The Eternity Project

8

EAST VILLAGE, NEW YORK



‘You there, Tom?’

Karina Thorne stood at the door to the apartment block near the corner of East 10th and peered up at the fire-escape ladders as she spoke into the entry panel on the wall. The low sun glinted off the metal railings, but she could see that the windows to Tom’s apartment were shut and the blinds drawn tight across them.

No reply came from the device and she was about to turn away and pull out her cellphone when the entry door’s locking mechanism suddenly buzzed. Karina turned and pushed the door open.

The apartment block had been recently renovated, the foyer clean and hushed as the door locked shut behind her with a sucking sound, the noise from the busy streets instantly deadened. She turned and climbed up the stairs, avoiding the elevator as she always did. Karina was claustrophobic, probably due to her having grown up in the open wilds of Blackwater alongside Chesapeake Bay. She had never quite got used to the towering steel-and-glass blocks of New York City.

She reached Tom’s door and knocked softly. For a long time no sound came from within but finally the door clicked and opened. Karina saw the apartment in shadow within and Tom’s eyes staring out at her, black and devoid of emotion.

‘Can I come in?’ she asked, her voice almost a whisper.

Tom turned away from the door without a word and walked into the shadows. Karina followed him in and shut the door behind them.

As a cop, Tom would not have earned enough alone to afford a two-bed in the East Village, but his wife Donna had been a doctor and together they had been doing okay. The apartment was neat and tidy, the décor clearly chosen by a feminine touch. The only thing out of place was Tom’s disheveled hair and the cushions that had been scattered off the couch.

Tom slumped down onto the couch and stared into the darkness, his hands hanging limp between his legs, his eyes as black and vacant as deep space. Karina knew what shock looked like – she had seen it many times before in the eyes of gunshot victims and automobile-wreck survivors, when the face lost all expression, the brain shutting down due to an emotional overload.

Karina stood immobile in the center of the lounge and chose her words with care.

‘Have you been back to the hospital yet?’

Tom did not respond. He had frantically followed the ambulance carrying his wife and child after they had been cut from the tangled wreckage of the Prius, screaming and hurling away anybody who tried to approach him. Even Jake Donovan had been unable to restrain Tom, instead enforcing a ten-foot exclusion zone around the distraught officer lest he toss somebody clean over the railings and down into the East River below.

Karina knew that racing the bodies to the hospital was most likely a futile gesture, as nobody could have realistically survived the wreck and the fire. By the time she had got there, Tom had already left. A duty nurse informed Karina that Donna and Sarah Ross had both died instantly from massive head and neck trauma from both the initial impact into the pile-up and then the second impact from the truck that piled into them from behind. Neither would have known what had happened or had the opportunity to feel a thing, but there was no such mercy for Tom, who for entirely understandable reasons had been prevented from seeing them one last time.

Karina felt tears pinching the corners of her eyes again as she sensed some tiny fragment of the colossal pain that Tom was enduring. Her voice croaked as she spoke.

‘They’re gone,’ she said. ‘I know you can’t deal with it right now, so I’m going to leave you in peace. I just wanted to let you know that the duty nurse confirmed that they would have known nothing about it. It was instant.’

Tom remained motionless. Karina sucked in a short, quivering breath as she felt something trickle gently down her cheek.

‘You’re on compassionate leave, effective immediately,’ she added. ‘Donovan has said that you can take as long as you need. The department will send somebody to see you when you’re ready, a counsellor.’

Tom did not respond, still staring silently into blackness. For a moment, Karina wondered whether he was actually breathing, he seemed so still. She knew that no words would be adequate, that no action could even begin to replace the vacuum torn into Tom’s soul by the uncaring hand of fate, but she also knew that to just walk away from him wasn’t an option.


‘Is there anything I can do, Tom?’

Tom remained silent and still, the silence drawing out until it weighed heavy in the darkness. Karina sighed softly enough that Tom would not hear it, and then she turned for the door. ‘You know where I am, if you need me. Just call, anytime.’

