The Eternity Project

by Dean Crawford

  Lopez raised an eyebrow. ‘I can see why that trip isn’t advertised as loudly.’

  ‘You think that people who have lived badly get the demon treatment, and those who have lived well head upstairs?’ Ethan asked. ‘Like heaven and hell?’

  Professor Bowen shook her head.

  ‘It would be nice to think so,’ she replied, ‘but studies have shown that there is no defined difference. Some people who have had more than one NDE have undergone both good and bad experiences. It seems to have more to do with the person’s state of mind than any particular sense of judgment.’

  ‘Which could rule out the afterlife evidence entirely,’ Lopez pointed out, ‘but not the ability of the soul to escape the body or the brain.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Professor Bowen replied. ‘The experiences of what people are so tempted to call heaven or hell may simply be an extension of the person’s psychological state at the time of death. A high percentage of attempted-suicide victims report distressing NDEs, which holds well with the hypothesis: they’re unlikely to be in a healthy mental state when they decide to take their own lives. What really interests me is the fact that the consciousness does indeed seem able to escape the body and brain, and it’s not just the person undergoing the experience that has witnessed this event.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Professor Bowen countered, ‘the experience provides knowledge that the recipient could not possibly have obtained through normal means.’

  ‘Such as?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘They’re called “Peak in Darien” cases, where a dying subject has a near-death experience and speaks to a family member whom they believed to be still alive but who now claimed to be dead. Upon recovery, they mention this strange meeting, and subsequent investigation reveals that the person in question has indeed died.’

  ‘Have there been many of these?’ Lopez asked, really interested now.

  ‘Countless,’ Professor Bowen replied. ‘One early example was recorded by Doctor Henry Atherton himself in 1680. His young sister died after a long sickness. Attendees placed live coals to her feet to no response and saw no breath on a mirror held to her face. But the girl later awoke and reported a vision of seeing heaven and several people who had died, one of whom was thought by the attendees to still be alive. They checked it out, and found that the girl was indeed correct.’

  ‘Anything a little more recent?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘There is the case of an elderly Chinese woman in the terminal stages of cancer who reported that her sister and husband visited her bed in visions, urging her to join them. She reported to a nurse that her sister was still alive in China, but they hadn’t met for many years. The nurse told this to the woman’s daughter, and was informed that the long-lost sister had died two days earlier of the same cancer, but the family had decided not to tell the patient to avoid upsetting her.’

  Lopez shrugged. ‘Okay, but there’s still nothing here that we can use to try to stop whatever’s killing these victims.’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Professor Bowen insisted. ‘I cannot speak for every paranormal event or haunting on our planet but, if there’s one thing that I have discovered over the past twenty five years, it’s that these things happen for a reason. The spirit of somebody is hunting people down and it must have some kind of goal in mind. You have three victims. Something must connect them, and, when you find out what that something is, you’ll be one step closer to figuring out how to stop the wraith.’

  Ethan raised an eyebrow. ‘You think we can stop it? We can’t even see it.’

  ‘It’s on a mission,’ Professor Bowen insisted, ‘just as some hauntings seem to involve spirits unable to move on from injustice and murder, so maybe this wraith cannot move on. It’s your call – let the killings continue, or find out why they’re happening and try to put a stop to it.’

  31

  ‘Tell me you’ve got something.’

  Karina Thorne pulled out into the stream of traffic as Ethan and Lopez settled into the rear seat, the university disappearing behind them. Lopez had called her as soon as they walked out of the university, eager to share the new information. Jarvis had climbed into the front seat, but Ethan had noticed that the old man had remained mysteriously quiet for some time.

  ‘We have,’ Lopez replied, ‘but you’re not going to like it.’

  Karina sighed as she glanced in the mirror.

  ‘You’ve got fifteen minutes before we get back to the station. Shoot.’

  Ethan filled her in on the details they’d learned from Professor Bowen. Karina seemed to take it all in well enough, but the response when Ethan was finished betrayed her disbelief.

