Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense

by Fynn Perry

  In the interview room, a paramedic had appeared and was attending to Hardwell as an argument raged between the detective and Hardwell’s lawyer. Jennifer’s attention was still fixed on the spirit. It glowed the same color as John and it was male but that’s where the similarities ended. The face was not easy to forget: a hard rectangle––thuggishly handsome. The looks of someone in his thirties, with a brutally muscular build clad in a prison- type jumpsuit. She noticed punctures in it–––the same as John’s single knife wound. Whereas John had only one, this guy had about twenty.

  As he slowly moved through the steel table toward the viewing window, he was staring right through it. His long hair, pointed beard, and the way in which he seemed to float as he approached, made him look like a macabre vision of the Messiah in some bizarre second coming. There was an expression of pure evil on his face and his eyes were now burning white with only a tinge of orange at the edges.

  Jennifer backed away, turning sharply for the door, and collided with Sergeant Clarke, who was standing immediately behind her. Losing her balance momentarily, she realized she had already lost her chance to escape. She muttered an apology.

  The spirit was now less than a half-inch from the glass. Jennifer had no way to escape without causing a commotion and making the spirit aware that she could see him. She quickly feigned indifference toward him, mirroring the concern of the other occupants in the room, who were staring at Hardwell’s collapsed body.

  The spirit’s face was now literally pressed to the viewing window.

  The orange light radiated out into the glass as the spirit’s head penetrated it and stared directly at Jennifer, only a fraction of an inch now from her head. Her heart raced, but she knew she couldn’t show any fear. She had to look past it, her vision now tinted with orange and two intense points of bright-white light burning into her retinas. She focused on Hardwell’s unconscious body, which had now been propped upright while an examination by a paramedic was taking place.

  “Maybe he can’t be revived. Maybe it’s God’s will. You know, punishment for his crime,” Clarke said behind her. Clearly, he couldn’t see the evil spirit.

  Jennifer realized that a response was expected. “Maybe,” she replied as calmly as she could, attempting to stare through the glowing face that dominated her field of vision and, instead, focus on Hardwell, like everyone else in the room. She feared that looking into those burning eyes would set off a panic that she couldn’t hope to contain.

  She felt a prickly sensation on her forehead. Beads of sweat would form very soon and give her away. Gratefully, she registered movement around Hardwell. A second paramedic had arrived to help, and she noticed the suspect was coming around.

  Jennifer channeled her pent-up stress into an excited tone, as she exclaimed to the detective, “He’s opening his eyes!”

  The spirit immediately pulled his head out of the glass and spun around to look at Hardwell, who had started mumbling something in a disoriented daze. He repeated it, and this time it was clearer. “I’m sorry. The evil…the evil said I should do it!” His eyes welled with tears as his head descended back into his hands to hide his face.

  She saw Hardwell sit bolt upright as the spirit returned to his body and a flash of excruciating pain registered on his face before his features settled and his glowing stare found Williams. The tears and mumbling immediately stopped.

  “What do you mean, ‘the evil said I should do it’?” Williams asked.

  Hardwell said nothing.

  “If the boy you stabbed dies, you’re looking at Murder One here. We’ve seen your little photo collection—that’s premeditation, so quit playing these stupid games with me, Hardwell!” Williams shouted.

  Hardwell’s lips twitched in a half-smile. Jennifer’s eyes widened for a second time as she looked on in horror as the spirit re-emerged and passed into Robert Devereux, Hardwell’s lawyer and her father’s ex-colleague. Again, the television monitor over the window failed to register the movement. Devereux suddenly stiffened, but the change went unnoticed by everyone except Jennifer. At the same time, Hardwell’s head and chest returned to their previous resting place with a heavy thud, causing further commotion in the viewing room.

  Shit! Now it’s possessed the lawyer! Jennifer thought. She then listened as Devereux spoke.

