“Nicholas.”
“Sir?”
The judge got up and walked into the hallway so he wouldn’t disturb his daughter.
“Your wife would like to have a word with you.”
“She’s awake?” he asked, surprised. He quickly looked at the time. “It’s already past seven? I thought it was…” He shook his head. “I’ve lost about four hours. Does Laurant know about Jordan?”
“Yes, she does. She was watching the news when your mother and I walked in.”
“I unplugged the television…”
“Apparently, someone plugged it back in. Your mother’s sitting with her, and both of them want an update on Jordan’s condition. I’ll switch places with your mother in a little while. She’ll want to be with Jordan.”
Nick took the stairs to get to Laurant while Noah went back into the waiting room to call Chaddick. He’d been checking in with him every half hour. He was probably driving the agent nuts, but Noah didn’t care. He’d stop harassing him when he got the information he needed.
Dr. Morganstern appeared in the doorway. Noah raised his index finger to ask him to wait while he answered Chaddick.
“Okay, I’ve got his name,” Chaddick blurted.
“Who is he?”
“Paul Newton Pruitt.”
Noah repeated the name for Morganstern.
“Have you ever heard of him?” Chaddick asked.
“No. Tell me,” he ordered.
“For openers, he’s been dead for fifteen years. Yeah, I know, he isn’t dead,” he rushed on. “I’m just telling you what I read. Pruitt was connected. He testified against a mob-connected guy named Chernoff. Ray Chernoff. No doubt you’ve heard of Chernoff. Pruitt’s testimony sent him away for a couple of life sentences. Pruitt was supposed to stay in protective custody and testify at two other trials, and then they were going to put him in witness protection.”
“So what happened?” he asked as he rubbed the back of his neck to ease his tension.
“Pruitt vanished,” Chaddick continued. “That’s what happened. The agents in charge found blood in his apartment. A lot of blood, and all of it was his. No body though. After a lengthy investigation, they concluded he was killed by one of Chernoff’s associates. They also concluded that they’d never find his body.”
“He staged his own death and started over.”
“And he did a fine job of it until now,” Chaddick added.
“Was Chernoff ’s trial high-profile?” asked Noah.
“It sure was.”
“Lots of camera time?”
“As I recall, not a lot,” said Chaddick. “They tried to keep it out of the press to protect their witnesses, but you know how that goes. Why?”
“Jordan told me that Professor MacKenna had bragged to her that he never forgot a face. I’ll just bet the professor saw Pruitt and recognized him. That’s it!” said Noah.
“The cash deposits. MacKenna was blackmailing him. Nasty,” Chaddick muttered. “It seems to me, half of Serenity was being blackmailed by J. D. I couldn’t figure the professor’s angle, but it looks like he had a rather lucrative sideline as well.”
Noah dropped down on the sofa and hunched forward into the phone. “So now we know.”
“I’m telling you, everyone under the sun is going to go after this guy. You’re going to get flooded with agents wanting in on this. And if Chernoff’s gang hears that Pruitt’s surfaced, they’re going to be on the lookout for him too. I just hope he hasn’t already gone to ground.”
“No,” Noah said. “He’s still here.”
“You’re sure?” Chaddick didn’t wait for confirmation. “I’m getting on the next plane to Boston. I want to be in on this too. I talked to Trumbo. I mean Pruitt. Hell, I shook his hand.”
“You’re serious? You’re coming here?”
“Damn right. Wait to kill him, okay?”
It was funny really—Chaddick assuming Noah would find Pruitt and also assuming he’d kill him. But in fact that was exactly what Noah planned to do.
Chapter Forty-one
HAD HE GOTTEN THE JOB DONE OR NOT? WAS JORDAN Buchanan going to live or die? Ironically, Pruitt’s life hung in the balance as well. If she survived, he’d have to go back and finish the job, but if she died, he could return to his family and his work.
She was still listed in critical condition. Pruitt had called the hospital twice during the night for an update. He’d gotten through to ICU with his second call and had been informed by an efficient but harried nurse that Jordan Buchanan had not regained consciousness.
