Heart of a Killer

by David Rosenfelt

  “That’s my philosophy of life,” I said. “Actually, the story I gave you was partially true. What I wanted to talk to you about does have the potential to be a very big story. I’m hoping you can help me avoid that, and do the right thing in the process.”

  “I assume it’s about Ms. Harrison. What is it that she wants?” she asked.

  “She wants to save her daughter’s life.”

  “Sounds reasonable. Where does the Department of Corrections come in?”

  So I laid it straight out for her, chapter and verse, and she listened without saying anything, except a single “I see,” when I got to the part about Sheryl being the only match for a heart that Karen was likely to find.

  When she finally responded, it was slowly and carefully. “I’ll move your request quickly through the system. You were wise in coming straight here; had you gone through the local prison authorities it would have been bogged down for weeks.”

  “Great. Do you have a point of view on the request itself?”

  “I want you to understand that what I’m about to say does not represent the point of view of the commissioner, or the state of New Jersey.”

  I nodded. “Understood.”

  “I think it’s a wonderful thing she’s doing; I’d like to think I would do the same. But you don’t have a chance in hell. Not one.”

  That was becoming a familiar refrain. “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t kill people in New Jersey; we don’t have the death penalty. She should have committed her murder in Texas.”

  “This is not a penalty; this is her wish. Hopefully, in her mind, her dying wish.”

  “I understand, but it makes no difference. There is no jurisdiction I know of, not even Texas, where the death penalty is voluntary. And even if it were to be approved by the commissioner, even by the governor, the doctor performing the surgery would be breaking the law. Assisted suicide is illegal, and make no mistake, that is what we’re talking about here.”

  “We are not asking a doctor to perform the surgery while she is alive, simply that transplant preparations be made should she die.”

  That didn’t sway her, so I thanked her for her time, asked that she expedite the process, and left. She had said exactly what I knew to be the truth. She put it more bluntly than I expected, but not as bluntly as I would have to put it to Sheryl Harrison.

  She was not going to get what she wanted. She was going to live, and unless a donor could be found quickly, her daughter was not. Nothing could change that, not even a lawyer who knew what he was doing.

  If she could find one.

  I didn’t feel like going home, so I called Ken Bollinger on his cell, and was not surprised he was at one of the bars we’d go to, on Amsterdam in the upper seventies.

  “Well, my man, you got here just in time. I was going to have to give my credit card for the tab; now you can have that honor.”

  “Ken, I think you have enough money that you can spend some on beer and not run out.”

  “You miss the point, Jamie. When it comes to money, the fun is in having it. If you spend it, then you have less, which means less fun.”

  I shrugged and took out my credit card and gave it to the waiter.

  After a few minutes of me doing very little talking, Ken said, “What’s the matter, pal? You’re even more boring than usual tonight.”

  “It’s about that case I told you about. I’m not sure I see a way through it, and I might be in over my head. It’s bothering me a lot.”

  “Take some advice, Jamie,” he said. “Don’t bring your work home with you. And definitely don’t bring it to the bar.”

  I nodded. “Wise counsel.”

  “One more thing,” he said. “Don’t go growing up on me. I’m not ready for that.”

  At that moment, Alex Cahill wished his father could be there. There was nothing shocking about that; Alex had been wishing that since his father died, thirty-three years ago, when Alex was five. His other main wish, for all but the first few of those years, was that he could remember his father.

  Randy Cahill, by all accounts, had been a powerful man. He was a landscaper, and if you called him a gardener you were in for a hell of a lot of trouble. When someone bought a house, they called in Randy, and he designed the outside, down to the last shrub. Randy felt it was easily as creative as interior design, but somehow didn’t get the same respect.

  And Randy did the work himself. He had helpers, but they were there to take direction. Randy literally got down in the dirt and created, and his wife, Nancy, used to say that she spent half their honeymoon futilely trying to get the dirt out from under her new husband’s fingernails.

  And then one day, while planting bougainvilleas, Randy died. No warning; he just tilted over and fell facedown. It took about ten minutes for his coworkers to even notice, but the paramedics said it wouldn’t have mattered. He was probably dead before he hit the ground.

  Alex saw newspaper clippings that Nancy had saved, what passed in their small-town paper as an obituary. They mostly focused on the fact that Randy had been a great high school athlete, and they mentioned that he left a young son behind.

  Nancy told Alex that his father’s heart just stopped, that the rhythm with which it beat was somehow interrupted. No one had known he had that problem, though back then there was little they could have done about it.

  When Alex was sixteen, he lost his mother. Nothing sudden about that; she contracted throat cancer from smoking and withered away. Alex decided that of the two ways to go, Randy had it right, albeit way too early.

  Alex never married, never wanted to have kids, and he figured it was because he didn’t want to leave anyone behind, like he was left behind. He moved from his southern Californian birthplace to north Jersey, and carved out a successful career for himself as a software designer and consultant.

