In fact, the radiation was being directed more than six inches from the correct spot, to an area near the bottom of Ryan’s brain. It wouldn’t be until much later that day, long after Ryan’s body was taken away for an autopsy, that they also learned that the radiation had been delivered at more than seven times the directed strength. It had charcoal-broiled his brain.
Within weeks, the grief-stricken Alice had hired a lawyer, and the hospital, as well as Dr. Robbins and the company that manufactured the machine, had all quietly consented to a very large settlement. Ryan’s family would be wealthy, but it was small consolation to them for his loss.
The life insurance company paid off the $750,000 to Alice, as well as the $1.5 million policy to Daniel Shaw, whom Ryan had never met nor heard of.
If one wants to hire a murderer, prisons are a great place to start. Especially maximum security prisons; when mining for murderers that’s pretty much the mother lode.
The key is to find someone with expertise and experience; MIT has the engineers, Vegas the gamblers, Manhattan the great pizza makers. But if a headhunter is looking to hire a literal “headhunter,” a maximum security prison is the place.
If you throw a dart in a maximum security prison, you’ll most likely hit a murderer, though that would probably not be the wisest thing to do. Ray Hennessey didn’t have to throw a dart; all he had to do was put out the word that $100,000 was up for grabs.
The fact that the killers in prison by definition had previously gotten caught meant nothing to Hennessey. Whether his hired killer was apprehended after killing Sheryl Harrison was of no concern to him, and likely wouldn’t be to the killer either.
New Jersey’s lack of a death penalty was the reason for that. Many of the convicted murderers were already put away for the rest of their natural lives. So since they couldn’t be put to death, or sent away for any longer than they already were, why would another conviction be of concern?
Money always talked, even behind the prison walls. Not only could it buy perks on the inside, many of these people had families on the outside, and being able to provide them with substantial cash was very appealing.
So once Hennessey put the word out that he was looking for someone on the inside to kill Sheryl Harrison, he had a wide array of possibilities to choose from. Since it was a women’s prison, they were all women, which was not something that Hennessey was used to.
The person he chose came highly recommended both for her ruthlessness and for her discretion. Even though Hennessey’s identity remained a secret from her, if she were caught she would still reveal nothing about the facts behind her hiring.
But none of that mattered. He had arranged for Sheryl Harrison to be murdered. It was to take place in the prison laundry, where she worked, but on the appointed day she didn’t show up for her shift. The killer made inquiries, and learned that she had been moved to suicide watch.
That meant that she would be isolated from the other prisoners and carefully guarded twenty-four hours a day, with constant camera surveillance. Under those circumstances, she simply could not be gotten to, not even by someone willing to reveal their identity for the chance to make the kill.
The word was passed to Hennessey by his hired killer, who could not accomplish the job because of the suicide watch.
Sheryl Harrison, the inmate who wanted to die, could not be killed.
Terry Aimonetti was cooking, which had lately become a delicate balancing act.
Terry was one of those instinctively great cooks. No matter what was lying around in the refrigerator, she could make a uniquely wonderful meal out of it. She was an artist, and she generally loved practicing her art.
But she had been trying to balance two conflicting needs, and it was a struggle. Karen’s appetite had waned; the weaker she became the less interest she had in eating. Since she had always loved Terry’s cooking, it fell to Karen’s grandmother to make special dishes that would overcome her lack of appetite and get her to eat.
But also as Karen became more ill, her doctors kept making her diet progressively more strict. No spices, no seasonings, nothing that Terry ordinarily used to work her magic. With so few weapons at her disposal, making something that Karen would be anxious to eat became a near impossible task, but that didn’t stop Terry from tackling it head on.
Terry had been cooking for almost an hour, making a whole wheat pasta with a sauce that Terry’s own mother would have scorned as belonging in an old age home. But it was as good as it was going to get, and Terry had called out to Karen to sit down at the table.
She called three times, but Karen didn’t answer. This was not terribly unusual, as Karen had been sleeping during the day a great deal, and had a teenager’s immunity to sleep disturbances.
“Karen?” Terry kept calling, with increasing loudness as she walked to her room. She was by then starting to worry, moving more quickly as she approached.
Karen’s door was open, but she was not there. The door to the bathroom off her room was closed, and Terry moved toward it. She thought she could hear water running, so she called out, “Karen? Karen, sweetheart, are you okay?”
There was no response, so Terry called again, louder and more insistent. Still no answer, so Terry opened the door. “Karen, I’m sorry, I…”
Karen was on the floor, facedown, blood coming from the top of her head. Terry screamed and went to her, fearing the worst. She slowly turned her so that she could see her face, and she saw the blood coming from a cut, which was actually just above her eye.
But she was breathing, and starting to open her eyes groggily. She said something, so low and muffled that Terry couldn’t make it out.
“It’s okay, baby … you’re going to be okay,” Terry said, then took a folded towel and placed it gently between Karen’s head and the cold floor. She pressed another towel lightly to the cut, but it had mostly stopped bleeding by then.