  “I demand this interview is stopped on the grounds of the mental instability of my client. He needs a full psychiatric evaluation!” As the possessed Devereux spoke, two paramedics returned and were again attempting to revive Hardwell. He eventually came to and was immediately helped to his feet and escorted out, with Devereux following.

  “Pumpkin, are you OK?” Her father interrupted Jennifer’s spinning thoughts. She hadn’t realized how her breathing had quickened. In fact, she was on the verge of hyperventilating, her body desperate for a release from the shock she had experienced.

  Sergeant Clarke took her hands, pressing them around the opening of a paper bag and motioning to her to place it over her mouth and breathe into it. Within a couple of minutes, she had her breathing back to normal.

  “Just a momentary flashback. I’m fine, Dad...really!” As much as she wanted to tell her father what she had seen, she stopped herself, knowing that he would never believe her. She could hardly believe it herself.

  “Listen, can you wait here a while? You’re not strictly supposed to be here. I don’t want you running into Hardwell’s lawyer out there.”

  You have no idea, Jennifer thought.

  Jennifer poured herself a coffee from the coffeemaker sitting in the corner of the viewing room, and waited fifteen minutes before leaving.

  Outside the precinct, Jennifer made her way to an Uber she had ordered. Before she got in it, she heard Robert Devereux’s voice behind her.

  “Jennifer Miller? David Miller’s daughter?” he asked loudly enough to illicit a response.

  Shit! Her heart thumped an accelerated beat in her head. She turned around to face him, trying to appear casual with her response. “Yes . . .”

  “What a terrible ordeal you’ve had.”

  She sensed insincerity in his voice and noticed that the orange fire in his eyes became fiercer. She tried not to picture the expression of pure hatred on the face of the spirit inside Devereux.

  “I’m fine, thank you, Mr. Devereux.” It took all her nerve to fake a warm reply.

  “What were you doing at the precinct?” he asked solicitously.

  “I think you can understand that’s private, counselor. You have to excuse me,” she said in a tone of fake outrage at the impropriety of his question. She impressed herself with how adept her response was, but her voice, unfaltering until this point, had changed tone––a tone that could betray fear.

  Devereux’s eyes momentarily reached a flash point as if gasoline had been added. She turned her back on him and walked toward her car, feeling his eyes penetrating her again.

  “I am sure we will catch up with each other soon,” he called out after her.

  His parting words caused her to involuntarily shiver.

  Back in her bedroom, Jennifer gave John an account of her experiences at the station and drew him a sketch of the uncannily Jesus-looking spirit. Neither one of them had any idea who it could be, or what it could possibly want from them.

  “Hardwell was like a different person when it was in him,” she said, pointing at her sketch. “He had this confident, creepy smile. Then when the spirit left him, he looked so pathetic and he kept mumbling. First about him being sorry, then he said something like the ‘evil said I should do it.’ He definitely stabbed you, John. I had no doubts when I saw his face, but when he did it, I think he wasn’t alone…I mean, I think this thing had possessed him.”

  They sat in silence for a long time after that, before a ping announced the arrival of a text message on Jennifer’s phone:

  Will be home after 7. Love Dad.

  “He never works late, he’s only staying late to avoid my mom, who is supposed to pick m
e up at six,” she sighed, grateful for the opportunity to think about something else, even something as mundane as her parents’ relationship.

  “How long were they together?” John asked.

  “A long time—twenty-four years.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s a long story, but basically my father had to change jobs and move to New York. It all started to go downhill from that point, and eventually my mom moved back to Miami with some guy she had met.”

  “You chose New York over Miami? Why?”

  “My dad’s a lot easier to get along with, and the guy my mom lives with is an asshole.”

  “Got it,” said John.

  She figured he took her at her word and didn’t need to know the details. “How about your parents?”

