The Eternity Project

34

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY



‘Seriously?’

Jake Donovan stood in his office with Glen Ryan, Neville Jackson and Karina Thorne, as Jarvis laid out what they had discovered.

‘It’s the only thing that makes sense,’ he explained. ‘Whoever is responsible for the murders is systematically targeting the people that they believe were involved, however indirectly, in the auto wreck on the Williamsburg Bridge.’

The lie wasn’t a big one, but Ethan still marveled at Jarvis’s ability to deceive with a conviction that was utterly convincing. The auto wreck wasn’t their main area of concern, but Donovan didn’t need to know that. Many times in the past, Jarvis had, in effect, deceived Ethan, although never with malice in mind. Lopez seemed less inclined to believe the old man right off the bat, but then she too was capable of the same kind of deception. Takes one to know one, Ethan reflected. He wondered just what else Jarvis might keep buried up there in his head, what secrets he may harbor.

‘You want us to start digging into the clerk’s private records?’ Jackson asked them. ‘She’s just a bit player. How will that bring the men responsible for this to justice?’

‘You’ve already found the four men responsible for the robbery,’ Ethan reminded them as he tossed the black-and-white photograph of Wesley Hicks onto the table before them. ‘Two are dead and two are in jail right now. This is Hicks, caught by the security camera on the Williamsburg Bridge.’

‘There wasn’t any footage of them up there,’ Jackson uttered.

‘Computer-enhanced reflection in the window of the flatbed,’ Lopez replied with a bright smile. ‘Having the DIA on the case helps enormously, don’t you think?’

‘So they’re linked,’ Donovan said. ‘You think we might be able to dig something up on the clerk, maybe some kind of payment?’

‘That was my next move,’ Ethan said. ‘Problem is, if the money all went into the East River, then it’s possible that she won’t have received any payment. It would all have depended on the robbery going down without a hitch or, at least, one of the robbers making it out with the cash.’

‘Then what use is any of this?’ Glen Ryan asked. ‘Sure, it’s good procedure to have the clerk checked out, but I don’t see much chance of there being a paper trail. Dudes like the ones who hit the Pay-Go work with cash. It’s not like they’d have sent her a check.’

Ethan shook his head.

‘We don’t make the clerk our priority,’ he explained. ‘The bank heist is effectively solved. What we do now is start thinking about who else could have been involved on the inside and whether or not they might be targeted by the same person who killed Hicks, Reece and the clerk.’

‘You think there’ll be more killings?’ Karina asked.

‘There’s been no justice,’ Lopez explained. ‘The killings seem to be motivated by revenge. If it’s gone down the way we think, then the four thieves would have hired the clerk to alter, falsify or just plain lose the statements, rendering them inadmissible in court. That would have created the first big stumbling block for a prosecution. The whole set-up would be there ready just in case any of the men were captured, slowing judicial procedure and perhaps, ultimately, getting them off the hook.’

‘We’re thinking that maybe this is the gang that have been hitting banks all down the east coast,’ Ethan said. ‘Just that the brains behind the Pay-Go heist isn’t one of the actual robbers.’

Donovan raised an eyebrow. ‘A sort of mastermind, staying out of the limelight?’ he speculated.

‘It fits,’ Ethan said. ‘The heists are meticulously planned and go off without a hitch. It was only bad luck that the flatbed lost control on the bridge, but Hicks and Reece got away even then, suggesting they’d planned for every eventuality that they could. The latex masks, the waiting perhaps for days for the armoured truck to turn up because they run deliberately changed routes each day – all of it suggests that somebody must be behind the team actually hitting the banks.’

‘Okay,’ Karina agreed. ‘I can buy that. Question is. What do you want to do about it?’

Ethan looked again at the picture board in one corner of the office.

‘My thinking is that the chain of corruption might be bigger than just the clerk. What if the whole team had been captured on the bridge, before the money cases could be opened? The organizer of this little masquerade would need a guarantee that the thieves wouldn’t sell them out to avoid prison time. The mastermind would need a second line of defense, somebody who could keep his team of thieves out of the prison system.’

Jackson got it first. ‘The lawyer.’

‘Exactly,’ Lopez agreed. ‘His name was Eric Muir and he wasn’t a state attorney, he was privately hired and likely not cheap. Where did the money come from?’

‘The other bank heists?’ Glen Ryan hazarded.

‘Too soon,’ Ethan said. ‘They wouldn’t have had time to launder the money. Unless, of course, the attorney was willing to consider cash.’

‘If he’s crooked then cash is the best way because the notes are so hard to trace,’ Donovan agreed. ‘Anything else, there would be a trail to follow.’

Ethan nodded in agreement. Fact was, so many criminals were too damned stupid to realize that keeping cash tucked in a safety box or similar was by far the best way to commit the perfect crime. Whether by fraud or outright robbery, thieves too often splashed their ill-gotten gains in ways that made them conspicuous and easy to trace: fast cars, casinos, drug deals that brought them to the attention of other police forces and so on.

But the smart man who carried off a decent take from a heist or fraud and ensured that their life changed as little as possible, at least on the outside, held a crucial advantage. Sure, you might still have to hold down a day-job to cover your tracks, but, if a successful heist netted a man a couple of hundred thousand bucks and he was smart enough to use it for all of his cash purchases, things like gasoline, food shopping, household goods and such like, then even if he spent a thousand bucks a month that cash would last him more than fifteen years. And that didn’t even take into consideration the extra salary that would build up in his bank account, money that would otherwise have been spent on those same goods that could now be legally spent on the cars and casinos without attracting unnecessary attention. A wise man could double his available annual income for the majority of his working life off the back of a single successful heist.


