Heart of a Killer (21 page)

“Keep going,” Novack said.

“Okay. Then there was the story itself. I don’t believe that Murray would have knifed the guy, come back into the bar, and finished his beer. But maybe he would have; maybe he’s a ruthless sociopath who operates illogically.”

“I’ve seen killers who would do exactly that.”

I nodded. “I believe it, and maybe Murray stayed there. But Laufer didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Laufer said he saw Murray come back into the bar, finish his beer, and then order two more. There is no way that a—I believe you used the term ‘chickenshit’—guy like Laufer watches a murder, and then sits around drinking beers in the same room with the guy who did it. Especially since that guy still has a knife, and had no qualms about using it.”

Novack looked interested, and it was more than two minutes since he had insulted me. I was enjoying having the floor, a lot more than I had enjoyed talking to that three-judge panel.

“There’s one more thing,” I said. “I’m not sure if it meant anything, but I noticed it, and it’s worth mentioning.”

“What’s that?”

“You asked Laufer if the name Hennessey meant anything to him, and he said, ‘No. Who is he?’ Well, how did he know Hennessey was a male?”

Novack didn’t say anything for a while, then finally told me he didn’t agree with what I had said. “Which part?” I asked.

“Starting with when you opened your mouth.”

I wasn’t in the mood to be put off, so I pressed him to explain himself.

He nodded. “Okay, he gave up the information fairly easily. Maybe the job was important to him. Maybe he wants to have it on his résumé. Or maybe there’s a female student in the class that he has the hots for. Or maybe he needs the money. The point is that he’s teaching the class, so for whatever reason he wants to be there.”

He continued. “Or maybe it’s not the job at all. Maybe he wants to see a cold-blooded killer put behind bars. He could have been scared to say something all these years, and we gave him the chance to unburden himself. You ever see someone sliced to death?”

“No,” I said.

“Good. If you have the chance to see it someday, don’t. As far as Laufer coming back into the bar and watching Murray drink three beers, maybe he was stunned and afraid to leave, because Murray might suspect that he saw too much. Or maybe he is lying about that; maybe he took off and ran, but is embarrassed to tell us. Doesn’t much matter either way.”

“He knew Hennessey was a male,” I said.

Novack shook his head. “When I asked him if he heard of Hennessey, he said, ‘No, who is he?’ What should he have said, ‘Who is he or she?’ Or, ‘Who is it?’ Sorry, Jamie, but people don’t talk like that. I was a cop investigating a murder; it was natural for him to assume I was asking him about a male. He’d be right ninety-nine percent of the time.”

“Okay, I’ve heard enough,” I said.

“Don’t stop me, I’m on a roll, and I haven’t got to the important part yet. Why would he lie?”

“To get revenge on Murray for something.”

“So he took a job he didn’t want, for no money, in the hope that the cops would show up and ask him something that would give him a chance to get revenge? Don’t forget, he didn’t come to us. We went to him.”

I could have pushed it further, but I wasn’t going to get him to agree with me, and I was no longer sure that I agreed with me. He had given me a good lesson in police work, should I ever decide to become a cop. And since I was about to become an unemployed lawyer, that might not be a bad idea. Except for the part about the danger involved.

“Where do you stand on finding Nolan Murray?” If Novack believed Laufer, then I assumed he was out there looking for Murray.

“I’m getting a report from the computer crimes people this afternoon,” he said.

Novack reached into his desk drawer and took out a photograph. It looked like a mug shot of a very scary guy. “This is Raymond Hennessey. Show it to your client, and see if she ID’s him.”

“What have you learned about him?”

“He was a hit man; one of the best. Worked mostly out of Chicago, but would go anywhere if the price was right.”

“What do you mean ‘was’ a hit man? Is he dead?”

Novack nodded. “More than six years ago. He died a month before Charlie Harrison.” Then he paused. “At least that’s what the computer says.”

