Heart of a Killer (12 page)

Flight 3278 was about fifty-five minutes from Charlotte, close to entering the domain of Charlotte air traffic control. The controller who would be bringing it in to its uneventful landing would be Denise Weber, herself just finishing fourteen years on the job.

It was approaching 2:00
P.M.
, a comparatively slow time of the day, and Denise was having a cup of coffee to keep her alert. She did this because everybody else did, not because she had ever been able to discern any such effect from caffeine. The truth was, she could drink a gallon of it at night and go right to sleep.

A moment later, Denise got more of a jolt than the coffee could have ever provided. Her phone rang, flashing red at the same time. It was the emergency line, and in all her time on the job it had only rung twice before.

She picked it up on the first ring. “Weber.”

“I think there’s something wrong with one of your airplanes.” It was a little girl’s voice; Denise thought she couldn’t be more than five years old. She had absolutely no way of knowing that a grown man, Nolan Murray, was actually doing the speaking, with his voice going through a synthesizer to change it to the sound of a little girl.

“Who is this?” Denise asked.

“Tammy.”

“Tammy, how did you get this number?”

“I don’t know, I just have it.”

“Well, you’re not supposed to call it. You could get in trouble.” Denise’s voice had gone from reflecting her worry to one of amusement. This would be even funnier, if it didn’t mean she would have to write a lengthy report about it.

“But there’s something wrong with your plane.” The little girl’s voice was insistent.

“What plane?

“Flight three two seven eight.”

“How do you—” she started, but was interrupted by a message coming in from one of the airplanes.

“This is Southern three two seven eight,” said Larry Whitaker. “We have an onboard problem; request technical assistance.”

Denise tried to process this information. How could this little girl know that? Where was she calling from? “What’s the issue, three two seven eight?”

“Onboard computer is preventing our descent. We’re actually gaining altitude.”

Denise pressed a button, which would alert her supervisor to a looming emergency. “Roger, Southern, will get you assistance.”

She then turned her attention to the little girl on the phone. “Tammy, how did you know there is something wrong on that plane?”

“Because I am controlling their computers, silly. I’m making it go up, up, instead of down.”

“How can you do that?” Denise asked. It was getting more bewildering by the moment.

“Easy.” Nolan was getting a lot of enjoyment out of this, but that was not why he was doing it. He felt that the people he was talking to would find it somehow more disconcerting, more terrifying, to have a conversation of this deadly importance with a voice that sounded like a little girl.

Whitaker then came in through Denise’s headset, more urgency in his voice, reporting that they were at thirty-five thousand feet and rising. “Request immediate assistance.”

“Tammy, what are you doing?”

“I’m making the plane go up until you give me a million dollars.”

The words sent a cold chill through Denise; however this caller sounded, there was nothing childish or funny about what was going on. At that moment the supervisor, Ray Pierce, arrived. From the moment Denise had buzzed into him, he had been monitoring what was going on, though had no more explanation for it than Denise did.

Pierce became the person talking to Whitaker, and they patched in Southern Airlines’ top technical person. “Thirty-nine thousand,” Whitaker reported. He was clearly very upset, since it had only taken a couple of minutes to gain seven thousand feet, and the plane could likely not survive about fifty-five thousand.

Denise continued to talk to “Tammy.” “Tammy, you have to stop this. We’ll give you a million dollars, but you have to let the plane land.” She realized how ridiculous she sounded, but the facts were dictating her response.

“But I want the money first.” The voice was that of a petulant child.

“I don’t have a million dollars, but I’ll get it for you. I promise.”

“I don’t believe you,” Tammy said. “Show me.”

“How can I do that?”

“Put it on television. Nickelodeon.”

The passengers on the Southern flight were starting to notice the problem. At a time when the plane should have been starting its descent, it was clearly climbing. The captain hadn’t yet said anything, but the flight attendant announced that air traffic control was adjusting their altitude because of traffic in the Charlotte area, and that there was nothing to worry about.