  ‘You seriously think it’s a spook hunting down these victims?’

  ‘Supposedly so,’ Lopez confirmed, ‘and it fits what we saw in that courthouse. There was something with us.’

  ‘What the hell am I supposed to do with that?’ Karina asked. ‘Issue an arrest warrant for a poltergeist?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Ethan replied, ‘but right now, we need to get back to the station and look into the case and see if there’s a connection between the dead men in the warehouse and the dead clerk.’

  Karina frowned.

  ‘You think that Wesley Hicks and Connor Reece were with Gladstone and Earl Thomas, the guys who hit the Pay-Go and caused the accident?’

  ‘Is there a reason why they shouldn’t be?’ Lopez challenged.

  ‘Sure there is,’ Karina replied. ‘The men who hit the Pay-Go were hardened criminals, professionals, backed up by the two men we caught. Reece and Hicks were small fish, not the type capable of arranging a major heist.’

  ‘There wasn’t much major about the attack on the Pay-Go,’ Ethan pointed out, ‘in case you hadn’t noticed. Brute-force impact to rupture the armoured truck was enough to extract the cash, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Sure,’ Karina agreed, ‘it wasn’t graceful, but the men responsible would need serious connections or experience to make use of the money. The cases it’s sealed into on those trucks are equipped with trackers and ink dispensers that allow them to be followed and render the cash useless if the cases are forced open.’

  Ethan thought for a moment. ‘I’ve read about the spate of bank robberies down the east coast. It could be a copy-cat robbery, somebody mimicking the original gang in the hopes of avoiding arrest themselves if the original gang ends up being caught.’

  Karina shrugged. ‘I guess, but that’s speculation, and Donovan’s not going to let you just walk in and start sifting through the evidence.’

  ‘Donovan’s not going to have much choice,’ Jarvis said to Karina. ‘He starts obstructing us, I’ll have him removed from his office until we’re done.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Karina muttered, ‘this just gets better and better. He’ll hit the goddamned roof if you try that on him.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Ethan pointed out.

  ‘Tell Donovan that,’ Karina complained. ‘He’s losing control of a case that could cost us our jobs now that the media’s getting involved and budget cuts are being made. There’s a good chance that the mayor will make an example of our unit if things don’t turn out for the best real soon. Last thing we need is a serial-killer scare hitting the headlines.’

  ‘Let me handle Donovan,’ Jarvis said, as Karina turned into a parking lot near the 5th Precinct. ‘I’ll make sure he sees sense.’

  Karina said nothing in reply as she parked and led them up into the precinct offices. They were halfway across the room when they spotted Donovan standing in the doorway to his office, glaring at them and beckoning Karina with one hooked finger.

  ‘See what I mean?’ she said.

  They filed into the office, Ethan closing the door behind them, as Donovan sat at his desk, folded his arms and glowered at Jarvis.

  ‘You want to tell me why you’re really here, Mr. Jarvis? Right now, you’re the asshole who’s taken this case from us for no good reason that I can figure.�
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  ‘I am that asshole,’ Jarvis replied. ‘And you don’t need to know anything else.’

  Donovan stood up abruptly and towered over Jarvis. ‘I’ve got ten staff working with me, all of whom might see their jobs on the line if we get chopped from the precinct, and I’m damned if I’m going to let someone like you come in here and steal this from under us—’

  ‘Your jobs are safe,’ Jarvis interrupted. ‘Nobody’s going anywhere.’

  Donovan’s eyes narrowed. ‘You can’t know that or force the mayor to secure our positions.’

  ‘I can’t control the mayor,’ Jarvis replied evenly, ‘that much is true. However, our presence here is covert. Any breakthroughs made during this investigation will be announced by yourselves, not us. So the faster we solve this case, the safer your jobs will be, agreed?’

  Donovan, apparently stumped, seemed to lighten up a little. ‘Agreed,’ he said suspiciously. ‘What’s your interest in this?’

