OBJET D’ART EXCERPT
Chapter 1
Sean Barrick could not pull his eyes
from the smart phone in his hand even
as his primal instinct for nutrition
knotted and rumbled at the center of
his stomach. He had just watched
video evidence proving his claim all
along; he was not the mastermind
behind the attempted theft of stolen
jewels three years before during the
Hurricane Sandy tragedy. This video
evidence was indisputable; his rookie partner, Officer Dale
Kalb, attempted to steal jewels freshly stolen minutes
before from a jewelry store with its security system
powered down from the storm. Had this video evidence
existed at the time, Sean would still be a law enforcement
officer. That’s not the way it played out. This video didn’t
exist until recently. The woman he’d come to know as Elyse
had traveled back in time to film it for him.
If this wasn’t personally world-shattering enough for Sean,
in his lap sat another conundrum: a stack of photographs
that simply could not exist. They showed impossible events
featuring people who could not have been present at the
time. Here was photographic evidence that time travel was
not only possible, but occurred on a frequent basis. These
were pictures of his grandfather, Paul, and Elyse during
historic moments in time. Elyse and Paul at the failed
Reagan assassination attempt in 1981. Elyse filming the
1963 assassination of President Kennedy at Dealey Plaza in
the now-iconic guise of the Babushka Lady. Pictures of
Elyse out of scenes described in Paul’s World War II journal.
Sean just saw her forty-five minutes before, and she
appeared no different in any of these photos.
These were both life-altering discoveries, not only for him,
but for every person drawing a breath on the planet. But
his main concern right now seemed to be hunger. He
hadn’t eaten anything since roughly four-o-clock that day
while waiting for darkness to cover their unlawful entry
into the Louisiana Memorial Pavilion of the World War II
Museum in New Orleans. It had only been two sugar-filled
protein bars and a water from a Time Saver convenience
store, like the one he saw outside the passenger window of
Allie’s car. That meal—if you could call it that—had quit on
him an hour before, and his body was escalating the
demand for more.
He looked around again, the fourth or fifth time he’d
checked his surroundings in the last ten minutes. Was it his
police training; that ever-present tickle of paranoia in the
back of his mind? Was it just a nervous release of energy
after the last few hours of mainlining adrenaline? Was it
low blood sugar? He contemplated buying food in the Time
Saver but he didn’t want to leave these truth bombs in the
car alone. Maybe he should find a drive-through?
Above him, sprouting from a tall pole, a single high-
intensity sodium lamp burned, casting a dingy, yellow light
into his borrowed car. The chirp of countless crickets and
the recurrent Doppler-altered hum of large trucks hurtling
past on nearby Interstate 10 rode atop the muggy air
entering through the open driver’s side window, but no
sirens yet. Thirty feet away, a young kid driving a four-door
coupe filled his gas tank while he scrolled on his smart
phone. On the far bank of pumps, a large pickup truck sat
with oversize tires and a pie plate-sized exhaust stack
poking through the bed. Sean couldn’t see the driver, but
that would be a poor choice of undercover vehicles if
someone were watching him. A four-door sedan sat empty
in one of the parking spots at the front of the store. He
couldn’t see inside but it was likely another hungry
traveler, although the common, nonspecific car set off
alarm bells.
Finally, a sliver of logical thought tumbled through the
noise of his self-induced paranoid psyche. The police
would likely canvass convenience stores like this one on
the outskirts of the city near large highways and someone
might remember a nervous-looking guy in a white Honda
parked nearby. He needed distance. He would push
himself another fifty or sixty miles to the next cluster of
restaurants and gas stations on Interstate 10, and then
perhaps take the photos and this cell phone with him in
the backpack. He still had the Glock .40 caliber in a holster
at his side that he would have to conceal before entering a
public place.
