Martin Cordemann

How To Kill Yourself With Time Travel

The Polizeit Investigator

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

13:00

13:01

13:02

13:03

13:04

13:05

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13:06

13:07

13:08

13:09

13:10

13:09

13:13

Impressum neobooks

13:00

“That's... something you don't get to see very often!” I had to admit.

Actually it was something you usually didn't get to see at all. I mean, ever! At least not in your own lifetime. For obvious reasons.

“Looks like me,” I said.

“It is you.”

“And I am really dead?”

“Yup!”

There you are, obvious reason!

“So, I presume...”

“Oh, don't presume. It is you and you are dead,” Cause confirmed.

“Bedside manner?!” I asked.

“I am not your doctor, am I?” He glanced at the body. “And even if I was, there would be nothing I could do.”

“You could be...”

“More nicely? More not so brisk? In a 'Hey, Sal, I've got good news and bad news for you, the bad news is, that you're dead and the good news is... you can find out who did it' kind of way?!”

“Would have sounded nicer.”

“It would?”

“No, come to think of it, it wouldn't.”

“My condolences, if that should help.”

“It does not.”

“Actually, I didn't think it would,” he admitted. Ethan Cause, Time Travel Detective of the Polizeit... just like me, only less dead. Well, actually I wasn't dead... yet!

Cause smiled at me.

“What?”

“You just figured it out, didn't you?”

“Figured what out?”

“That you are not dead yet. Sooo...”

“I can find out how I died?”

He smiled brightly.

“Exactly. Isn't that exciting?”

“Would you find it exciting to investigate your own murder?”

“I would love it!”

And I believed him. Yes, he would. He was one of those people who actually liked time travel and the whole shebang. He would get a kick out of this. Finding his own body, not knowing, what happened to it, to him... to me, to be exact. It wasn't his corpse we were all staring at. It was mine. And I still hadn't gotten over that. How in the nine hells of time travel could that be? Well, I guess I answered that myself. By time travel, obviously. But that didn't explain why it was here and now and dead and foremost: who the fuck did it???

“So do you want it?” Cause asked.

“Want what?”

“The case.” He pointed at my dead body. “Of your murder.” He looked at the coroner. “Murder?” The doctor nodded. “Murder. So, evidently this was not an accident, someone did this to you. Would you like to find out who it was or would you prefer someone else to do it?”

“Is it allowed... I mean, I'm part of this investigation.”

“Yeah, well, this is the Polizeit, so... nothing we do does really make sense. Investigate your own murder? Sure, why not? What could go wrong? Get yourself killed? Well, too late for that, isn't it?”

“Is it?”

“You know the answer, Sal.”

“History can't be changed.”

“It usually can not, no.”

“What if this isn't a usual situation?”

“Oh, it is none,” he grinned. “That we know for sure. But can it be changed? Well, doesn't seem like an Uncertainty Principle thingy to me. So do you want it or not?”

“Since when is that your decision to make?”

“It's not, but I talked to Captain Fect and she says it is. If you're up to the task.”

“You bet your ass I am.”

“I'd rather bet yours, but I concur.” His smile changed. “Good luck, Sal.”

“Thanks, Ethan.”

He turned around and left.

I turned around and glanced at the coroner.

“Good pep talk,” he grinned.

“You got a better one?”

“I got none at all. Also no bedside manner – and I am a doctor.”

“For the dead.”

“More of the dead... but that doesn't matter, does it? What matters is...” He pointed at...

“It's a corpse, Agent Schick. A body. A dead body. Your dead body. I'm afraid you have to face this fact.”

“I'm still working on it.”

“I can see that, but there is nothing helpful I could tell you.” He gave it a quick thought. “No, that came out wrong. There is nothing uplifting to say to you, like 'everything will be fine' or bullshit like that. Everything will not be fine, at least not for you. You, my friend, are gonna die. And not in a distant future and of old age, you are gonna die from a... gunshot wound, if I see that correctly. You also had a brief encounter with a knife... show me your forearms.”

I showed him.

“No, no wounds yet. So there's still some time. And they are not fatal.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“They healed. A little bit, at last. You had time to bandage them. Then you got shot.”

“By whom?”

“Don't know yet. But there's hope.”

“For me to ditch that bullet?”

“No, but to find out which gun it was shot from. It's still in your body, you know.”

“Yeah,” I murmured, “so there is good news.”

“Now you've got the right humor to deal with this,” the coroner grinned. His name, funny as it seemed, was Dr. Coroner, and he always said that gave him not a real choice career wise. “So, find out who did this to you. And...”

