by Clark Graham
She put her hands over her mouth. “Ted’s son. My, oh, my.” She looked both ways. “Did you destroy it?”
“Destroy what?” He played stupid in hopes of getting an answer.
“That time machine. Did you destroy it?”
“Oh that, of course. It was my father’s will that it be destroyed.”
“Thank goodness.”
Bryan listened to the conversation from around the corner. He cringed when his mother mentioned the time machine. A few moments later his blood ran cold. He had been in business long enough to know when someone was lying, and this man wasn’t good at it.
Waiting until Mel left, he walked up to his mother. “Who was that?”
“That was Ted’s son. The time machine has been destroyed.”
“Father would have been happy to hear it.”
Chapter Five
New York Harbor
1948
Mel smiled to himself. A time machine! I can control the world with one of these. He needed more information. His father was a meticulous record keeper. There had to be more information on the plane somewhere. It wasn’t at home, he knew that for a fact. It had to be somewhere in the warehouse.
The next day he drove down to the pier. He scanned the room. There was a table full of tools, and time machine parts, but nothing else. He pulled the tarp off of it and set a ladder against it. Looking in the cockpit, he saw boxes, upon boxes on the seats and sitting in the storage area behind them. Aha.
“For a machine that was destroyed, it looks very intact to me.” The voice came from behind him.
Mel whirled his head around. “Who are you?”
“Bryan Dalton. You told my mother you destroyed this thing. You lied.”
“How did you find me?”
“You sent the bill for the warehouse to your lawyer to pay.”
“Yes, and so what?”
Dalton smiled. “He’s also my lawyer. He let me know where the plane was as soon as the bill arrived. I have a barge waiting and a lot of dynamite. I’m putting it on the barge, taking it out to sea and blowing it sky high. I wasn’t expecting to see you here today though.”
Mel climbed down from the ladder. “You can’t do that. It’s mine.”
Bryan held up a piece of paper. “Our lawyer has given it over to me because it was my father’s originally. I have every right.”
Mel grabbed the paper from his hand and read it. “He’s fired.”
“He won’t care. I pay him a lot better than you pay him.”
Panicking inside, Mel still kept a calm face. “I’ll fight this in the courts.”
“You’ll be too late. The barge arrives tomorrow. All I have to do is tell them where to park it, and they’ll load up the plane. By the time you get a new lawyer, the plane will be in thousands of pieces.”
Mel raged inside. It was as if he could feel the millions of dollars that he was losing. Grabbing a crowbar, he struck Dalton across the head. He hadn’t meant to hit him that hard. Blood flowed out of the wound. Dalton collapsed to the floor, dead.
Pacing back and forth, Mel tried to figure out what to do. He tied most of the heavy tools, wrenches and crowbars, around Bryan’s body, then waiting for midnight, he dragged Dalton to the edge of the pier and threw him in. As he walked towards the gate, he noticed another car parked next to his. Oh, no. Dalton’s car. He couldn’t leave it there. He looked inside, the key wasn’t there. It’s in his pocket. Mel shook his head. Why hadn’t he looked there first? Hotwire it. As a child, he and a neighbor kid had stolen Ted’s car. They only took it for an hour, then returned it. The neighbor kid had shown Mel how to hotwire.
He pulled the wires out and then stuck them together. The car started. He drove it several miles away, parked it in an industrial area, then walked back to the pier. It was nearly dawn when he arrived. He scrubbed the blood off the floor and flushed it away with water. Satisfied he had covered up his crime, he drove home to get some sleep.
His guilt kept him away from the warehouse for a few weeks, but in the end, greed got the best of him. He drove down again and grabbed two boxes to take them home. They were full of papers and photos. The papers described how his father had hired a company to find the time machine and pull it up. It also described all of his failed efforts in trying to restore the thing. There was no one who could do it, he had concluded.
Mel could again feel millions of dollars slipping away from him. He had murdered to keep the machine, but now it was worthless. He locked up the warehouse one last time and walked away.
Bryan had not come back. Mary called the police. They couldn’t find him. After a couple of weeks, they found his car. It had been stolen, and parked down by the waterfront. There was no blood in it. It wasn’t the crime scene.
Chapter Six
New York City
1948
Mel sat at home, the doors locked and the curtain drawn. I killed a man. The scene played back time after time in his mind. I can go to the police and turn myself in for manslaughter. He shook his head. No. No one knows what I did. They’ll never find me. Opening up the boxes he brought home from the warehouse, he went through them again. It took his mind off of his problems. I can go back in time and stop the murder if I can figure this out. Murder? I’m a murderer! He shook involuntarily.
As he read, he felt his father’s hopelessness. “I have worked on this twenty-three years and am no closer to figuring out how to repair it than when I brought it up from the depths of the ocean. My only hope is talking to Robert, something I vowed I would never do. He’s the only one who knows how it works.”
Robert? Who’s Robert? He slammed the papers down on the desk. I’m not only a murderer, I killed a man over a bunch of worthless metal.