Terry ran into the bedroom, grabbed the phone, and called 911, asking that an ambulance be sent. Within ten minutes the emergency medical people were in the house and putting Karen onto a stretcher, for the trip to the hospital.
Terry drove with her in the back of the ambulance. Karen was awake and coherent, but she was scared, and Terry tried to console her. “You must have slipped on the wet floor,” Terry said, but they both knew better.
Karen was taken to the emergency room, but admitted to the hospital as a patient. It was not because of the cut, but because of her condition. Her heart was weakening at an alarming rate, and it was felt that she would be better off in the hospital, where she could be monitored and cared for.
Stress was something that her doctors wanted her to have none of, so it was decided, at least for the time being, that the furor surrounding her mother would be kept from her. This was not as easy as it sounded; it meant that she could only watch television when supervised, and could not take phone calls from her friends.
Terry was having a difficult time. The horror of watching her granddaughter go through this, coupled with the nightmare going on with Sheryl, was enough stress for ten people, and it was weighing heavily on Terry.
But life had never been easy for her, and it had made her a remarkably strong woman. She was going to get through this, no matter which direction it went, and she was going to be there for her family.
And the part that made this particularly unbearable, and so terribly, terribly unfair, was the secret that she had promised never to reveal.
Uncle Reggie called me at seven o’clock in the morning. I was sleeping, having been up until 1:00 A.M. the previous night doing media interviews over the phone. When they say that cable news is a 24/7 operation, they mean it literally.
“He’ll see you at eight-thirty behind the tennis courts at Eastside Park in Paterson,” was the opening Reggie used instead of “hello.” “And he said if you bring any reporters, he’ll cut your tongue out.”
“Paterson? I’m in New York.”
“Then you’d better get your ass
moving; he’s doing this as a favor to me.”
I jumped in the shower, dressed, and was in my car in fifteen minutes. I had a vague idea how to get to Paterson, but no idea where Eastside Park was, so I figured I’d ask when I got in the area.
I made very good time and was approaching Paterson on Route 4 at about eight o’clock. I stopped at a gas station and asked the attendant where Eastside Park was, and he didn’t have a clue. He told me his boss would be back in a minute, and that he would likely know.
The mention of “boss” jarringly reminded me that I had a meeting at nine-thirty scheduled with Gerard Timmerman, an appointment I would not be able to keep.
Once the gas station boss gave me directions to the park, I called Timmerman’s office, and got his administrative assistant, an imposing woman named Mildred. She was the only person under sixty that I had ever met with that name, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.
“I’m sorry, but something important has come up, and I’m going to have to reschedule my meeting with Mr. Timmerman this morning.”
She didn’t answer at first, no doubt finding it difficult to process. Then, “You’re rescheduling?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. What time works for him?”
“You’re sure about this?” she asked, clearly incredulous. Her tone was screaming at me that this was an ill-advised career move.
“Listen, I know this is unusual, but I’ll explain when I see him. And I’m in something of a hurry. I’m late for a meeting.”
“You set up a different meeting?”
I was getting in deeper, but there was nothing I could do. Finally, she told me that Timmerman had an opening on his schedule for eleven-thirty, and she would pencil me in for then. If Timmerman found that unacceptable when she spoke to him, she’d call me.
I got to the tennis courts five minutes early, and exactly five minutes after that former detective, now lieutenant, John Novack pulled up. He got out of the car and walked toward me, glancing around, probably to make sure he didn’t see reporters, which would force him to cut out my tongue.
“Speak,” he said.
“Thanks for coming.”
“Speak words that matter.”
“Okay. I’m representing Sheryl Harrison; you’ve probably seen the media coverage about what’s going on.”
He didn’t say anything, so I pushed forward. “You were the arresting officer in the murder case, and the first one on the scene. Sheryl confessed to you.”
“You planning on telling me something I don’t know?” he asked.
“Actually, I’m not. I’m more interested in learning what you do know, or more accurately, what you think.”
“About what?” His tone was still belligerent, and it was getting on my nerves. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to alienate him.
“Look, Reggie told me you don’t like defense lawyers, but that’s not what I am. I just sort of wandered into this, and I’m doing the best I can. I’m trying to save a girl’s life.”
“And lose your client’s in the process.”
“I’m not happy about that, but it’s her decision, or at least that’s what I’m hoping to make it.”
He seemed to think about this for a moment, and then seemed to soften a little. A very little. “What does this have to do with me?”
“I don’t give us much chance to win in the courts, and even if we do, Karen won’t make it that long. Public opinion is on our side, and we can milk it as we go along, but it’s not so one-sided that the state is going to back down.”
“So?’
“So Sheryl has a parole hearing in three weeks. It’s just a formality at this point, but I want to make it more than that. I want her to get the parole and go out in the world. Then there will be nothing to stop her from saving her daughter’s life.”
“She won’t get paroled,” Novack said.
I nodded. “Not on the current evidence.”
