Heart of a Killer (31 page)

But I was not about to put all my eggs in one basket, so we gave what I thought was a compelling and energetic presentation to the board. First I took Novack through the investigation, and he drew a straight line from Sheryl to Hennessey to Laufer and on, with the line not stopping until it led to the Limerick nuclear reactor and Nolan Murray.

The board members hung on every word; their expressions said that they were thrilled to be close-up witnesses to history.

Next I introduced Sheryl, who described in heartfelt words what happened in that room six years ago, and why she confessed to a murder she did not commit.

I asked her a bunch of questions, fleshing out the details, and she answered them simply and honestly. Then she summed up by saying, “So recently I told the truth, which I should have done many years ago. I didn’t have any idea that it would ultimately lead to capturing Nolan Murray, or preventing a national disaster. I’m very grateful for that, but it’s not something I can take any credit for.

“I finally told the truth for one simple reason. My daughter is very ill, and I want to be with her.”

I wanted to hug her when she finished, to hold on to her and tell her how great she was, and how much I cared about her. But I don’t think lawyers do that, and so I didn’t.

What I did do was fill in what I thought were some slight holes in the testimony we had presented, and provide some additional evidence. Included in that was the document that Karen signed, in which she said that she had seen Hennessey with her father, before seeing him on television as a murder victim. Something was bothering me about that, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

The board members had questions for both Novack and Sheryl. The ones for Novack were somewhere between respectful and hero worship, centering mainly on the later parts of the investigation, more about Nolan Murray than Sheryl.

Then they questioned Sheryl, and they were surprisingly and disappointingly on point. They asked whether the reports of her wanting to give her heart to her daughter were true, pointing out that it was their responsibility not to release someone who they believed would go out and once again break the law.

Sheryl deflected the question as we had discussed, saying that her plans were private, but that no one would be hurt by her actions and society would not suffer.

I took it one step further. “I know you understand and are respectful of your obligations,” I said, “but you also have an obligation to justice. If you have listened to this entire presentation, and I know you have, then you cannot have any doubt that Sheryl Harrison has spent six years in prison for a crime she did not commit. You also cannot have any doubt that she will be exonerated and freed by the courts, but that is a process that takes time. She wants to be with her daughter, and for that there is simply no time.”

It was finally over, and we were asked to go to an adjacent room while the members discussed the case, and wait there in case they had any further questions for us.

Novack said that he had to leave, that there were “a thousand ridiculous reports to write” about the previous day’s events. I shook his hand and thanked him for coming through for us, and Sheryl hugged him.

He hugged her back. “It’s going to work out,” he said, and then smiled. “Whatever the hell that means.”

We waited in the room for a half hour, then an hour, even though they had said it would only be twenty minutes. I was getting rather annoyed, and preparing to complain, when Stanley Breslin came in.

“We have decided that releasing Ms. Harrison based on newly found evidence is outside of our province,” he said. “It is a job that is rightly for the courts, and taking it upon ourselves would be setting a dangerous precedent.”

I was going to argue, but it wouldn’t have helped. Besides, he wasn’t finished talking, and he was smiling.

“But it doesn’t matter,” he said, “because the governor has just commuted the sentence.”

I was never really comfortable on a computer. It was ironic, because the case had been so much about computers. But what I was doing that night on my laptop was so awful that when I was finished, I was going to smash it with a hammer.

I was running computer searches for painless ways to commit suicide, ways that would not damage vital organs. I thought the answers would be plentiful, but all I did was turn up countless pleas to distraught people telling them not to die, that life was too worth living.

That’s what I wanted to tell Sheryl, among a thousand other things, but there was little time left to do it. She was spending one more night at the prison, while the court reviewed the governor’s commutation and processed it. The next day she would be released. She would go straight to the hospital, spend time with Karen and Terry, and then die. Dr. Jenkins was notified and ready.

