The Coleridge Project
An explanation and Prologue
First, an explanation of what I’ll be doing.
Back around 2015 I wrote a thriller that involves a reporter finding himself mired in a deadly conspiracy involving a shadowy organization developing a mind-control technology for the purpose of the takeover of the US. Around that time, a friend and good thriller writer (I’ll leave him anonymous) had hooked up with this guy who had figured out a way to game Amazon and sell a gazillion books, and my friend urged me to let this guy publish my new thriller also, which I had titled Dying Memories. By the time he got the book published, Amazon had plugged the hole in their casino, and since it was no longer going to sell a gazillion copies (or really any given his lack of marketing), this guy agreed to unpublish the book and give it back to me. I put it away, thinking maybe someday I’d do something with it. A few months back I gave it another read. I think it’s good, but could use some polishing and some rewrite, so I’ll be going through it a chapter at a time and putting up the new chapters here—probably one a week, but maybe more. I had a hell of a time coming up with a new title since Dying Memories fits it so well, so The Coleridge Project is for now a placeholder, but it could be what I end up using unless someone is able to suggest something better. The new title comes up from this passage from a poem, which sort of fits.
Strange Power, I know not what thou art,
Murderer or mistress of my heart.
I know I'd rather meet the blow
Of my most unrelenting foe
Than live---as now I live---to be
Slain twenty times a day by thee.
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
Prologue
Other than the man who watched her though a pair of high-powered binoculars from a fifth-floor office window across the street, the people who passed the woman as they rushed to work didn’t pay attention to her, which was understandable. She was in her thirties, nondescript, dressed neither expensively nor shabbily, her hair thin and dull brown in color, her body hidden under a bulky black-and-white-checkered cloth coat.
Those who glanced at her might’ve wondered about the tautness hardening her face into an angry mask and the deadness glazing her red-rimmed eyes if they weren’t so preoccupied with their own busied thoughts or their cell phone conversations or wolfing down their greasy breakfast sandwiches and gulping down the remnants of their coffee. It was eight thirty-seven in the morning, which meant that most of these people were already seven minutes late for work. The few who did slow down on noticing her assumed that her obvious distress was over something trivial, such as a rough morning or an unpleasant business meeting scheduled for later, and they sped up quickly as they dismissed the idea that she was anyone to be concerned about.
They paid attention to her after the shots blasted out. There were a lot of them and everything seemed to stop then. Nobody screamed, though. As people turned to her, she stood stone-faced, her right hand stretched out in front of her, her knuckles bone-white as she gripped the handgun that had earlier been hidden under her cloth coat. Red speckles dotted her coat sleeve and gun hand, and the acrid smell of gunpowder penetrated the crisp autumn air. Lying on the sidewalk crumpled only a few feet from her was a well-dressed man, his legs twisted unnaturally beneath him. From the gray showing in his hair and his weathered face, he appeared to have been in his early fifties. Before the shooting he could’ve been a good-looking man; slim, athletic, but it was hard to tell given the way his chest had been turned to a bloody pulp and the gaping red hole carved out where his left eye had been. Some of the people staring at the scene were probably in shock, others might’ve thought this was a TV stunt and were expecting Ashton Kutcher or some other such celebrity to come running out yelling that they had all been punk’d.
Nobody ran, but people began to back away from her, especially as they realized that as unreal as the scene may have seemed, it was quite real. The blood that had spattered on the woman was genuine, as was the gore littering the sidewalk and the blood pooling beneath the man that she had shot. He was dead. This wasn’t staged. The shooting wasn’t an elaborate special effect and make-up job. The gunshots still reverberating through the street were real. The woman standing as still as a statue with her gun hand outstretched had indeed fired bullets into the man lying dead on the Boston sidewalk in front of her.
As people moved away from her, they did so as if they were pushing through molasses, even the ex-Marine who recognized the model of the gun that she was holding and was pretty sure he had counted seven shots, which would’ve left the magazine empty. When the crowd had gotten to what they felt was a safe distance from her, some stopped to watch, others continued on. Nobody spoke. A hushed silence had descended on the area. The woman seemed oblivious to them all, her attention focused only on the ruined body of the man she had murdered.
Several minutes passed before the quiet was broken by the pulsating wail of police sirens. By the time four Boston police cruisers came screeching to a halt in front of her, the woman was alone on the sidewalk; all other pedestrians had moved to the other side of Post Office Square to watch the events from a safe distance. Orders were barked at the woman to drop her gun.
The woman remained frozen. She appeared unaware of the small mob of police officers shouting at her to give up her weapon. They didn’t fire on her. Instead, three of them edged closer to her with their own guns drawn. When they had gotten within ten feet of her, they charged, first pulling her gun out of her hand, then forcing her onto the sidewalk and, with their adrenaline pumping, violently jerking her arms behind her back so they could cuff her. The woman remained mute through it all, just as she had while she had waited for her victim and later during her assassination of him. If she felt any pain from the near dislocation of both of her shoulders or the abrasions that the rough cement of the sidewalk caused to her face, she didn’t show it. It was only when she was pulled to her feet that she muttered something under her breath.
One of the police officers asked her what she had said. He was holding her by her right elbow, his hard, narrow face red from the excitement, perspiration wetting his upper lip and gleaming along his forehead. She turned to face him, confused, as if she were only just realizing he was there.
“I’m glad I killed him,” she said.
The officer was still breathing hard from the arrest. He grunted, nodding toward the dead man. “You knew him?”
Her eyes grew small and her mouth quivered as she glanced at what was left of the man she had shot seven times. She swallowed back whatever emotion was fighting to come surging out.
“I knew him,” she said. Her voice broke off for a moment before she added, “Kent Forster. He raped and murdered my daughter. Jenny was only eleven when that monster did that to her. He deserved worse than what I did.”
She started crying then. Mostly a silent sobbing, her face twisting into a massive crease. Two of the officers placed her in a police cruiser and drove off.
Simon, the man who had been watching her through binoculars, was alone in the office. He had also listened to her statement to the police using a state-of-the-art parabolic microphone. He was dressed neatly and conservatively in a dark gray suit, white shirt, light gray tie, and black oxfords. Thin, with black hair that had been cut short, and a square-shaped and freshly-scrubbed pink face; his most distinguishing features other than the extreme pink hue of his skin color were slightly pointed ears and small round eyes that didn’t look much bigger than a pair of dimes. Satisfied with what he had seen and heard, he packed the equipment into a small canvas suitcase and left the office.