He dragged his attention back to the cell phone in his
hand. The screen was blank, having entered sleep mode to
save battery power. Did it only contain the video that
proved his innocence of the jewelry heist or were there
other clues on it he missed? He decided to look again at
the next stop. He began to set it down on the seat beside
him when a piercing ring split the relative silence and
caused him nearly to drop the phone. The screen lit up
with a generic unknown caller screen, daring him to
answer it. Was it Elyse calling him? Nobody else would
have this number, he thought. It had to be her. Another
ring screamed at him before he stabbed the green dot with
his finger and held the phone to his ear.
“Hello,” he said, quietly, almost reverently, as if a long-lost
elderly relative was at the other end. At first, he only heard
his own racing heartbeat thudding in his ears, but then a
voice came from the small speaker.
“Hello, we’ve been trying to reach you regarding your car’s
extended warranty. You should have received something in
the mail—”
Sean swore as he jerked the phone from his ear and
tapped the connection closed. I’m being foolish, he
thought, Elyse isn’t going to call. Besides, she could just call
me on the burner phone we bought, why call on this one?
It was time to go. He reached for the keys dangling in the
ignition and looked out the windshield. Something new
met his gaze that wasn’t present just moments before,
pausing his arm in mid-reach. A shadowy figure stood sixty
feet away near a stretch of trees and thick brush on the
other side of the gas pumps. Perhaps it was his current
state of mind but the figure appeared to stare directly at
him. Sean stared back. The figure began walking toward
the car. As Sean’s heartbeat began to accelerate, his hand
slowly moved away from the ignition and toward the
holster at his side.
Elyse was his first thought. Had she slipped away from her
partner, Sands? Had she somehow checked the historical
record to see where he would stop for a look at the
photos? As he scrutinized the figure walking closer to him,
he realized it was not Elyse. It was likely not a woman at all.
He’d watched Elyse walk before, with her shorter strides
and swaying hips; this person did not fit that pattern.
These were long strides with exaggerated arm and
shoulder movements; no, this was a man. Sean removed
the pistol fully from his holster and rested it on his lap,
muzzle pointing toward his door.
The man continued walking closer, angling his approach
toward the car’s driver side. Sean could tell he wore a hat,
possibly an eight-point patrolman’s cap like he used to
wear as a police officer in Philly. Had his premonition
about leaving come seconds too late? Had the police found
him already? In the coarse yellow light of the sodium lamp,
Sean began to make out the finer details of the man’s
clothing. It wasn’t a police officer’s uniform. He appeared
to be wearing bib overalls like you would use for working
outside in the cold.
As the man drew near the front of the car, Sean saw that
they were not bib overalls. They were just overly baggy
trousers that came up aggressively high on his waist. His
hat was not a police officer’s cap, but instead a fedora, like
gangsters wore in the 1930s. The shirt looked like a
bowling alley button-down special with a wide-collar and
thick brown and tan vertical stripes. It fit right in with the
fedora. And were those shoes two-tone Oxfords? Had this
man just come from a costume party?
With the window already down and the mugginess of the
Louisiana night still billowing in, Sean waited for the
costumed man to reach him. His gait slowed as he neared
the open window of the car. He held his hands away from
his body in an obvious gesture of nonaggression. The
overhead light cast long shadows on the man’s face, but
Sean picked out the generic details of a police description.
Caucasian, medium athletic build, short brown hair,
earnest face. Also, there was a hint of familiarity. He didn’t
ever remember meeting this man but felt like he knew him.
He looked like… like… well, quite a bit like…
“You probably don’t want to shoot me,” the man said, “that
might not be good for either one of us.”
Sean knew that voice, or at least he knew an older version
of it. The version from his memory carried a slightly higher
pitch and a sandpapery quality due to thinning of the vocal
cords, a natural result of the aging process. The last time
he heard his grandfather speak, the words bore an
underlying quiver, the aural equivalent to the mild tremors
in an octogenarian’s outstretched hand. This man’s voice
carried no such tremor; it was rich and deep, bursting with
the vigor of youth. Despite these obvious differences, Sean
knew this voice well; beyond doubt.
“Gramps?”
