CHAPTER 27
FRIDAY, 8:00 P.M.
CRISTOS SAT NEXT TO Jack in the back of the Suburban, Aaron and Donal in the front seat, a man named Josh in the rear third seat. All were silent in deference to Cristos as they drove toward the city.
“So how did you know?” Cristos asked.
“How did I know what?” Jack said.
“That I was alive. You try to act so surprised, yet you taunted me with that note.”
Jack shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“The note that was inside the case we stole from you.” Cristos reached inside his pocket, pulled out the letter, and handed it to Jack. “Is that your signature?”
Jack stared at the envelope and quickly pulled out the letter. Just when he had started to think his memory was intact, this letter said otherwise.
“Who told you?” Cristos pressed him. “Or did you figure it out?”
Jack was speechless, his confusion impeding him from even hearing Cristos. Until he had received the call, he had no idea Cristos was alive. Nothing could have ever allowed him to surmise such an impossibility. He had no memory of writing it. He had no memory of placing it in the box.
Yet here he was, staring at his own handwriting, his own signature.
The envelope had Cristos’s name on it. The personal stationery was Jack’s, given to him by Joy for his birthday. The message was written in blue ink, with thick, heavy strokes.
I killed you once …touch my family and I will kill you again. Jack Keeler
“NOT REALLY WORDS becoming of a district attorney.” Cristos took the letter from Jack, tucked it back into the envelope, and gave it back to him. “You go ahead and keep it, contemplate it later.”
Jack looked out the window of the Suburban, seeing that they were heading down the FDR, nearing their destination.
“So, Jack, before you kill me, you’re going to help me.”
Jack could hardly focus. Against all logic, it was as if he had written a letter to a ghost. His attention was pulled back as Cristos nudged him.
“You really don’t have a choice, Jack,” Cristos said as he held out his cell phone.
“You expect me to help you break in?” Jack finally said, trying to put aside the fragility of his mind.
“Oh, I expect you to do so much more than that. You’re not only going to lead us down there, but you are going to steal the box from under the noses of the agents who are protecting that room.” Cristos paused. “And Jack, you know, if you don’t, your wife’s death will be your fault.”
Jack took the phone from Cristos, flipped it open, and quickly dialed. The phone hadn’t made it through half a ring when—
“Evidence,” Charlie Brooks answered.
“Charlie?” Jack asked in surprise.
“Holy shit,” Charlie said, immediately recognizing his friend’s voice.
“Don’t say a word,” Jack said quickly.
“I wouldn’t know what to say. Oh, my God.”
“Charlie, who’s down there with you?”
“And your wife?”
“She’s alive, but you can’t react. No one is to know what’s going on.”
“You know the feds are down here looking at everything.”
“I know. How many people you got down there now?”
“Three feds and an accountant. Seems I’m not the only one with nothing to do on a Friday night. Does Frank know?”
“Yeah.”
“That son of a bitch, He let me go on and on. I’m going to kick his little fireplug ass—”
“Charlie.” Jack cut him off. “Remember the case Mia and I dropped off the other day?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, especially every time the feds ask about it.”
“You’re a good man. Smart. Don’t let them tell you any different.”
“Good thing you said not to log it in.”
“Well, that box you have no idea about? I’m coming to get it.”
CRISTOS STUDIED THE hand-drawn map that Jack had sketched out of the lower level of the Tombs, looking at the bottleneck entrance to the evidence room, the small administrative office, and the oversized warehouse-like space where tens of thousands of evidence cases, boxes, and bags lay in wait to be shepherded through the judicial system.
“I will get you the box, but you don’t harm anyone, do you understand?”
“You don’t really think you’re in charge here, do you?” Cristos said. “We’re all going downstairs except Josh here.” Cristos pointed to the third man, his brown hair slicked back, his jacket a size too large. “He’ll watch the guard and the lobby and keep us posted.”
“Those people downstairs have nothing to do with this.”
“Then their lives are in your hands. You get us the box without incident, no one dies. But if you try to warn anyone or take control, their deaths will be on your conscience.”
As Jack sat there in the limo, he did everything he could to stay focused, to keep his mind off of Mia, as any fear he felt for her would only distract him from the task at hand. He had to get that case but had to stay alive in the process if he was to have any chance of saving her. He finally turned back to Cristos and asked the question that had been burning in his mind since he first heard his voice.
“How did you survive? I watched you die.”
“Yes, you did,” Cristos said. “But do you remember what I said? Death is not always final, not always permanent. Death is never the end.”
“You’re trying to tell me you came back from the dead?”
“Where I come from, life and death stand side-by-side; the divide is blurred. Our priests say they can communicate with the dead.”
“Really?” Jack said, his voice filled with cynicism.
“You act as if that sounds so far-fetched. Everyone talks to those who have passed away in one way, shape, or form. How many people do you know who will talk to their deceased mother or father, hearing their voices in their ears during times of stress or anguish? Mothers hearing the cry of a child who has passed away. Or seeing people in our dreams, people who have come back to haunt or guide us. The priests from the village where I grew up have traditions thousands of years old concerning life, death, resurrection, just like any other religion.”
Jack stared at him.
“They believe in magic. In not only communicating with the afterlife but also seeing the future, predicting what’s to come as if they could read your fate. They say they can remember the future in much the way we remember the past.”
“Spoken like a man who can only see life in terms of black and white, right and wrong. Spoken like a scientist who can’t wrap his mind around things he can’t understand or … just like an attorney.” Cristos tilted his head, as if assessing. “You look like a Catholic to me.”
Jack didn’t answer.
“The priest during mass, turning water into wine, Christ rising from the dead. Miracles, healings, divine intervention. Every religion has and embraces its own beliefs, the kind that some might call magical. Who are you to question their validity?”
“You’re telling me the priests of your religion can see the future?”
“The head Cotis priest can look into someone’s heart and see his fate and, in some cases, even help to shape it.”
“If they have such a third eye, why didn’t they see the horrors you would commit and try to stop you?”
“Who’s to say they didn’t try?” Cristos paused. “Do you believe your future is preordained? That we were always destined to meet again even though I died?”
“We shape our lives,” Jack said. “Not some divine intervention.”
“Really? If your mother called you in the middle of the night with a premonition of your house burning to the ground from a fault in the toaster, you’d unplug that toaster. Or if someone was to tell you that you were to die in a car accident on I-95 tomorrow and they said it with certainty, would you take a different road or perhaps avoid getting into a car?”
Jack pondered the logic of Cristos’s words. He hated when people lectured him but there was a glimmer of truth to their words. “Are you telling me you weren’t supposed to die that day? That some kind of magic intervened?”
Cristos let out a dry laugh. “No magic involved that time. I only needed to own two people: the technician who administered the drugs and rigged the heart monitor and the coroner.”
Jack was instantly shocked. “How could you get to them from prison?”
“Once I was captured, the people who hired me were the ones who insisted on my speedy trial. They knew that if I was ever captured, I could choose to name names during the trial about who hired me and tell them about the list I had of all of the jobs I’ve done worldwide. And most particularly, who my employer was. They were easily swayed to my cause. We came to the conclusion that if I was convicted and executed, I’d have even more free rein to carry out future assignments.”
“How could your employer manipulate our system so easily?”
“Because my employer is the system. My employer was your government.”