Detective Caswell looked over the car. It wasn’t much to go on, but he had found plenty of fingerprints on it. He didn’t have anyone to match them up with. Having become unbound, Bryan Dalton’s body floated to the surface of New York harbor two days after he was reported missing. It was now a murder investigation. The statement from the family lawyer about Bryan going to reclaim a plane stuck in his head. The docks were in a rough part of town. Bryan could have been mugged, but why would they move the car? He had to talk to that lawyer again.
“How can I help you?” Mr. Walker was all smiles as Detective Caswell entered his office.
“The body of Bryan Dalton washed up on shore this morning. We’ve not released any information to the newspaper yet, so keep it under your hat for now.” The lawyer's mouth gaped open. To Caswell, the man looked really upset. He couldn’t figure if it was from losing a client or he really liked Dalton. The detective wasn’t big on lawyers.
“That’s terrible.”
“Now it’s a murder investigation. Do you know who Dalton was going to visit?”
“A man named Mel Hart. He’s in possession of the plane that Bryan wanted.”
“Where’s the plane, and where can I find Mr. Hart?”
Walker wrote both addresses down and handed them to the detective.
“Thank you very much.”
The guard at the gate had seemed to hesitate to allow the officer in. After a minute, though, the gate opened. The warehouse unit was locked, so Caswell looked around. The area between the door and edge of the dock looked like it had been freshly cleaned. Right at the edge of the dock, there were scrape marks, like something metallic had been dragged over it. The detective looked over the edge. Aha, blood. Taking samples, the detective made his way back to the door of the building and dusted it for fingerprints. When he was finished, he walked over to the guard and talked to him.
Mel answered the knock on the door and stood face to face with Detective Caswell with two police officers standing behind him. “Hello?”
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Bryan Dalton.” Mel was handcuffed and taken to the station. He didn’t utter a word the whole way.
At the station he was fingerprinted and put in a holding cell. A few hours later, a
police sergeant stood over the detective's desk. “The fingerprints are a match.”
“Good, I’ll bring in Mr. Hart for questioning. I’m sure he’s cooled his heels long enough.”
The sergeant smiled.
All the bravado Mel planned on using when questioned had left him hours ago. He was a beaten man by the time they sat him down in the interview room.
The detective walked in and sat down. “Mr. Hart, do you know why you’re here?”
“How dare you accuse me of murder? I was home that night.”
“What night are you talking about?” The detective smiled.
“Every night. I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Why were your fingerprints on Bryan Dalton’s car?”
Mel swallowed hard. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“You don’t have a prayer. I’ve got your fingerprints at the dock and on the car. I have the guard telling me you drove Dalton’s car away from the pier. All I have to do is connect the dots for the jury and you’ll fry in the electric chair.”
“You don’t have a body. You can’t convict without a body,” Mel blurted out.
Caswell threw the photos of Bryan’s body on the table. “Oh, but I do have a body.”
Mel buried his head in his hands. “I didn’t mean to do it. He was going to take the plane. I thought was worth millions. Come to find out, it isn’t worth a dime.”
Chapter Seven
New York Waterfront
1949
“So, what is it? Some type of jet plane?” Gerald Mesh asked. The little man had a high-pitched voice.
“I suppose so. It doesn’t work, but for some reason it’s worth killing for.” Henry Sandoval walked around the plane. The tarp that covered it was old and moth-eaten.
“Killing?”
“Two men fought over this plane. One wound up dead. I got it for back rent on the warehouse bay. I’ve pushed every button it has, but I can’t make it go.”
“You try putting gas in it?”
“Of course, I did. Premium, the best that money can buy. The oil leaks out the side, so I plugged the holes.”
Gerald walked up to the plane to get a closer look. “Duct tape? You plugged the holes with duct tape?”
“It ain't going nowhere. Duct tape will work fine.”
Gerald shook his head. They both walked around the plane for a few minutes. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Sell it.”
“To who?”
Henry scratched his head. “I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’ll figure out something. For now, I’m going to leave it right here.”
B. B. Griggs, of the Griggs Salvage Company, stood before the plane. He hadn’t seen anything like it before. And if he hadn’t, nobody else had, because he’d seen it all. The tall man with beady eyes walked slowly around it. Some top-secret military project that fell into the wrong hands no doubt. They would pay millions to get it back. He would have rubbed his hands together for joy, but Henry was watching him like a hawk. If he was looking for any facial expression, there wasn’t any. “So how much do you want for it?”
“I’m figuring five million.”
Griggs would have paid that in a heartbeat, but that’s not how the game was played. He shook his head slowly back and forth. “My dear fellow, I don’t know what you think you’ve got, but It's worth only a few thousand. It’s all beat up. I’m certain it doesn’t work. I’ll I can do is break it apart and sell off the pieces.”
“But, but.” Henry composed himself. “I’m standin’ fast at a million. Not a penny less.”
Griggs rubbed his chin as he took another walk around the plane. “I’m feeling charitable, I’ll give you ten thousand.”
Henry deflated. “It’s a time machine. You can control the world with it. Five hundred thousand, no less.”
