My heart is pounding so hard that it feels like somebody is using the Dumpster we’re leaning on for a bongo drum. “Andy?” Karen whispers—I guess, to confirm that I’m still there, since we’re not actually touching. I reach out and touch her arm, hoping it will stop her from talking.
I can clearly hear someone coming toward us, stalking us. I’m in a near panic, not knowing whether we should try to run some more or stay there and hope the night makes us invisible. The danger in running is that we are likely to bang into something and call attention to ourselves. Based on what happened to the door, the shooter has such a powerful weapon that he will not have to be terribly accurate to hit us in this enclosed area.
I can hear the shooter coming closer. I can’t tell how close, but I would guess he’s thirty feet away. It is impossible to avoid the realization that this person is going to kill us unless I do something to stop him. I have no idea how to do so, and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t have the courage or ability to pull it off.
On the other hand, I do have Karen, and she pushes something into me which feels rock hard. I reach out and take it; it feels like a piece of firewood. It makes sense; if she or her neighbor has a fireplace, this would be a likely place to keep the wood.
So I have a log, and he has a large gun. Advantage, bad guy, although I wouldn’t feel confident even if the weapons were reversed.
I whisper to Karen: “Move as slowly and quietly as you can away from the Dumpster and back toward that wall.” I say it so softly that I’m not even sure if actual sounds are coming out of my mouth, but she must hear me, because I can feel her slowly move away.
I can hear the shooter’s footsteps move toward me, and I force myself to come up with a plan. It’s not a good one, but it’s the best that I can do.
As he gets closer, I slowly stand, dreading the clicking sound that my knee usually makes when I get up after sitting for a while. This time it doesn’t; I wonder if fear-induced adrenaline is a cure for knee clicking.
Taking a deep breath, I quickly raise the lid of the Dumpster a few inches and let it drop. It is a distinctive sound, and I want the shooter to think we have taken refuge inside.
It seems to work, because I can hear him move quickly to the Dumpster. He opens the lid, and the next sounds I hear are bullets being fired into it.
Using that deafening sound to camouflage the sounds I will make, I stand and start swinging the log at the spot where his head and body are most likely to be. I seem to strike him a glancing blow, probably on the shoulder, and I hear him yell in pain.
I know that he must be readying the gun to fire, and I make an adjustment and bring the log down as hard as I can at where I think his head must be. It makes a crunching sound, and he moans and seems to fall.
I’m not taking anything for granted, and I keep swinging the log at him, alternating between hitting cement, Dumpster, and something else that I hope is his head. I’m sure the sound of wood hitting skull is quite disgusting to most humans, but right now it sounds pretty good to me.
I start screaming to Karen to run into the house and call 911. I eventually stop swinging the log, because the shooter is completely silent and apparently unmoving. Lights go on in Karen’s neighbor’s house, probably because they are wondering what the racket is about.
My eyes adjust to the dim light, and I can see the shooter at my feet. His head is literally smashed in, and a pool of blood is forming next to him.
I can’t see his face, and I gently move him with my foot so that I’ll be able to. I’m guessing it’s Banks, Carelli, or Winston, since they are the unaccounted-for people in that alleged helicopter crash.
I’ve seen pictures of them all, but the damaged face on the shooter does not seem to match any of them. It’s disappointing; there seems to be enough people in this conspiracy to fill Yankee Stadium, all of whom want to kill Karen.
Within a few minutes the area is filled with seemingly every cop in New Jersey, and the paramedics arrive moments later. But this particular conspirator is not going to kill anyone ever again.
He is dead, just the latest bad guy to learn that you don’t mess with Andy Carpenter.
KAREN AND I don’t get back to my house until four in the morning.
It would have been even later, but Pete Stanton arrived on the scene at Karen’s house and ushered us out of there faster than another detective would have.
After what happened, Karen hadn’t wanted to spend the night at her house, which was totally understandable. Right now we’re both exhausted, and I show Karen the bedroom where she can sleep, and head to my own to go to bed. I call Laurie to tell her what happened, since I know she would want to hear about it as soon as possible.
I wake her, but she quickly becomes alert when I start to tell her what happened. This is the first time I have ever told a story about my own actions that is simultaneously heroic and truthful. I faced death without Marcus to protect me, and I prevailed. The mind boggles.
Laurie has many questions for me about tonight’s events, the last of which is, “Andy, are you okay?”
I know that right now she is referring to my state of mind, my emotional health. I have killed a man, violently and at close range, and that is known to have an often terrible effect on one’s psyche.
Not on mine.
Maybe it will set in later, but I feel absolutely no remorse or revulsion about what I’ve done. This is a guy who deserved to die, whose intent was to gun down Karen and me. “Better him than us” is an understatement.
I get off the phone and try to sleep, and my exhaustion enters into a pitched battle with my adrenaline, the result of which is, I don’t sleep well at all. I get up at seven to take Tara for her walk; it will give me time to consider the impact that what happened last night will have on our investigation.
Karen was obviously the target, since the shooter could not have known that I would be there. But the reason for the attempt on her life is bewildering. How could she possibly be a threat to their conspiracy? It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself since she got shot, and I’m no closer to the answer than before.
