Heart of a Killer (8 page)

“Paterson? I’m in New York.”

“Then you’d better get your ass moving; he’s doing this as a favor to me.”

I jumped in the shower, dressed, and was in my car in fifteen minutes. I had a vague idea how to get to Paterson, but no idea where Eastside Park was, so I figured I’d ask when I got in the area.

I made very good time and was approaching Paterson on Route 4 at about eight o’clock. I stopped at a gas station and asked the attendant where Eastside Park was, and he didn’t have a clue. He told me his boss would be back in a minute, and that he would likely know.

The mention of “boss” jarringly reminded me that I had a meeting at nine-thirty scheduled with Gerard Timmerman, an appointment I would not be able to keep.

Once the gas station boss gave me directions to the park, I called Timmerman’s office, and got his administrative assistant, an imposing woman named Mildred. She was the only person under sixty that I had ever met with that name, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.

“I’m sorry, but something important has come up, and I’m going to have to reschedule my meeting with Mr. Timmerman this morning.”

She didn’t answer at first, no doubt finding it difficult to process. Then, “You’re rescheduling?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. What time works for him?”

“You’re sure about this?” she asked, clearly incredulous. Her tone was screaming at me that this was an ill-advised career move.

“Listen, I know this is unusual, but I’ll explain when I see him. And I’m in something of a hurry. I’m late for a meeting.”

“You set up a different meeting?”

I was getting in deeper, but there was nothing I could do. Finally, she told me that Timmerman had an opening on his schedule for eleven-thirty, and she would pencil me in for then. If Timmerman found that unacceptable when she spoke to him, she’d call me.

I got to the tennis courts five minutes early, and exactly five minutes after that former detective, now lieutenant, John Novack pulled up. He got out of the car and walked toward me, glancing around, probably to make sure he didn’t see reporters, which would force him to cut out my tongue.

“Speak,” he said.

“Thanks for coming.”

“Speak words that matter.”

“Okay. I’m representing Sheryl Harrison; you’ve probably seen the media coverage about what’s going on.”

He didn’t say anything, so I pushed forward. “You were the arresting officer in the murder case, and the first one on the scene. Sheryl confessed to you.”

“You planning on telling me something I don’t know?” he asked.

“Actually, I’m not. I’m more interested in learning what you do know, or more accurately, what you think.”

“About what?” His tone was still belligerent, and it was getting on my nerves. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to alienate him.

“Look, Reggie told me you don’t like defense lawyers, but that’s not what I am. I just sort of wandered into this, and I’m doing the best I can. I’m trying to save a girl’s life.”

“And lose your client’s in the process.”

“I’m not happy about that, but it’s her decision, or at least that’s what I’m hoping to make it.”

He seemed to think about this for a moment, and then seemed to soften a little. A very little. “What does this have to do with me?”

“I don’t give us much chance to win in the courts, and even if we do, Karen won’t make it that long. Public opinion is on our side, and we can milk it as we go along, but it’s not so one-sided that the state is going to back down.”

“So?’

“So Sheryl has a parole hearing in three weeks. It’s just a formality at this point, but I want to make it more than that. I want her to get the parole and go out in the world. Then there will be nothing to stop her from saving her daughter’s life.”

“She won’t get paroled,” Novack said.

I nodded. “Not on the current evidence.”

“You have something new?”

I shook my head. “No. That’s where I’m hoping you come in.”

He laughed. “Let me go check my car; I think I’ve got some new evidence in the trunk.”

“Reggie doesn’t think she did it,” I said.

Novack didn’t say that Reggie was an idiot, or that Reggie didn’t know what he was talking about, or that I should stop wasting his time with this bullshit. What he said was, “Yeah.”

“More importantly, I looked at the discovery, including the murder book.”

“So?” he asked, though he knew where I was going.

“I saw your reports; you had doubts that Sheryl was guilty. I think that’s why you agreed to meet me this morning.”

He seemed to run through his mind where to go with this, and then he asked, “You know that thing you attorneys have, where you take an oath to keep things in confidence, and you pretend you have integrity?”