  ‘A long-running investigation,’ Jarvis said airily, ‘the less about which you know the better.’

  ‘I don’t like being kept in the dark,’ Donovan rumbled.

  ‘You won’t be,’ Jarvis replied, ‘as far as the case you’re investigating is concerned. Right now, our priority is analyzing the closed-circuit-television camera footage obtained from the Williamsburg Bridge.’

  Donovan raised an eyebrow. ‘The footage? Why would you need that? I thought you were here for the Aaron Lymes’ case?’

  Karina stepped forward.

  ‘They think that the two men we found in the warehouse on Hell Gate were involved in the auto wreck.’

  Donovan appeared surprised. ‘They didn’t fit the profile of professional armed robbers.’

  ‘It’s not profiles we’re interested in,’ Ethan said, ‘it’s connections. All of the murders share similar characteristics that seem impossible, especially the absence of forensic evidence and the presence of extreme force. Maybe there’s a reason why they were all targeted. Find that reason and we might just find our killer.’

  Donovan appeared to consider this for a moment.

  ‘That’s a weak link by any stretch. There’s a more likely scenario: our professional robbers use hired hands to do their dirty work and then silenced them afterward, permanently.’

  ‘I doubt that a well-educated clerk would have much to gain from working with professional criminals, except to report them to the police at the first opportunity,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘And your theory doesn’t explain how the criminals supposedly killed two men without leaving any evidence behind whatsoever.’

  Donovan chuckled and shook his head.

  ‘This case isn’t going to be solved by two gumshoes,’ he said. ‘There’s no link between these two murders and—’

  ‘Yes, there is.’

  The voice came from behind them all, and Ethan turned to see Tom Ross standing in the now open office doorway.

  ‘Tom?’ Donovan said in surprise. ‘You should be at home.’

  Karina hurried to his side. ‘Tom, you shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Tom insisted to her with a faint smile. ‘I want this case solved and any avenue of investigation is fair game for me right now. I’ve been able to dig up one piece of information that might be useful.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘The connection between the two men found dead in the warehouse and the clerk.’

  Donovan rolled his eyes. ‘Go on, then, what’s the story?’

  Tom gestured to a picture board nearby, where images of the two dead thieves and the clerk were pinned.

  ‘Those two men were involved in the raid,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Donovan insisted. ‘Even we don’t know that.’

  ‘And that clerk,’ Tom went on, ‘was responsible for the paperwork assigned to the case. The signatures that failed to make it onto the statements must have been doctored, and that means that she must have been involved, because I won’t believe that the two men we have in jail right now could have walked from the interview rooms without having signed and dated their own statements.’

  ‘That’s very thin,’ Donovan pointed out, ‘and speculative, too. There’s nothing to suggest that the clerk was in any way involved in some kind of cover-up, or that there was one in the first place.’

  Jarvis stepped forward. ‘Worth checking out, though, don’t you think? We’ll need access to that camera footage.’

  Tom looked at Karina in confusion. ‘Who the hell is he?’

  ‘Defense Intelligence Agency’s handling the case now,’ Donovan explained, then turned to Jarvis, ‘not that we’re happy about it. Okay, go ahead, but I want to be informed of anything that you learn. I can’t imagine why a clerk would be involved with two dropouts.’

  ‘That’s why we’re doing it,’ Lopez replied tartly.

  Karina turned to Tom. ‘We’ve got this, Tom, really. You need to get some rest.’

  Tom sighed. ‘I need to do something to help. Sitting at home all day is driving me nuts.’

  ‘And being here could compromise the validity of our investigation,’ Karina replied. ‘You know that. You’re too emotionally invested. I’ll keep you posted, on everything.’

  Tom glanced at the team in the office and then reluctantly turned and walked away. Karina watched him leave for a moment and then turned to Donovan.

  ‘I’m worried about him, he’s not taking care of himself right now.’

  Donovan glanced at Jackson, who’d just walked in. ‘You want to keep an eye on him?’

