The Eternity Project

13

HELL GATE, QUEENS, NEW YORK



Ethan peered out of the window of the SUV as it pulled into the sidewalk alongside an old chain-link fence that ringed a series of low warehouses on the cold shore of the East River. He climbed out and followed Jarvis to where police cars were parked outside the nearest warehouse, crime-scene tape fluttering across an open access door nearby.

‘A crime scene?’ Ethan asked Jarvis. ‘What are we doing here?’

‘The scene’s being handled by detectives from the Fifth Precinct,’ Jarvis explained. ‘The same officers recently investigated the death of a man named Aaron Lymes, a retired CIA operative found murdered in his apartment. Turns out he served . . .’

‘ . . . in Gaza,’ Lopez guessed. ‘You think these guys know anything yet?’

‘That’s what we’re here to find out,’ Jarvis said.

A group of four detectives were standing outside in the lot, a tall man with rugged features and gray hair dominating them as he stood with his hands shoved into the pockets of a long black overcoat. He turned and looked at Jarvis as the old man flashed his identity badge.

‘Doug Jarvis, Defense Intelligence Agency. This is Ethan Warner and Nicola Lopez.’

‘Jake Donovan, NYPD,’ the tall man said. ‘We weren’t expecting you guys down here.’

‘We’re here for the Aaron Lymes case. DIA has jurisdiction,’ Jarvis explained. ‘Lymes was a former CIA operative you found murdered downtown recently. We need to talk about it.’

‘Is that right?’ Donovan replied. ‘Well, I tell you what. If you can explain this crime scene, then I’ll talk to you about Lymes. Deal?’

Jarvis gestured to the warehouse. ‘Deal. Something here not making sense to the CSI team?’

Donovan introduced his team to them: Karina Thorne, a young-looking detective, Glen Ryan, whom Ethan quickly deduced was a former soldier, and Neville Jackson, an African-American detective.

‘Got ourselves a double homicide,’ Donovan explained.

‘What’s the big deal?’ Lopez asked.

Donovan looked at Lopez quizzically for a moment. ‘Nicola Lopez, you say? Why do I know that name?

‘Metropolitan Police Department,’ Lopez replied, ‘over in DC. I worked there for several years.’

Donovan nodded slowly as though trying to recall something. ‘Didn’t you blow some kind of corruption scandal in DC a couple of years back? Got yourself a hell of a reputation?’

‘Reputation is one word,’ Lopez replied with an easy smile, ‘infamy’s another.’

Donovan grinned back at her and then looked across at the warehouses that were now ringed with bright yellow police-cordon tapes. A forensics vehicle was parked nearby, and a small cluster of construction workers from nearby buildings were watching the police with interest.

‘The feds would have been our first port of call here anyway so it’s helpful you turned up,’ Donovan said finally to Jarvis, ‘because what we’ve got in there sure as hell doesn’t make much sense to me.’

Lopez led the way. ‘Let’s go see what the fuss is about. You got up real early for a double homicide.’


Karina Thorne rested one hand on Lopez’s arm as she passed, her features creased with concern. ‘It’s a bad one.’

Ethan glanced at Lopez as they followed Donovan’s team across to the warehouse entrance, the two uniformed cops standing guard outside parting to let them through. Ethan whispered to Jarvis as they walked.

‘What’s the story with these guys?’

‘Call came in,’ Jarvis replied. ‘These guys called the FBI about the killing of Aaron Lymes and the feds followed the new protocol and sent it on to us right away. We’ll chat with them and find out what we can about Lymes’ death, see if it yields any clues to Joanna’s involvement or whereabouts.’

Lopez moved ahead alongside Karina Thorne. ‘Forensics done a sweep yet?’

‘All cleared,’ Karina confirmed. ‘Donovan got here first, then Nev Jackson worked the scene with the CSI guys. Not that they found much.’

Ethan heard their voices echo as they entered the cavernous warehouse. Shafts of pale morning light beamed weakly through windows thick with grime. The warehouse floor was stained with thousands of bird droppings and coated with dust, through which he could see several rows of footprints ahead of them that wound a trail back and forth toward the very rear of the warehouse. More faint footprints were to either side, where the CSI teams had walked around the originals to avoid contaminating them.

‘Guns kill, then,’ Lopez surmised. ‘No contact.’

‘No gunshots,’ Donovan said over his shoulder at her, ‘not with resulting wounds anyway.’