  “My father went into a business partnership with a guy from Australia on an office development project in Dublin when I was fourteen. The day after the building was sold, I came home from school to find my mother gone, along with all her clothes. It wasn’t until a few days later that I was told she had moved to Australia with my father’s business partner. Then there was the divorce, and I decided to stay with my dad. After that, she never contacted me.”

  “That’s tough.”

  “I was devastated,” John admitted.

  She sensed the wound ran deep, and he wasn’t accustomed to talking about it. But she also felt he wanted to share things with her, and they spent the next few hours exchanging details of their parents’ divorces.

  It was about 6:00 p.m. when they heard someone entering the house. Jennifer’s heart raced as she imagined it being the spirit she had seen, now in possession of someone else.

  To their surprise, it was Jennifer’s father, home earlier than he’d said he would be. He and Detective Williams were standing in the kitchen where David was operating the espresso machine. Jennifer exchanged greetings with the detective.

  “Dad, what’s going on? Why are you back so early?”

  “Detective Williams was planning to take your statement at the precinct today but after your reaction to seeing Hardwell, I asked that he wait until tomorrow. You know, give you a little time to recover. Unfortunately, that’s no longer possible because Hardwell’s arraignment has been brought forward to tomorrow, so he needs to take it now. We thought you’d be more comfortable if he took it here, too.”

  “We expect Devereux will try to show that Hardwell is unfit to stand trial for reasons of mental illness and, if that doesn’t work, will plead an insanity defense,” Williams advised.

  “There isn’t a chance he could be set free, is there?” Jennifer asked, balking at the prospect.

  “No, they wouldn’t do that. He would probably be put into a mental institution, but that would mean we might never know the truth about why he stabbed John.”

  “So, it’s down to a psychiatrist to decide if there’s a trial?”

  “On the question of whether he’s fit to stand trial, no, we have no influence. But on the insanity plea, Devereux will have to make a jury believe that Hardwell is suffering from a mental disorder so severe that he had very significant detachment while committing the crime. Judges and juries are skeptical of insanity pleas, plus we have evidence of him buying the knife and something else that shows he planned it.” Detective Wilson opened his briefcase and pulled out a brown envelope. “These are photos we found in Hardwell’s apartment.” He pulled out a stack of images recording what seemed to be the last twelve months of Jennifer’s life.

  Jennifer gasped. “He was photographing me, and I had no idea! Why would he do that? Is he some kind of pervert?”

  “The psychiatrist said he showed no recognition of his real age and no grasp of simple facts such as what year it is. He seems to be living in the past, stuck at around the mental age he was when he attended high school. And for some reason, he kept referring to you as ‘Jessica,’ ” Wilson added.

  “That’s my mother’s name!” Jennifer exclaimed, looking confused.

  David Miller now spoke up. “Yes, and I showed the detective a picture of your mother taken when she was at high school—unbelievably the same one as this man Hardwell, in Ohio. What struck me was that at that age, she really looked very similar to you.”

  “I know. Mom showed me her yearbook photos. Did you ask her if she remembers Hardwell?”

  “She said she had a lot of admirers, but he wasn’t one of them. She did remember him as someone who acted awkwardly around her, and sometimes he even seemed to have been following her, even when she was on dates.”

  She probably thought it funny, Jennifer considered for a moment, and then she waited for her father to add something about her mother’s concern for her safety, but it never came. Her father simply went on. “She said she couldn’t believe he was capable of doing this and even felt guilty for not having been nicer to him. If she had been, he may not have done what he has.”

  Wow, Jennifer thought as she was taken aback by what seemed to have been a rare moment of genuine self-reflection on her mother’s part.

  “Nobody except Hardwell is to blame here,” the detective said quickly. “We think these photos triggered something inside him and made him attack. Jealousy seems to be the obvious motive.” He pulled out more photos. Each one was sealed in a separate clear plastic envelope and showed Jennifer with a male companion who couldn’t be identified because the face had been cut out. It was the same for each photograph in the stack.

  “Oh my God, that’s John!” she said, recognizing the leather jacket in a few photos and his sweater in others.

