Heart of a Killer (11 page)

I had been asking for an injunction of sorts, but not in the traditional sense. An injunction, if granted, ordinarily puts a stop to something. For instance, if a building were to be knocked down and people were opposed to that, they could seek an injunction stopping the demolition, so that the matter could then be considered by the court.

I wasn’t asking for anything to be stopped, other than the edict by the Department of Corrections that Sheryl’s wish to die not be granted. The problem was that even if the court stopped that edict, they were not in a position, at least not yet, to reverse it. They weren’t about to say at this point that her wish must be granted; I hadn’t even had the nerve to ask for that.

What I wanted was for them to tell the lower court that they must hear the lawsuit immediately, and what I didn’t want was for them to tell me to go shove it. We needed this to go on, to give us some forward momentum, so that we could keep the public relations pressure on.

A “no” from the New Jersey court, which meant a refusal to order that the lawsuit be heard on a very expedited basis, would leave us with the Federal Court of Appeals as our next option. But that would be a ridiculous long shot, and everyone would know it. The legal air would have come out of our balloon.

At least on this day there would not be any dramatic moment in the court; they were going to post the ruling on their website. So my choices were to watch TV and wait for them to announce it, or sit in my apartment and keep hitting refresh on the website. I chose the latter, but planned to turn off my phone at the appointed hour, so I wouldn’t be told by a media person calling for a reaction.

At a quarter of two, before it was posted and before I turned my phone off, it rang. I answered it against my better judgment, since I had no desire to give the media a preruling reaction.

“Hello?”

“It’s Novack. Ask your client where Charlie would have kept his personal papers.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I want to know.”

“Are you working on the case?” I asked.

“No, six years after everybody dies, I try and find their personal papers. It’s a hobby of mine.”

Novack was not the most agreeable guy in the world, but I was thrilled he was doing at least some investigating. “Anything else?” I asked.

“Yeah. Find out if he had a safe-deposit box.”

“Okay.”

Click.

He hung up before I could say, “Welcome aboard.” It was probably just as well.

I shut my phone off and waited, and by two-thirty there was still nothing up on the court website. I was tempted to turn on the TV, in case they already had the ruling, but I resisted. It was almost like a superstition, like I had to see it on the website for us to have a chance, as if I ever waited for a ruling on a website before. Or waited on a ruling anywhere before.

At 2:38 the refresh button finally had the desired effect, and the court’s ruling appeared. It was only two pages long, which my pessimism took to be a negative, but I plunged ahead and read it.

We won, at least that round. The court found a compelling public interest in the case being heard immediately, and ordered the lower court to do just that. They took two paragraphs to make the point that they were not rendering an opinion on the merits of the case itself; they were simply affirming our right to be heard, and heard quickly.

Actually, the court distinguished between our lawsuit and the underlying issue. Since a lawsuit could naturally involve damages to the state if it lost, they were entitled to sufficient time to prepare. The court could not fairly reverse that, though they encouraged the lower court to move rapidly.

It was in the matter of judging whether the Corrections Department made the right decision in the first place that the court insisted on an almost immediate resolution, and that was the area we would have to focus on. The lawsuit could be handled later, and the sad truth was that the potential damages would hinge on whether Karen, and Sheryl, lived or died.

I turned on the phone and started answering the calls, which came in rapid succession. I basically said the same thing to each reporter: “We are happy the court ruled the way it did, and Sheryl Harrison looks forward to her day in court. The system works, and it will continue to do so. The net result, we hope and expect, will be that an innocent young girl’s life will be saved.”

Then I went outside and tried to pretend I was still a normal, noncelebrity human being by going outside and walking to the supermarket. The media was waiting for me, and walked along with me every step of the way, with me waxing eloquent about the court’s ruling.

It was a simple, three-block walk, but it felt like a victory lap.

Karen learned the news from her grandmother. As much as she dreaded the conversation, Terry decided that she couldn’t wait any longer. Karen, though still hospitalized, was feeling stronger and was certainly more alert. That meant she wanted to watch television, and wanted the remote control in her hand.

It also meant that she wanted to talk on the phone, and text with her friends. It was the way of the fourteen-year-old, and therefore it was well beyond Terry’s ability to control the flow of information.

So Terry told her that they needed to have a very serious conversation, and she laid it out, straight and direct, the way they always talked. The only shading of the truth was Terry’s saying that Karen’s mother wanted to do this “if necessary.”

“How do I get her to change her mind?” was the first thing Karen asked.

“The best way is for you to get better.” Karen was not fully aware that she was dying, or that the chances of finding another heart were as remote as they really were. “It’s a backup plan,” Terry said. “But the way the media is, they build up the story, you know? Just stay strong and healthy, and all this will go away.”

After a while, Karen started to sob. They were soft, quiet sobs, which reflected not an anger but an unspeakable sadness. Terry held her as she cried, and they cried together. It wasn’t the first time, and Terry hoped it wouldn’t be the last.

When there was no crying left, Karen said, “Grandma, I can’t let that happen.”

“Then stay strong.”

“It’s my heart that doesn’t work, not hers. I can’t let her die. I can’t kill her.”

“You would not be doing anything to her, Karen. It would be her choice, and her joy.”

“Would you do it? For her?” Karen asked.

“Would I give my daughter my heart? Is that what you’re asking?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “In a heartbeat.”

“I’m serious,” Karen said.

Terry nodded. “So am I. I would do it for her, and I would do it for you. And my mother would have done it for me. That’s the way we’re wired, sweetheart. You’ll know what I mean when you have a child, and a grandchild.”

“But how could I live, knowing she did that?”

“The same way I live, knowing that my daughter is in prison for something she did not do.”

Terry regretted the words as soon as they came out of her mouth. She had never said them before; it was a solemn oath to Sheryl, that she now had broken.

