by Mike Markel
“I share that confidence, Florence,” Cheryl said.
“It will take you some time to become comfortable with my style of management, having worked so long with Lee. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask questions that Lee certainly never had to ask.”
“About the operations? Yes, that will be fine. I will always be available to help you understand the business as we move forward.”
“I’m so glad to hear that,” Florence said. There was silence for a moment. “Let me start, then, with this question: Why did you kill Kirk Hendrickson?”
There was more silence. I glanced over at Jorge, who nodded his head to tell us the wire was still working.
“Excuse me?” Cheryl Garrity’s voice was low and hesitant.
“I asked you why you killed Kirk Hendrickson.”
“What … what makes you think … who is Kirk Hendrickson?”
“He was the young man who hacked into the company’s data system. The young man you killed Wednesday night. Tell me about that.”
“I really don’t … I have no idea what you’re … I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
There was silence for a moment. “Cheryl, I need you to listen to me. I have a right to know what is going on in the company. Please don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m referring to. And don’t be defensive. I’m not criticizing you. After everything that has passed between us? It’s very likely I would have made the same decision you made. Start by telling me what you know about Kirk Hendrickson and why you decided to kill him.”
There was another long pause. “Kirk Hendrickson was a student at the university. He was working with that professor, Lauren Wilcox. Lee told you about her, I think.”
“Yes,” Florence said. “Yes, he did. Now what exactly did Kirk do?”
“He hacked our system. He planted some spyware.”
“Have you had that spyware removed?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. Did he also discover any irregularities in our reports to the DEQ?”
“Yes,” Cheryl Garrity said. “He did.”
This time it was Florence who paused. “That was unfortunate. That should not have happened.”
“I take responsibility for that. It won’t happen again.”
“Did you kill him before he had a chance to pass that information to the professor?”
“I don’t know whether he did tell her—or whether he was ever planning to.”
“I don’t understand.”
Cheryl Garrity spoke softly. “I decided to take action when he told me he was going to blackmail the company. He asked for one-hundred thousand dollars—he called that the first payment. If I did not give him that money, in cash, he said he would go to Lauren Wilcox with the information he had downloaded from our system. But I’m not sure he had fully worked out what he was going to do.”
“I see.”
“I didn’t come to you. I thought … I thought it was best if you didn’t know. To insulate you from it.”
“I appreciate that.”
“How did you find out … how do you know what happened?”
“There’s a camera in the garage. I have it on the tape.” The leather on the couch rustled, as if Florence shifted her position. “What did you do with the body, after you hit him with the car?”
“Really, Florence, I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to talk about these details. The less you know, the better.”
“If we are to work together, Cheryl, we need to create an environment of trust. As we go forth, each of us knows something about the other’s background that cannot be divulged. I know, for example, that you are aware of my background, in St. Louis—”
“I never breathed a word of it to Lee. Never once.”
“I know that,” Florence said.
“I swear on my parents’ graves that I never told a soul. No one.”
“And that is why I know you will be honest with me now.”
“I killed Kirk Hendrickson because he threatened everything that Lee worked so hard to build over the decades. Everything Lee and I built. I don’t know whether he had already told Lauren Wilcox, but I felt it was necessary to eliminate him. If it turns out that Lauren Wilcox has that information, we will have to deal with that. She might be sufficiently intelligent to let it be, for her own welfare. Perhaps she realizes that I am fully prepared to act on behalf of our company, to protect your interests and mine, if there is an additional threat. I hope you believe that.”
I looked over at the chief, who was smiling.
“I do, Cheryl. I do,” Florence Rossman said. “Thank you for being frank with me. I know it’s not easy to talk about these things. But you need to know that I will not repeat what you say here tonight.”
“I cannot tell you how relieved I am to hear that.”
“Now I need you to answer one more question.”
“Anything.” I could hear the relief in Cheryl’s voice.
“Why did you kill Lee?”
It was silent in the living room. It was silent here in the bedroom.
“I had to.” Cheryl’s voice was barely a whisper now. Jorge was hunched over his equipment, fiddling with dials. “He was going to destroy the company.”
“It was about the wastewater,” Florence said softly.
“I begged him to let me take care of it.”
“How were you going to do that?”
Cheryl let out a sad laugh. “I had already begun to solve the problem. In fact, the solution was in sight. The DEQ analyst. He’s fifty-six years old. He wanted a little security for his retirement. He wanted a position with Rossman. I told him that wouldn’t be a problem. And it wouldn’t have been …”
“Except for Lee, you mean.”
“Yes.” Cheryl Garrity’s voice was a whisper. “Except for Lee.”
“Did you order the attack on my stepson?”
“Oh, my God, no. Never. I would never have done anything to hurt Billy.” Cheryl Garrity started to moan. “When I learned what had happened to him, I was sick. Literally, sick. I love Billy, like a son. I held him in my arms the day he was born. I was there. Lee wasn’t there that day. Lee wasn’t there a lot of days. Of all the things I have done, the one thing that I will never forgive myself for is my role in the attack on Billy. But you must believe me that it was Lee’s decision, not mine. Lee must have authorized Billy to take that water. I would never have let him do that. I would never have let him put himself in danger like that. I pray for Billy’s recovery.”