  Jackson nodded. ‘I’ll drop by, tonight.’

  ‘I’ll visit him tomorrow,’ Karina added. ‘He needs people around him as much as possible.’

  Ethan stepped forward. ‘The tapes,’ he said to Donovan.

  The chief pressed a button on his desk. ‘I’ll have them sent up.’

  32

  Ethan sat down behind a monitor that showed a grayscale image of traffic flowing across the Williamsburg Bridge on the day of the Pay-Go heist, Jarvis and Lopez standing behind him in an interview room.

  ‘Quality’s not great,’ Lopez observed.

  ‘Doesn’t need to be for traffic observation,’ Jarvis said, ‘but, if we can place our two suspects in the morgue at the scene, then at least we’re a little closer to solving this. I can get the guys in the labs at the DIA to clean up anything we find, enough for it to be admissible in court.’

  Ethan spun the footage through, accelerating time to the moment of the auto wreck.

  ‘We could do with Project Watchman right now,’ he suggested.

  Jarvis shook his head. Watchman was a covert government-funded surveillance program that Ethan and Lopez had encountered during a previous investigation in Florida, a series of KH-11 ‘Keyhole’ spy-satellites providing a high-resolution three-dimensional virtual replay of the entire globe that a viewer could walk through. Essentially, the government could look into the past at any location on Earth or follow any individual, anywhere.

  ‘My clearance is no longer sufficient to access Watchman,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Besides, we got control of this case because I asked for it through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Our agency doesn’t have any stake in these homicides, so we wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway.’

  ‘Clearance,’ Lopez echoed his words. ‘Stakes. People have died and your agencies don’t give a damn unless there’s something in it for them.’

  ‘They’re concerned with national security, Nicola,’ Jarvis replied, ‘not one-upmanship.’

  ‘You expect us to believe that?’ Lopez challenged. ‘After what they pulled in Idaho and DC?’

  Jarvis pointed at the screen. ‘There, that’s the flatbed, right?’

  Ethan had already spotted the flatbed truck swerving violently through traffic on the outside section of the bridge. They watched as the truck raced beneath one camera and was picked up on the next as the image switched.

  The pursuing police vehicl
e closest to the flatbed accelerated, and its front fender smashed into the truck’s tail lights.

  Ethan watched as the truck swerved, lost control and then crashed against the barriers guarding traffic against the long fall into the East River. It rolled violently, the two men in the rear tumbling out, and then it slid to a halt, balanced on the barrier.

  ‘There’s Karina and Tom,’ Lopez identified the officers as they jumped from their vehicles.

  The doors to the truck flew open as the two men in the cab leaped out, leaving their two accomplices lying comatose in the road behind them. Several shots were fired at the police, but the men had their backs to the camera as they retreated, their faces obscured. The truck lay with its chassis hanging over the precipitous drop and the balance altered as the men jumped free. Slowly, the truck tilted backward as the cases of money spilled out and tumbled away toward the river below.

  ‘There goes the cash,’ Lopez said wistfully. ‘A few million bucks turned into fish food.’

  ‘Come on,’ Ethan snapped at the camera in frustration as the armed robbers disappeared from view, ‘there must be a better angle than this.’

  The cops whirled as, behind their vehicle, a huge tanker swerved as it tried to brake and avoid the suddenly stationary traffic, but then hit the cars in an explosion of shattered glass, smashed plastic and rending metal. The cops hurled themselves clear of the wreckage.

  Ethan stared at the monitor in disbelief. ‘Where’s the next camera’s shot? The one of them running down the bridge?’

  ‘There aren’t that many cameras on the bridge,’ Jarvis said. ‘There’s this one on the overhead, plus the one that captured the first images, which is a surveillance camera on the north side of the pedestrian-and-pushbike path.’

  Ethan sat back, feeling a sense of dismay as he saw the flames burning around the stricken tanker and the police struggling to both apprehend the two men lying in the road and free crash victims trapped in their vehicles.