“What do you mean? She didn’t kill him?”

“No, in my heart I can’t let myself believe that she did.”

It was a deception; Terry knew that, but it was the only way she knew to cover her mistake. And it worked; Karen didn’t press her on it anymore.

“We live one day at a time, sweetheart. And before you know it, it’s tomorrow. And if that isn’t any better, the good news is that there’s another day coming right after that.”

She hugged her granddaughter closer. “We just need to keep those days coming.”

The fake ID in Charlie Harrison’s wallet was in the name of William Beverly. It was a Pennsylvania license, with an address in King of Prussia.

Novack assumed that it was a fake name and address, as most fabricated IDs are. But with a very short time on the computer, and one phone call, Novack learned otherwise, and he was able to gather a good deal of information on the real William Beverly.

Beverly was thirty-five years old at the time of Charlie’s murder, which made him two years younger than Charlie. He worked for a major clothing manufacturer as a salesman, which put him on the road almost constantly.

It didn’t take much more digging to learn that Beverly had lived in King of Prussia all his life. He went to Penn State for two years, but dropped out to earn money soon after his parents died in a car accident. That left just William and his brother, James, who was two years older than William.

At first nothing seemed unusual or particularly relevant to the Harrison case, except of course for the fact that Beverly’s driver’s license was in the dead guy’s wallet.

But then something else caught Novack’s eye, and his cop’s instinct alarm instantly went off. James Beverly was dead, the result of mistakenly taking two incompatible drugs. And according to the public records, he died two weeks before Charlie Harrison.

There was obviously more to be gained by digging further on the computer, but Novack was a street guy, and he felt that this was the time to be on the street. In this case the street was Carbondale Road in King of Prussia, specifically number 241, William Beverly’s address, as indicated on the ID in Charlie Harrison’s wallet.

Novack made the normally two-hour drive in an hour and forty, and with the help of his GPS found the house easily enough. It was on a hill near the top of a private road. There were three houses on the hill, and their mailboxes were at the bottom of the road.

There were two cars in the driveway of number 241, and that, plus music coming from inside the house, made it obvious that someone was home. It was rap or hip-hop or something; Novack wasn’t sure which, but it didn’t matter, since he hated them both.

Novack rang the bell, and the door was opened by a teenage boy, probably fifteen years old.

“I’m looking for William Beverly,” Novack said, talking loudly to be heard above the annoying music.

“Who? Beverly? Never heard of her.”

“William Beverly. Is anybody else home?”

“Just my mother. But she’s busy.”

Novack took out his badge and held it up. “Get her.”

The young man did just that, and within thirty seconds had fetched his mother, a beleaguered-looking woman who turned off the music as soon as she entered the room, earning Novack’s undying gratitude.

He identified himself as a policeman, and said that he was looking for William Beverly.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I know the name,” she said. “Who is he?”

“He used to live here,” Novack said. “As recently as six years ago.”

“No, sir. I’ve lived here for fourteen.”

Additional questions from Novack got him nothing more than that, so he went to the other two houses on the hill. The family living in the nearest house had only lived there three months; they were renting. But they had never heard of William Beverly.

The family in the other house had lived there close to forever; the woman Novack spoke with was in her fifties and she grew up there. She said quite definitively that no family named Beverly had ever lived on that street, or in that neighborhood.

Next stop for Novack was Finley Fashions, the dress manufacturer for whom Beverly worked. Their office was in downtown King of Prussia, and it was a small one. Their actual manufacturing was done in Vietnam, and their materials came from Thailand. With their salesmen spending most of their time on the road, there was no reason to have a lot of employees in their local office.

Novack’s questions at Finley brought the same response as in Beverly’s home neighborhood. The manager, a woman named Hilda Stenowitz, clearly thought Novack’s arrival was incredibly exciting, and she tried her hardest to be helpful.

Even though she had been in that office for fourteen years and would certainly know Beverly if he had worked there, she dutifully went to the files to check. The process took about ten minutes, and Novack was impatient, since by now he knew what the result would be.

“Never had an employee by that name,” she said.

Novack nodded, thanked her, and left. His next stop was city hall, where the physical documents in the records department confirmed that no one named William or James Beverly ever lived in King of Prussia, or for that matter, anywhere in Montgomery County.

Novack had the drive home to try and make sense out of all this. The fact that Harrison’s fake ID was of a fake person with a fake address wouldn’t ordinarily be much of a surprise.

What was apparently inexplicable was the fact that cyber records had shown Beverly to be very real. Novack’s online search before his trip confirmed Beverly’s address, listed his employer, and gave him a fairly full history.

He would dig into it more, as well as everything related to James, William’s brother. Maybe he’d discover that there was a rational explanation for all of this, and that everything was as the online information made it seem.

Or maybe William Beverly, real or not, was the reason that Charlie Harrison had his throat slit.

Captain Larry Whitaker’s mind was wandering. Daydreaming in this fashion while working is generally frowned upon in the pilot community, though it’s understood that they all do it. Especially when flying runs like Southern Air Flight 3278, Atlanta–Charlotte, as Whitaker was doing for the fifth time that week.

At fifty-two years old, Whitaker found his daydreams during that particular flight involved looking ahead three years, to retirement age, when his pension would kick in. His two kids were long out of the house, doing well on their own, and he and wife, Ginny, wanted to travel.

Atlanta to Charlotte was not in their travel plans.

The weather was perfect on that particular day, and once Whitaker settled the Regional jet in at 31,000 feet, the plane could pretty much fly itself. In fact, since it had made this particular run more than Whitaker, he wouldn’t be surprised if the onboard computers could reach Charlotte, land on their own, thank the fifty-five passengers, and unload the luggage.

That day was coming, but Whitaker was thankful he wouldn’t be around to see it.