So it was up to me to figure out how. I should have done it earlier, but I never wanted to acknowledge that it could happen, and I must have cut the class in law school when they taught us that killing someone you love was a lawyer’s responsibility.

But there I was, searching and taking notes, when there was a knock on my door. I opened it and there were my parents, breathing heavily from the trudge up the steps. I think I would have been less surprised to see George and Martha Washington.

“Hello, Jamie,” my mother said, and hugged me. My father clapped me on the shoulder, and they came in. I made coffee, and we talked for a couple of hours, though it seemed like much less.

They had read about everything in the papers, and knew what I must be going through, so they came to comfort me. My parents. Came. To. Comfort. Me.

As beyond amazing as that was, it paled in amazing-ness next to the fact that it worked. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t turning cartwheels, but it felt good that they were there, and that they understood what I was dealing with.

And when they were ready to leave, my father said, “You seem down, Jamie. Depressed and lethargic, and—”

“Yes, Dad, I—” I interrupted, but he interrupted my interruption.

“And you seem to be scratching a lot. Are your allergies bothering you?”

“Allergies? I don’t have…”

He reached into his pocket and took out two small bottles of pills. There were no labels on the bottles. “One of these is for your depression, and one is for your allergies. But don’t take too many, and don’t take them together. Were you to take six of each, you would certainly not survive. Your death would be painless, but it would be certain, and very quick.”

I took the bottles from his hand, and the next thing I knew I was hugging both my parents and we were all crying.

I picked Sheryl up at the prison at 10:00
A.M.
Her actual release was fairly easy; the prison officials had prepared well, probably fearing the glare of the press. When she was brought out to me, we hugged briefly. “You doing okay?” I asked.

She smiled. “Best day in a while, and you made it happen.”

We walked out of the building, and I saw her take a quick look up at the sky. As we made our way toward the parking lot, she saw the enormous media contingent waiting for us. “So this is real life?” she asked.

“It is for us celebrity lawyers.”

As we made our way through the reporters called out questions, some of which were a little too direct and painful for my taste. Sheryl seemed not to hear them, though I knew she had to.

The forty-five-minute drive to the hospital was an uncomfortable one. We didn’t talk much, although I had an endless conversation going in my head. I tested out a bunch of comments in silence, but none of them came close to accomplishing what I was trying to say.

One thing I wasn’t going to do, much as I wanted to, was try to talk her out of doing what she wanted. It wouldn’t be fair to her. She knew she still could change her mind, and she knew what the result of her actions would be. My pointing it all out would add nothing to the picture.

She was quiet as well, but I had no idea what she could be thinking. There were no circumstances in which I could read a woman’s mind, and to hope to succeed with a woman just freed from prison after six years, about to see her daughter and mother, and about to die at her own hands, was completely out of the question.

We got to the hospital, and Dr. Jenkins was there to greet us. Before we went to see Karen, he took Sheryl and me in to talk to the executive director of the hospital, who actually read to us from a prepared statement, no doubt written by the hospital’s lawyers.

The hospital was very carefully distancing themselves from anything that Sheryl was planning to do. They were telling Sheryl that they would give Karen excellent care, including a heart transplant should a donor heart become available. In that regard, they had no power and could merely wait for that possible availability, wherever it might come from.

I agreed with their approach. They were already taking a legal and public relations risk by participating in this at all, and they were demonstrating what I considered great courage by doing so. Protecting themselves in this manner was fine with me, and fine with Sheryl as well. She thanked the executive director and Dr. Jenkins, and everybody in the room knew what she was thanking them for.

Finally, Dr. Jenkins took us up to Karen’s room, or at least the room they had moved Karen into. It was actually a three-room “suite,” which I suspected was done to give Sheryl privacy. Karen could be in one room, Sheryl in another, and the rest of us in the third.

In the elevator, Sheryl asked how Karen was, and Jenkins said that she was very weak, and that she had very little time left. He looked at me, and I had the feeing he was trying to tell me something, but I wasn’t close to figuring out what it was.

