The Eternity Project

27

5TH PRECINCT POLICE DEPARTMENT, NEW YORK CITY



The dawn labored its way across the city horizon as Ethan and Lopez leaned against railings outside the 5th Precinct station in Chinatown, the street still enshrouded in shadows. The air was cold and misty, only a few cars and delivery trucks cruising the streets this early in the morning.

Karina Thorne strode out of the station doors and jogged down the steps to meet them.

‘What’s the story?’ Lopez asked her friend.

Karina rubbed her temples with one hand. ‘I don’t even know where to start,’ she replied. ‘Forensics finished with the elevator car. Fingerprints all over the inside of course, but not a single fingerprint on the outside, except a small number of residuals already matched to personnel from the company that services the elevator cars. All of them have perfect alibis.’


‘You’re saying nobody laid a hand on that car?’ Ethan asked. ‘What about the body of the woman?’

‘Assistant clerk of the court,’ Karina replied. ‘Maria Coltrane, twenty-three years old. No previous convictions, born and raised here in New York. Forensics is done with her and so far there’s nothing to show for it, but we’ll have to wait until the autopsy’s complete, which could take another day.’

‘I don’t think they’ll find anything new,’ Lopez said. ‘She was crushed to death. It’s what did the crushing that interests us.’

Karina looked at them furtively. ‘This isn’t right, Nicola. Something’s going on here and it’s bigger than us. Donovan and the rest of the team aren’t listening.’

Ethan moved closer to Karina. ‘Did the forensics guys say what happened to the elevator car cables?’

Karina nodded. ‘They were ripped apart, not cut by a machine. One guy told us that the weight of the car isn’t nearly enough to break those cables. And as for the car being crushed, nobody’s got an answer.’

Ethan glanced up and down the street, one eye now open at all times for their mysterious stalker.

‘We’ll look into that,’ he replied. ‘The MO is similar to the murders down at Hell Gate Field, right? No forensics, no motive?’

Lopez nodded. ‘Figures, but there’s nothing to connect the dead clerk with the two losers we found in that warehouse. They couldn’t be further removed from each other.’

Ethan saw an SUV pull into the street and cruise toward them.

‘We’ll be in touch,’ he said to Karina. ‘Anything else comes up, let us know. Okay?’

‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘Where are you guys going?’

‘Research,’ Lopez replied as Ethan opened the SUV’s back door. ‘We’ll let you know what we find out.’

Ethan climbed aboard the SUV with Lopez, the vehicle pulling smoothly away from the sidewalk.

‘Morning,’ Jarvis said as he twisted in his seat to look at them. ‘What’s the story at the courthouse so far?’

‘No news,’ Ethan said. ‘Local police are stumped, no forensics, no evidence at all and certainly no suspects. Victims are currently assumed to be unconnected.’

‘But the MO is the same,’ Lopez added. ‘Technically, they’re both examples of a perfect murder with nothing at all to go on. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

‘So Ethan said,’ Jarvis replied. ‘And you said you felt as though you weren’t alone?’

Ethan nodded and explained the unusual things that they had witnessed the previous night.

‘Something’s going on here and it may have something to do with Karina Thorne,’ Ethan said.

‘We don’t know that,’ Lopez protested. ‘How about we stick to what we do know and save the speculation for later, okay?’

Ethan looked at Jarvis. ‘What about our mysterious friend? Did you manage to follow him?’

Jarvis cast Ethan a hurt look. ‘Seriously, you need to ask?’

‘Who is he?’ Lopez snapped.

‘We don’t know, yet,’ Jarvis admitted. ‘We spotted him right after you called me. I put one guy on the street and then stayed in the vehicle to back them up. The mark seemed to watch you both for a while, snapped a few pictures and then took off north. We followed him for several minutes but he kept his face well covered against the weather and observation. Stayed outside, too, never caught the subway or a cab.’

‘The rough weather gave him a reason to keep his hood up,’ Ethan speculated, ‘and avoid being identified. Where did he go?’

‘My man followed him as far as Central Park but was given the slip,’ Jarvis admitted. ‘It’s his best guess that the mark realized he was being followed and took off at the first available opportunity.’