“You have something new?”
I shook my head. “No. That’s where I’m hoping you come in.”
He laughed. “Let me go check my car; I think I’ve got some new evidence in the trunk.”
“Reggie doesn’t think she did it,” I said.
Novack didn’t say that Reggie was an idiot, or that Reggie didn’t know what he was talking about, or that I should stop wasting his time with this bullshit. What he said was, “Yeah.”
“More importantly, I looked at the discovery, including the murder book.”
“So?” he asked, though he knew where I was going.
“I saw your reports; you had doubts that Sheryl was guilty. I think that’s why you agreed to meet me this morning.”
He seemed to run through his mind where to go with this, and then he asked, “You know that thing you attorneys have, where you take an oath to keep things in confidence, and you pretend you have integrity?”
I smiled. “I’m vaguely familiar with it.”
“Well, you better keep what I tell you in confidence, because if you don’t, you won’t get disbarred. You’ll get dis-balled.”
I smiled an uncomfortable smile. “You have my word.”
“Good. It’s true that I was never sure she did it; none of the pieces fit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for one, the victim was lying facedown, which means she had to lift his head from behind, reach around, and slice him.”
“She couldn’t have done it from the side?”
He shook his head. “Not in the direction it was done. I could explain that, but take my word for it. Also, the autopsy showed there were indentations on his back from the killer’s knees. But for her to have done it the way the evidence showed wouldn’t make sense anyway.”
“Why is that?”
“Couple of things. One, she risked waking him up by doing it that way, which would not have gone well for her. Two, if she was an enraged, battered wife, she would be far more likely to plunge the knife into his back a bunch of times. The way this was done was surgical; not a crime of passion at all. More like an execution.”
“Anything else?”
He nodded. “There was no blood on her. She would have had to be very, very careful to avoid the blood; it was everywhere. And why go to all that trouble if she was going to call 911 and confess?”
“Maybe she’s squeamish.”
“Squeamish people don’t slit throats. They put poison in coffee. And the victim had a gun in his pocket, a thirty-eight. It was unregistered.”
“So?”
“So he was a used-car salesman. Why did he need to carry an unregistered handgun? Plus he had a fake ID in his wallet, a professional job.”
I wanted to sound like I knew what I was talking about, like I had some insight. But I was impressed at the way this was pouring out of Novack, with little prompting. Either he had amazing powers of recall, or he had been thinking about this over the years. “So?”
“This guy wasn’t getting carded in bars; why would he have a fake ID?”
“Did you do anything about this at the time?”
His stare was the reason the phrase “If looks could kill” was invented. “You may find this hard to understand, but police have a tendency to use their time and resources to solve crimes that haven’t already been solved. It’s not a whodunit when somebody has already said, ‘I done it.’”
“Why would she confess if she didn’t do it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll ask her the next time we have a client conference.”
I decided to ignore the insult and get to the real reason why I was there. “I need your help.”
He just stared at me, waiting.
“I don’t have any money, and Sheryl sure as hell doesn’t. So I can’t hire any investigators.”
Still just stared, waiting.
“So I was wondering if you could conduct at least some of the investigation you didn’t conduct back then,” I said, and then softened it with, “Not that you should have, I mean, back then
.”
“I’ll get back to you,” he said, and then walked back to his car. I had no idea what his intentions were, or what he was going to get back to me with.
So I went to meet with my boss, which would probably be a lot like meeting with my parents.
Probably worse.
Jamie Wagner’s question had gotten under Novack’s skin. He had asked why Novack didn’t do anything about his suspicions at the time of Charlie Harrison’s murder. The answer had been the right one; once Sheryl Harrison confessed, there were other cases that more urgently needed his attention.
But it was bullshit, and Novack knew it. The case had bothered Novack ever since, and he had the autonomy to have pursued it if he thought it was worthwhile. But he never did, and even though he made the excuse to Wagner, he knew better.
Of course, time was always a factor, and there was never enough of it, but at this point he was going to make the time. He would try to find out what really went on in that room that day, and whether Sheryl Harrison killed Charlie or not.
He was tired of beating himself up over this case; he had plenty of other cases to beat himself up over.
Sheryl’s mission to save her daughter’s life and give up her own was not the motivating factor for Novack. He wasn’t sure where he came down on the issue, and didn’t spend much time thinking about it. Deep philosophical thinking was not really Novack’s thing, especially when the issue at hand was strictly other people’s business.
But if he were pressed, he’d probably be on the side of saving the daughter’s life. He and his ex-wife Cindy didn’t have any children, but if they had, Novack would do everything he could for that kid, including giving up his own life, if that became necessary. So he admired and respected Sheryl’s guts, whether or not she slit Charlie’s throat.
Novack had discussed it the night before with Cindy. She was pretty much the only person in the world that he ever had an outside-of-work conversation with that didn’t include the words “Knicks,” “Mets,” “Giants,” or “Jets.”
Heart of a Killer Page 6