The Eternity Project

41



The mirrored-glass exterior of the law school flashed with the reflections of dozens of strobe lights in a flickering kaleidoscope of blues, oranges and reds as Ethan stood with Lopez beside an ambulance.

The body of Muir, the lawyer, was wheeled into the vehicle by a pair of paramedics, his battered remains covered with a black body-bag.

From the entrance of the building walked Donovan, Jackson and Glen. All three of them were carrying water bottles and Jackson had a blanket draped across his shoulders. It had taken the fire service almost two hours to cut them free from the mangled wreckage of the elevator car. Donovan reached them first.

‘Karina did tell you to take the stairwell,’ Lopez pointed out.

‘Noted,’ Donovan snapped, clearly having been divested of every last shred of his sense of humor. ‘Tell me, everything.’

‘It’s not of this world,’ Ethan replied. ‘We don’t know how to deal with it yet.’

Donovan’s features were creased with an anxiety that Ethan had not seen before. The solid rock that was the police chief was crumbling after what he had witnessed.

‘You two know damned well more than you’re telling me. I want to know everything,’ Donovan insisted.

‘So will the manufacturers of those elevators,’ Ethan reminded him. ‘That’s two of them crushed by unknown forces in as many days.’

‘Coroner’s going to have a hard time explaining how the lawyer died, too,’ Lopez said.

Donovan looked at the body thoughtfully. ‘Suicide,’ he suggested. ‘Long fall.’

‘Not long enough,’ Ethan said. ‘That ceiling was maybe twenty feet up. No way he could have got into that mess.’

‘Then it stays with us,’ Donovan insisted. ‘We can’t afford to create a city-wide panic right now.’

‘We told you what it is that’s doing this,’ Lopez said, ‘a vengeful spirit. It’s called a wraith.’

‘I don’t give a damn what it’s called,’ the chief shot back. ‘I want to know how it’s stopped.’

‘It isn’t stopped,’ Ethan assured him, ‘until justice is done.’

‘Justice?’ Glen asked as he joined them. ‘Justice for what, and how?’

‘Whatever happened to that spirit,’ Lopez said, ‘when it was alive, needs to be corrected. It was wronged and it’s seeking revenge.’

‘For what?’ Donovan asked, confused. ‘Even if you’re right, how can we know whose spirit it is or how it was wronged?’

Ethan turned to face Donovan directly, his face barely inches from the chief’s.

‘That’s what’s been bothering me ever since we got out of that building,’ he said. ‘This wraith, supposedly, only attacks the people who wronged it during life. So why would it be going after you three?’

Donovan looked at Jackson and Glen, and shrugged. ‘How the hell would we know? Maybe a disgruntled criminal? Maybe somebody got put away for a crime they didn’t commit and got iced while inside?’

‘Doesn’t match the hits on the clerk, the lawyer or the thieves,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘Fact is, the only thing that ties them all together is the Pay-Go robbery.’

Donovan’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘That could mean it’s the wraith of somebody killed on the bridge in the accident, maybe.’

Ethan nodded. ‘Like Tom Ross’s wife or daughter.’

‘You think that’s who’s doing this?’ Jackson uttered, his eyes wide like an animal caught in headlamp beams. ‘Why the hell would they be coming down on us? That accident wasn’t our fault.’

‘They may not see it that way,’ Lopez replied. ‘You ever heard of a poltergeist that could be reasoned with?’

‘This isn’t a goddamned poltergeist,’ Glen snapped. ‘This is the mother of all weird demon shit!’ He looked about for a moment. ‘Where’s Karina?’

‘She’s taking a break,’ Lopez replied.

Donovan looked at each of them in turn. ‘You’ve got jurisdiction of this case but not my officer. Take me to her immediately.’

‘Your officer?’ Lopez echoed. ‘The same officer that we had to carry out of that hall after you took off with your tail between your legs?’

Donovan ground his teeth in his skull. ‘I didn’t see her go down.’

‘Then you weren’t paying enough attention,’ Ethan snapped. ‘You’ll see her when she’s good and ready, not before.’

Donovan fumed on the spot for a moment before he turned away and stormed across the lot between the fire truck and the ambulance. Glen Ryan looked at Lopez.

‘I could do with seeing her,’ he said.

‘She could have done with you not high-tailing it out of there, too,’ Lopez uttered, barely looking at him. ‘She wants you, she’ll find you.’

‘Karina and I are none of your business!’ Glen snapped as he pointed at her. ‘You stop sticking your nose into it or I’ll—’

Ethan’s knuckles pushed against the base of Glen’s throat as with the other hand he grabbed the younger man’s wrist and spun him around. Glen hit the side of the ambulance and found himself pinned there, his face squashed against the cold metal. Ethan peered at him with interest. ‘You’ll what?’

Glen coughed as he tried to swallow, but couldn’t.

‘Let him go,’ Lopez murmured. ‘He’s just a little boy.’

