A Matter of Time

Velma Harrison shook her head.

"Ok. Get back to work. Velasquez. You stay."

The others trooped out of the office. Velma Harison waited until they were gone and the door closed.

"What do you think about all this?"

Velasquez shrugged.

"I think it was the husband. But he has as solid an alibi as he can have. Besides, How could he be in five different places and virtually the same time."

Lt Harrison shook her head.

"Find out all you can about the wife. There has to be a connection to these other killings. I don't how it was pulled off, but we need to know before we have another batch happen. The press are having field day with this and the mayor is looking at a re-election campaign next year. He got elected last time on the law and order ballot. He has been generous with the PD in the budget. We can't afford to let him fade the heat on this."

Velasquez felt a sour taste in his mouth. He didn't like politics. He didn't relish getting involved in that kind of situation. He personally had no animosity toward the mayor.

"I understand. Let me get to work."

&&&&&

Like the Lt, Sgt Velasquez was convinced that there was something seriously out of whack with this whole case. There were just too many inconsistencies that had no rational explanation. He sat down and looked at his case notes again. He needed to find something else. He picked up the phone and dialed the hospital where Mrs. Zimansky had been treated.

He spent time talking to the hospital administrators. He got the names of the nurses, technicians and the two doctors who had been in the ER the morning that Connie had been brought in. He got up and called Officer Terri Tote.

"Come on. Let's go to the hospital."

Twenty minutes later Tote and Velasquez walked into the ER. THey identified themselves and asked to see the nurse who had been with Connie that morning. In a few minutes she was sitting in the break room.

"We are trying to find anything we can about that morning. You were with Mrs. Zimansky while she was in the hospital. Can you think of anything she might have said that would help us."

THe nurse, Sharon VIckers, looked at them.

"I don't know. THis sounds like it will get into HIppa areas. I can't discuss any patient's medical information with you."

"I understand. I;m just looking for something to give me a lead. Is there anything you can remember that we should consider?"

Nurse Vickers thought for a moment. Not that I can think of.

The rest of the morning went about the same. The doctors and other nurses either wouldn't talk about the case because of Hippa regulations or because they just didn't remember anything. Finally, Velasquez brought that avenue of investigation to an end. He and Terri left the hospital. Velasques sat in the sedan in the parking lot thinking. Terri finally spoke.

"Nwo what?"

"I don't know. Maybe we will take another tact."

Back at the station, Velasquez was working systematically through what they had. He noticed that the coroner's report on Adamson had been added to the online case file. He pulled it up and began to read. There was nothing that he didn't expect until he got to the lab reports. It jumped out like a sore thumb.

Adamson had an STD. That was huge and opened up a whole new line of investigation. He immediately called his contact in the DAs office and related the new findings. His last request was for a warrant to get Mrs. Zymansky's medical records. THe DA agreed.

The records didn't get to Velasquez until the next morning. He looked at the doctor's records from the day of the incident. Sure enough, the doctors in the ER had ordered a whole litany of tests, including a rape kit and a blood test. Velasquez didn't know a rape kit had been ordered. The blood test indicated that Mrs. Zymanski had also proved to have an STD. That meant a report had been filed with the local health department. He was immediately on the phone.

THirty minutes later he was looking at a copy of the STD report on his computer. Sure enough Mrs. Zymanski had a chlamydia infection. That meant that at some point she would have to visit her doctor and be screened again, treated, and then followup. She would also have to give a list of her sexual partners for the last 6 to 8 weeks. Velasquez began making calls.

It took another day to get everything he wanted. The DA had to get involved again and put pressure on the health department but eventually Velazquez had a copy of the report that Mrs. Velisquez had filled. It had a list of 6 names on it. There were five others. He looked at the board that was prominent in the office that listed the current active cases. There were six names listed on the board. The same six names were on the case report from the health department.

He had found the link they were looking for. He hurried to the LT's office with hie case notes.

""What's up?"

"I got it."

"You got what."

"The link. Look at this,"

He laid the health department report on the desk. Lt. Harrison read it and when she came to the list of names, she looked up at Velasquez.

"She was screwing all five of these guys."

"Yeah. I bet if we test their blood, everyone of them have an STD. I want to get Dr Zymanski tested as well."

"He would have to have been tested. That's part of the protocol. Why not just ask him. He has been cooperative so far."