  But the reason Alex especially wished Randy could have seen him on that particular day was because Randy had saved his life, if inadvertently. Alex had gone to a heart specialist when he was twenty-one, armed with information about the ailment that killed his father. Tests showed that Alex had the same problem, though it hadn’t yet completely developed.

  Alex was told to come back every six months to be rechecked, and he did so religiously. For seventeen years, they sent him home without recommending any special treatment, until six months before that day. Then the doctor dropped the verbal bomb that the condition had worsened, and for the first time posed a threat.

  A pacemaker was recommended, which would maintain the rhythm of the heart. Had that kind of awareness and technology existed for Randy, Alex could have watched him grow old.

  But Alex intended to grow old, and he very willingly had the procedure that implanted the pacemaker. It was much less of a big deal than he imagined, and once it was inside of him he really didn’t notice it at all.

  Following his doctor’s instructions religiously, Alex began a diet and training regimen designed to support his already supported heart. He was down to 170 pounds on his six-foot-one frame, and had done cardio work at the gym every day.

  Alex’s doctor was by this point telling him that there were no restrictions on him at all, that he could be as active as he wanted, within reason.

  So on this day Alex was doing exactly that; he was being as active as he wanted. He was going to run five miles in the park near his home. The distance was not particularly daunting, since he had frequently done more than that on the treadmill.

  But it was outdoors, so it was somehow special, and it would have been nice for his father to be there, to root him on as Alex had always heard fathers were wont to do. But of course he wasn’t there, never would be, and Alex said a silent thank-you for the knowledge that Randy had provided, which had saved his son’s life.

  Karen Davies, a nineteen-year-old student at Seton Hall with a secret dream to run the New York Marathon, was the one who found Alex, lying facedown in the dirt like his father all those years before. She called para
medics, who arrived quickly but could do nothing.

  An autopsy was performed, and it was determined that the pacemaker had inexplicably failed. Not only did it not prevent Alex from suffering Randy’s fate, but its malfunction had caused it. It had speeded his heart up to levels that caused it to literally burst from the pressure.

  It was left to a woman who claimed to be Alex’s widow, even though he was never married, to file a lawsuit, seeking four million dollars in damages.

  A claim that was paid and collected.

  I can’t remember the last time the local TV morning news had anything that interested me. I only watch it to get the weather report, which enables me to complain to anyone who will listen that the weather forecasters don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

  I wasn’t even going to turn it on that day, because I was rushing to get out of the city early, in order to beat the traffic into Jersey. Almost no one, besides me, lives in New York City and works in New Jersey, yet there’s always heavy traffic in both directions. It’s baffling.

  But I turned it on, jumped in the shower, and didn’t pay any attention to it while I was getting dressed. I walked into the kitchen, and got back to the bedroom just in time to hear the news guy say, “Harrison’s lawyer is James Wagner, but he has not commented on the report.”

  My initial, desperate refuge was in the mention of the lawyer’s name as “James,” rather than “Jamie,” but since James is my real name, that is how I am listed with the bar association. In any event, I knew down deep that another James Wagner having a client named Harrison, in a situation that was newsworthy, was too much of a coincidence to really hope for.

  I went right to my computer and turned it on. I have Yahoo! as my home page, and the first thing I noticed was the name Sheryl Harrison. It was at the top of the “trending now” list, which probably meant her name was at that moment the most searched name on the web.

  My hope was that Sheryl somehow gave an interview from prison, but I knew that wasn’t going to turn out to be the case.

  The story was everywhere; I had my choice of where I wanted to read it. I chose The New York Times; there would be time to check out the more sensationalized versions later. And sure enough, it was a straightforward recounting of the facts, at least in its initial paragraphs. It then eased into a legal analysis of the law as it relates to assisted suicide, both in New Jersey and nationally.

  It was completely clear that either Constance Barkley went to the press after I left, or she went to her superiors, who then decided to go public. It made sense for them, especially since I had stupidly threatened to do so myself. This way they got to frame the story in their terms; the first time the public saw the facts they would be getting the government version.

  Also mentioned in the story, as it had been on television, was the fact that I was not available for comment. Then I realized why. I turn off the ringer on my phone during the night and let the machine pick up. Late-night phone calls have always scared me; nobody calls after midnight with good news. So I avoid them.

  There were eighteen messages on the machine, since that was all that it could hold. I didn’t know how many people couldn’t get through, and I had no desire to find out.

  Seventeen of the calls were from media outlets, imploring me to call them back. Quite a few of them implied that they were on my side, and that I could use them as a platform to spread our word.

  The one call not from a media person was a woman’s voice that I recognized as Sheryl’s. Even if I hadn’t recognized it, the message would have made the identity of the caller crystal clear.

  All she said was, “Harvard, you are an asshole. A major asshole. Thanks for telling my daughter and the entire world that she is going to die.”

  Had Sheryl Harrison employed a cadre of advisers for twenty years, giving them as their only task coming up with words to cause me pain, they couldn’t have done as well as she did with that message. I hadn’t even considered the effect on Karen, how stunned, frightened, and devastated she would be.