“I believe you, Cheryl. I believe you.”
The leather sighed as the two women stood.
“I’m so glad we had this talk, Cheryl. Come here.”
There was silence, then Florence said, “Robert, please come out now.”
After a moment, Cheryl Garrity said, “What did you just say?”
The chief, Ryan, and I came out of the bedroom and arranged ourselves in a semicircle, facing Cheryl Garrity.
Florence Rossman unbuttoned the top two buttons on her Irish sweater, then the top button on her blouse, revealing the recorder taped to her chest. “It’s over, Cheryl.”
Cheryl Garrity stood there, motionless and uncomprehending, her bag hanging from her shoulder. “What have you done, Florence? What have you done?”
“I have done the right thing, Cheryl,” Florence said, her voice steady and strong.
Cheryl Garrity’s face hardened into an expressionless mask as she started edging backward, slowly. “No, Florence, you definitely have not done the right thing.”
“It’s your turn to do the right thing,” Florence said. “You will get only one shot.”
Ryan and I charged at Cheryl Garrity. She thrust her hand into her bag and pulled out a snub-nose revolver, barely visible in her palm. Ryan leapt at her, trying to tackle her around the waist, but he was a half-second too late. I got a hand on her right arm, but she pulled it free, raised the revolver to her mouth, and fired. The explosion was deafening in my ear. I fe
lt the spray of blood on the side of my face and the back of my neck and saw it spatter onto the brown leather couch and a Native American rug. Her body crumpled to the floor, pinning my left hand under her shoulder.
I pulled my hand free. “You okay?” I said to Ryan, who had landed hard on the floor.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, lifting himself up and rubbing his elbow.
The chief was on the phone, calling for an ambulance.
Florence stood there, serene, as the action swirled around her.
I walked over to her. “You knew she was armed?”
“I had told her Lauren Wilcox would be coming later. I assumed she would bring a gun.”
“How did you know she wasn’t going to shoot you?”
“I didn’t know.”
Ryan and the chief were standing over Cheryl Garrity’s body, which was still. Her eyes were half-closed. I said, “She gonna make it?”
“No,” the chief said, turning away from the body.
I spoke to Florence Rossman. “Did you know she killed Lee?”
“Yes,” she said. “I knew. Only Cheryl loved him enough to have done it.”
“That’s a strange way to show love,” I said.
“I don’t think so, Detective. When she said she never told Lee about my past? That was true. She never did. She knew it would destroy the marriage, which would have given her some satisfaction. But she didn’t tell him because she thought it would hurt him too much. She was wrong about that, of course. She never understood the first thing about Lee. She didn’t realize that he was incapable of real love, that he simply used women all his life. She forgave him for that—forgave him even for disposing of her and marrying a woman like me. Lee never experienced a great passion, but Cheryl did—she loved him completely. She was a great romantic. In that way, he was never worthy of her.”
Chapter 32
A shooting seems to take just a few seconds, but really it takes hours. There is the ambulance, the medical examiner, the statements at headquarters. We weren’t done until after two am.
Right after the shooting, Florence Rossman drifted back into her bedroom. I let her be for a while, then I knocked and walked in to ask if she needed anything. She was sitting on a chair, gazing straight ahead. She looked a little startled when she saw me in the doorway.
“Could you come in, please?” she said and gestured for me to sit. She seemed to want to talk, and I was the only other live female in her house. “Am I going to be arrested?”
I thought for a second. “I’m not an attorney, but I don’t see you’ve broken any laws. Nothing related to Cheryl’s suicide, that’s for sure.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything. We sat there for a few moments.
I said, “You want me to leave?”
“No.” She looked at me, and for the first time I saw the loneliness in her eyes. “Stay.”
“Have you thought about your plans?”
“I have thought about that, quite a bit, since Lee’s death. I think I’ll head back to St. Louis. That’s where I’m from. It’s where I belong.”
I didn’t know what, if anything, that last sentence meant. “And the company?”
“It’s going to a real mess for a while. I’m sure there will be an investigation of the discrepancies about the wastewater. And about the DEQ analyst. It could go on for months, maybe longer.” She paused. “I don’t even know who can take over for Cheryl. Lee relied on her so much.”
“And longer term?”
“I’m going to talk with Bill about that. If he continues to recover as he has, I’d like to sign it over to him. That is, if he wants it.”
“I bet he will.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I think he loved his father, and his father loved him. Lee trusted him to help him to get to the bottom of the problem with the dirty water. He didn’t go to Ron Eberly.” Florence Rossman looked at me, to see if I was making some sort of comment about her affair with him, which I wasn’t. “He’d known Ron for thirty years, but he went to Bill. I think Bill is an honest guy, like his father was. Working out on the rig like he’s doing, when he could take a desk job or just sit on his ass, waiting for an inheritance? No, I think he’s still learning from his old man.”