This was the voice of his grandfather, Paul Barrick. The
man looked just like the picture on his grandparents’
mantel of Paul wearing his Army uniform from World War
II. It looked like the same man from the Kodachrome color
photo he’d just seen of his thirty-something grandfather
standing next to Elyse with London’s Big Ben in the
background. But this wasn’t possible. This man standing
before him in the fedora was easily sixty years younger
than his grandfather, who, in the ultimate closing-
argument case-winning mic-drop, had just died less than
two weeks before.
“Maybe you should call me Paul from here on out.”
Hunger finally forgotten, Sean nodded, unsure what to do
or say next.
His grandfather’s lookalike waited a beat, then continued,
“Do you mind if I come around to the passenger side and
get in. This might look a little odd to the folks pumping
gas.”
“Uh, yeah, of course,” Sean nodded and aimed a weak
pointer finger toward the opposite door. While Paul
worked his way around the front of the car, Sean couldn’t
stop tracking the man with his eyes. As Paul opened the
door, flooding the interior with light, Sean noticed the
objects on the seat. He quickly grabbed the photo
envelope and cell phone with an awkward reach of his left
hand, maintaining his grip on the gun with his right. Paul
sat and in the momentary brightness of the car’s interior,
the man’s features came into focus. He had to admit, Elyse
was correct; under the brim of that fedora, he and Paul
really did look alike, at least at this age. In the last vestiges
of light before the door thudded closed, Sean realized he
was staring at him, but Paul was staring right back with the
same look of astonished skepticism.
“They didn’t tell me I had such a handsome grandson,” Paul
said, an almost imperceptible smirk pulling up one corner
of his mouth.
Sean couldn’t stop the chuckle from rising out of his throat.
“That’s funny, because we look alike. That’s something I
would say.”
“Well, it looks like you got my sense of humor, too.” He
glanced down at the envelope in Sean’s hand. “I see you
found the photographs.”
Sean nodded as his mind ratcheted past the shock of this
new reality to the explanation. Time travel! First, without
any substantial proof to speak of, Elyse had convinced him
it was real. Chalk that up to feminine wiles, he thought.
Then, just an hour ago, Gabriel Sands easily and smugly
shot holes in her story with the obvious truth that any ten-
year-old kid could have digitally doctored a photograph to
make time travel look real. He still remembered the sting
of feeling like an idiot. He didn’t want to believe Sands but
that explanation had logic on its side. It brought
believability and a rational explanation to this fiasco from a
broad, overall perspective. However, once he began
looking at the pictures in this envelope, his doubts again
fell away, and this time without the benefit of Elyse’s
captivating smile or alluring figure. Unless all the
photographs in the envelope were fake, which seemed
unlikely, time travel was indeed a reality and now,
irrefutable proof was sitting in the seat next to him.
“Yeah, uh, right there at the bottom of your footlocker
where you hid them.”
“I left clues, but I wasn’t certain who I was leaving them
for.”
“At some point you must have decided it was me. You gave
me subtle hints over the years that sounded like lessons in
photography and life.” In the thin light of the security pole
outside, Sean saw a satisfied smile touch the corners of
Paul’s mouth. “And actually,” Sean continued, “these aren’t
all the pictures; just the ones Elyse left for me.”
“Is that what she calls herself now?”
Realizing he was still holding the gun, Sean slid it back into
the holster and nodded. “Yeah, Elyse Somerville.”
“That’s a new one.”
Sean’s stare was beginning to feel awkward, but he couldn’t
pull it away. “Are you really Paul Barrick?”
Paul laughed and nodded. “I really am. I don’t have any
proof. They frown on us bringing identification on these
trips.”
Sean shook his head. “Not necessary. I know it’s you, I can
see it and I can hear it. I just can’t believe it. It feels like it’s
you and a totally separate person at the same time. It’s
hard to square in my mind.”
“Well, this is new for me, too. They tell me you’re my
grandson and I can see the resemblance but I don’t even
have a wife yet.”
Sean thought about his grandmother, Dee, a girl Paul
dated before the war, and wondered if Paul even knew he
would marry her. “Do you know anything about your
future?”