  I hadn’t thought through the impact my actions might have; I just blundered ahead with the first idea that popped into my head. And now it was too late; nothing I could do from that point on could make up for what Karen Harrison had to be going through.

  I decided not to call any of the reporters back, for two reasons. First of all, I hadn’t decided what to tell them, and I had already said enough to regret for a decade. More important, Sheryl deserved to be the first one I talked to. That way she could fire me, and it would no longer matter what the hell I said to anyone.

  They were waiting in front of the building; I would call it a small army of media people, except for the fact that it wasn’t small, and it wasn’t just people. There were also trucks, and cameras, and microphones.

  The garage where I parked was about two hundred feet from the front door of my apartment, and it took me twenty minutes to navigate it. I decided to make one statement, so as not to look as if we had nothing to say on our side.

  “I’m not going to comment publicly at this moment. This is a very serious matter; a young girl’s life is at stake. Just because the Corrections Department decided she is not entitled to privacy and compassion does not mean we should stoop to that level.”

  I didn’t mind taking a shot at the Corrections authorities. It was by then completely obvious that they were never going to relent; if we were going to prevail it would be in the courts. And it was just as obvious that this would be as much a public relations war as anything else, with the PR ball now obviously in our court.

  The other reason I attacked them was because I was pissed, and I wasn’t going to just sit back and take what they dished out. The desire to fight, and to win, was a feeling I hadn’t experienced since maybe never.

  It was a feeling I liked, except for the nauseous part.

  Ray Hennessey got the call the way he always got the call. His phone rang with a number that began with the area code 406. Hennessey had once checked and learned it was a Missoula, Montana, number. He had even called it once, from a pay phone, but the recording said it was out of service.

  He knew the drill; once the phone rang from that number, he was to turn on his laptop computer forty-five minutes later. He did so, and five minutes after that the familiar voice came through the speakers. It was a normal voice, a little tinny from the speakers, and it spoke with a fairly dull monotone. This would be the primary way that they would communicate, though Hennessey did have a number to call, albeit through a circuitous route, that could put him in touch with the contact.

  Hennessey had never met the person speaking to him, though they had talked at least fifty times. More significantly, that person had paid Hennessey more than five million dollars in the past seven years, with the promise of more to come.

  Much more.

  Hennessey had given up an earlier desire to know more about the caller, and where he was calling from. This time, as always, there was no background noise at all, as if the caller were in a sealed, silent room.

  He had no way of knowing that there were two men besides the caller in the room. Their names were Daniel Churchill and Peter Lampley, and they had quite a bit in common. Both were in their late twenties, and were workaholics. At that moment, as always, they sat at their desks, staring at their elaborate, state-of-the-art computer systems. Neither had girlfriends, other interests, or anything resembling a life away from their work; there would be plenty of time for that later.

  The other thing that Churchill and Lampley had in common was that they were both dead by the time they were ten years old.

  The man who conducted this and all conversations with Hennessey was Nolan Murray. He was considerably older than his handpicked colleagues, but he referred to them as his “partners.” He was in actually their leader, and their boss.

  Murray and Churchill knew each other first, and developed what had become their incredibly profitable “business” together. It took a while to find a third pe
rson who could meet their strict requirements to join their club, but Churchill finally found him in Lampley. Once they added Hennessey for the “hands-on” work, their workforce was complete.

  And once Murray worked his way into the Limerick nuclear plant, they knew that their business was going to expand rather dramatically.

  “Hello, Mr. Hennessey. I received your report on Sheryl Harrison,” Murray said. He spoke through a voice synthesizer, so the sound that Hennessey would hear bore little resemblance to his real voice.

  “Obviously things have since changed,” Hennessey said, referring to the media outburst that had just occurred.

  “Obviously. The situation has gone from slightly worrisome to decidedly unsatisfactory.”

  “I’m working on finding out more information,” Hennessey said. “Not just what’s in the papers.” He said this without conviction, since he really had little prospect of finding out anything useful to the caller that wasn’t already public.

  “Information is not what I’m looking for now. We’re coming up on a sensitive time, and this is an intolerable interference.”

  Hennessey had no idea what he meant by a “sensitive time,” because he really hadn’t a clue as to what Murray’s goals were. “Okay. What are you looking for?”

  “Ms. Harrison wants to die.”

  “Yes.”

  “Grant her wish.”

  A media contingent was waiting for me outside the prison. They looked exactly like the group in front of my apartment; there seemed to be no limit to the number of people assigned to this story.

  Once I got past them and went inside, the people in the reception area and the guards seemed somewhat more responsive than they had the previous times. I assumed it was because they now knew the world was interested and watching, and scrutiny might be visited upon them.

  I was brought into the same room Sheryl and I had met in twice before, and once again she was waiting for me. It was a conversation I was not looking forward to. I realized that I was seeking her approval, and I was about to get anything but that.