I smiled. “I’m vaguely familiar with it.”

“Well, you better keep what I tell you in confidence, because if you don’t, you won’t get disbarred. You’ll get dis-balled.”

I smiled an uncomfortable smile. “You have my word.”

“Good. It’s true that I was never sure she did it; none of the pieces fit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for one, the victim was lying facedown, which means she had to lift his head from behind, reach around, and slice him.”

“She couldn’t have done it from the side?”

He shook his head. “Not in the direction it was done. I could explain that, but take my word for it. Also, the autopsy showed there were indentations on his back from the killer’s knees. But for her to have done it the way the evidence showed wouldn’t make sense anyway.”

“Why is that?”

“Couple of things. One, she risked waking him up by doing it that way, which would not have gone well for her. Two, if she was an enraged, battered wife, she would be far more likely to plunge the knife into his back a bunch of times. The way this was done was surgical; not a crime of passion at all. More like an execution.”

“Anything else?”

He nodded. “There was no blood on her. She would have had to be very, very careful to avoid the blood; it was everywhere. And why go to all that trouble if she was going to call 911 and confess?”

“Maybe she’s squeamish.”

“Squeamish people don’t slit throats. They put poison in coffee. And the victim had a gun in his pocket, a thirty-eight. It was unregistered.”

“So?”

“So he was a used-car salesman. Why did he need to carry an unregistered handgun? Plus he had a fake ID in his wallet, a professional job.”

I wanted to sound like I knew what I was talking about, like I had some insight. But I was impressed at the way this was pouring out of Novack, with little prompting. Either he had amazing powers of recall, or he had been thinking about this over the years. “So?”

“This guy wasn’t getting carded in bars; why would he have a fake ID?”

“Did you do anything about this at the time?”

His stare was the reason the phrase “If looks could kill” was invented. “You may find this hard to understand, but police have a tendency to use their time and resources to solve crimes that haven’t already been solved. It’s not a whodunit when somebody has already said, ‘I done it.’”

“Why would she confess if she didn’t do it?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll ask her the next time we have a client conference.”

I decided to ignore the insult and get to the real reason why I was there. “I need your help.”

He just stared at me, waiting.

“I don’t have any money, and Sheryl sure as hell doesn’t. So I can’t hire any investigators.”

Still just stared, waiting.

“So I was wondering if you could conduct at least some of the investigation you didn’t conduct back then,” I said, and then softened it with, “Not that you should have, I mean, back then.”

“I’ll get back to you,” he said, and then walked back to his car. I had no idea what his intentions were, or what he was going to get back to me with.

So I went to meet with my boss, which would probably be a lot like meeting with my parents.

Probably worse.

Jamie Wagner’s question had gotten under Novack’s skin. He had asked why Novack didn’t do anything about his suspicions at the time of Charlie Harrison’s murder. The answer had been the right one; once Sheryl Harrison confessed, there were other cases that more urgently needed his attention.

But it was bullshit, and Novack knew it. The case had bothered Novack ever since, and he had the autonomy to have pursued it if he thought it was worthwhile. But he never did, and even though he made the excuse to Wagner, he knew better.

Of course, time was always a factor, and there was never enough of it, but at this point he was going to make the time. He would try to find out what really went on in that room that day, and whether Sheryl Harrison killed Charlie or not.

He was tired of beating himself up over this case; he had plenty of other cases to beat himself up over.

Sheryl’s mission to save her daughter’s life and give up her own was not the motivating factor for Novack. He wasn’t sure where he came down on the issue, and didn’t spend much time thinking about it. Deep philosophical thinking was not really Novack’s thing, especially when the issue at hand was strictly other people’s business.

But if he were pressed, he’d probably be on the side of saving the daughter’s life. He and his ex-wife Cindy didn’t have any children, but if they had, Novack would do everything he could for that kid, including giving up his own life, if that became necessary. So he admired and respected Sheryl’s guts, whether or not she slit Charlie’s throat.