The strain in her voice said otherwise.

Whitaker, meanwhile, was trying to control his own panic. He had no control of his aircraft at all; he might as well have been sitting back in coach. The computers were in command, and they were either out of control, frozen, or being run from an external source.

And the altitude was forty-six thousand feet.

“Tammy, please, let me talk to someone else,” Denise pleaded. Security had arrived and they were telling her what to say, though no one had been through anything like this before. “The person that is doing this.”

“I’m the only one here,” the little girl’s voice said, “and you didn’t give me my money.”

“It takes time, okay?” She was still talking in that gentle, singsongy way that adults talk to small children, which was incongruous and bizarre in this situation. “Stop hurting the plane, and you’ll get your money. I promise.”

“I don’t believe you,” Tammy said. “I’m not talking anymore.”

The oxygen masks came down a few seconds later, sending the passengers into a near panic. They had noticed some trouble breathing moments before, and hungrily grabbed the masks, as the flight attendant came on again and offered both instructions and confident words.

No one believed her.

“Fifty-two thousand feet,” said Whitaker. He kept trying to take control of the aircraft, but it was completely unresponsive.

Both Whitaker and the people on the ground knew what was going to happen very soon. The plane would not break apart, nor would the pressure differential inside the aircraft become so pronounced as to harm the people on board. And the oxygen masks would continue to function and let them breathe.

Before any of that could happen, the air outside would become too thin to support the aircraft, and it would stall and begin a plunge toward the ground. In normal circumstances, the pilot could then attempt to restart it and come out of the dive, and often would be successful in doing so.

This case was different, though. There was no way to know if the aircraft shutting down would have the effect of restoring control to the pilot; that could only be determined in the moment. And that moment would be terrifying.

It was clear that Tammy had not hung up, but was not responding to Denise’s pleas. The call was traced to Dubuque, Iowa, and the FBI was responding, but none of that was going to matter to those people in the air.

Whitaker could only watch as the plane reached 55,700 feet, sputtered, and died. He braced himself and geared for what would come next; the plane would dive and he would have to bring it back to life. But he would only have a chance if it had reverted to his control.

The plane began its plunge, and with the screams of the passengers behind him, he grabbed on to the controls and got to work.

There was a full four-minute interval between the time he realized that the computer was still in total control and the moment the plane smashed into the earth.

All Tammy said before hanging up was, “Next time you better listen to me.”

Sheryl was less enthusiastic than I expected. I had come there that morning to give her the good news, hoping she would hear it from me first. At this point I could pretty much come and go as I pleased; the fact that the case was prominent in the media meant that the prison authorities would try to appear accommodating.

But Sheryl reacted if not coolly, then matter of factly, to my report, and that was probably because I never seemed to give her credit for being as smart as she really was.

“You did well,” she said.

“I thought you’d be euphoric.”

“Is the lower court going to rule in our favor? Are they going to order that I can give Karen my heart?”

“It’s very, very unlikely,” I said.

“Then why exactly should I be overjoyed? We either win it all or we lose, Harvard.”

She was right, of course, but I didn’t want to fully give her that. “Because, and you should pardon the expression, right now this keeps us alive. And as long as we are alive in the courts, there’s a chance for public pressure to build.”

“And then what?” she asked.

“And then maybe they’ll cave. If we haven’t come up with anything else in the meantime.”

“Like what?”

I ignored the question, at least for the moment. “Where did Charlie keep his personal papers?”

“Why?”

I hit it straight on. “Because I’m working with the cop that arrested you. He’s doesn’t think you murdered Charlie, and I don’t either.”

She was clearly annoyed. “We’ve been through this.”

I nodded. “And now we’re going through it again. Look, there’s a two percent chance we’ll uncover something to get you paroled. But that’s double the chance we have of winning in court, so I’m going to pursue it.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Sheryl, my job is to protect you, which in this case means getting you what you want. This is the best way for me to do it, to go down both avenues. If that doesn’t work for you, then you need to get yourself a different lawyer.”