“...yes, I know, try not to change history.”

“Well, I presume the Polizeit would prefer you to avoid that.”

“Changing history... or my death?!”

“It's the same, isn't it?” he smiled. “See you in two hours, than I can probably tell you who killed you.”

13:01

I had to admit the whole thing kinda ruined my day. Not that it was a great day anyway, but finding out that you will be killed in maybe a matter of days and knowing that for sure kinda sets you into a bad mood. So how did this probably last day of my life start? Quite normally, I would say. I woke up, prepared for work, some interviews in a case about a time traveling serial killer, but then the office called and Captain Fect said: “Wanna see something mind blowing?”

Of course I wanted. So I went there. A small park. Autumn. Cold. More browns than greens. Trees like skeletons. And a figure in black. Lying on the cold ground. Cause was there, the coroner was there, some of Polizeit's Finest had build a perimeter around the black figure. I showed my badge, they showed some respect... except for Cause, of cause. He stepped into my way, before I could find out, what was going on... or who was lying there.

“This is... different,” he opened.

“Different how?”

“Different... completely.”

“Mind blowingly?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“What is it?”

“Someone you know.”

“Closely?”

“Very.”

“Someone I liked?”

“Guess so.”

“Whom I'm gonna miss?”

“Technically... no.”

“Are you going to tell me anytime soon?”

“I'd rather not.”

“But?”

“Guess I have to.”

“So who in the nine hells of time travel is it?”

“Sal... you're not gonna like this.”

“I think it's a dead body, someone I know, evidently, murder and by that a crime, possibly, so no, I'm not gonna like it.”

“As I said...”

“You said nothing!”

“As I indicated, it's... more personal this time.”

“How much?”

“Actually... more than even possible.” He sighed. “I'm not really sure, you should see it. It can... do things to you.”

“Is the body mutilated?”

“Thank god, no! But... it's not a pleasant sight. In some other sense. Which you will find out if you really want to see it.” He thought about it. “You don't have to.”

“Who's idea was it to bring me here?”

“That was mine,” he admitted. “But maybe it wasn't a good one. Maybe we should forget this ever happened and... see what happens. Uncertainty Principle and stuff?!”

“Would it help?”

“I doubt it.”

“Soooo,” it was my time to sigh, “I was called here, I am here, I am, as you, an Agent for the Polizeit, so is this a case? Is it time travel related? And...? I can't think of a third point.”

“Then I answer to one and two with yes.”

“Is it my case?”

“If you want it.” He smiled. “If something like that happened to me, I would beg them to make it my case.”

“If what happened to you?”

“Finding my own dead body.”

“It is...”

“Oh, it's not mine. If it was, I would love it. In a morbid kind of way, of course. But wouldn't that be great? Having the opportunity to find out what happened to me and who killed me... probably.” He sighed thinking about that. “What a thrill. What an interesting concept.” He shook his shoulders. “But, as I said, it's not my corpse.”

“Are you saying, it's mine?” I gasped.

Cause nodded, slowly.

“Yeah, I'm not good at telling people stuff like that, so... I wanted you to figure it out for yourself.”

“You are saying I'm dead, probably murdered and my dead body is lying there in the bushes?!”

“Pretty much,” he nodded. “Wanna see?”

I had better starts into the day, but certainly not worse. It took me some time to comprehend. I'm still working on that, actually. Certain death, that's a rare concept. Well, actually it's not. Many have faced it. Sick people. People in planes, that were about to crash. Prisoners in front a firing squad. Okay, there are many possibilities for certain deaths, time travel only added one or two new ones. And this was one of them. My dead body, in a park, with a gunshot wound. But the why, the where, the who, all of that was still unknown. The coroner told me, that my body had been moved, meaning I hadn't been killed there. So why did the killer place my corpse somewhere easily to be found? There were lot's of questions, but they had to wait. First, I had lot's of other questions for some other people.

“Yes?” the person who opened the door asked.

“Good morning, Mr. Perkins?”

“Yes?!”

“My name is Sal Schick and I'm with the Polizeit.”

“Is it about our damn time distortions?”

“No, it's about the St. Patrick's Days Murders. May I come in?”