‘Blades?’ Ethan asked.

‘You’ll have to see it for yourself , ’ Donovan replied.

Ethan followed them to the rear of the warehouse, but, like Lopez, he came up short long before he reached the corner where the forensics team were still dusting down for prints and evidence around the scene of the crime.

The trail of footprints in the dust led to a scattering of more footprints, appearing to move in random directions all in the same area. Clearly, whoever had entered the warehouse had made their way to this corner before doing something on the spot.

Whatever that something had been, it hadn’t ended well for the two victims now lying within ten feet of each other on the dusty warehouse floor. Ethan looked down at the body of one man lying on his side, his torso ending in a bloodied mess of congealing intestines, entrails and blood stains smearing the ground.

‘Jesus,’ Lopez murmured. ‘Where’s the rest of him?’

‘That’s where this starts to get interesting,’ Donovan said, and gestured across to Ethan’s right.

Ethan turned and saw some fifty feet away another smaller cordon of police tape and a lone forensics officer working on two long objects lying on the ground. Between the two locations was a faint splatter of blood droplets scattered in a thin line across the ground.

‘That’s his legs?’ Jarvis asked in amazement.

‘That’s not all,’ Donovan replied and gestured the other body nearby. ‘This guy doesn’t have a mark on him. We’ll have to have it confirmed via autopsy but there are no visible wounds, puncture marks, contusions or any other visible sign of death.’

Ethan looked at the second corpse. The body was on its knees, crouched over with its elbows resting on the ground and the hands clasped across the chest. The dead man’s face was pinned against the ground and locked in a gruesome rigor of agony, the jaw open and the eyes wide, the tongue hanging limp and dry between the lips.

‘Looks a little like a heart attack,’ Lopez suggested. ‘He still in rigor mortis?’

‘Coming out of it as we speak,’ Donovan confirmed, ‘but for some reason, he’s still stiff as a board. Only thing the coroner can confirm at this moment is that he died in that position. Liver mortis shows he hasn’t moved since his heart stopped beating.’

Ethan looked from one body to the next. ‘Were any weapons recovered from the scene?’

‘A pistol,’ Donovan replied. ‘Nine millimeter, an old Russian make, apparently.’

‘Makarov?’ Ethan hazarded.

‘How did you know?’ Donovan asked.

‘Former standard Soviet sidearm,’ Ethan explained. ‘Very stable weapon, easily obtained on the black market, especially since the fall of the Soviet union  . Were these two guys criminals?’

‘Ethan was an officer in the United States Marines,’ Jarvis explained to Donovan, ‘served with me on a couple of tours.’

Donovan nodded, looking at Ethan with renewed respect. ‘Connor Reece and Wesley Hicks. Local hoods and petty thieves, not much between them but jail-time. They were known to us but didn’t figure much on the bigger scale of things.’

‘They do now,’ Lopez pointed out, ‘for somebody at least. Who the hell would rip a man in half just for the hell of it?’

‘They did more than that,’ Donovan said. ‘Coroner gave the body a quick once over and said that virtually every bone in his body was broken, and that it likely happened before he died of massive hemorrhage.’

‘Gangland beating got out of hand?’ Karina wondered out loud. ‘Maybe they got in with bigger fish and upset them.’

Lopez shook her head slowly. ‘Doesn’t make any sense. This guy’s been ripped apart but there’s no sign of any power tools, weapons, nothing. How’d they do it?’

‘Indeed,’ Donovan replied. ‘Biggest problem we’ve got here is that both men were obviously murdered, yet the only weapon on the scene cannot have been used to commit the crime.’

Ethan frowned. ‘You said that there were gunshots though.’

Donovan nodded, and his grizzled features seemed to pale a little. ‘Five shots, all closely spaced.’

Lopez blinked, looking around her. ‘Where’s the mark then?’

Donovan slowly lifted his hand and pointed straight up.

Ethan craned his neck back and looked up to the warehouse ceiling, forty or more feet above their heads. There, needle-thin shafts of light pierced the dusty air in the warehouse from five tiny holes in the roof. It took Ethan only a moment to realize that there were no walkways, no beams and no girders across which a potential killer could have been hiding when the shots were fired.

‘That’s weird,’ Karina murmured.