“I see. And if you could control the world, then you wouldn’t be selling it, would you? The fact is, I’m not the first person you’ve had here. Politicians, Army officials, Collectors maybe. They’ve all told you the same thing. It isn’t worth that much. What was the highest bid you’ve gotten for it?”
“Fifty thousand.”
It was a lie. Ten thousand was his highest offer. Griggs knew the game and all the players. “Fine, fifty-five thousand and it’s a deal.”
They shook hands.
Two days later the machine was moved to Griggs Marine Salvage sheds two piers down the waterfront. He had an army of experts go over every inch. A few days later his chief engineer sat across from him at the table.
“We don’t know what half of that stuff is, Sir. Some technologies are barely coming online, others, well, we just don’t know. You said this plane could be from the future. I laughed inside when you said it, frankly. Now, I’m a believer. We can’t fix it.”
“It’s worse than that. I’ve had my man in the Pentagon send out feelers to see if there was some secret project that has gone missing. No luck.” Griggs leaned back in his chair. “Box it up and hide it in the back corner of the storage. I’ll give it twenty years then try again.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The large wooden box was pushed into place by two forklifts. Stenciled on the side was “Priority Low, 1969” It was Griggs code. His dreams of riches from the plane had faded, like so many others before him. Still, he hadn’t given up altogether. Maybe someday it would be worth the millions he hoped for.
Chapter Eight
Washington D.C.
2044
Charles Gilman, professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, looked up as a man entered his office. The appointment had been set the week before. He had all week to try and find out why a United States Senator wanted to visit him, but try as he could, he was still clueless. The grey-haired professor took off his reading glasses. His eyes were a vivid blue, but deep set with wrinkled skin around them. “How may I help you, Senator?”
“I need you to find something for me.”
The professor’s eyebrows almost touched as he wrinkled his forehead. “Sir?”
Senator James took a seat across from him. “I need to swear you to secrecy.”
“That will be easy. I don’t know anything.”
Adjusting his tie, the senator continued. “A plane didn’t make it back after a mission and disappeared. I need you to find it.”
“Me? but…”
“You don’t understand, I know. This plane disappeared around the turn of the last century.”
The professor’s stared at him blankly before responding. “Are we talking the year 2000 or the year 1900?”
“1900.”
The professor smiled. “That one is easy, there were no planes then.”
James leaned forward until he was uncomfortably close. “There was one. A time machine. It is something very out of place for the period. I need it found. Millions of research dollars for your department are on the line.”
Gilman leaned back to put some space between the two of them. “I, um, it’s hard to believe, is all.”
“You don’t need to ‘believe,’ just find it. Also find Robert Dalton, he was the pilot.” Not waiting for an answer, James stood up and left.
The professor shook his head. His department relied heavily on the funding they received from the government and James held the purse strings. He would have to do something. Reluctantly, he headed down to the archives.
It was a needle in a haystack, but that was what the professor was good at, finding needles. A murder case he stumbled across was the very first piece of the puzzle. The defendant, Mel Hart mentioned something about a time machine during the sentencing phase of his murder trial. The man he murdered was one Bryan Dalton, son of R. Adalwolf Dalton. Could that be Robert Adalwolf Dalton?
Following up on the lead, he found a court order for Mel Hart to hand over an airplane to Bryan Dalton. There was no indication that it ever happened. A plane was sold from that location by the owner of the dock. The trail stopped at Griggs Salvage Compan
y. Two reasons for a trail stopping in Gilman’s experience, it was the end of the trail, or worse, the records were lost.
With thoughts of his grant money disappearing, he headed over to Robison Recycling, the ones who bought out Griggs, to see what records they had.
Standing up from his desk, a tall Ralf Robison asked. “Professor Gilman, how can I help you?”
“I’m looking for something that is lost to history. It was traced to the Grigg’s Salvage. It’s an airplane that was purchased in 1949.”
“Oh, the heap, that’s what we call it. Old man Griggs wouldn’t let us scrap it for the metal, my father vowed he wouldn’t when he bought the company, now that I own it, I’ve kept it crated up according to his wishes. As soon as he’s gone, though, so is the heap.”
The professor rushed back to his office and called James. “I found your time machine.” Gilman smiled. He was getting his grant money after all.
It took a while for Senator James to make it to the office. By then, Gilman was having second thoughts. When James strolled in, Gilman confronted him. “It’s an insane thing you are doing. Changing the timeline could destroy our very existence. I beg of you, leave well enough alone.”
“You’ll get your grant money. That’s all you scholarly type want, isn’t it? Look how much more research you will be able to do when the timeline changes. Besides, we’ve already gone back in time and we’re still here.”
Reluctantly, the professor gave him the location. A few million dollars later, the Vmax3 drive, along with what was left of the airframe, was headed on a train to Seattle.
Atlantic Ocean
2044
The boat chugged up and back, with three fishing lines in the water. There were no hooks, just weights to make it look like they were on a fishing charter. There was a large cable with an electrical line out the back of the ship, for the side scanning radar. Other than that, the disguise was perfect.