Pete Stanton makes the situation slightly clearer when he calls and says that the fingerprints of the guy I killed showed that he was, in fact, Mike Carelli, the Special Forces officer who supposedly piloted the chopper. I didn’t recognize him from the picture, but as in the case of Archie Durelle, the picture I had seen was seven years old.
Either way, I’m getting a little tired of people trying to kill people that I care about, including myself. And I’m getting more than a little angry about my government standing by and not doing anything to prevent it.
I call Alice Massengale at her Newark office and tell her I want to see her about her representations at the hearing. She seems reluctant, so I use the same approach on her that I used on Hamadi: I tell her that if she doesn’t meet with me today, she can learn what I have to say by turning on the television tomorrow. It works again, and an hour later I’m in her office.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Carpenter.”
Cindy Spodek said that Massengale can be trusted completely, but at this point I’m not ready to give her the complete benefit of the doubt. I’m certainly not concerned about the social niceties. “You misled the court about Stacy Harriman.”
If she’s cowed by my direct approach, she hides it well. “That’s a serious accusation.”
I nod. “And an inaccurate one. I should have said, “You misled the court about Diana Carmichael.”
“Diana Carmichael,” she says, concealing whether the name has any meaning for her. “Suppose you tell me what you are talking about.”
I continue. “Here’s some of what I know.” I then proceed to detail some, but not all, of the facts I have learned about Hamadi et al. I tell her that a group of people stole billions during the chaotic reconstruction period in Afghanistan and then faked their deaths and disappeared.
“But it is difficult to disappear with a huge amount of
ill-gotten money and exist in society. So an elaborate scheme was set up, whereby fake companies would do fake business with each other, showing huge earnings in the process. But in reality they were earning nothing; the money that they received was the stolen money, effectively laundering it. Hamadi was the front man for the operation.
“I know a lot more than that,” I say, “and what I don’t know, I am going to discover through the Freedom of Information Act.”
“Mr. Carpenter, you can believe me or not, but the story you are telling is one I am completely unfamiliar with.”
“If that’s true, then you were set up to mislead the court, and you should want to help me get the truth out. Because I am going to prove that the government you represent knowingly withheld information, stifled investigations, and then deliberately misled the court. It resulted in my client twice being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.”
“All I can say is that I will look into your allegations.”
“Good. You should start with Hamadi.”
She nods and asks me if I can write out all the particulars of what I know about him.
I start to do so, and I’m almost finished when I realize something else I can give her. “I have pictures of the people at his funeral. They meant nothing to me, but maybe…”
I stop talking, and the pause becomes so long that she says, “Maybe what?”
All of a sudden I’m not inclined to explain it to her. All I want to do is get out of her office and go home, because I just realized who is not in those funeral pictures.
On the way home I call Sam Willis and ask him to come right over with the pictures. I want to go through them again, just to make sure I’m right.
Next I call Kevin and ask him to check whether a golden retriever was reported missing to the Essex County Animal Shelter during a specific one-week period back in March.
Sam is already at my house and set up when I arrive, and I look at each one slowly and carefully. I still don’t recognize anyone, which is exactly what I was hoping.
I call Karen, Pete Stanton, and Marcus and ask them all to come over on a matter of urgent importance. I want Pete with us where we’re going, because law enforcement should be present, and I want Marcus with us in case we run into a couple of hundred bad guys with machetes and bazookas.
Karen, Pete, Marcus, and I are in the car and heading off within forty-five minutes. Kevin calls me on my cell while we’re on the road, and he confirms exactly what I suspected about the animal shelter records.
Next I ask Kevin to check the records of Gary Winston, the surgeon who was on that chopper. What I want to know is what kind of surgery he specialized in. Actually, I believe I already know, and I just want to confirm it.
Karen is surprised when I tell her that we are heading for the cabin, and shocked when I tell her why. I’m encouraged when Pete hears what I have to say and doesn’t ridicule it, but even if he did, it wouldn’t matter.
I think I’m right.
I’d better be right.
It takes almost an hour and a half to get up there, and we park close but out of sight of anyone in the cabin. I’m not sure how to go about approaching it, since there is a very good chance that gunfire might be heading our way when we do.
Pete and Marcus come up with a plan; they will sneak up and enter the cabin, disarming anyone who might be inside, while Karen and I wait by the car for them to signal to us that it’s safe to come up. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the perfect plan.
Pete and Marcus head off, and for the next fifteen minutes Karen and I hear nothing. No voices, no gunfire, no noise of any kind. I’m trying to figure out whether that’s good or bad news, when my cell phone rings.
“Come on in,” Pete says.
“Is there anyone there?” I ask.
“Come on in,” he repeats, and hangs up.
Karen and I drive the rest of the way to the cabin. No one is outside and everything is completely quiet, and I have a brief flash of fear that Pete was forced to call me and that we could be walking into a trap. Then I remember that Marcus is with him, and I get a new infusion of artificial courage.