Novack had discussed it the night before with Cindy. She was pretty much the only person in the world that he ever had an outside-of-work conversation with that didn’t include the words “Knicks,” “Mets,” “Giants,” or “Jets.”

He and Cindy were married for seven years, which could best be described as turbulent. Novack was simply impossible to be married to; he was moody and difficult, and his level of impossibility exactly mirrored what was happening at work.

There were many good moments, and she loved him, but he was just too unpredictable, and she didn’t want to walk on eggshells all the time. So finally, she couldn’t take it anymore, and she threw him out. She immediately filed for divorce, which he did not contest, and began the process of overhauling her life.

She finished her masters in speech therapy and got a good job in an already thriving private practice. She started dating, nothing too serious, which was just as well, since there was a problem.

Its name was Novack.

For all practical purposes, Novack didn’t recognize the divorce. He took an apartment of his own, but considered the post-marriage situation simply a phase. He kept showing up at Cindy’s house, helping her whenever he could, and just hanging out until she told him to leave.

It definitely inhibited her dating, since Novack was six foot two, a hundred and ninety pounds, was trained in martial arts, and carried a gun. Prospective suitors found that to be a somewhat unappealing combination.

And the truth was that Cindy didn’t mind. This was a different Novack, attentive, respectful, and even, her mind boggled at the thought, sensitive. Plus, since they didn’t live together, she could throw him out whenever he started to get on her nerves, though that happened on surprisingly few occasions.

Sex between them, though always satisfying to both, became even better. And money, a cause of some friction in the past, was not an issue, since they kept separate finances. Cindy actually made more than he did, which was a secret she would carry to her grave and beyond.

They were planning a vacation, for one week starting that Monday. Nothing fancy, they were heading to Long Beach Island, New Jersey. Surprisingly, Cindy was looking forward to it without any trepidation, even though it was the first vacation they would take together since the divorce. She figured that if any problems came up, they were advanced enough to handle it.

Cindy knew how much the Sheryl Harrison case had troubled him and stuck with him over the years, so she was not surprised when he brought it up the previous night. When Reggie told him that Jamie Wagner wanted to meet with him, Novack basically knew where that was going to go, and he discussed it with her.

She had encouraged him to do whatever he had to in order to clear his mind of it once and for all. She also felt for Sheryl, and strongly supported her goal of saving her daughter.

Cindy was not surprised when Novack showed up at her office after his meeting with Jamie Wagner. He started to make small talk, which was decidedly not his specialty, and since a client was waiting for her, she attempted to cut through it.

“What’s up?” she asked. “How was your meeting with Wagner?”

“Fine … no big deal.”

“Great,” she said, trying to hide her amusement. “I was afraid it might interfere with our vacation.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

“Because I know you wouldn’t want anything to interfere with our vacation.”

He gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, “Every day with you is a vacation.”

“You’re a piece of work, you know, Novack?”

“I’m aware of that, yes.”

“You came here to tell me we’re not going away next week, and you don’t know how to bring it up.”

“Cind, it’s a perfect chance to get to the bottom of this. And that poor girl, lying in that hospital…”

“You’re playing the ‘poor girl’ card on me?”

He smiled. “I can only play the cards I’m dealt.”

“You know, all the other women, their ex-husbands take them on great trips after they get divorced. I had to get stuck with you? You won’t even take me to New Jersey?”

“I’ll make it up to you. Next year I won’t take you to Paris.”

She laughed. “Deal. Now get out of here.”

Gerard Timmerman kept me waiting in his anteroom for ten minutes. It was probably some type of revenge for my postponing our meeting, or maybe he was on the phone with HR determining if they needed to give me any severance, or just throw me out without paying me a dime.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind; Timmerman could keep me waiting until August and I’d be fine with it. It would have meant less time at my desk poring through contracts, and I was getting paid whether I actually did any work or not. But I was anxious to get to the prison and talk to Sheryl, so I was hoping the great man would hurry up and see me.