Paul shook his head, a little too vigorously. “No, and don’t
tell me anything. I don’t know the implications of insider
information.”
“Yeah, this time travel thing is bizarre.”
Paul nodded. “It takes some getting used to but after a
while, it becomes almost routine. It’s just like taking a trip
to a foreign country. Many things are different and you
have to remember where you are and what you’re doing at
all times.”
With an index finger and thumb, Sean forcefully massaged
a spot between his eyes over the bridge of his nose. “You’d
think with all the science fiction movies about time travel I
watched as a kid I’d be less shocked than I am right now.”
His arm dropped back down and he refocused on Paul,
hoping to assure himself he wasn’t hallucinating. “So, what
are you doing here?”
“Can we talk about it while you drive?”
Sean gave him a quick shrug and said, “Sure, where are we
going?” He reached toward the ignition to start the engine.
“The World War II Museum.”
Once again, Sean’s arm paused midway to the keys. He
looked at Paul but the sight of his grandfather as a young
man made his thoughts wander from their conversation.
Instead, he cranked his head back and looked at the
wooded strip of land where Paul appeared. “That’s not
happening. I just left there and the New Orleans PD will be
crawling all over that place.”
Paul turned in his seat and put a hand on Sean’s shoulder.
Sean reluctantly turned to look at him. “Son,” Paul said, a
name he often called Sean in his youth when the subject
mattered, “Kiva, I mean… what did you say her current
name was?”
“Elyse.”
“Right, Elyse, is in trouble. I need you to go with me to help
her.”
Again, the visual confusion of seeing Paul kicked in, so he
looked away. “Where is she?”
“Paris.”
Sean didn’t say anything but slowly turned his head again
to look at Paul. Each time it was the same. He saw a
familiar face staring back at him; one that he met in the
mirror every morning. The same eyes, the same jawline, it
was close enough they might have passed for twins,
almost. “And… when is she?”
“August 25, 1944.”
Sean voiced his reply slowly, adding a full stop between
each word. “You have got to be kidding.”
Paul shook his head. “I’m not kidding.”
“You want me to go to 1944? As in back in time?”
“Do you want to help Elyse or not?”
Sean studied his grandfather’s face. If not for the similarity,
he might not have believed any of this, despite the
photographs. But after everything he and Elyse went
through, he felt a bond with her. Perhaps it was that one
night of drunken passion, but a bond is a bond.
“How is us getting thrown in jail going to help Elyse?”
Paul chuckled. “We’re not going to jail tonight. Trust me.
The smart people at the Bureau have worked this all out.”
“The Bureau?”
A flash of concern swept Paul’s face, then the easy smile
returned. “I think I can say that. It’s just what we call it.”
“The time travel…” Sean struggled for a word to complete
his sentence, but Paul saved him.
“Thing. Yeah, that, uh, group of people. I’d tell you the
entire name but it sounds a little odd.”
Sean hesitated as the moments ticked by. He had to admit,
going back in time piqued his curiosity. How many people
could say they traveled back in time, although, he knew he
wouldn’t be able to tell anyone, even if it were true. His
previous experiences with Elyse taught him that. And in
1944 the war was almost over, wasn’t it? How dangerous
could it be?
“Okay, how can I say no?” His hand resumed its journey to
the keys but he stopped short of starting the engine. “But
first, you’re going to have to change out of those clothes
into something modern and lose the hat.”
Paul looked down at his baggy, high-waisted pants and
striped shirt and said, “No problem. This wasn’t the
greatest era for fashion. Do you have any extra clothes or
do we need to buy some?”
The thought of Paul wearing the “Show me your kitties!”
shirt that Allie bought for Elyse gave him a brief smile
before he pointed a thumb at the rear of the car and said,
“I have some stuff that will probably fit you in that gray
duffel back there. You can change in the Time Saver
bathroom.”
“Okay,” Paul said. “Do you have any money? I need to buy
something.”
Sean pulled his wallet out and handed him a twenty. “Buy a
couple waters and a big bag of trail mix while you’re at it.”