&&&&&

Sgt. Velasquez and Detective Tote walked into the immense brick building on the university campus. The sign indicated that this was the Physics building. They entered a small reception area on the first floor. The receptionist had smiled. Jaime introduced himself and Detective Tote and asked to see Dr. Zymanski. The receptionist had picked up the phone and in seconds, the professor appeared and called them into his office.

"What can I do for you officers today?"

"I would like to ask you a few more questions, if I may, Sir."

"Of course. Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.'

After they had found seats, Velasquez continued.

"We are aware that your wife was found to have an STD during the routine examination after the incident at your house."

"Yes. I believe she tested positive for Chlamydia. I was notified and went to my physician and got tested myself. My test came back negative. My doctor should have reported that to the health department."

"He did. We just wanted to make sure. It follows that you and your wife weren't having sex for sometime before this incident."

"More than a year to be exact. My wife claimed she was going through menopause and didn't have any interest or need for sex. I have been extremely busy with research and it didn't seem to be a problem."

'And you had no idea she was having an affair?"

"I typically spend 10 to 12 hours a day here and at my lab. The lab is through that door and down a spiral staircase to the basement. It has no other entrance or exit?"

"Can I ask what kind of research you do?"

For the first time Valasquez saw Zymanski smile and his eyes light up.

"Of course. I am conducting research into the phenomenon of time dilation and compression in or near the event horizon of black holes. We are trying to determine exactly what happens when matter slips over the event horizon. It is fascinating."

Velasquez nodded. He was pretty sure that he knew all the words the man had said but he had no clue what they meant in the context he had just heard. That's interesting I am sure. Were you aware of your wife's extramarital activities?"

"Did I know she was screwing around? No. I found out when you came in to tell me of the incident at my home. That was my first inkling."

Velasquez nodded. Suddenly Det. Tote popped a question.

"Have you been home since the incident?"

Zymansky had looked at her sharply but then replied coolly.

"No, I have not. It was evident that my wife had an affair. I am a religious man, officer. I take my wedding vows very seriously."

Outside the building, Velasquez and Tote walked toward the car.

"Why did you ask him that question?"

"That guy is too smooth and too collected. Most men would be wailing and wallowing around in a swamp of despair and self pity. He doesn't seem angry or frustrated or anything like that. It's just not natural."

&&&&&

As they walked into the office, It was pandemonium. He stopped and looked around. Lt. Harrison saw him and motioned him into the office. Once there she turned her laptop around to face him.

"We got a hit on the CCTV from one of the killings. We got a partial look at the shooter."

She punched a key on the keyboard and a picture flashed into view. It was a man, standing turned slightly away from the camera. He was talking to another man. Lt. Harrison began to speak.

"That is our shooter. You can see he is talking to the victim. If you watch the video, in about 2 seconds he is going to pull a revolver from his hoodie pocket and fire it almost point blank into our victims face, blowing his brains out the back of his head. He then calmly turns and walks out of the camera view. No one sees him after that."

Jaime looked at the slightly fuzzy picture. Something looked familiar about that face but he couldn't quite put a finger on it. He was sure he had seen it recently. But the angle, the quality of the photograph and the shadows made it hard to put any detail to the face.

"Well. That does us some good anyway. Anything else."

"Nope. You got any new leads or suspects."

"None. The only thing these guys have in common is that they were all humping Constance Zymansky. That normally would put Dr. Symansky right in our crosshairs and all we would need to do is dismantle any kind of alibi he has and close the net. The problem is we can't. Not only does he have an unassailable alibi, there is no way he could be in 5 different places at almost exactly the same time."

"Yeah. Everyone is talking about this in the same way. We know that Zymanski probably did this but how? You figure that one out and we can make a case."

The case went cold. No new evidence came to life and no progress was ever made on who or why five men were executed at the same time. Sgt Velasquez never forgot the case. The case files were always somewhere close to his desk. As he got ready to retire after some 38 years on the force, he sat down to take one last look at the files.

The folders were now thick with notes. He had methodically tracked every lead he could find and documented the outcome. Nothing ever came close to being an answer to that riddle. He knew, deep in his soul, that Zymanski had been behind those killings but he could never find a single bit of evidence that there was a conspiracy or any other plausible explanation. It used to cause him sleepless nights. Now he was going to close that file folder for the last time, take his wife, Terri, Tote Velazquez and go quietly into retirement.

