Justification For Killing (51 page)

“
Oh, sorry Sis, I got
carried away. Okay, ‘The Plan’, there is only one way in and only
one way out of the mansion – it’s the long driveway. I figure we
can park across the street from the driveway entrance and wait
until around 6 or 6:30 tonight. While waiting we will change into
Clem’s chauffeur and Penelope’s maid outfit, and when the time
comes we drive down the driveway. That’s it Sis, I’m blank, I have
nothing more.”

“
What do you mean, ‘That’s
it’! That’s It! Are you crazy Forrest? Where is ‘The
Plan’?

“
Okay, I have exhausted
all I had on ‘The Plan’, I only figured on getting to the Murdock
house. Now I need to come up with something else, let me
think...”

“
Okay genius,” Olive Marie
said. “What about this: the party will probably begin, I’d say,
around sevenish or so. The guests should start arriving about 7:00
or 7:30. You stay outside, dressed in your cute, black, chauffeur’s
uniform and take note of the guests coming into the house. Just
mingle with the other chauffeurs; they will never get wise to your
plans.

“
I will, at the same time,
go around back to the kitchen entrance. I will tell the person in
charge of the serving staff that I was sent over from the temp
agency to help with the party. They probably have so many servants;
they will never notice one more server. Once I get inside, I’ll
carry drinks and hors d’oeuvres to the guests and listen to any
conversation I might hear. If I see President Johnson come in, I
will try to work near the room where he is supposed to have his
‘assassination’ meeting and see if I can hear what they are talking
about.”

“
Dog-gone it Sis, that
sounds like an interesting plan, it might actually work. In fact,
that was almost the same plan I was about to come up
with.”

“
Yeah, right, but we have
another problem Forrest, the tank was full when we left Grandpa’s
cow pasture, but by the time we get to Clint Murdock’s estate we
will be running on fumes. Do you have any money?”

“
No problem Sis, I have
about two hundred dollars in my wallet.”

“
What type
money?”

“
What do you mean what
type? Fives, tens and twenties... good ole American greenbacks,
cash, dough, you know, spending money.”

“
Forrest, you cannot use
our ‘new’ currency. Remember we are in 1963!! Our money is not real
to these people. Your money is from the 21st century. It is fake
money to them. Wait, what is that look you are giving me? What?
What is it Forrest?”

“
I left some money for
Clem and Penelope on their hallway table. Two ten-dollar bills -
two new 2012 ten-dollar bills!”

“
What are we going to do
Forrest? The money is probably not a problem anyway, I’m sure all
the service stations are closed due to this blizzard.”

“
Give me a minute, let me
think... We can’t worry about Clem and Penelope now, but, you’re
right, gas is a big problem. I noticed a garden hose and an empty
five-gallon gasoline can in the bed of this truck. We need to find
a car and ‘borrow’ some of its gas.”

“
You mean steal it!!!
Forrest I’m ashamed of you, stealing someone’s gas!!”

“
You got a better idea, or
do you just want to sit in this truck and let your toes and fingers
freeze when we run out of gas? In addition to being froze we will
miss the Murdock party, besides you already said I couldn’t leave
any more of my ‘new’ money for payment, so yes ‘steal’ it, it’s the
only way. I’m sorry, but sometimes a wrong is not necessarily
wrong. There are international laws in the case of emergencies that
cover situations just like ours.”

“
Where did you hear such a
ridiculous idea?”

“
I don’t know, but it
sounds better than ‘stealing’.”

Thinking hard about their
predicament, she reluctantly said, “I’ll keep an eye out for an
empty car where the owner has abandoned their vehicle. Hope we can
find one with a full tank!”

The likelihood of finding
such an automobile seemed particularly good – no one else was crazy
enough to be out on this wind and snow driven road on this cold,
blustery, wintery day. The automobiles that had ventured out and
gotten caught in the storm were being left unattended up and down
the county road leading to the main Highway 279.

A few miles down the
snow covered Farm to Market Road Forrest noticed a Texas highway
sign. Although, partially covered with windblown snow, he could
barely read the numerals “279”. The rest of the sign was illegible,
but he was sure it was indicating the main thoroughfare lay just
ahead. Before entering the road south to Dallas, they had noticed a
large grouping of cars had been left on the side of the road. Their
owners abandoned them to seek shelter from the blizzard.
Perfect opportunity
thought Forrest.

“
Stop anywhere in the road
Sis. You cannot pull over to the side, but it doesn’t matter there
is no traffic on this road anyway. Stay here in the cab, keep the
heater going and I will be right back.”

Jumping out of the truck,
Forrest grabbed the five-gallon can and a six-foot section of
rubber garden hose. He had not lost his siphoning skills, in a
couple of minutes he had a can full of fuel. Using a funnel from
the back of the truck Forrest had the five gallons poured into
their tank in no time; however, he could not pass up the
opportunity – he quickly moved on to another vehicle and withdrew
another can of gasoline. Getting back into the truck after pouring
the last five gallons into their tank, he tried to thaw his frozen
hands with the warm air coming from the heater vent. “Ooh Forrest,
you smell of gasoline.”

“
Fine, complain of the
smell as you stay nice and warm for the next few hours.”

Once they started down the
main highway, Highway 279 to Dallas, instead of making better time,
stranded vehicles left in the road hampered their progress. Olive
Marie had to maneuver around the abandoned cars and trucks, paying
close attention not to slide into any of them or off the road into
the roadside ditch.