Nolan Murray thought of it as a field trip … a class outing. Of course, he was the only member of the class, or at least the only person there to learn.

He was on the public tour conducted at the Limerick power plant in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, about thirty miles northwest of Philadelphia. It was less than a three-hour drive for Murray, well worth his time.

Nolan had been there before, when he was deciding whether to put the grand plan into operation. He had seen what he needed to see then, but felt a refresher course couldn’t hurt. It was unlikely that there had been major structural changes, but as someone who would soon be in charge of the plant, Nolan felt he should check it out again, just in case.

He wore a disguise of sorts, a mustache and a baseball cap pulled down fairly low. Nothing fancy or elaborate, but it would suffice, since nobody would have any idea that’s how he would be spending his day off from his regular job, anyway.

There were seventeen people with him on the one-hour tour, and Nolan amused himself by listening in on their conversations, to try and determine why they were there, and more important, where they were from.

By the end of the tour, he figured that eleven were tourists, though why anyone would want to visit a nuclear power plant on their vacation eluded him. The other six, the ones that might be dead or dying in a couple of weeks, were local.

There had been some minor changes in the place, but nothing that would influence Nolan’s plan. What Nolan really cared about was the computer system and its security, and he already knew all he needed to know about it. He couldn’t help smiling when the tour guide talked about the new state-of-the-art computer systems that were put in just eighteen months before. That system made all of what would happen possible, and soon Nolan would be giving the FBI a demonstration in how it worked.

Peter Lampley was waiting for him when he got back. Having him teach those classes at the school under his real name, Kevin Laufer, had paid off. Novack had paid him a visit, as Nolan knew he would, and Laufer had done his job.

“What did you learn, Peter?” Nolan asked, following the rule he had set to always use the assumed names.

“Novack knows about Hennessey,” Lampley said. “He asked me if I had ever heard of him.”

“How did you respond?”

“I told him I never heard the name.”

Nolan had been surprised that Sheryl knew Hennessey’s name. Charlie must have ignored his instructions and mentioned it, but it was too late to make him pay for his indiscretion. There was unfortunately a one-time limit to how often somebody could be killed.

But this represented a problem, at a time when Nolan didn’t need any. Hennessey was an important part of the operation, a problem solver in the physical world that Nolan did not have a backup for. It was unlikely that Novack would find him, at least not in the next two weeks, but it was always possible.

It was also very unlikely that, if found, Hennessey would talk. For one thing, that would run counter to his attitude and reputation. For another, Hennessey was unaware of Nolan’s identity, or the location of his operation, so he couldn’t put Novack on the right track even if he wanted to.

Or so Nolan thought. But he recognized that if he could be wrong about Sheryl Harrison knowing Hennessey’s name he could be just as wrong about Hennessey knowing nothing about Nolan’s operation; and that could be a disaster.

Nolan made a quick decision; he would call Hennessey in, thus taking him out of Novack’s reach.

Of course, Nolan was not the type to call Hennessey up and say, “Hey, Ray, come on over and we’ll hang out.” Instead he contacted him as he always had, through his computer, and the message was,
Follow the GPS in your phone. Leave at 5:45
P.M.

*   *   *

Hennessey was not a tech guy; he actually doubted he would even own a computer if not for his job, and the messages he received through it. He had bought the cell phone that his employer told him to buy, but never used it for anything other than phone calls.

He was sitting in a diner on Route 46, having coffee and a burger, when he felt the phone vibrate in his pocket. He reflexively ate another large mouthful, since he had a feeling that whatever the message was, it was going to interrupt his dinner.

He hadn’t even known the phone had a GPS, but when he looked at it, there it was, a single destination in Garfield that had been inserted into the memory. He ate another couple of bites, left some cash on the table, and went to his car.

Hennessey basically knew where the address was, but he decided to let the GPS guide him there, in case his boss had programmed it in a way that the real destination was different than the one listed.