13:02

The St. Patrick's Days Murders were a time travel related crime, which made them ours to investigate. At least, we thought so. There were traces of time travel at each crime scene so we were quite sure, it fell into our jurisdiction. And so it was my task to visit the few remaining time travel agencies who offered trips into past or future to people who couldn't afford their own time machine... which were most. There were some people who voiced the opinion, time travel should be restricted to only the rich, some who meant it should be restricted to only the government and some who felt the same about the military. I was in the last two camps, but not the first. With rising costs, most time travel agencies had already gone out of business, but there were a few left and I hat to visit them all.

I arrived at a building, that used to be some kind of warehouse and might become one again, soon. It was the home of

TIME TO TIME TRAVEL

and it had seen better times. It was a wide flat building which seemed to have about two floors, but only one front door, which wasn't made out of glass and lead into a nice lounge, where the travelers to be could enjoy a drink while waiting to go on their trip, it was a door made of metal and not very inviting at all. But luckily there was a bell and so I rang it.

“Please, come in,” the man said. “We are...”

“Redecorating?”

“I wish,” he sighed. His name was Paul Perkins and he was the manager slash owner of this agency... which I confirmed which he confirmed.

“So we got that clear,” I smiled.

“Yes. I'm sorry, I would offer you a drink or something, but as you can see, we are about to go out of business. And by 'we' I mean 'I', cause there is no one else left.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” I lied. As any Polizeit Agent I was glad for any time travel agency being closed. They were always a pain in the astral movements and caused more trouble then they helped. They should have called them time trouble agencies, but they didn't. “What's the reason?”

“The costs. The permits. The equipment. It's too expensive and... it doesn't work any more. Let me show you.”

Perkins ran down a long corridor. At the end he stopped, turned back to me and shouted: “Oagen myla time.”

Then he ran back and, slightly out of breath, asked: “What did you hear?”

“Oagen myla time,” I repeated.

He laughed. “That fits. I said: 'Hello Agent Schick, this is my last day as a time travel agent.'”

I stared at him, question marks in my eyes, as they said in the old cartoons.

“Time distortions,” he explained.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Schick is my vel agent.”

“We got time distortions. As you can hear. Or at least, I think that's what that is. Our last remaining time machine is not in a good condition.”

“You mean, it's damaged.”

“Yeah, kinda. It still works, but... it also does this distortions. Throughout the whole building. Not really predictable when or where... and quite harmless, I guess.”

“You guess???”

“Yeah, well, my time technician is gone... Not dead, but has a new job. For the government, of course. So I can only suspect, that this is not very dangerous.”

“But it could be.”

“Yes, I suppose... But nothing has happened, yet.”

“That's what they said on the Titanic, until they met the iceberg.”

“Isn't that an old movie?”

“It's a timohazard is what this is!” And more than enough reasons to close this agency today! I had to send a team to dismantle everything and do some scans to see, if these imbeciles had done some greater harm to the space time continuum... but first I had some questions. “What do you know about the St. Patrick's Days Murders?”

Perkins scratched his head. “I read about them?”

“You don't seem too sure.”

“I'm not. I had a lot of problems with,” his gesture implicated the building, the agency, time itself.

“Ooookay,” I started, “does any of the following names ring a bell: Patrick Strand? Patrick Stevenson? Patrick Strahovski?”

“Nnnnno, I don't think so.”

“So you don't know anyone of them?”

He thought about it.

“No, I do not. Why?”

“Would you like to guess?”

“I would rather not.”

Probably a good decision.

“They have all been murdered.”

“By whom?”

“That's kinda the tricky part: We don't know yet. But here's where you come into play: In each of the murders a time machine was involved.”

“Uhhh!” he said.

But that seemed to remain all.

“And as you are a provider of time travel, you might have been in contact with the person who committed these crimes.”

“I... don't get it.”

It was my time to sigh. Intensely.

“As I said before, they are called the St. Patrick's Days Murders, and they are called that for a reason. For a few reasons, to be precise.”

“Which are?” Perkins looked at me with curiosity. Then his expression changed. “Or am I not allowed to know? Is it classified?”

“It is not.” Nothing about this damned case was classified. It might had helped if it was, but the press was all over the case and every detail could be found on the net. “Well, what do you know about St. Patrick's Day?”

“Something... Irish? Green? That's pretty much it.”

“Well, unfortunately our killer knows a little bit more about it. Although... maybe not that much more. It is being celebrated on March 17. And that seems to be the crucial part. Every murder occurred on a March 17. The first one two years ago, the second one last year and the third one this year. That's the first point. The second is, that all the victims also were born on March 17. And their first name is Patrick and their last name starts with an St, so you got a hint to 'St. Patrick': Patrick Strand,