Ethan considered sending Glen sprawling onto the asphalt, but instead just shoved him sideways. Glen stumbled, rubbing his throat as he glared at Ethan.

‘What goes around, Warner.’

Ethan smiled coldly. ‘Ain’t that right.’

Glen stalked off and Jackson looked at each of them in turn, before turning and hurrying away. Ethan looked at Lopez.

‘We’re not going to get much help from them now,’ he said. ‘This whole thing just got a lot more complicated.’

‘We could still be wrong,’ Lopez pointed out as they started walking toward Karina’s car. ‘Maybe this isn’t about revenge.’

‘You saw what happened to Eric Muir,’ Ethan replied. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence. What bothers me more is that the wraith went for Donovan.’

‘You think that he had something to do with this?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ethan replied, ‘but there’s definitely something more going on than we know about, and I don’t like surprises.’

They turned a corner alongside bright yellow police-cordon tapes and saw a television crew already setting up. Ethan caught sight of a photographer standing nearby, camera at the ready, looking toward the law school.

Ethan and Lopez had rounded the police tapes alongside a fire truck, and had been concealed from the view of the television crew and a handful of bystanders. The photographer, hood up and concealing their features, was side-on to them and had not seen them emerge.

‘Get the car and follow me.’

Ethan launched himself into a full sprint, aiming directly at the photographer as he lifted his camera and took a shot of the ambulance leaving the site with the dead lawyer aboard.

Ethan’s headlong dash alerted him. The photographer’s head snapped round at the sound of approaching footfalls and instantly he whirled and took off down the street. Ethan sprinted past the television crew at full speed and barely ten yards behind the photographer.


He saw him slip his camera into a pocket of his thick winter coat, struggling to seal the pocket up as he ran out across 44th Drive and dodged past a slow-moving vehicle. Ethan hurled himself across the vehicle’s hood as it screeched to a halt, sliding off and hitting the ground at a run again as he closed in on the wildly fleeing reporter.

The runner turned south, heading toward the Metro on Court Square as he cut across a tree-lined plaza and headed for Jackson Avenue. Ethan pushed hard, just a few yards behind now and closing fast. He reached out as they cleared the plaza, gambling that the runner wouldn’t head right out across the lanes of traffic.

The runner suddenly slammed to a halt and ducked down, then jerked backwards into Ethan’s path. Ethan stumbled as he tried to avoid him but the reporter’s body crashed backwards into his legs and sent him flying over them.

Ethan hit the tiles of the plaza hard, rolling into his shoulder and coming up onto his feet in time to see the reporter dash between cars flowing south-west on Jackson. Ethan struggled on in pursuit, his joints aching from the impact as he fought to regain lost ground. Cars honked their horns as he ran across Jackson and into Court Square Park, a circular affair with a small clump of trees on the east side and cars parked along the sidewalk beyond them.

Not this time.

Ethan plunged between the trees in pursuit but this time he kept running, dashing through the copse until he burst out onto the sidewalk on the opposite side. He turned back, scanning the trees for his quarry to emerge.

A car’s tires squealed as it turned onto Court Square, the beams flashing across Ethan as he stood on the sidewalk. He saw Lopez driving Karina’s car and then pointed into the trees in front of him.

Lopez did not hesitate. She swerved the car up onto the sidewalk and switched on the high beams to illuminate the copse in bright white light. Ethan saw the trees glowing in the beams and then the figure that dashed from behind one of them, back through the treeline.

Ethan sprinted back into the treeline, hearing Lopez’s car reverse off the sidewalk behind him as he ran, and he burst out onto Thompson Avenue only a few paces behind the reporter. They sprinted across the street and the reporter vaulted a chain-link fence into a courtyard filled with old vehicles.

Ethan flew lithely over the fence into the courtyard, just in time to see the reporter whirl and flick one foot out toward him. Ethan careered sideways, sweeping his right arm down and across to block the blow as he staggered off balance.

The reporter spun with surprising agility, one fist trying to catch Ethan with a back-handed punch. Ethan threw his left forearm up and smashed the wrist aside, regaining his balance as he drove his bunched right fist straight into the man’s chest, just below his throat.

He heard a gasp of shock as the reporter was hurled backward by the force of the blow. He tumbled into the chain-link fence, one hand flying to his chest as he struggled to breathe. Ethan surged forward, driven by anger. He grabbed the reporter by the throat and pinned him against the fence, then reached up and yanked the hood aside.

The streetlights cast a pale glow down on the face that stared back at him, and, all at once, Ethan felt the air sucked from his lungs as the strength drained from his limbs. He staggered backwards as though struck, his jaw hanging limp and his eyes wide in disbelief.

The reporter was a blonde, her hair tumbling out from her hood, and her green eyes seemed dark in the shadows cast across her face by the streetlights above. But there was no mistaking her features, no doubt who she was.

Joanna Defoe stared back at Ethan, but she did not speak.