Too Late

      “Hey, O’Brien,” Detective Schwartzman pipes up on the ride to the murder scene, “If you could go back in time to anything, where would you go?” He paused for a moment to take a drag of his unfiltered cigarette, “When would you go? I should say.”

       Plainclothesman O’Brien didn’t answer his partner’s ridiculous question. Why was Schwartzman always asking ridiculous questions about time travel? The older detective kept his eyes on the road, he was attempting to focus on the murder they were about to investigate- some old crackpot scientist.

       The man was found in a pool of blood from multiple stab wounds. Whoever had done the horrible deed wasn’t playing around, either- the man had been butchered and it seemed that quite a few objects had been stolen from the laboratory. Despite his strongest attempts to keep his mind on the objective at hand, O’Brien’s mind did shoot to one particular moment in his life from twenty-six years ago.

       “Well, O’Brien?” Schwartzman asked a little impatiently.

       O’Brien thought of a different moment to say to shut the bastard up. “Probably my wedding day to warn myself out of a nasty divorce before it even started,” he attempted a joke.

       “Really?” Schwartzman asked laughing. He lit another unfiltered Lucky. “I would have thought you would go back to that National Championship game.”

       O’Brien gripped the wheel tighter at the mention of that moment. His scarred knuckles shined like white pearls amidst his beaten hands.

       “Thanks for bringing that up,” O’Brien said more to himself than anything. His mind shot back to his football days. The star quarterback of Penn State playing against Oklahoma for the role of the best team in the country for the year. A Heisman runner-up his senior year, Patrick O’Brien had choked- more suffocated- on the final drive.

       “I would like to go see the biggest moments in history,” Schwartzman said, “I’d witness the Manhattan Project, Julius Caesar’s assassination, that stuff.” O’Brien hardly heard- he was back in his worst moment in personal history.

       With six seconds left on the clock, Penn State uses their last timeout on the four-yard-line. Down by six points, the Nittany Lions just need a touchdown and a field goal for the victory. O’Brien takes the snap, fakes a handoff to the running back. He’s got a receiver wide open in the middle of the end zone. O’Brien raises his arm to throw, the ball slips out! Oklahoma picks it up and the tight end takes it ninety-six yards to the end zone. A 33-21 victory for Oklahoma and Patrick O’Brien loses all hopes of going pro- becoming a laughing stock who enlisted in the Army to join the war effort then became a Homicide Detective after receiving a Silver Cross medal for bravery on the battlefield.

       “O’Brien!” The detective snapped back to the current moment, “We’re here partner.”

       Without a word of reply to Schwartzman, the two men got out to question the officers on the scene as well as a witness who had heard the commotion.

       “It was odd, detective,” Mary Talbott, thirty-six, and the scientist’s assistant told him, “I heard the sound of struggling and fighting. Beakers being broken on the ground and that stuff. But after that, nothing. Total silence. I was outside of the only door that leads in or out of the lab and there’s no windows in there- he must have exited through the vent.”

       “Miss Talbot-“ O’Brien began before the woman interrupted to just call her Mary. “Mary, do you know what Dr. Andrews was working on? Anything that might have upset anyone or anything that another scientist would want to have?”

       Mary lit a cigarette with shaking fingers and took a slow drag. She coughed on the exhale. “He definitely seemed to think so.”

       “What do you mean, Miss- Mary?” O’Brien asked as he scribbled lines of information in his notepad.

       Mary answered, “Well, he kept everything extremely secretive. Even to me, and I have- had been his assistant for ten years. All he would say was it had to do with travel and that it was going to make him the most revered scientist of all time- even more than Einstein or Oppenheimer.”

       “I see,” O’Brien spoke while writing what he had just been told down. “Is there any more information you could give me, Mary?”

       “No, sir,” Mary spoke, discarding her cigarette, “That’s truly all I know. I knew he had rivals, but couldn’t name any of them.”

       “Well, thank you for your help, Mary,” O’Brien tried to sound friendly. Like an uncle to his niece, instead of a murder investigator questioning a witness. He didn’t think it worked.

       “May I go home now?” Mary asked, “I need to relax and start working on finding a new job.”

       “Of course, thanks again.”

       The laboratory was brutal. O’Brien had seen some gruesome moments before, but this was horrible. Whoever murdered Dr. Andrews had treated the man like a fish to fillet rather than another man.

       Lab equipment was tossed about everywhere, broken glass and shards of dented metal littered the place.

       “You don’t think it was the girl?” Schwartzman asked.

       “No, I know it wasn’t her,” O’Brien replied. “It’s interesting, though. The only exit is the door and the vent, but Talbott was right outside and never saw anyone leave and the vent doesn’t show any signs of being tampered with.”

       “He couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air- that’s insane,” Schwartzman replied. The two of them investigated the scene a while longer before forensics came in to take fingerprints and sweep for hair or dead skin.

---

       “Nothing was found detective, only a fingerprint of your partner, but that must have just came from when you two investigated,” the woman from forensics told O’Brien, who only shook his head and sighed before thanking the woman and leaving.

       “O’Brien,” the commissioner called from his office as Patrick walked by, “Hey, we found a man named Donald Barney. He was a rival of Andrews back a decade ago. As far as we know, they haven’t had contact for at least eight years, but he has to take any leads we can get. Mind checking it out ASAP?”