I’d never been that forceful with her, and she seemed taken aback by it. She took time to gather her thoughts, and I realized that, just like with every woman I’ve ever met, I had absolutely no idea what she was going to say.

Finally she said, “He had a desk in the room he used as an office. There were drawers that locked, and he kept important stuff in there.”

“Where would it be now?”

She laughed. “Good question. After I was arrested and he was dead, the house was empty. Within two days, I was told that someone had broken in and ransacked the place. The bastards must have read about what happened in the papers, and they swooped in. It’s like when they read the obits, so they’ll know who to rob during the funeral.”

I didn’t know why Novack had asked the question about Charlie’s papers in the first place, but I was immediately suspicious about the robbery. It seemed very possible, even likely, that it was not a theft of opportunity by predators who knew from the newspaper that the house would be unoccupied. They could have been after whatever Novack was after; unfortunately they got there six years ahead of him.

“What about a safe-deposit box? Did he have one of those?”

She thought about it for a while, and then nodded. “I think we had one together, though I never used it. I remember when we took it out.”

“Do you have the key?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t think I ever did.”

“What bank?”

“Probably Citizens Trust on Broadway. That’s the branch I always used.”

“Thanks, Sheryl,” I said, and then had an idea. “Would you talk to the cop if I brought him in here? His name is Novack.”

“Believe me, I remember him.”

“Would you talk to him? I’d be in the room as well.”

“I’d rather not,” she said.

“I’d rather you would,” I said.

“You’re turning into a pain in the ass, Harvard.”

“Not true. I’ve always been a pain in the ass. You’re just learning it now. Where have you been?”

She smiled. “In here.”

“So maybe we can change that. I’ll talk to you soon.”

I started to leave, but then stopped at the door before the guard saw me. I turned back to her, and came fully back into the room. “Sheryl, I’m sorry to be difficult about this, but I just can’t see you slitting someone’s throat.”

She shrugged but didn’t say anything.

“How did you do it?” I asked.

“With a knife.”

“No, I mean, well … was he lying on his back or his stomach?”

“Do I really need to relive this?” she asked.

“This is the only time I’ll ask you about it; I promise,” I said.

“He was on his stomach.”

“And where were you? Did you just walk up to him and raise his head?”

“Yes. He was sleeping.”

“So you were standing next to him?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I knew from Novack’s description, and from the discovery documents, that the killer made knee imprints in Charlie’s back. “You’re lying, Sheryl. You don’t even know how the hell it happened.”

She yelled “Guard!” and when he came in, she added, “We’re finished with our meeting. Get my lawyer the hell out of here.”

I didn’t wait for the guard; I left on my own. I had done what I needed to do; I had shaken her up. I was pleased by that.

Ten more times and we’d be even.

“We’re going to have to work together on this.”

Novack just laughed when I said it, as if the idea was too absurd to warrant an actual verbal response. But I knew that I was going to have to get my way on this, ever since I left the prison that morning.

We were sitting and eating pancakes in Paula’s Pancake House, on Route 4 in Elmwood Park. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and we were at one of only two occupied tables in the place. The other patron, sitting on the other end of the room, was an elderly man in his seventies, drinking a cup of coffee so slowly it seemed it might last into his eighties.

I would assume that pancake consumption decreases as the day goes along, and at Paula’s that day it had apparently ground to a halt. The ones I was eating seemed as if they were cooked around 9:00
A.M.
; at that point they were somewhere between pancakes and hockey pucks. Novack was suffering through his as well.

The lack of other customers was a good thing, since it meant we didn’t have to whisper. Arguing in hushed tones always seems awkward.

I had called him here, so I was the one with the agenda, and I was going to push it. “I’m serious,” I said. “It’s the only way that works for me, and for you as well.”