I know that he must be readying the gun to fire, and I make an adjustment and bring the log down as hard as I can at where I think his head must be. It makes a crunching sound, and he moans and seems to fall.
I’m not taking anything for granted, and I keep swinging the log at him, alternating between hitting cement, Dumpster, and something else that I hope is his head. I’m sure the sound of wood hitting skull is quite disgusting to most humans, but right now it sounds pretty good to me.
I start screaming to Karen to run into the house and call 911. I eventually stop swinging the log, because the shooter is completely silent and apparently unmoving. Lights go on in Karen’s neighbor’s house, probably because they are wondering what the racket is about.
My eyes adjust to the dim light, and I can see the shooter at my feet. His head is literally smashed in, and a pool of blood is forming next to him.
I can’t see his face, and I gently move him with my foot so that I’ll be able to. I’m guessing it’s Banks, Carelli, or Winston, since they are the unaccounted-for people in that alleged helicopter crash.
I’ve seen pictures of them all, but the damaged face on the shooter does not seem to match any of them. It’s disappointing; there seems to be enough people in this conspiracy to fill Yankee Stadium, all of whom want to kill Karen.
Within a few minutes the area is filled with seemingly every cop in New Jersey, and the paramedics arrive moments later. But this particular conspirator is not going to kill anyone ever again.
He is dead, just the latest bad guy to learn that you don’t mess with Andy Carpenter.
* * * * *
KAREN AND I don’t get back to my house until four in the morning.
It would have been even later, but Pete Stanton arrived on the scene at Karen’s house and ushered us out of there faster than another detective would have.
After what happened, Karen hadn’t wanted to spend the night at her house, which was totally understandable. Right now we’re both exhausted, and I show Karen the bedroom where she can sleep, and head to my own to go to bed. I call Laurie to tell her what happened, since I know she would want to hear about it as soon as possible.
I wake her, but she quickly becomes alert when I start to tell her what happened. This is the first time I have ever told a story about my own actions that is simultaneously heroic and truthful. I faced death without Marcus to protect me, and I prevailed. The mind boggles.
Laurie has many questions for me about tonight’s events, the last of which is, “Andy, are you okay?”
I know that right now she is referring to my state of mind, my emotional health. I have killed a man, violently and at close range, and that is known to have an often terrible effect on one’s psyche.
Not on mine.
Maybe it will set in later, but I feel absolutely no remorse or revulsion about what I’ve done. This is a guy who deserved to die, whose intent was to gun down Karen and me. “Better him than us” is an understatement.
I get off the phone and try to sleep, and my exhaustion enters into a pitched battle with my adrenaline, the result of which is, I don’t sleep well at all. I get up at seven to take Tara for her walk; it will give me time to consider the impact that what happened last night will have on our investigation.
Karen was obviously the target, since the shooter could not have known that I would be there. But the reason for the attempt on her life is bewildering. How could she possibly be a threat to their conspiracy? It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself since she got shot, and I’m no closer to the answer than before.
Pete Stanton makes the situation slightly clearer when he calls and says that the fingerprints of the guy I killed showed that he was, in fact, Mike Carelli, the Special Forces officer who supposedly piloted the chopper. I didn’t recognize him from the picture, but as in the case of Archie Durelle, the picture I had seen was seven years old.
Either way, I’m getting a little tired of people trying to kill people that I care about, including myself. And I’m getting more than a little angry about my government standing by and not doing anything to prevent it.
I call Alice Massengale at her Newark office and tell her I want to see her about her representations at the hearing. She seems reluctant, so I use the same approach on her that I used on Hamadi: I tell her that if she doesn’t meet with me today, she can learn what I have to say by turning on the television tomorrow. It works again, and an hour later I’m in her office.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Carpenter.”
Cindy Spodek said that Massengale can be trusted completely, but at this point I’m not ready to give her the complete benefit of the doubt. I’m certainly not concerned about the social niceties. “You misled the court about Stacy Harriman.”
If she’s cowed by my direct approach, she hides it well. “That’s a serious accusation.”
I nod. “And an inaccurate one. I should have said, “You misled the court about Diana Carmichael.”
“Diana Carmichael,” she says, concealing whether the name has any meaning for her. “Suppose you tell me what you are talking about.”
I continue. “Here’s some of what I know.” I then proceed to detail some, but not all, of the facts I have learned about Hamadi
“But it is difficult to disappear with a huge amount of ill-gotten money and exist in society. So an elaborate scheme was set up, whereby fake companies would do fake business with each other, showing huge earnings in the process. But in reality they were earning nothing; the money that they received was the stolen money, effectively laundering it. Hamadi was the front man for the operation.
“I know a lot more than that,” I say, “and what I don’t know, I am going to discover through the Freedom of Information Act.”
“Mr. Carpenter, you can believe me or not, but the story you are telling is one I am completely unfamiliar with.”
“If that’s true, then you were set up to mislead the court, and you should want to help me get the truth out. Because I am going to prove that the government you represent knowingly withheld information, stifled investigations, and then deliberately misled the court. It resulted in my client twice being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.”
“All I can say is that I will look into your allegations.”
“Good. You should start with Hamadi.”
She nods and asks me if I can write out all the particulars of what I know about him.
I start to do so, and I’m almost finished when I realize something else I can give her. “I have pictures of the people at his funeral. They meant nothing to me, but maybe…”
I stop talking, and the pause becomes so long that she says, “Maybe what?”
All of a sudden I’m not inclined to explain it to her. All I want to do is get out of her office and go home, because I just realized who is not in those funeral pictures.
On the way home I call Sam Willis and ask him to come right over with the pictures. I want to go through them again, just to make sure I’m right.
Next I call Kevin and ask him to check whether a golden retriever was reported missing to the Essex County Animal Shelter during a specific one-week period back in March.
Sam is already at my house and set up when I arrive, and I look at each one slowly and carefully. I still don’t recognize anyone, which is exactly what I was hoping.
I call Karen, Pete Stanton, and Marcus and ask them all to come over on a matter of urgent importance. I want Pete with us where we’re going, because law enforcement should be present, and I want Marcus with us in case we run into a couple of hundred bad guys with machetes and bazookas.
Karen, Pete, Marcus, and I are in the car and heading off within forty-five minutes. Kevin calls me on my cell while we’re on the road, and he confirms exactly what I suspected about the animal shelter records.
Next I ask Kevin to check the records of Gary Winston, the surgeon who was on that chopper. What I want to know is what kind of surgery he specialized in. Actually, I believe I already know, and I just want to confirm it.
Karen is surprised when I tell her that we are heading for the cabin, and shocked when I tell her why. I’m