Florence Rossman smiled a little bit. “That’s very kind of you to say. I think he is honest, too. But with all that’s happened, Bill might decide to walk away. He might not be strong enough to stay. He might be like me.”
“Tonight, after you got Cheryl to confess to the two murders, you could have said ‘Excuse me’ and left the room, let us walk out there and arrest her. But you stood there and told her to do the right thing. You knew she was armed. That took some courage.”
She closed her eyes and kept them shut for a bit. Then she opened them. “That was more about not caring either way.”
“What I’m saying is, the oil business isn’t your life. It never was. But I bet it will be Bill’s life.”
“Well,” she said, “he will have to decide. He can have it if he wants it.”
The doorbell chimed. It was Harold, the medical examiner. “Excuse me,” I said to Florence, and headed out to the front door to greet him and stand around while he called the official time of death.
The way things worked out—with Cheryl Garrity shooting herself—made it easy for me and Ryan. It was a simple suicide, with the confession on tape and four live witnesses. Suicides are always easier than officer-involved shootings, with their paperwork and mandatory leave and the other cops asking you if you’re okay.
Still, it’s hard not to think about how it ended and ask yourself if you could have handled things differently, if you could have prevented any of the deaths.
I thought a lot about Florence’s comment that Cheryl was a great romantic, but I didn’t buy it, and I still don’t. I’m no psychiatrist, but it seems to me Cheryl Garrity was just a murderer. She didn’t have anything going on in her life except Rossman Mining, so she did whatever she thought she had to do to protect it, including killing two people.
When she decided to kill herself rather than Florence with her one shot, I think she had decided she didn’t want to go to prison for the rest of her life or take the needle. Florence told me it meant Cheryl was fundamentally a good person, that she understood that what she had done was wrong and she deserved to die for the two murders. I think Florence is a little bit more of a romantic that she realizes.
I was fine with how Florence got Cheryl to bring a weapon: telling her Lauren Wilcox would be there so she would think she might need to kill one more person. And I was fine with Cheryl killing herself like that. I don’t see that it does anyone any good to put her on trial for a few weeks. It would sell a bunch of newspapers, especially if whatever Florence was into in St. Louis became public. But if the purpose of a trial is to discover the truth, there was no point in going through the motions. Cheryl had already confessed to both murders.
And I didn’t see any reason to make Cheryl sit in prison forever and reflect on her actions. You’re the kind of person decides to kill the boss because you doesn’t like how he wants to solve this particular business problem, it doesn’t seem all that likely reflecting is going to help you see anything clearer.
Maybe a priest or minister or a thoughtful normal person would think it’s a real shame that Cheryl got so screwed up she started killing people, and how it was a real loss when one of God’s children dies. I was willing to go along with the first part. Yeah, it would have been better if Cheryl Garrity hadn’t gotten so twisted in the first place. But Sunday night, when she knifed Lee, she forced the rest of us to move on the next two questions: Who killed Lee Rossman, and what were we going to do to get that person off the street? The cop questions.
The point is, Florence did a damn good job taking care of the Cheryl Garrity problem. Of course, there’s never only the one problem, and you never finish taking care of it. Bill Rossman is going to be shitting bricks for the rest of his life
every time he coughs a couple times, wondering when he’s going to start getting sick from the poison those idiots poured down his throat.
And Lauren Wilcox is done teaching, or at least teaching outside of a federal prison. She was picked up the day after Cheryl killed herself, and Allen Pfeiffer told me she would probably do the full ten years, or most of them. That will give her plenty of opportunity to think about whether she did right by Kirk Hendrickson. So far, we don’t know if Cheryl Garrity was telling the truth that he was blackmailing her. After all, Cheryl was a pretty good liar, and maybe she just wanted to justify her decision to kill the kid. We did figure out that Kirk used Lauren Wilcox’s university email account to hack into Rossman Mining. So it’s clear he was a coward—about that, anyway. But that didn’t mean he deserved to die, and it didn’t let Lauren Wilcox off the hook for involving him in the hacking.
All in all, it was a long, tough week, but I didn’t see how I could have prevented either of the murders or saved anybody any heartache. So, all things considered, I was doing fine.
Monday morning, Ryan and I were writing up all the files we had neglected while we were driving back and forth to the oil rigs. I heard a woman’s voice behind me.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I was told you’re Detective Seagate.” I turned around and looked up. It was Maureen McNamara, Mac’s daughter. She looked confused. “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re Eleanor, aren’t you, the woman I met at the hospital? From Mac’s AA group?”
I felt Ryan looking at me. After a moment, he stood up, said “Excuse me,” and walked out of the bullpen.
“Sit down, Maureen,” I said. She sat on the chair next to my desk. “I’m Karen Seagate.”
“I’m sorry. You’ll have to excuse me. I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep lately.”
“No, Maureen. We did talk that night at the hospital.”