  “Can you positively confirm that these are John Logan’s clothes and that is his build?”

  “Yes, I can,” Jennifer said without hesitation.

  “And you can confirm that you were with John Logan at the locations shown?”

  She glanced at John before affirming that she could. Her eyes started to well with tears as she muttered, “Yes!”

  “Well, it looked like he literally wanted John out of the picture.” This came out wrong, like a joke in poor taste, and the detective seemed to regret it, and cleared his throat before continuing. “But this is where it gets even weirder, and it’s the reason for his insanity plea. Hardwell has been in some kind of extreme shock since the stabbing. He told the psychiatrist that he knew he had committed the attack but couldn’t come to terms with why he’d done it or how it happened.”

  “Neither can I!” John interjected, but it was only for Jennifer’s benefit.

  The detective continued. “However, he did tell the psychiatrist that he had surprised himself when he realized just how jealous of Jessica’s boyfriend he had become and that he wanted him ‘out of the picture.’ He scoffed awkwardly at the repeat of the same unintentional joke and added, “His words, apparently. She—the psychiatrist—couldn’t get him to focus on the actual stabbing event because he had blocked it out. So, we don’t know what was going through his mind at that time. She said his head is a real mess.”

  “He’s locked up now where there’s no chance of him getting out, right?” Jennifer was worried. She had seen the spirit come out of Hardwell, but now she was unsure that the possession was the only reason for his terrifying actions.

  “Yes, he’s secure.” The detective assured her. “One other thing. He was asked how he knew to be outside the Irish pub at that time.”

  “Exactly! How the hell did he know? Was he following John’s car?”

  “No, he doesn’t have a car. He was told to be there.”

  Jennifer was silent for a moment. “By who?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  “He can’t remember, or he’s too scared to remember?”

  “We don’t know which, but the result is the same—he’s not talking. It’s somehow locked away in his mind along with the actual stabbing.”

  “Only my dad, Jim Donovan, and the band knew we would be there…and your father, right?” John said, looking at Jennifer.

  Jennifer nodded. She
turned to Williams. “Have you spoken to the people who knew we would be there? You know, like members of the band and Jim Donovan, the pub owner?”

  “Why would they know anything?” the detective asked.

  “Because when we were in the pub, John got up to play a few numbers with the band on stage. Later, I found out it was his band; it had all been arranged to surprise me.” She directed the subtlest of smiles in John’s direction.

  “So, Jim Donovan knew what time John would get on stage?” He paused before adding, “Don’t hold back with any details. I really don’t care, in this case, about any underage drinking.”

  “John told me that Jim let the band practice there a couple of nights a week.” For a moment, she looked distant as John grabbed her attention by telling her something that she was quick to pass on. “Wait, I remember now,” she continued. “Just before the stabbing, Jim came over to us and said we should leave the pub. He acted a little nervous and said he had noticed an undercover cop in the bar checking IDs. He didn’t want to get a fine.”

  “Well, if there was a cop there that night, we can check it out but even if there wasn’t, he could have just been mistaken. It doesn’t mean Donovan was involved,” Williams pronounced.

  “There was also the strange behavior of Donovan’s employee, Brian McGinty. You had him down at the precinct when he came in to view Hardwell’s mug shots.” Jennifer’s father added.

  “Yeah, that kid’s guilty of something, alright,” the detective answered. “But you know better than I do, Counselor, that we can’t just lock people up because they act suspiciously. Hell, we’d have to lock up half of the city and then some. Until we can get more out of Hardwell, we have no cause to question Donovan or anyone else about the incident, but it is starting to look like Hardwell wasn’t acting alone,” Detective Williams replied. “Now, I just need to take your statement and I’ll go,” he said, turning to look at Jennifer.

  The detective took down Jennifer’s statement. After they had all read it through, including John looking over Jennifer’s shoulder, and corrections had been made, Jennifer signed it.