He was surprised to get a note from someone he had never expected to hear from again. The note from Dr. Allen Zymanski asked that he come to the Rightborn University Convalescent care center. He had nothing else to do until the retirement party that night. He closed the file, closed the door to the office, and headed to his car.

He found the convalescent center and introduced himself. The nurse attendant had led him toward the back of the center and into a room with a beautiful view of a manicured garden. The man he saw looked nothing like the Zalynski he had seen many years ago. The old man in the hospital bed was gaunt and clearly not well. Jaime Velasquez introduced himself and saw Zymanski smile weekly before he began to talk in a feeble almost whisper.

"Thank you for coming. I thought I owed you a little closure."

"I appreciate that. Today is my retirement day."

"I know. I saw it in the papers. Congratulations. I understand you married that pretty little detective that used to accompany you."

Jaime smiled.

"That I did. Best thing I have ever done."

"Good for you. I wish I could say that. I haven't seen my wife since that day at the station. I divorced her and never looked back."

"That's probably the wisest move."

"No. THe wisest move I made was to get my revenge."

"How so?"

Zymanski coughed for a few minutes before he could continue.

"I killed everyone of those bastards that my wife was fucking."

Jaime raised his eyebrows.

"That would take some doings since all of those murders occurred at basically the same time, miles apart and you were in your office at the university."

"Not if you have a very thorough understanding of time and space and some of the most sophisticated technology in the world."

"I'm listening."

" My colleagues and I had been researching how time behaves in and around the edges of black holes. We had made some amazing discoveries and basically set physics research off into a whole new direction. I had been looking at some of our research and discovered some interesting things. That resulted in me building a small device that could mimic the event horizon around a blackhole for a few seconds. I improved it over time until I could basically manipulate time in the vicinity of the device for about 15 minutes at a time.

With improvements and the use of the university's supercomputer, I figured out how to use those time disruptions to my advantage. I could effectively slip through time for brief periods. I could time travel both backward and forward. When the process broke down I was immediately returned to wherever I was. The big challenge was controlling where I went and when I stopped. It took everything that a super computer had to make those calculations.

I had discovered my wife's cheating a few weeks before. I planned my activities meticulously. WHen that day came, I went to work, went into my office and down to the lab in the basement and got ready. For the next 30 minutes I slipped up and down time. In that 30 minutes I completed 5 murders, all within a few seconds of each other, at specific times and placed. The last was Adamson as he was fucking my wife.

I then came up out of the lab and waited in my office for you to come. The rest is history."

"That is a fantastic story Dr. Highly implausible I think, given what I know about physics and time."

The old man smiled.

"I didn't expect you would believe it. But that is the way I did it. I got revenge and I got away with it. But there was one big cost that I failed to consider in my plan."

"What was that?"

"The research I had done and the device I had built were world changing. I would probably have won the Nobel prize. But I discovered that I couldn't let anyone else know about my discoveries. If I had made it public, written the papers and continued the research, it would have been readily apparent how I had managed to kill those men the way I did. The cost of my revenge was to forego the accolades I would have received and the vast wealth it would have brought me. I was relegated to spending the rest of my life as an unknown and little appreciated physicist."

"Why are you telling me this now?"

Zymanski grinned.

"I figured not being able to solve that case was still eating at you. I thought you deserved a little peace in your retirement that I never got. There is no statute of limitations on murder. I was stuck keeping my secret."

"You could let your secret go now. You will still be recognized for your accomplishments."

"No. I have thought about this a lot. I am convinced that this ability to shift up and down timelines is one that would be too big of a temptation to human kind. I could open up all kinds of probabilities that I don't want to let loose on the world. My secrets will go to my grave, which my doctors assure me is only weeks away. But you deserved an answer."

I looked at the old man laying in the hospital bed. He had a secret that could change humanity forever. However, I could see the wisdom in his reasoning. I stood and offered him my hand.

"Dr. I appreciate your candor. I think I understand why you did what you did. Given the opportunities you had, I am not sure I wouldn't have done it myself in your circumstances. Your secret is safe with me."

I smiled and left. I got the call a few weeks later. He had died in that hospital bed, alone. Terri and I have enjoyed a wonderful retirement. We don't go and do as much as we once did but we still manage to have a good time. I never have told her what Zymanski told me that day at the care center. I decided to leave that where it was. It is a cold case that still confounds the best criminal minds several times a year. There have been TV shows made about it and lots of outlandish theories about how it was done. I smile everytime I see or hear them. Sometimes it is just a matter of time.