Hennessey had no idea what this could be about; it was the first time he had ever received instructions like this. He assumed it was in some way connected to his employer’s recent comment that the operation was approaching a “sensitive time,” but there was no way to be sure of that, or what it meant if true. All he could do was follow the instructions he was given; doing so had always proved profitable in the past.

The other possibility was that it was somehow tied into Novack, and his conversations with Sheryl Harrison and that lawyer. But he basically discounted that; after what he had done to her, and threatened to do to her daughter, he doubted that Sheryl would break her six-year silence.

In terms of what was going on, he would know when he would know. Hennessey wasn’t the type to worry very much; he would wait for his boss to give him the lay of the land. If there was trouble, he knew how to handle it.

The GPS took Hennessey on a twenty-minute ride, ending at a small strip mall in a run-down area. Three of the stores in it were closed, with
FOR LEASE
signs covering the windows. Hennessey had a hunch that there was not exactly a bidding war going on for the locations.

The specific address was one of the empty stores, and the outline of the removed sign above the door identified it as having been a pizzeria. There seemed to be no one inside, and for a moment Hennessey thought that the address might be a mistake. He rejected that notion quickly enough, though; if they made a mistake, it would be the first he was aware of.

He knocked on the door and got no answer, then tried it and found out it was open. He went inside and looked around, confirming that there was nobody there. He would just have to wait.

Then Hennessey saw, on the counter, a cell phone. It looked exactly like his own, so much so that he felt for his pocket to make sure he hadn’t placed it on the counter and forgotten. He hadn’t; this was a different phone, but identical to his.

He walked over to it, and was startled when it started to ring. Certain that his employer had left it there for him as the way to deliver another message, he waited two rings and then picked it up to answer it.

He pressed the button to answer the call, and was dead before the connection was made. The explosion was sufficient to destroy the place, as well as the adjacent store on each side.

If Mike Janssen had ever felt this helpless, he couldn’t remember when. He was essentially tied to his desk, waiting for his army of agents to come up with promising leads. But they simply were not coming in, and Janssen was beyond frustrated.

Janssen had always been more comfortable out in the field, and that’s where he wanted to be for this investigation. And he would go out there, if something would materialize that was worth his time.

In his mind, the failure to go public with the danger was not only immoral, but was crippling the investigation. A huge portion of crimes are solved by tips from the general public. In this case the public would be highly motivated, and they would inundate the Bureau with information. And information was something that Janssen knew was in short supply.

So all he could do was sit in his office and sift through reports that told him nothing. That’s when he wasn’t fielding calls from his bosses, all the way up to the White House, inquiring as to what progress was being made.

As time went on, those “inquiries” became more demanding, and the people doing the inquiring became more agitated. There were many lives at stake, and many political careers. And Janssen couldn’t tell which was causing more agitation.

Tammy, or whoever it was that was utilizing the little girl’s voice, was not going away. She seemed to be motivated by money, yet so far hadn’t received a dime. There hadn’t even been a real effort to get any money; the acts so far were set up as demonstrations. The real monetary demand was still to come, which meant that the threatened act accompanying it would be much bigger and much deadlier.

And if by some chance money wasn’t the goal, if perhaps it was the power that the acts provided her, there was still no reason to stop.

Because so far Tammy was undefeated.

Sheryl physically pulled back when I put the photograph on the table. She recoiled, like I would do if I came upon a spider, or a snake. For a moment I thought she was going to cry, but she held it together, showing incredible courage.

Like always.

I wanted to hold her, but I didn’t. I missed the moment, the chance to be more than observer and actually help.

Like always.

“You found him?” she asked, after a short while.

“No. But Novack has identified him. The computers show that he died a short while before Charlie.”

She looked at me strangely, and then shook her head. “He didn’t.”

“I know. Novack will find him.”

“And Karen is protected?”

“Yes. I was there. There are police everywhere.”

“Did you see Karen? Did you talk to her?”

“No, she had just come out of surgery. They wouldn’t let me go in. But they assured me she’s fine.”