       “Yes sir,” O’Brien replied and departed for Barney’s lab. Where the hell is Schwartzman? He hasn’t even called in sick, he thought to himself.

---

       Doctor Donald Barney was a squat individual with an annoying whiny voice and a bad combover.

       “You say Dr. Andrews has been murdered?” He asked O’Brien, “Serves that stealing bastard right.”

       O’Brien took a sip of the black coffee the scientist had poured him and grimaced. It tasted like a cup of mud from the shores of the Ohio River. “What do you mean by saying he’s a ‘stealing bastard?’”

       “Exactly what the phrase implies, detective,” Barney answered as if O’Brien had asked him what color the sky was. “Dr. Andrews stole my research on interdimensional portals when we were peers at Penn together.”

       “Interdimensional portals?” O’Brien asked somewhat amused.

       “Time travel,” Dr. Barney answered with utmost sincerity. “Andrews and I worked together trying to figure out the physics of traveling through the years at anyone’s pleasure. Well, Andrews stole the research I had completed and earned his Ph.D. But I had to wait another four years of doing research on black holes to earn mine.”

       “So, time travel is possible?” O’Brien asked, still partially laughing.

       “No,” Barney answered shaking his head, “My research concluded that it was impossible. I moved on to astrophysics, but Andrews made interdimensional travel his life’s obsession, his issue was trying to avoid splinching- would you like a coffee too, sir?” the scientist looked over O’Brien’s shoulder to address whoever had just walked it. It was Schwartzman.

       “Where the hell have you been?” O’Brien asked his partner then shot, “How did you get here?”

       “My apologies, O,” the younger detective replied, “had a bit of an accident this morning,” the man held up his left arm and pulled the sleeve back. It looked like a massive bit had been taken out of it.

       “Did a fucking bear attack you?” O’Brien asked at the sight of Schwartzman’s wound.

       “Slipped while shaving and somehow massacred my arm trying to keep my balance,” Schwartzman said. He then turned his head back to Barney, “What was that about splinching?”

       Barney took a sip of coffee and answered, “Well, apart from the physics of time travel making it completely impossible, there’s a belief of people having limbs or their whole body being more or less cut off by a portal closing. Of course, this is all science fiction at this point, mind you.”

       “Right,” Schwartzman replied with mocking interest.

       “Detectives, I wish I could say more, but I honestly haven’t had contact with Andrews in almost ten years. Not since we tried to reconcile our differences,” Barney eventually said after fifteen minutes of more questions and answers that lead nowhere.

       “I understand,” O’Brien replied, “Sorry to take your time. We will be on our way.”

       The two detectives left the old scientist and got in their car.

       “You know,” Schwartzman started, “Julius Caesar never actually said ‘E tu, Brute?’ when being killed. That was just a figment of Shakespeare’s own creation. Also, they pronounced it like ‘kaiser’ with the hard C not with the sss sound.”

       “Will you shut up about the history lesson for a moment, Schwartzman?” O’Brien interjected, “I’m trying to think.”

---

       “No, sir,” O’Brien told the commissioner, “three weeks of investigation has brought up nothing. Andrews was not a beloved person, but no one was angry enough to kill him. Maybe his ex-wife, but even she hasn’t given any indication of committing the crime.”

       “Well, there has to be something,” Commissioner Patterson told him. “With Schwartzman MIA for the last four days, it’s up to you. I know he suspected that Barney person.”

       “But, sir, Barney didn’t seem like he had it in his heart to even swat a fly. You should have seen this man.”

       “Well, I want you to bring him in. We will do some interrogations and if he’s found innocent, he’s free. No harm, no foul,” the commissioner lit a cigarette and offered one to O’Brien, who politely refused.

       “Yes, sir, I’ll go get him,” O’Brien answered reluctantly.

---

       Dr. Barney showed annoyance but overall allowed himself to be arrested peacefully.

       “I’m telling you,” Barney said in the frigid interrogation office, “Dr. Andrews was attempting to work on some kind of time-traveling portal last I heard. Whoever killed the man knew about it or he had finally just pissed off the wrong person. I’m not saying he didn’t have it coming, I’m just saying that that’s what I know from our contact eight years ago.”

       O’Brien stayed silent to allow the doctor to continue.

       “The man was obsessed with being able to see the Roman Empire in all its glory. He raved on and on about witnessing the Manhattan Project-“ He was cut off.

       “Dr. Barney,” O’Brien said hastily, “I believe you. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go. It’s urgent- I’ll have you released.”

       He stormed out of the office and told the desk he was going to be out the rest of the day. His heart was racing, last time O’Brien felt this rush was that infamous Championship game. He sped home and tore into the beaten box in the back of his bedroom closet.

       O’Brien found what he was searching for. A small projector and a roll of film. He turned it on and studied the “O’Brien Choke” closely. His heart stopped when he found what he was looking for.

       The image was blurred and hard to render, but it was him alright. Detective Schwartzman. Not as a seven-year-old as he would have been at that time, but as a thirty-five-year-old man. He was giving a smile as to say “Good job, but too late buddy.”

       Detective O’Brien knew they had taken the wrong suspect in while the real one traveled at leisure to witness all the historical moments of the past that he was obsessed about. It was too late now.