Karen follows me as I enter the cabin. Pete is leaning against the counter that separates the kitchen area from the main room. Someone I assume to be Anthony Banks lies on the floor unconscious, with Marcus standing over him.
In the corner of the room, lying on an area rug and chewing on a toy, is Reggie, looking none the worse for wear from his adventure.
And sitting at the small dining table is a woman I recognize as Yasir Hamadi’s live-in lover/employee, Jeannette Nelson.
Also known as Diana Carmichael.
Also known as Stacy Harriman.
Even though she was expecting this, Karen doesn’t recognize her at first, but slowly it starts to sink in. She stares at her as if trying to process what she is seeing. Stacy just sits there, sullen and silent, as Karen slowly walks toward her.
“You,” Karen says slowly, “are a piece of shit.”
YOU WOULD THINK that discovering that a murder victim is actually alive would be enough to quickly spring from prison the man wrongly convicted of the killing.
Unfortunately, the system does not work nearly that efficiently. The state has to endlessly investigate the developments, a hearing has to be scheduled, and witnesses have to be heard. That would all be fine, except that Richard is sitting in jail.
His reaction when I told him that Stacy was alive and Reggie was safe was not what I expected. I expected shock and euphoria; what I got was an almost dulled acceptance. This man has been battered and beaten down by events, and I have to get him out of that cell as soon as possible.
To that end I once again call to arrange a meeting with Alice Massengale. This time she doesn’t resist at all, asking me to come in right away, which I’m happy to do.
It is clear from the moment I arrive that Massengale is angry, and it doesn’t take much longer to discover that it’s not me she’s angry with. “Stacy Harriman—Diana Carmichael—was part of WITSEC,” she says. “I shouldn’t be confirming that for you, but I am.”
“Thank you for that,” I say.
“I had been told otherwise, which is why I made those representations to the court.”
I believe her, and I tell her so. I also tell her that I am here to negotiate with the U.S. government, and I have chosen her as their representative.
“I have no standing to represent anyone,” she says.
“I think you’ll have all the standing you’ll need,” I say. “All I ask is that you convey my terms to the appropriate officials and tell them they have twenty-four hours to respond.”
She smiles; she doesn’t yet know what my terms are, but she thinks she’s going to like them. “Fair enough,” she says.
“Good. Here’s what I want. Richard Evans must be released from jail immediately; I don’t care how it’s done. I want him out and the conviction wiped from his record. Then I want ten million dollars to help compensate him for the loss of five years of his life, to say nothing of the pain and suffering he has had to endure. I believe he can get more in the lawsuit I will otherwise file.”
“What are you offering in return?” she asks.
“Partial confidentiality.”
“What does that mean?”
“Mr. Evans is free to discuss everything with the press, with the following exceptions. He will not reveal that the government was aware of his innocence, that it misrepresented to the court, or that it tried to wiretap and otherwise sabotage his legal team. He also will not reveal the terms of the settlement.”
“Ten million dollars is something of a reach, don’t you think?” she asks.
“Not compared to what the government will recover when they start digging into Hamadi and everyone else. Either way, it’s not negotiable. If my offer isn’t accepted by close of business tomorrow, we file suit the next morning and start booking talk show appearances immediately. And with what I know about Afghanistan and the
government’s behavior in this case, ten million dollars to shut me up is a bargain.”
She agrees to convey my offer, and I get the feeling she’s relishing doing so. I also wouldn’t be surprised if she testified for our side, should this ever go to trial.
I head home for a planned meeting with Pete Stanton. Pete is feeling pretty good right now; the arrests of Stacy Harriman and Anthony Banks are by far the biggest of his career. He’s been all over the media talking about it, including an interview on the Today Show this morning. He has had to say repeatedly that he can’t reveal details of the investigation, so basically all he does is smile a lot.
If Pete is grateful to me for putting him in this position, he’s hiding it well. I tell him that there are a few things I still can’t figure out, and ask if he can fill me in on where the investigation stands.
“I should tell you, a private citizen, about confidential police work?” he asks. “Why would I do that?”
“Let me take a shot at a reason,” I say. “How about so you’re not forced to buy your own beer from now on at Charlie’s?”
“On the other hand, we need more openness between law enforcement and the private citizenry,” he says.
“Since it obviously wasn’t Stacy, whose body washed up on shore?” I ask.
“Still no ID on that. We’re checking missing-persons records for that period. Whoever it was, they took her hair and put it on the hairbrush at Richard’s house and then put some of her blood on the boat, so it would seem to match Stacy’s DNA.”
“They would have had to find someone with the same body type, hair color…”
He shakes his head sadly. “Good reason to get murdered, you know?”
“Any luck finding Gary Winston?” I ask.
“Not yet… Hopefully Stacy will give him up. But he’ll be found—surgeons aren’t the type to hide in the wilderness eating leaves and shit. They like to come out and have a good meal once in a while.”
As far as I can tell, and Pete agrees, Winston is the last missing member of the conspiracy. Had I realized earlier that Winston was a plastic surgeon, stationed in Afghanistan to deal with serious battle wounds, I might have caught on to the scam earlier.
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