Heart of a Killer (15 page)

I spoke up. “So you had no idea what he was doing?”

“That’s what I just said, didn’t I, Harvard? I didn’t know and I didn’t care.”

“Then why did you kill him?”

The question seemed to jolt her, and I realized it was possible she never had to answer it before. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said.

“How were things for you and Charlie financially?” Novack asked.

“What do you think? You saw where we were living. You think I had my pick of places to raise Karen, but I chose that dump?”

“Somebody wired Charlie two hundred thousand dollars in the six months before he died,” I said.

She did a double take. Then, “Who?”

“We were hoping you could tell us that.”

“I have no idea. He never mentioned anything like that to me. Where is that money now?”

“That was my next question,” Novack said. “It was taken out of the account.”

“Not by me,” she said. “I would have fixed up my cell much nicer.”

“What are you afraid of, Sheryl?”

“I’m not afraid of anything except my daughter dying.”

Novack shook his head. “There’s more to it than that,” he said, and then turned to me. “You going to be long?”

“A few minutes.”

“I’ll wait for you outside.”

As soon as he left, Sheryl asked, “So what’s up, counselor?” She was trying to act nonchalant and in control, and had been in that mode since Novack and I arrived.

“I’m in court tomorrow. I submitted my brief this morning.”

“Good. Please come tell me what happens.”

I nod. “Of course. But there won’t be a decision tomorrow.”

“There never is.”

I stood up to leave, when Sheryl asked, “Can I trust him?”

“Who? Novack?”

“Yes. How do I know if I can trust him?”

“Sheryl, you don’t even know if you can trust me.”

“Answer the question, please.”

“I don’t know; I just met him myself. But he’s using up his vacation to try and help you. Or at least to find out the truth. I don’t know what he’d have to gain by lying.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, good luck in court tomorrow.”

I nodded my thanks, and walked to the door. Her voice stopped me and I turned.

“Harvard, I do trust you. I think I trust you more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, we’re going to find out if that’s true.”

Novack now knew what he was looking for, and how to find it. That is why it took him less than four hours to determine that the other fake IDs Charlie Harrison had in the safe-deposit box were much like William Beverly. That is, they had lives clearly represented in cyberspace, but in reality never existed.

Less than one hour after that he was meeting with Captain James Donovan, his boss. They had an interesting dynamic in their relationship. Novack knew he was full of shit, yet at the same time he liked him. He was probably the only person Novack ever met who he could say that about.

The reason, both men knew, was that Donovan never tried to hide who he was, at least from Novack. Donovan was more politician than cop; a descendant of a long line of high-ranking police officials, he knew he was going upward from the moment he joined the force. It is unlikely there was ever a person less inclined to make waves.

Their relationship was established the first time they met. Donovan was brought in from another precinct, in what was to be a key rung on the climb to the top of the department. He called his direct reports in for individual meetings, just to get to know one another, and to establish ground rules for going forward.

When Novack got into the office, they shook hands and Donovan said, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, too.”

“What did you hear?” Donovan asked.

“That you want to be commissioner, and you’ll kiss any ass necessary to make that happen.”

Donovan waited a beat and said, “That about sums it up.” And from that moment forward, Novack liked him.

He was not a third of the cop Novack was, but some leaders would try to compensate for such a deficiency by exercising tight control. Not Donovan; he gave Novack a great deal of autonomy, except of course when it had the potential to make him look bad.

The situation with Sheryl Harrison did carry such danger, but not the traditional kind. Certainly, no department likes to be revealed as having put an innocent person behind bars, but it really wasn’t police work that led to Sheryl Harrison’s incarceration. Her confession took care of that quite nicely.

But Donovan was still very concerned about where Novack might be going with this. This was an incredibly politically charged issue, national in scope, and anything that the department did to influence it would be seen through a political prism. Which meant that enemies would be made, no matter which way things went.

For Novack, the issue was a simple one, and he laid it straight out. “I don’t think she’s guilty,” he said.

“She confessed, Novack,” Donovan said. “That’s a pretty significant piece, don’t you think?”

“In some cases it would be. But I think she lied. I think she’s still lying.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. She’s scared of something.”

Donovan was factoring in the fact that if progress was made, then it would seem as if the department had come down on the side of Sheryl Harrison. That was simply because if Novack got nowhere in his investigation, then no one would need to know the investigation had taken place at all. But if he succeeded in casting doubts on Sheryl’s guilt, it would be seen nationally as an effort to let her commit suicide.

“Have you seen the national polls on this?” Donovan asked. “Thirty-five percent of the people are opposed to her; they don’t want to let her kill herself. Fifty-two percent are on her side.”

Novack couldn’t have cared less about the polls, but it seemed as if Donovan was making Novack’s point. “So you’ll be a national hero,” he said.

“That ain’t how it works,” Donovan said. “These are people who have never heard of me. We do this, and thirty-five percent of the people in America will hate me. That’s got to be over a hundred million people. By definition, if a hundred million people hate me, it’s a bad thing.”

Novack tried to bring Donovan back to discussing the specifics of the case. He laid out all that he had learned to that point, which was considerable. As he reached the end, he said, “I’ve got a feeling that Charlie died before he could cash in on the death of Beverly’s brother; I should say his fake brother. What we need to find out is if big money changed hands involving these other identities, the ones that were in the safe-deposit box.”

Donovan nodded, seeing a chance to delay a decision. “Why don’t we meet again after you check that out?”

Novack shook his head. “No, Captain, it can’t work like that. This has to become a department investigation, not me tinkering around on my vacation. I need help; I don’t know what I’m doing with all this computer stuff. We need to bring the fraud and cyber-crime people in. And we need to do it in a hurry.”

“What’s the rush? The murder is six years old, and he obviously faked these identities before that. So why are we all of a sudden in such a big hurry? Sheryl Harrison?”