When we got there, Terry was alone with Karen, who was in bed sleeping. Terry and Sheryl hugged for a long time, and I could see them both try to keep from crying. Karen looked small and frail; I hoped she was strong enough to survive the surgery. Failing to do so would be unimaginably awful.

Everyone was counting on her to live her mother’s life.

Terry went into an adjoining room; she had said her good-byes to her daughter, and it was understandable that she couldn’t be there to watch her “departure.” As a nonparent, I couldn’t come close to imagining what she was going through.

Sheryl went over to Karen’s bed, leaned over, and kissed her forehead. I wanted to leave the room, to give them privacy, but I couldn’t get myself to do it. Karen opened her eyes and saw her mother standing there. She said something, so softly that it was hard for me to hear. I think it was, “Ma, don’t. I can’t let you.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. This is the way it should be. And the truth is that nothing will change; you’ve always had my heart.”

Then she straightened up and walked to the door to the adjoining room. She took a deep breath and said, “Jamie, can I see you for a second?”

I nodded and started to follow her into the other room. Before I could do so, Dr. Jenkins came over and blocked my path.

He spoke softly, so that only I could hear. “Don’t let her do it.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, because I didn’t.

“Just don’t let her do it. It’s too late.”

“But…”

“Jamie, listen to me. Do not let her do it. I am telling you that it’s too late.”

“Jamie…,” Sheryl said, with the door to the other room open. “Are you coming?’

I cast a helpless glance at Dr. Jenkins, but he was neither backing down nor further enlightening me. I followed Sheryl into the room and she closed the door behind us. She had already removed the pills I gave her, the pills my father gave me, from her bag. She pulled me toward her and pressed her head against my chest.

“You’re the best, Harvard.”

I couldn’t talk; I literally couldn’t say a word.

“Some lady is going to be lucky to get you,” she said. “But don’t limit yourself; give some Yale girls a chance.”

She held up the pills and said, “Ten minutes, right?”

That’s what my father had told me, and that’s what I had already told Sheryl, so I nodded.

“Just checking,” she said, then, “This is tougher than I thought it would be, and it’s not like I expected a walk in the park.”

I gently took the pills from her hand, which surprised her. “What are you doing?”

“I can’t let you take these,” I said.

“Don’t go there, Harvard. We’ve been over this. I need you to be strong for me here, okay?”

I decided to try honesty, because I couldn’t think of anything else. “Sheryl, Dr. Jenkins told me to stop you.”

“Why?” She was getting annoyed. “This was all planned, okay? It’s—”

I interrupted her. “He said it’s too late.”

She was just starting to process this in her mind when the door opened and Dr. Jenkins came in. He spoke directly to Sheryl. “You should come back in here right away.”

The look of panic in Sheryl’s eyes was something I’ll never forget. Dr. Jenkins turned around and went back into the other room, and Sheryl rushed after him. I wanted to follow as well, but it took a few moments to get my legs to swing into action. They were having enough trouble holding me up.

It took maybe twenty seconds until I heard it, a moan, more like a wail, coming from Sheryl. I finally went back into the main room, but was surprised by what I saw, or really what I didn’t see.

Karen was lying on her bed, eyes closed and peaceful. But neither Sheryl nor Dr. Jenkins was there. It wasn’t until I heard Sheryl sobbing that I realized she was in the third room.

I moved to that open door, and when I got there I immediately understood what had happened. Terry was lying on her bed, also with her eyes closed and peaceful. Sheryl’s head was on Terry’s chest, and she was sobbing more softly now.

Dr. Jenkins saw me come in, and came over to me. All he said was, “We have a donor heart.” He then picked up the phone, waited a moment, and said, “We’re ready.”

“Did you know, Jamie?” Sheryl was asking me if I knew in advance of Terry’s plans to donate her own heart, in place of Sheryl’s. It was shortly after the operation finished, and Dr. Jenkins had come in a few minutes earlier to say that it had gone very, very well.