Malice

"Do you know where you'll be going from here?"

"Yes," Huttington said, and began to cry again. "I'm going to hell."

Karp was surprised by the answer but recovered quickly. "Well, yes, I'm sure you will," he replied. "But I meant while you're still among the living?"

Huttington blew his nose into a tissue. "Yes. Some of the people I will be testifying against are considered dangerous. I'm going to be placed in solitary confinement in a federal prison for my safety."

"And do you ever expect to walk out of prison a free man?"

Huttington looked up at the jury. There were no sympathetic faces looking back. He glanced at the spectators; there wasn't a smile or a hint of forgiveness there either. Then he looked at Karp. "No. I will spend the rest of my life in prison."

29

"Mr. Fulton just called from the lobby. he says the package arrived and he's on his way up."

"Thank you, Mrs. Milquetost," Karp replied to his receptionist, "show him in when he arrives, please." He then sat back at his desk on the eighth floor of the Criminal Courts Building, looking down at the worn yellow legal pad with all of its arrows and balloons and names. Then he tossed it in the trash can. It had served its purpose, but he wasn't going to need it anymore.

Next, he gathered the photographs of the murdered schoolchildren and placed them in a large manila envelope. "Sleep tight, kids," he said. "Tonight we'll get him."

Karp stood and looked out the window. He loved April in Manhattan. The trees in Foley Square across Centre Street were in full leaf and had yet to fade in summer's heat. The city felt young, renewed, ready to take on the world. He should have been enjoying his latest triumph. But even the end of the O'Toole trial had seemed anticlimactic.

First, a representative for the university's Board of Regents had met with him and O'Toole and gone a long way toward "healing" by apologizing for Huttington and Barnhill and what the coach had endured. The representative made no excuses, except to say that the regents had trusted the university president and attorney. So when their attorney, Karen Welt, then offered a large settlement and a lifetime "should he want it" contract as the baseball coach, O'Toole accepted it. "It's where I want to be," he'd said. "And I think we've all learned a great deal."

The ACAA was another matter. The association had replaced Zusskin, who was under indictment for suborning perjury and for the obstruction of the administration of justice. And the defense had switched to contending that the association had been duped by "the criminal masterminds" Huttington and Barnhill, as well as betrayed by Zusskin and Larkin.

"The panel was merely following the rules as set forth in the American Collegiate Athletic Association bylaws," the attorney, a nervous young man, said in his closing argument.

However, by the time Meyers finished his closing-throwing in the word "malice" at least a dozen times-the jurors looked like they could hardly wait to get to the deliberation room and cut his client a big, fat check. Like the ACAA hearing panel, they took less than an hour to return with a judgment in the plaintiff's favor.

If Mikey O'Toole had wanted, he could have retired a very wealthy man. But coaching was in his blood, he told Karp. "I'd just get bored being retired."

Then it was back to New York for Karp and Marlene, where, with a nod from the doctors and a kiss from his wife, Karp returned to work at the DAO. In the meantime, Zook kept them informed about the progress of the cases against those implicated in the Santacristina murder.

Most of it was going well, except for three disappointing developments. The first was that Barnhill wasn't talking, and according to Huttington, he was the link, along with Big John Porter, to who knew how and why the computer system at the university was being used by an unknown group, or groups, connected to the Unified Church.

The second was that before the police could apprehend Big John, his pickup truck was discovered upside down in the Payette River. The truck had apparently swerved off the road for some unknown reason and rolled down the embankment. He'd managed to get out of the truck but never made it to shore.

"His body was found about a hundred feet downstream," Zook said. "Funny, but he was only a yard or two from shore when he must have slipped and hit his head on a rock. Actually, he hit his head on a rock over and over, if you get my drift. But other than that, we don't have enough to say it was foul play."

The third development had rendered asking Porter and Barnhill about the computers moot. The FBI had flown in specialists to try to break into encrypted files on the Cray computer. However, their attempts triggered a computer virus that had crashed the system, frying every bit of data in the files.

Karp was wondering what was in those files when Fulton popped his head in the door. "I got that tape you wanted," he said.

"Great. Care to stick around while I look at it?" Karp said. "I could use your eyes."

Two hours later, Mrs. Milquetost buzzed to say that Jon Ellis had arrived for his appointment. Karp and Fulton rose to shake the hand of the assistant director of special operations for Homeland Security.

"Thanks for coming," Karp said. "I know this is all short notice."

"No problem," Ellis replied. "Clay here said you needed to talk and might need my help with something important."

Karp nodded. "I got a call from some guy-sounded Russian-said to meet him tonight in East River Park under the Williamsburg Bridge. He says he has a copy of a photograph purporting to be of Jamys Kellagh meeting with Nadya Malovo and Andrew Kane in Aspen. Says it's a fax and not good quality, but good enough to nail this Kellagh character."

"I thought there was only one copy according to that reporter's story," Ellis said.

Karp shrugged. "So did I, but this guy claims that a copy was made. Now he wants to give it to me. But I have to meet him in person at the park, tonight at midnight."

Ellis looked thoughtful, then nodded. "So what do you need from me?" he asked. "Obviously, we're itching to take Jamys Kellagh down."

Karp grinned. "I thought you might be interested. And to be honest, except for my man Fulton here, I'm not sure who I can trust to provide security."

Ellis grinned back. "Well, if you can't trust Homeland Security, then who can you trust?" His face turned serious. "Forgive me if this is out of line, and I asked your daughter this once before, but what about Jaxon? I know he's out of the agency, but he's a friend and, heck, he probably has more firepower and technology as a private guy than I do with the government."

Karp looked troubled, then sighed. "You're right. I've known him for years and I've always liked him. And I'm not saying he can't be trusted. But considering some of the unanswered questions, I'd like to leave him out of it for now."

"Of course," Ellis said. "I think he's one of the good guys, too, even if he went for the money. And hell, I've been involved in a lot of this, you could just as well put me in the same category."

"I've got to trust somebody," Karp replied. "This photograph could break this wide open. But I can't take a chance that it's a setup."

"Yeah, you've got to trust somebody," Ellis agreed. "It's too bad that in these times, you can never be sure who. It's a dirty business, though, when it makes friends suspicious of their friends."

The men stood to shake hands again, then Ellis left, saying he'd be in touch regarding the security arrangement. "With any luck," he said, "tonight we get our man."

A few minutes before midnight, Karp and Fulton pulled into the parking lot of East River Park near the Williamsburg Bridge.

"You ready?" Karp asked as they began to walk toward the bridge. "You gave him the envelope, right?"