Ethan sat back in his seat in exasperation. ‘Who the hell is this dude? He’s definitely not CIA, they’d have shot or arrested us by now.’

‘I keep telling you, you don’t need to worry about them,’ Jarvis insisted. ‘They’re not on your case anymore and won’t be as long as I have something to do with it.’

Lopez gestured to the driver of the SUV. ‘So where are we going now?’

Jarvis looked back at them. ‘Your call last night raised a few questions at the DIA when I relayed the details of the case back to them. We’re going to see somebody who might understand what’s going on here.’

‘I’ll believe that when I see it,’ Lopez murmured, ‘literally.’

‘We don’t even know what we saw,’ Ethan said. ‘The whole event lasted seconds, and the spiral patterns on the window of the court could have been caused by some kind of wind effect. It was blowing a gale last night.’

‘That’s possible,’ Jarvis agreed, ‘but it doesn’t explain what happened in the warehouse. If the two cases are connected, as you yourself said you suspected them to be, then the person we’re going to visit might be able to explain how.’

The SUV drove north up onto Washington Square, pulling in alongside the New York University. The halls occupied one entire length of the block opposite the tree-lined square, a row of tall buildings with an almost Gothic appearance. Ethan got out of the vehicle with Lopez and followed Jarvis into the nearest entrance.

‘I didn’t think scientists at accredited universities did research into ghosts,’ Lopez said to Ethan as they walked through the building, ‘if that’s what this is about.’

‘They don’t,’ Jarvis replied, over his shoulder, for Ethan, ‘at least not officially, but there are a few here who spend their free time chasing up reports of hauntings and similar phenomena. Most wouldn’t talk about it but one seems happy to help in a murder case, albeit off the record.’

Jarvis led them to an office in the psychology department of the building and knocked before entering. Ethan and Lopez followed him into the small room, and found there waiting for them a surprisingly casually dressed woman. In her forties, with long black hair, wearing a short leather jacket, faded blue jeans and sneakers, Ethan figured that she was some kind of New Age lecturer, the type who somehow managed to be more cool than their students.

‘Professor Amanda Bowen,’ Jarvis greeted her with a shake of her hand, and introduced Ethan and Lopez.

‘What can I do for you?’ she asked Ethan and Lopez directly. ‘Doug said that you had encountered something unusual during a murder investigation.’

‘We don’t know what we encountered,’ Lopez replied. ‘What we do know is that we now have three homicides, all of which have been conducted in a way that can only be described as impossible.’

‘Impossible, how?’ Professor Bowen asked.

Ethan explained the nature of each of the crime scenes, the lack of forensics and the circumstances in which each of the victims had died. Professor Bowen bore an expression of deep interest that slowly dissolved into something akin to fear as Ethan outlined the case. When he had finished, she looked at each of them in turn for a few moments, before speaking.

‘And this event that you witnessed last night?’ she asked. ‘Did you actually see anything?’

Lopez shrugged as she replied: ‘It’s kind of hard to describe. We didn’t see what it was, but we saw its effect on things like dust motes and falling rain. There was something there for sure, you could feel the drop in temperature and a sort of static charge on the air.’


Professor Bowen nodded, then turned to a bookshelf nearby and selected a weighty tome that she laid down on her desk in front of them. Ethan watched as she opened the pages and flipped through, before stopping on one page and turning the book toward them.

‘You ever heard of one of these before?’ she asked.

Ethan looked down at the page and felt something unpleasant ripple beneath his skin, cold and foreign.

The image on the page was reproduced, according to the caption beneath it, from an ancient medieval woodcut. The crude, heavy lines and simplistic visualization did little to deter from the apparent ferocity of the phantom shape that towered over a victim cowering on his knees. Drawn by the artist to resemble flames rising from a nearby fire, the spectral terror loomed over the man, who was clasping his chest and screaming.

Beneath the caption was the image title:

An encounter withe the Wraithe.

Bulgaria, 1586

Lopez looked up at Professor Bowen. ‘What’s a wraith?’

The professor gave her a worried look. ‘Bad news, that’s what.’