‘We follow the lawyer, Eric Muir,’ Ethan said. ‘If he’s attacked by somebody, then maybe we get to catch our killer. If he isn’t but evidence is found of him doing deals to get these convicts off the hook for a price, then we still win. Either way, I’d be surprised if this guy’s completely clean: somebody had to hire him as the defense for this case.’

Donovan nodded. ‘Agreed, we’ll do it. You guys keep searching for evidence of this mysterious mastermind.’

Ethan shook his head. ‘We’ll all take part in the stakeout.’

‘What for?’ Donovan asked. ‘It only takes two officers to keep an eye on one man.’

Ethan thought fast. He wanted to be on site, because, if the mysterious photographer showed up again, he absolutely intended to corner them once and for all.

‘We don’t know if he’ll lead us directly to the main man,’ he said. ‘The more people we have on this the better, as it’s our only lead. Besides, putting cops on it costs money. We’re not on the department’s clock, remember?’

Donovan shrugged and nodded, and Ethan turned away and walked out of the office with Lopez and Jarvis.

‘This is getting in the way of things for us,’ Lopez pointed out as they walked. ‘Nothing’s being done about MK-ULTRA or our friends at the CIA.’

‘One thing at a time,’ Jarvis cut in. ‘Let’s get this case solved first.’

‘Nicola’s right,’ Ethan insisted. ‘Have you got anything from Major Greene’s list of names?’

‘The team’s on the case,’ Jarvis replied, ‘but these things take time. There’s a hundred years to work through, much of it from time periods when documentation wasn’t as prevalent as it is today. If there’s anybody here in the city descended from people on that list, they’ll find them eventually.’

‘The CIA were tracking Joanna toward New York,’ Ethan said, ‘and are likely here already. Just because we’re not under threat, doesn’t mean they’ll stop their mission. If we don’t find her fast, they will, and everything we’re trying to achieve will be over.’

‘I’ll stay on it,’ Jarvis promised.

Karina jogged up behind them as they walked. ‘Nice work back there. You want to tell me what you’re going to do if this wraith thing of yours turns up and kills that lawyer?’

‘We haven’t figured that part out yet,’ Ethan admitted.

‘Well, you might want to start thinking about it,’ she said, ‘because, sooner or later, Donovan is going to realize what’s happening here and, if he thinks you guys are crazies, he’ll have justification for claiming back jurisdiction of the case. Just sayin’.’

Ethan looked at Lopez.

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘or he sees what we saw. Then he’ll want us here.’

Jarvis stopped them both.

‘Look, before we go see Eric Muir, why don’t we take this to the people that we know for sure are involved?’

‘Earl and Gladstone?’ Lopez asked. ‘I doubt we can do that without further compromising the case. If that lawyer is crooked and we lean on his clients, he’ll use it against us in any trial and, besides, we already know that they’re not talking. Identifying Hicks and Reece probably won’t be enough to get them to sing for us.’

‘This is DIA business, nothing to do with the police department, so we keep it quiet,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Why don’t you pay them a visit and tell them straight that one by one their colleagues are being picked off by a crazed serial killer? Show them a few photographs of what’s left of Hicks and Reece? Maybe that, along with the fact that the money all went into the East River, will be enough to tip them over the edge and finger whoever is actually behind all of this.’

Ethan looked at Lopez, who shrugged. ‘I guess it’s worth a shot.’

*

‘What have you managed to dig up?’

Donovan looked Glen Ryan in the eye. The kid shrugged as he replied.

‘Nothing. Out-of-towners, nothing to suggest they’re up to no good here. Karina’s not hiding anything as far as I can tell but we’re not on great terms right now.’

Donovan turned his gaze to Jackson. ‘You?’

‘Plenty,’ Jackson replied. ‘They took off out of Chicago a few months back and somebody’s been housekeeping for them, that much we knew. I checked the local rags for information around the time they cleared out, and guess what I found?’

‘Tell me.’

‘It was all over the news,’ Jackson said, ‘a major congressional investigation into corruption at the Central Intelligence Agency. A big government department in DC was running the show when suddenly two staff members were killed in suspected homicides. The investigation is shut down, the media goes quiet and everything’s forgotten.’

‘What’s that got to do with Warner and Lopez?’ Glen Ryan asked.

‘Only the fact that Warner’s sister was on the team that got hit,’ Jackson replied. ‘Natalie Warner. She too goes off the radar for a few weeks, but then turns up again after an internal investigation clears her of any wrong-doing. Point is, there was no need for her to disappear at all, seeing as she wasn’t ever a suspect in the murders.’

Donovan stared thoughtfully out of his office door. ‘Their man Jarvis works for the DIA,’ he mused out loud. ‘Maybe some kind of inter-agency-rivalry thing? The CIA tying up loose ends in some kind of cover-up?’

Jackson shrugged. ‘Beats me. They’re up to their necks in something, but, as it involves government agencies, there’s never quite enough evidence to tie them down. You want me to call Langley and see what they say?’

Donovan thought for a moment, then shook his head.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’ll do it.’