“Beats me. And her father said the man was going to give them a lot of money, or something to that effect. So if it was Laufer, then it would mean he was working with Nolan Murray.”
He shook his head. “Makes no sense. Laufer fingered Murray; he put us on to him in the first place.”
I nodded. “Right. And if for some reason it was all a setup, and Murray wanted Laufer to put us on to him, how could he know we’d go to the school and interview Laufer?”
“He couldn’t, so it falls apart.”
“How did we get to Laufer in the first…” I caught myself in midsentence, and stopped.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Nothing, just thinking out loud,” I said, then stood up. “Well, I guess with Laufer and Murray both dead, it doesn’t much matter anyway. Thanks for your time.”
I started for the door, but his words stopped me. “Hold it, Wagner.”
I turned and saw that he had a gun in his hand, and he was pointing it at me. “Do you realize that the entire country was trying to figure it out, and you’re the only one that did?”
“Right now I’m not feeling too good about that,” I said.
“Everybody who knew anything is dead,” he said. “Except you. And your client’s daughter. I’ll have to take care of her before I leave.”
I knew I was talking to someone who had killed hundreds of people, and had been willing to kill hundreds of thousands. But the idea that he would kill Karen somehow seemed to cross some ridiculous line that I had in my mind, and I couldn’t take it anymore. “You are a piece of shit,” I said.
He laughed. “For a lawyer, you’ve got some guts. But unfortunately for you, I can create people, and I can make them disappear. You are going to join the disappearing group.”
He started to raise the gun, and the room exploded; SWAT team members came in from everywhere. If anyone yelled “Freeze!” I sure as hell didn’t hear it. Emerson turned toward one of the smashed windows, but before he could point the gun he was cut down by what seemed like a thousand bullets.
The next thing I knew, Novack was alongside me. “Well done, lawyer. You even had me believing it.”
“The guy could have shot me. There had to be an easier way.”
“I told you, he wasn’t someone to leave a paper trail. We needed him to implicate himself, and he sure did that.”
I nodded, I had known he was right, and events confirmed it. “I’m going home now,” I said.
“Nope. You need to make a statement and get debriefed. All that good stuff.”
“I’ve watched an amazing woman die, I almost got shot, and I have no job. It’s been a rough twenty-four hours. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, and I left.
Epilogue
I will be famous for the rest of my life. That’d become clear already. Everybody told me that the combined stories of the terrorist attacks and Sheryl Harrison were going to stretch my fifteen minutes of fame closer to fifteen decades. It was going to take some getting used to.
It’d only been a week since Nolan Murray was killed; I still found it hard to stop using his name and call him Emerson instead. In any event, I hadn’t returned to real life yet. It felt like I’d been debriefed and interviewed by every department of the United States government except the post office, and when I hadn’t been talking to them, I’d been busy avoiding the media.
For a guy who never liked the media, it seemed like Novack had been doing round-the-clock interviews. I’d actually learned some things I didn’t know by listening to him.
For instance, Novack said that an examination of Hennessey’s financial records showed that he joined Emerson’s group just before Charlie Harrison was killed. That was probably why he was hired in the first place, and why Laufer was the one that Karen had seen with her father.
Charlie must have gotten greedy and tried to extract more money than Emerson was willing to pay, so it became necessary to hire extra muscle. Once Hennessey was aboard, he stayed, and probably was very useful when other problems came up that couldn’t be solved by computer.
Emerson’s creation of the Nolan Murray persona was brilliant. He must have killed the real Murray, maybe he had Hennessey do it, and then erased his life on computer. He appeared to make a mistake, leaving only the college transcript in Maine, but that was intentional. It gave him the chance to re-create Nolan Murray and then have Churchill take his place in death.
Emerson also was in a perfect position, as a local cop, to monitor police activity if it were closing in on “Murray.” That was why most of the early murder-frauds were done locally.
Once he moved to the “big stage,” the national attacks, he could have done it from anywhere. My guess was he insisted on only speaking to Janssen about the attack on the nuclear plant because Janssen was operating out of the police station, giving Emerson a vantage point to learn what was happening from both sides.
At the very end, Emerson had given Garrett the lead that sent him to interview Laufer’s ex-girlfriend. She was lying, paid off by Emerson, and she would have been killed later on, had Emerson lived.
Gerard Timmerman called me three times, wanting me to come in and talk about my position within the firm. That fame I mentioned had apparently made me very employable, probably even “partner” material. Which would be good news, if I had any interest in it at all.
My uncle Reggie wanted me to join him and thereby double the size of his firm. Maybe I’d talk to him about it, after a while. I knew I’d eventually have to do something; I was just going to push it off for as long as possible.
Dr. Jenkins called me a couple of days after the surgery, to apologize for being so cryptic before I went into the second room with Sheryl. All he had said was that I shouldn’t let Sheryl take the pills, that it was “too late.” He had promised Terry he would keep her secret, so he couldn’t say more, yet he also couldn’t allow Sheryl to take the pills.
Dr. Jenkins also confirmed most of my suspicions about how the Terry situation developed, without specifically saying so. It was obvious he was very helpful to her.
I spoke to Sheryl today; she called me for the second time this week. She told me that Karen is doing really well, that she was up and around and getting stronger every day. There was always the danger of rejection, but Dr. Jenkins was optimistic. Terry’s heart was a perfect match, which increased the chance for long-term success.
Sheryl said that she wanted to see me, that she’d been thinking about me more and more. When she got to the point where she thought about me twenty-four hours a day, then that would make us even.
Karen was going to be out of the hospital within the week, though she’d need a lot of recuperation time at home. “Come over and I’ll cook you dinner,” Sheryl said. “Although it’s been a while since I cooked, and I was never any good at it in the first place.”
“I’ll bring in pizza,” I said.
“Much better idea,” she agreed. Then, “Harvard, we didn’t have the normal first couple of dates, and I don’t know whether that will impact where we go. But right now, at this moment, I can’t wait to see you.”
“That’s exactly how I feel,” I said, because that was exactly how I felt. So we made tentative plans, depending on when Karen can go home.
I had wanted to tell her much more about how I felt, but I didn’t. Which is okay, because it looks like we’re going to have plenty of time.
Also by David Rosenfelt
One Dog Night
On Borrowed Time
Dog Tags
Down to the Wire
New Tricks
Don’t Tell a Soul
Play Dead
Dead Center
Sudden Death
Bury the Lead
First Degree
Open and Shut
About the Author
David Rosenfelt is the Edgar and Shamus Award–nominated author of nine Andy Carpenter novels, most recently One Dog Night, and three previous stand-alones. He and his wife recen
tly moved to Maine with the twenty-seven golden retrievers they have rescued and rehabilitated over the years. Visit him online at www.DavidRosenfelt.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
HEART OF A KILLER. Copyright © 2012 by Tara Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Rosenfelt, David.
Heart of a killer / David Rosenfelt.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-59837-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4299-5050-3 (e-book)
1. Lawyers—Fiction. 2. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3618.O838H43 2012
813'.6—dc23
2011036056
eISBN 9781429950503
First Edition: February 2012
Heart of a Killer Page 26