and women’s rights. There are other categories as well, of course, but my research career focused on abolition—anti-slavery, that is—and women’s rights. I studied the movements in a broad sense, looking at changes over the course of several centuries. My very first research trip was to a Quaker village in the early 1700s. Are you familiar with the Quakers?”
“A little. I knew someone in Iowa who was a Quaker. He was in my karate class. One of the guys in the class thought it was funny that someone who was supposed to be a pacifist was into martial arts, but he explained that there was no contradiction, since karate is about trying to avoid violence, not about using violence to solve problems.”
Katherine nodded. “The Religious Society of Friends, often called Quakers, was the earliest religious group in America to both oppose slavery and to promote equality for women. The fact that women often traveled as ministers of that religion made it fairly easy for me to observe a community without being too conspicuous. During my first two jumps—one to 1732 and a later one to 1794—I was paired with the senior historian whose place I was taking at CHRONOS. After that, I did a solo trip to the 1838 meeting where the Declaration of Sentiments was signed. Many of those who signed it were Quakers.”
“That’s the document you showed me that now has Prudence’s signature, right?”
Katherine nodded. “I took a few other solo jumps as well, but CHRONOS generally found that expeditions went more smoothly when historians traveled in pairs. The logical person to group me with was Saul Rand, since his specialty was religious movements. There were frequently overlaps between religious organizations and rights movements—not just among the Quakers but with many other denominations, too. Saul was only eight years older, so our traveling as a young married couple provided an effective cover. And eventually, the cover became very natural, because we were a couple.
“So” she continued, turning back to the computer screen, “we had twenty-seven jumps together, total.” She tapped the mouse and pulled up a list of cities with a date printed next to each. “These twelve seem to be the most likely candidates for when my murder might have taken place. We can’t really rule out my solo jumps either, although I’m not certain how much information Saul had about those.”
“Why?” I asked. “Not why these specific trips—we can discuss that later. Why is Saul doing this? Why does he want to change the past? Why does he want to kill you?”
“Why did he kill me is the more correct question—or, technically, why did he have someone else kill me,” said Katherine. “As I explained earlier, Saul is stuck in whatever time he landed and I’d wager a great deal that it’s a point in the future, not the past. He’s using someone else—or, I’m beginning to suspect, several individuals—to change history for him. We know that there are two—the young men you encountered yesterday—but I don’t think we can safely assume those are the only ones. I suspect that Prudence is one of them as well. We have evidence that she has, at least, made small changes to the historical record.”
“I still don’t understand Saul’s personal motives. What does he hope to gain?” I could see Connor shaking his head in annoyance out of the corner of my eye and decided to address him directly. “You have to admit, Connor, if I’m supposed to help track down a murderer, it might be important to understand his reasoning.”
Connor turned his swivel chair to face me. “Take any psychopath, sociopath, whatever label you choose. Scrape off the details and the motivation is always the same, Kate. Power. As much power as they can get.”
“But why kill Katherine? Why didn’t he just have Pudgy kill me on the Metro? Katherine can’t use the medallion and she hasn’t exactly hidden the fact that she has a terminal illness.”
“That’s a good point, Kate. I suspect it’s personal,” Katherine added. “The first time Saul planned to kill me—the time I escaped to 1969—it was because I was in his way. And, equally important, because I had ceased to find him fascinating, attractive, brilliant—all of the things I foolishly believed him to be for the four years we were partners. He failed to kill me then, and Saul never accepted failure lightly. If he has the means now to finish what he started back at CHRONOS, I suspect that he would do it simply on principle.”