Time Runs Out

CW: Contains depictions and/or references to gun violence, armed robbery, and kidnapping.

Annapolis Police Sergeant Jim Jenson and his squad had their hands full in their crowded precinct as they tried to pin down the details of the busiest crime spree the capital had seen in his lifetime.

Their unit had arrested so many suspects that no chairs remained in the bullpen. Smash and grab bandits had knocked over many of the town’s most exclusive jewelry stores so quickly that, between police, suspects and their attorneys and witnesses, not a spare space remained in the middle of the standing room only crowd in the precinct.

“All of those not employed by our department or working for it will have to wait here patiently while we review the security films and statements from all the parties and process our record number of arrests,” Sergeant Jenson said.

Because it seemed like the questioning was taking forever, many of the store owners, their customers, attorneys and the other witnesses grew impatient and began complaining loudly about the authorities treating the victims no better than those who victimized them.

Between the grousing, the interrogations droning on for hours and many of the police distracted by processing, some of the criminals saw their chance to make a break for it. Four faces in the crowd nodded at each other and bolted for an unlocked door in the back of the room.

Jenson quickly ordered five of his officers to give chase on foot as soon as they heard the squad room door slam. They pulled out their 357 magnums as they pushed their way out of the building and returned the fire coming from the guns the robbers had hidden in their work boots. Because of the crowded conditions the cops had not found any weapons during the pat downs of the suspects.

As the officers continued the pursuit outside the headquarters cars on the busy streets screeched to a halt, almost colliding with each other, as the men rounded the dark corner in the middle of rush hour traffic in the pouring rain.

The foot chase went on for five blocks. The incident happened too quickly to dispatch patrol cars. One of the thugs knocked rookie cop Harry Jones off his feet with a bullet fired into his leg. Patrolman Jim Evans stopped Sammy G, one of the suspects, with a single shot to his leg.

While Evans and his partner Gabriel Fabrizio tended to Jones and the wounded bandit, the other three continued after the gangsters. One of the bad guys then pulled out his cellphone and pretended he was making a call. Then, without warning, the three fugitives seemed to vanish into thin air.

They resurfaced outside an old-timey phone booth that suddenly popped up on the side of the road. It looked like a relic more fitting to 2001 than 2024.

Turns out, the smash and grabs conducted by this group of burglars did not come about because of a spur-of-the-moment decision. Under the direction of gang leader Joe Morton, they had spent two months carefully mapping out the robberies. They even had staged dress rehearsals in a number of abandoned buildings near their headquarters.

The only educated and well-read thug in the outfit, Morton recently had come across an article in Scientific American that revealed how Salisbury University Professor John Wisniewski had perfected a machine that would allow him to travel back and forth from the present to the past and back across a portal leading across the timeline.

The gang had broken into Wisniewski’s electronics lab and kidnapped him along with the machine. They had threatened to murder him unless he showed him how to operate his invention.

Morton had told his posse, “The time machine we took from this academic geek will give us the key to rake in thousands of big bucks for us in future capers and the coppers will never lay a hand on us. Too bad we had to leave Sammy G behind. He did, after all, know of the hazards of our profession before he signed on with us. We can’t worry about him now. Our main concern, now that we know how his gadget operates, should be to get the techie out of the way and leave no sloppy details behind such as witnesses who know too much.”

They then hopped into the 2001 Yukon Denali they had left on the street corner before blasting through the time portal and they then headed to their headquarters on the side of Mount Misery outside of Annapolis.

The crew members figured they would put a bullet through the head of the time machine professor, split up the loot and head for the heart of the capital, where they would get lost in the rush hour traffic and head south.

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Just as the gang members screeched to a halt in front of their headquarters a police helicopter landed and about a half dozen of Annapolis’ finest jumped in front of the building. They forced the robbers from their vehicle and took them away in handcuffs.

Morton shouted over the din of the chopper engines: “How did you ever catch us? We had this all planned out. We traveled through a time portal and robbed banks almost a quarter century into the future.”

Scott Jenson, the father of Sergeant Jim Jenson, laughed as he replied:

“You didn’t know that my son studied advanced time travel in a class at Salisbury U taught by Professor Janice Wisniewski, John’s daughter, who would become my daughter-in-law. Janice has conducted extensive research on advanced time warps, portals and how to transverse wormholes.

“Jim just applied his studies and led his team through the portal on the heels of the gang. Professor John Wisnewski worked himself free in the cabin and telephoned his location to the Annapolis Police. We teamed up with my son and his squad from the future. We borrowed one of their choppers and waited here with this reception party for you.”