Karina reached out for the door handle when a faint voice reached out for her, sounding monotone as though the life had been ripped out of it to leave only a bare shell of sound.

‘Is that it?’

Karina hesitated, then turned to look over her shoulder. Tom had not moved, sitting still as though carved from granite. Then, slowly, his head turned and his black eyes stared into hers from across the room. ‘They’re just gone?’

Karina let go of the handle and turned to face her partner.

‘They’re gone,’ she whispered, ‘gone from here.’

Tom’s features remained turned toward her, but his eyes were focused on some distant place far from where he sat in the present.

‘Gone where?’ he asked.

Karina had the sudden impression that she was talking not to an experienced detective but to a small child, as though the tremendous trauma had regressed his age.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered, unwilling to commit herself any further.

Tom seemed to focus on her for the first time. His mouth was slightly open, as though his jaw were too heavy to hold up, and the lack of life in his eyes suddenly scared her, as though he too were already gone, his body merely running on what remained of his strength like a discarded toy that needed new batteries.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Tom whispered. ‘I can’t feel anything.’

Karina realized that in all of her life she had never witnessed a human being so completely scoured of all emotion. Murders, rapists, serial killers – all of them harbored somewhere within them the same humanity with which they had been born, no matter how deeply buried. But Tom seemed completely devoid of any psyche, an automaton incapable of feeling the pain that must now be rising up like a tsunami inside of him.

Karina slowly walked toward her colleague and sat down carefully on the edge of the couch near to him, instinctively knowing not to move too close and invade his fragile personal space. Tom stared at her with those unblinking eyes and she was forced to look away, unable to bear the thought of whatever lay behind them.

‘These things take time,’ she replied finally, trying to be sympathetic and pragmatic at the same time. ‘Try not to force anything, Tom.’

He didn’t react to her words, still enveloped in a haze of confusion. Karina knew that in his apparently senseless state, he might become a suicide risk. Devoid of any sense of future or consequence, he could be suddenly overcome with grief when the shock finally wore off and take his own life in some unspeakable act of self-mutilation.

With a start of realization, she recalled that Tom’s parents had passed away a few years previously. An only child, he had literally lost the only family he had left.

She reached into the pocket of her jacket and lifted out a brass key. Gently, she reached across to Tom and took his hand. Tom looked down vacantly as she opened his hand and pushed the key into his palm.

‘My apartment,’ she said. ‘Use it. Doesn’t matter how upset you feel or what time of the day or night it is, you go there and you find me, okay?’ Tom stared down at the key. ‘Okay?’ Karina pressed him.

Tom looked slowly up at her and gave her a barely perceptible nod.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Do you have a spare key for here?’

Tom’s head turned and he looked at a clear plastic bag lying on a table top a few feet away. With a sickening feeling, Karina realized that it must have been the possessions of his wife and daughter, recovered from their bodies or from the wrecked Prius.

Slowly, Karina got up and walked across to the bag. Inside was a purse, some credit cards, a set of keys on a ring and, to her dismay, a small doll dressed in pink clothes, its blonde hair carefully platted.

‘Jesus.’

Tears drenched her cheeks as she opened the bag and unclipped the apartment key from the ring.

Karina slipped the key into her pocket and walked back to Tom, who was staring now at the bag on the table. Karina belatedly spotted pictures hanging on the opposite wall of the lounge, images of Tom with Donna and Sarah and others of Sarah as a tiny baby and toddler. She struggled to keep her own emotions in check as she knelt down before Tom and grasped both of his hands in hers. She desperately wanted to insist that she stay the night, to keep him company, to prevent him from doing something that he might regret, but she somehow knew that right now all Tom wanted to be was alone. She would have felt the same.

‘Keep in touch,’ she insisted. ‘Don’t let go, Tom, okay?’ Tom stared at her for a long beat before offering her another silent nod.

Karina stood and walked to the apartment door, glancing back as she left to see Tom still sitting in the darkness and staring at the plastic bag on the table nearby.