‘It gets even weirder,’ Donovan said. ‘Our heart-attack victim has powder residue on his right hand, suggesting that he fired the shots. But both of their prints were on the weapon. So he probably didn’t kill his companion here and was instead firing at something else. Judging by what happened to his friend, we think that he was trying to defend himself against someone.’

‘Or,’ Lopez said, finding a more comfortable foundation for thought, ‘this was drugs related. Maybe they were both high, got spooked into shooting at shadows.’

Donovan looked at Lopez. ‘Drugs and shadows don’t normally tear people in half.’

‘No,’ Lopez agreed, not bridling at the accusation of stupidity. ‘But there’s nothing to say that these two people died at exactly the same moment. The man who is in half may have died here first. His companion comes to find him, panics at what he finds and then starts shooting wildly. Maybe has a heart attack. He could have had an existing condition that made him vulnerable to cardiac arrhythmia, common in cocaine users.’

Donovan conceded the point with an inclination of his head, but Ethan had already considered something else.


‘The answers may lie in finding out why these two were here at all,’ he said as something on the floor near the bodies caught his eye.

He carefully skirted the nearest corpse and knelt down alongside several deep grooves in the warehouse floor.

‘Who called this in?’ he asked, glancing up at Karina Thorne.

‘Site manager,’ Karina replied. ‘Found the gate chains broke and the warehouse door unlocked when he showed up this morning to open the site.’

‘I got here first,’ Donovan added, ‘and called the team in as soon as I saw these guys lying here.’

Ethan gestured down to the grooves in the floor.

‘This warehouse is old and covered in dust from lack of use, but these grooves are fresh. These boys came in here looking for something, found it, and then got hit by someone. Whatever they found is now gone, taken by whoever walked out of here. Those footprint trails in the dust are moving both in and out of the warehouse.’

Donovan shrugged. ‘The grooves in the flooring could be unrelated, maybe residue from recent storage operations. The footprints are interesting but still don’t explain cause of death.’

Ethan stood up and looked about him.

‘Cause of death is for the coroner,’ Ethan said. ‘My guess is that the footprints in the dust trail leading to this spot will hold some answers. Have forensics take a closer look and try to figure out who walked out of here last, then have the site manager give up any documents regarding users of this building in the last six months. If anyone’s there it might be a lead, but this warehouse looks like it’s been abandoned for a few years. Perfect place to hide things to be recovered at a later date.’

Karina Thorne frowned at Ethan. ‘To do that, you’d need access,’ she pointed out.

‘Yes, you would,’ Ethan agreed as he jabbed a thumb in the direction of the entrance door. ‘Somebody had to cut the chains to the gate to get into the compound but there’s no forced entry to the warehouse itself. Who would own one key but not both?’

‘Maybe they picked the lock?’ Glen Ryan hazarded.

‘You see the size of it?’ Lopez challenged him. ‘It’s turn-of-the-century and no evidence of tampering. They got in without a problem.’

‘And with an empty warehouse inside, they had to be looking for something that somebody else had already left here. The question is: What?’

Donovan nodded, then cast a last glance at the grooves, before he turned to Karina.

‘What do you think?

Karina shook her head, mystified by what she was looking at but, more, Ethan suspected, by the lack of evidence to support what had actually occurred.

‘There’s not much that we can do here until forensics finish their work and the medical examiner can get toxicology reports on the two victims,’ she said. ‘Right now, I don’t have any explanation for how they could have died this way.’

Ethan glanced up at the five tiny bullet holes piercing the ceiling high above.

‘Somebody does,’ he said finally. ‘Ultra-violent killings like these, with people torn in half, are usually the preserve of organized crime syndicates like the Mafia. But they don’t bother with technical skill – they’d have just used a chainsaw or something. These guys were in fear of their lives from someone who had managed to get above them.’

Donovan turned away from the grisly remains. ‘Either way, we need to figure this one out and fast. If the perpetrator strikes again, it could cause a media frenzy. I don’t want them championing a vigilante killer.’

Donovan strode away, leaving Ethan and Lopez staring at the bodies.

‘Hell of a way to go,’ Karina uttered.

‘They say crime doesn’t pay,’ Lopez shrugged.

Ethan glanced up again at the holes in the ceiling and saw a shadow hovering over them. As soon as he focused on it, the shadow whipped aside and vanished. In the empty warehouse, the sound of soft footfalls rushed across the warehouse roof.

‘We’re being watched!’ Ethan shouted, and whirled for the exit.