He had checked into a run-down motel close to the airport to wait it out. He’d snatched only a couple of hours’ sleep, staying glued to the television news station. The early-morning news on Channel 7 ran a story on Judge Buchanan and his impressive career on the bench. On another local channel there was a taped interview with a matronly woman with bleached straw hair and painted-on eyebrows who swore she had witnessed the shooting. She was quite animated as she described what had happened. She had just walked out of the hospital when gunfire erupted. She insisted that, had she been one minute later, she would have been the innocent victim instead of the poor federal judge’s daughter. She told the interviewer she was cutting behind an ambulance to get to her car when the gunfire started blazing.
Her account of the shooting was all wrong. She claimed to have seen two men firing at the judge, one hanging out the passenger window of a late-model Chevy sedan. As the car careened around the corner, both the driver and the other man opened fire. Logistically, what she claimed was impossible. If there had been two men and both had been firing their weapons, then one of the gunmen would have been shooting into parked cars.
The TV reporter doing the interview didn’t catch the inconsistency. His voice reeked of false sympathy. “That must have been terrifying. Did you see Judge Buchanan’s daughter fall? Can you remember how many shots were fired? Did you see them? And could you identify them?”
“No,” she’d answered. That was the only time during the interview the woman seemed nervous. No, she couldn’t possibly identify either one of them. Their faces had been covered, and they were wearing hoodies.
And on it went. The more sympathy and interest the newscaster showed, the bigger and more outrageous the story became. The pathetic woman was making the most of her moment of fame. Eager to please and impress, she smiled into the camera and continued to embellish her account.
The good news for Pruitt was that every news bulletin update began with the same lead-in, the attempted murder of a federal judge.
It was an automatic assumption, and there weren’t any questions raised. Why would there be? There had been death threats against the judge. Of course he was the target, and his daughter was just an innocent bystander.
But Pruitt still needed to destroy the copies of the research. He was going to buy a paper shredder from an office supply store. He’d already searched through the phone book and found several that were at least twenty miles away from the hospital. He then planned to return to the motel and spend the afternoon shredding and stuffing plastic bags with the confetti paper. When he was finished, he would drop the bags into the Dumpster behind the motel and be done with that problem.
That stupid little man had almost destroyed his life. Pruitt didn’t feel an ounce of remorse for killing him. The bastard had been blackmailing him and deserved to die. The fool obviously had not guessed the lengths Pruitt would go to to protect himself.
A stupid twist of fate, Pruitt thought. That’s what it was. Someone had walked into his showroom to look around while his car was being repaired in the service department. He’d seen Pruitt then, and as he had explained later over the phone in a disguised voice, he had recognized him from the Chernoff trial coverage. The man bragged that he’d never forgotten a face, and Pruitt’s face was especially memorable. At one point, Pruitt had been led into a courthouse to testify against the patriarch of the Chernoff family. He had tried to cover his head as he was rushed into the building, but despite the law’s attempt to keep his picture out of the media, the cameras had gotten a couple of good shots.
By testifying and telling family secrets, Pruitt had been breaking the code, but he’d been promised amnesty, and his freedom was worth any price he had to pay. He’d worked as an enforcer and a collector for the Chernoff family, and he’d given the prosecutor names. He also swore under oath that he had witnessed his employer, Ray Chernoff, murder his own wife, Marie Chernoff. Pruitt’s details about the crime were so accurate, the jury believed him. When that crime was added to a myriad of others, Chernoff received three consecutive life sentences.
Most of what Pruitt had told the jury was true. He was quite specific about the killings ordered by the boss when a “client” refused to cooperate. He’d only tweaked a few important facts. He lied when he said that he himself had never killed anyone. He also lied when he said that he had witnessed Ray brutally stabbing his wife to death. In reality, it was Paul Pruitt who had killed Marie Chernoff. The opportunity had presented itself, and Pruitt pinned the murder on Ray Chernoff.
After the verdict, Ray was dragged out of the courtroom screaming at Pruitt, swearing revenge.
Killing Marie was the most difficult thing Pruitt had ever done, and to this day he thought about her. Oh, how he had loved her.
He had been quite the womanizer before he had met her at a Christmas party. The second he laid eyes on her, he had fallen in love with her. They started their affair that very night, and he pledged his undying love to her at each of their clandestine meetings from then on.
