Ethan turned as the lights of vehicles flooding into the plaza outside flashed against the rain-soaked windows.
‘There’s only one person that connects all of this,’ he said. ‘Karina.’
Lopez’s eyes flared in alarm. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘No,’ Ethan insisted. ‘Think about what happened at her apartment, and now this. I’ve read before that paranormal phenomena often surround an individual. What if she’s the cause?’
‘You think that Karina squashed an elevator car,’ Lopez said flatly. ‘And tore a guy in half?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ethan replied. ‘I just know that we’re going to need help with this one.’
‘Jarvis?’ Lopez asked as they walked toward the stairwell.
‘Better than nothing,’ Ethan replied. ‘He’ll be able to track down somebody who knows more about this than we do.’
‘The Ghostbusters?’ Lopez suggested with a twinkle in her eye. ‘Maybe we can get that team off the television down here: Ghost Hunters, isn’t it?’
Ethan grinned as he walked onto the stairwell, and then the grin vanished. Lopez almost walked into him as he froze but, even as she opened her mouth to remonstrate, she too fell silent.
The rain outside had stopped, the window opposite them streaked with a million droplets of water that clung to the surface of the glass and glowed in the light from the nearby street like a galaxy.
In the random raindrops was cast a pair of gigantic, symmetrical vortexes, as though Ethan were staring at water swirling down two opposing plugholes. The vortexes were slowly vanishing as the raindrops trickled down the window, giving up their fight against gravity. Ethan couldn’t help the impression forming in his mind that something had passed through the glass.
Lopez stared at the immense pattern outside the window. ‘Okay, I take it back. The Ghost Hunters would run like hell from this. We call Jarvis.’
Ethan nodded and continued on down the stairwell and through the rotunda. They walked through to the elevators, where a team of forensics and CSI officers were already swarming around the crushed elevator and the gruesome corpse pinned within it.
Beside them, being questioned by two cops, was the elderly guard who had called them in. Ethan made his way over, and, as the two cops moved off, he managed to grab the guard. The man was in his sixties and in reasonably good shape for his age. But his face seemed pale and his eyes glazed, as though he’d recently awoke from a deep but unsatisfying sleep.
‘NYPD,’ Ethan said, lying as though he did it every day. ‘You got a moment?’
‘It look like I’m going anywhere?’ the guard muttered. ‘I just finished talking to your guys, ask them.’
Lopez stepped in. ‘Sorry, it’s a double investigation, but we won’t be more than a minute or two. You called the police after hearing gunshots, right?’
‘Sounded like gunshots,’ the guard replied. ‘Then a whole lot of screaming. Like I said, I wasn’t going up there with nothing more than my service pistol.’
Ethan nodded. ‘I don’t blame you. Thing is, we didn’t find any evidence of weapons discharge up there.’
The guard sighed. ‘Man, I heard a lot of damned loud bangs that I took to be gunshots. There ain’t much else it could have been.’
Ethan looked at the elevator shaft down the corridor nearby and at the corridor that led to the stairwell, all the way up to the fourth floor.
‘You really think that you could hear gunshots from the fourth floor?’ he asked.
The guard glanced at the corridor and seemed to hesitate. ‘Well, I guess, maybe.’
‘But you said that the noises were loud,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘Damned loud, you said.’
The guard nodded but seemed confused. ‘What are you saying?’
Ethan watched as the crushed and torn elevator car was hauled from the shaft by the police using canvass straps.
‘You didn’t hear gunshots,’ he said finally. ‘You heard the elevator car cables being snapped.’
The guard frowned and shook his head. ‘Man, that thing only just came crashing down. How the hell could the cables have snapped and the safety devices failed all at the same time?’
Lopez looked at the guard. ‘You tell us how a half-tonne elevator car can get crushed like a soda can without industrial power tools, we’ll tell you how it came crashing down. Deal?’
‘You notice anything strange happening while all that was going on?’ Ethan asked.
‘Strange how?’
‘Odd,’ Ethan pressed. ‘You said there were electrical disturbances, things like that?’
‘Sure,’ the guard replied without hesitation, ‘was bugging me for a few minutes before I heard the bangs. Lights were goin’ on and off, phone lines messing around, that kind of thing. I figured it was the gales outside causing it.’
Ethan nodded and decided not to push any further. ‘Thanks for your time.’
Lopez joined him as they walked toward the exit. ‘Well?’
Ethan fished his cellphone from his pocket.
‘We get Jarvis in on this,’ he said.
‘That’s my boy,’ Lopez said. ‘Leaves us to find your little Miss Mysterious, right?’
Ethan stepped out of the lobby and onto the steps outside, the wind tugging at his hair and carrying with it a fine dusting of moisture. He could see veils of drizzle flashing past the streetlights as he lifted the cell to his ear.
And then he saw the man with the camera, standing this time further down the street, watching the police swarming around the entrance to the court. For a brief instant, his body primed itself automatically for flight but somehow he restrained himself and engaged his brain.
‘Don’t look or move,’ he said to Lopez. ‘Ten o’clock, fifty yards out.’
Lopez pulled her collar up about her neck against the wind and rubbed her hands together as she surveyed the street in a single sweep and turned to Ethan. ‘Got ’em. How do you want to do it?’
Ethan dialed a number and put his cell to his ear.
‘With help,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if we can get them to make a mistake this time.’
27
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?’