Little did Forrest
and Olive Marie realize it, but their
Pegasus
ride back to 2012 was at
that precise moment, beginning to dematerialize and was about to
disappear. For the last five minutes, it had been sitting in full
view in the cow pasture, northwest of Celina, Texas with its
entrance hatch opened widely awaiting someone to enter; however, no
one would enter since the two people it was waiting on were at this
very minute traveling down the snowbound Texas Highway 279 from
Celina to Dallas, Texas.

They were about to
miss their
Pegasus
return flight home!

The time was 12:29,
Thursday, November 21.

Chapter Forty

GOOD NEWS, BAD
NEWS

Captain Scarburg was
finishing his second cup of coffee preparing to pour his third when
the door to his office burst open. He had been at his office since
early yesterday morning and had pulled an all-nighter waiting on
answers. It was a few minutes past 4 a.m., almost twenty-four hours
since
Pegasus
‘vanished’. Startled, Grandpa turned to seek the source of
the intrusion. It was Mike Watkins.

“
What the devil Mike...
come on in... hope you have good news.”

“
Sorry,
Captain, but I knew you wanted answers to the missing
Pegasus
, and you wanted
them as soon as possible. I got’em. As you know, we worked all day
yesterday and on through the night. The persons who took
Pegasus
were clever;
they switched off all the cameras and disabled all our intrusion
detection devices in effect, at the time
Pegasus
disappeared. We could not
see anything. We had no apparent photographic images, but they did
leave a few nice fingerprints on the buttons and knobs they turned
to change the flight setting. We extracted the prints and have
spent most of the last twenty-four hours having the FBI identify
whom they were.”

“
Grab a seat Mike and fill
me in. What did you find out?”

“
Captain, I’ve got some
good news and some bad.”

“
Oh Mike, please...okay,
give me the good news first.”

“
We know
who ‘stole’
Pegasus
.”

“
All right give me the
bad.”

“
It was Forrest and Olive
Marie!”

“
What? You must be
mistaken! Not Forrest and Olive Marie, they are probably at home
right this very minute.”

“
Already checked Captain,
both are missing.”

“
I’m not totally
surprised, especially after we found his coat, and neither of them
came into work yesterday either. They both were upset because I
would not let them have an actual part in going back to Dallas.
What other information do you have Mike?”

“
The security-monitoring
camera and computer systems have a backup, but the backup system
had been compromised too. We knew from the beginning it was an
inside job since it took someone with detailed knowledge of our
security systems to change the passwords that allowed us to get
into the various computers, and see the security footage. It took
our computer guys most of the day and into the night to break the
codes, but by the time they had figured them out we had gotten the
fingerprint information back from the FBI. The prints were a
perfect match for Forrest and Olive Marie.

“
Once we
were able to gain access, the backup camera system plainly shows
Forrest resetting the launch commands on the master control panel,
and we also saw both of them entering
Pegasus
. Forrest set the launch time
for ten minutes from the time he pressed the ‘
LAUNCH
’ button – ten minutes later
your time-machine vanished, along with Forrest and Olive
Marie.”

Topping off his cup
Captain Scarburg walked across the room and sat down. His face was
expressionless. Sitting there the Captain stared off into space as
if no one were in the room with him, Mike asked, “Captain! Captain,
are you all right?”

Taking a sip from his cup,
he turned his attention to Mike as if he had not heard Mike’s
comment, “Okay, now the big question. Did you determine the
destination and period of time they where trying to
achieve?”

“
Captain, I have not changed any settings on
Pegasus
since you
returned, and the recording computers indicate Forrest only changed
the setting for the departure date. He changed it to yesterday’s
date December 6, 2012. Forrest and Olive Marie were going back to
Texas. If all went well they should have arrived on the same day
and in the same place as you did previously. That would be 12:30
p.m., Wednesday, November 20, 1963 in your cow pasture near Celina,
Texas.

“
Yeah, you’re right. The
time and the place had been erroneously changed on the onboard
computers. Shouldn’t your master control computer have the arrival
date as Friday, November 22, 1963?”

“
There was one abnormality
to your flight I discovered we didn’t know existed until now. The
man I talked to... Clem something or other...”

“
Yes, Clem
Ruby.”

“
Right,
Clem Ruby, he reset
Pegasus’s
computer, but he could change the onboard
computer only. The master computer here at SCAR picked up on the
change and reprogrammed itself. In doing so the master computer
changed another extremely critical date - it changed the Parallel
Universe. You left in one Parallel Universe and returned in
another. They left in the current Universe, but they are going to
arrive in a totally different Parallel Universe. The master
computer indicates they are going to another Parallel Universe, one
yet to be identified.

“
You mean they will not
arrive in the same Parallel Universe I was in? What are you saying
Mike, speak to me so I can understand! How could this
happen?”

“
Captain, we never anticipated someone would be able to change
the onboard computer to a different time and date as originally set
on the master computer. The circuitry on the master just
duplicated
Pegasus’s
computer when it began its return flight, and changed its
internal program accordingly.” For some reason, unless we
specifically program in the specific Parallel Universe we want to
travel to, the master computer will assign the next available
Universe in its program.”

“
I think
I am beginning to understand - tell me if I am wrong - Forrest and
Olive Marie changed the departure date to yesterday Thursday,
December 6, 2012 at 4:35 a.m. They were destined to Celina, Texas
and should arrive on Wednesday, November 20, 1963 but in a
different Parallel Universe.
Pegasus
will leave Texas on
Saturday, November 23, 1963 at 12:30. How am I
doing?”

“
Good, but not so good
Captain. You have it right until the coming back part. The master
computer has them locked into a return exactly twenty-four hours
after their arrival. That would be 12:30 on Thursday, November 21,
1963! They do not have until Saturday the 23rd!”