But sweet Marie became consumed with guilt. She would meet him and spread her legs for him, and then she would get dressed and go to church to light a candle for her sin of adultery. After a while, even that wasn’t enough. She told Pruitt she wanted to end their affair, that she would confess her sins to her husband and beg forgiveness. Pruitt remembered picking up the knife and walking toward her. He hadn’t meant to kill her. He just wanted to scare her a little, make her see that both of their lives would be over if she told. But Marie got hysterical and he couldn’t stop. He’d cried as he stabbed her.
He justified his actions by telling himself there hadn’t been any other way. Ray might have forgiven Marie for her infidelity, but he certainly wouldn’t have forgiven Pruitt. In the end, didn’t it come down to kill or be killed?
Once Ray Chernoff was put away, Pruitt thought he might have a chance. But things didn’t work out. Though Chernoff was behind bars, he still had plenty of connections on the outside, and the government’s promise of protection was a joke. Even if they relocated Pruitt, he’d be watched. No, he had to take care of himself. For several weeks he lived the life of a paranoid, and then, finally, one day he arrived home to see a shadow on the stairwell. There was no mistaking the fact that the man hiding one flight above him was pointing a gun and lying in wait for him. Pruitt took off and hid in a bar down the street until the coast was clear. Then he cautiously returned to his apartment and did what he had to do. As far as anyone knew, Paul Pruitt died that day.
For the last fifteen years he’d lived a lie. He’d been so careful. After the first ten years, he began to relax. He had moved as far away from his home as he could imagine, settling in a small town in Texas. He got a job selling cars in Bourbon and eventually worked his way into owning the dealership. He’d even managed to find a wife who wouldn’t ask too many questions. When people suggested that he do more advertising, he declined. He never wanted a camera near him. He was content right where he was. He had enough money to feel important. Maybe his ego got the better of him a time or two. He did like it when people looked up to him. He had earned some respect as Dave Trumbo in his part of the world, and he liked the fact that they were glad to see him when he came around.
The call from an anonymous man who had recognized him threatened to take everything away. After that first message, he’d tried to track down the caller. Every time he put the cash in the manila envelope and mailed it to another post office box, he’d try to find out who the blackmailer was, but each time the mystery man called, he’d give Pruitt a different address. Pruitt had even hidden and waited by one of the post offices to see who would carry out the package, the one he had marked with a fluorescent yellow pen. He’d put in two long days and nights sitting in a car on a street in Austin, binoculars in his lap, hoping to catch a glimpse of the bastard. When no one picked up the money in that time, he had returned to Bourbon. As the demands for money increased over the next month, Pruitt grew more panicky.
J. D. Dickey put an end to all of that. Pruitt had never met the man, but he’d heard about him. He knew he’d been in prison and also knew his brother was the sheriff of Jessup County. He had to give it to J. D. for having the balls to walk into his office, shut the door, and calmly tell him he could help him solve his little problem.
And what would that problem be? Pruitt remembered asking.
J. D. had laid it all out on the table. He explained he’d gotten into a new line of work that he found quite lucrative. He was now into blackmail. Before Pruitt could react to his confession, J. D. put his hands up and assured him that he hadn’t blackmailed him, and he had no plans to do so in the future.
He wanted to work for him. Pruitt remembered the conversation almost word for word. J. D. had told him how he would spend his days and evenings cruising neighborhoods and listening in on conversations with his surveillance equipment. If he heard something interesting, like a man cheating on his wife, well then, he’d make a note of it. Sometimes he’d even get into a room and set up a microphone or a camera. He found that videotaping sex brought him a lot of money. Some Serenity residents had some peculiar sexual habits. J. D. then gave Pruitt several examples.
It took J. D. a while to get back to Pruitt’s problem, but Pruitt didn’t mind. He was fascinated by what he was hearing. J. D. finally came around to the subject of Pruitt’s blackmailer. He explained that he had been parked up the street from the man’s house and had listened in as he talked to Pruitt on one of his cell phones. He didn’t know what Pruitt had done but assumed that he was probably having an affair or maybe something more serious, like skimming money off his profits at the dealership and not reporting it to the IRS. J. D. said he didn’t care what he had done, but he could help him get rid of his blackmailer. He could chase him out of town. And he would do it free of charge if Paul would put him on his payroll for future problems. Maybe he could be like a lawyer and be on retainer, J. D. suggested.
