Buried Treasure by Vincent Madison

Chapter 2

Just the Facts

Tom was sitting at his desk in the Metro Police station, the old rusted box sitting open in front of him. Kate was working at the desk next to Tom, typing intently on her keyboard.

  “Did you see what was in this box?” Tom asked.

   Kate looked up.  “Yeah – a bunch of old crap.”

  “Not just any old crap.”

Kate picked up an evidence list from the desk – “Let me see – one pair of antique binoculars…” Tom reached into the box and pulled out a pair of what looked like World War 2 vintage binoculars. “…one small metal toy DC-3 plane…” He pulled out a small silver toy plane. Kate continued to read the list as Tom pulled the corresponding items out of the box, one by one. “…one reel of processed Super 8 mm movie film, one newspaper…”

“That’s it!” Tom exclaimed. “The newspaper!”

The newspaper was yellowed with age and the paper was brittle and crumbled on the edges.

“What about it?” Kate asked

“It’s from the future.” Tom replied as if it were obvious.

“OK” Kate responded, waiting for some further clarification.

“I’m not kidding. The newspaper is dated September 23^rd 2008.”

“And how do you know it’s not just a fake?” Kate asked.

“Well…” Tom squirmed and shifted in his chair. “I…umm…figured it looked real.”

“You FIGURED it LOOKED real?” Kate looked at Tom in astonishment. “That’s top notch detective work.”

“But what if it really IS from the future?” Tom did not want his idea to die a quick death due to logic.

“Tell you what.” Kate smiled. “Come and see me in the future – say on September 23^rd 2008, and then maybe I’ll believe you.” Her smug smile left no doubt that there was nothing else to say.

Tom would have kept arguing his point, but just then, their boss, Lieutenant Dennis Becker walked in. Becker was a cool, casual yet no-nonsense kind of guy. Clint Eastwood was his hero, and he imagined he was Dirty Harry sometimes. He was six feet two and clean-shaven with short brown hair, well groomed and with a chiseled chin and a kind of grin that was always there, unless he was in a foul mood. He did not seem to be in a foul mood today. He wore lightly faded jeans and a white dress shirt, his police badge on his belt.

Tom was always eager to win some brownie points, so quickly spoke up.

  “What’s up boss?”

  “What did you two find over at Joker’s Hill?”

Always sarcastic, Kate could not resist responding:

  “Why it’s called ‘Joker’s Hill.”

Brown-noser Tom ignored her:

  “Actually, we may have found an actual artifact from the future – proving that time travel really works!!”

Becker stroked his chin and looked serious.

  “Really? Well that sounds interesting. Why don’t you dig a little deeper and see what you can find out?”

Tom seemed a little surprised at the response.

  “Sure boss… We’re right on it.”

Becker turned and left the office.

Kate paused until she was sure that Becker was out of earshot.

  “You know, I can never tell if he is serious or if he is just using us for his amusement.”

Tom smiled a huge smile.

  “Who cares? This is awesome!”

  “Yeah – awesome.” Kate’s tone betrayed just how far from awesome she thought this whole thing was. “Look Tom, send that newspaper down to forensics and get them to do an analysis on it, and the rest of the box contents. I’m not believing anything until I see some hard evidence, and I have a feeling your time travel box is just another one of those wild goose chase cases we keep getting assigned. I just have to figure out why.”