Novack hit it straight on. “Right. Sheryl Harrison. And I’m not just talking about the thing with her daughter. She’s been in prison for six years, and I put her there. Even if she planned to retire in Miami Beach when she gets out, I don’t want her to spend another day in prison … not if she didn’t kill him.”

“What about jurisdiction? None of these other crimes, if that’s what they were, happened here.”

Novack was getting annoyed, and he showed it. “Why the hell would that matter? We’re reopening the Harrison murder. That’s been ours from day one.”

Donovan basically had nowhere to go with his argument, but if he was going to go down, he’d go down flailing. “I don’t like you working so closely with this lawyer, Wagner. We don’t know anything about him; we could wake up one morning and find out he’s sandbagged us with the press.”

“He’s okay,” Novack said, one of the very few times he had said that about an attorney. “And she trusts him; he’s our link to her.”

By that point, Donovan knew he would have to cave. Novack would never let it drop; he’d plant a story in the press if he had to, or let the lawyer plant it. Donovan also knew that giving Novack what he wanted was the right thing to do. Of course the fact that it was the right thing to do played no factor in his decision.

“All right. Open the investigation. But nothing is said to the press until it’s cleared through me.”

That was fine with Novack; he basically didn’t trust or want to have anything to do with media people. “No problem,” he said. “As long as I get my week’s vacation back.”

“You’re an irritating pain in the ass,” Donovan said.

“You sound like Cindy.”

They were the three most intimidating people I had ever seen. This was true even though none of them was under sixty years old and I had no doubt I could beat up any of them, and probably all three together.

Their names were Robert Hudson, Sofia Hernandez, and Alexander Minter, and they made up the three-judge panel that I was hoping to successfully persuade.

My opponent in this action, representing the state of New Jersey, was Lydia Aguirre. I had done some quick research on her when I found out she had the assignment, and learned to my dismay that she was considered whip-smart, and a rising star in state legal circles.

What my research didn’t tell me, but which I believed, was that she was chosen at least partially because she was a woman. Surveys showed that women were particularly partial toward Sheryl’s position, and I’m sure it was believed by the powers that be that a woman arguing against her would be more palatable.

We each were to have an opportunity to give short presentations, which would support the written briefs we had already filed. There would then be time for questions, which we would answer together. However, I knew from my research into court procedures that my presentation would be interrupted constantly by questions from all three of the judges, so I prepared myself for that.

The reputations of the judges, honed by thousands of opinions that they had collectively written, told me what I needed to know. Judge Hudson was a staunch, pro-life conservative, and Judge Hernandez was an equally staunch, pro-choice liberal. While this was not an abortion case, polls showed that opinions on this broke down in a reasonably similar fashion.

In the middle was Judge Minter, and that was a position the moderate jurist was used to. His opinions were far less predictable, and there was no doubt that his was the vote we were fighting for.

It was fair to say that I was petrified. Just coming to the courthouse, through the mobs outside conducting their demonstrations, was an intimidating experience. And the idea that I was going to argue my first case, in this setting and on a matter of such importance, left me weak in the knees.

I barely had time to clear my throat before the first question was fired at me, by Judge Hernandez. I had started talking about the rights of prisoners, and how Sheryl was being unfairly treated, when held up to that standard.

“What prisoner has ever been granted the right to commit suicide?” Judge Hernandez asked. So much for thinking I had a friend on this bench.

“Explicitly? None,” I said. “But with respect, that is not the relevant question, since that is not the right Sheryl Harrison is seeking.”

“I would suggest playing word games with this court might not be the best approach, Mr. Wagner,” she said. “Giving away her heart would cause her death, more surely than if she jumped off the Empire State Building.”

“Certainly, but she is not asking for any special consideration from the Department of Corrections. No surgery, no assisted suicide, nothing like that at all. But she does not want to be persecuted, to be put on suicide watch and subjected to unfair and unwarranted invasions of her privacy, and deprivations of her rights.”

Minter jumped in. “She has not requested that the state allow her to die?”

I shook my head. “She has not, your Honor. I had a conversation with an executive in the Department of Corrections, but it was an informal exploration of options. I made no official request on Ms. Harrison’s behalf, despite the department’s mischaracterization of it in the press immediately thereafter.”

“So she does not want to give her daughter her heart?” Judge Hudson asked, obviously skeptical.

“Certainly she does, your Honor. She loves her daughter, and the fact that she is dying causes Ms. Harrison a horrible grief, as I’m certain you can imagine. But the simple fact is that she is entitled to her wishes, providing she doesn’t ask the state to assist in attaining them. It is not the province of the state to anticipate or imagine what she might secretly wish, and take preemptive measures to deny them, depriving Ms. Harrison of her rights in the process.”

It was an unusual tactic that I took, but the only one which I felt had any chance of succeeding. The law was firmly against Sheryl, and there was simply no possibility that the state of New Jersey was going to assist in her death.

The best we could hope for was a restoration of her rights, and a removal of the suicide watch. Then she would be relatively free to attempt suicide. If she succeeded, I would be there to intervene, and demand that as she was a registered organ donor, her organs should be harvested. As she was a perfect match for Karen, who was certainly near the top of the list, there should be no problem arranging the transplant.

It was all way, way beyond a long shot. Even if we won, the state would likely appeal, and we would have to go through this all over again. By then I would need a new heart, since the one I had could not take the pressure.

I finally got through my presentation, battered and bruised, and Ms. Aguirre took her turn. She for the most part ignored my arguments, and instead made a boilerplate speech against assisted suicide. Of course, she included a number of obligatory references to the sympathy everyone felt for Sheryl in her plight. She said that everyone was praying for Karen, though it didn’t seem that everyone included her or the three judges.