New Tricks (12 page)

“Maybe me and Sondra should be careful,” he says. “Waggy the psycho dog is bad luck.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that woman had him, and she got killed in the explosion. Then Laurie had him, and she got shot.”

Willie is not smiling when he says this, and he shouldn’t be. He’s pointing out the coincidence that two people who seemed
to be in control of Waggy got killed. I am angry at myself that I didn’t even think of it.

I don’t believe in coincidences, especially where murders are involved. They might exist, but it doesn’t make sense to act
as if they do.

I tell Willie to be careful, and not to tell anyone that he has Waggy.

Just in case.

I
T’S TIME FOR ME TO TALK TO MY CLIENT
.

There is no sense in our trying to construct a strategy to counter the prosecution before we know Steven’s version of the
events. And time is a-wasting…

Kevin makes the arrangements, though I go to see Steven by myself. I find the first significant meeting like this, the one
in which the client is called on to state the facts as he sees them, to go better when it’s just one-on-one. Clients seem
to open up more.

Steven is clearly relieved to see me and hear that I am staying on the case. He expresses the proper concern for Laurie, but
he is certainly more focused on his own predicament. I have to admit, if I were facing life in a seven-by-ten-foot cell, I’d
be a tad self-centered as well.

What Steven has been living is not a life. He spends twenty-three hours a day in his cell, eats food just south of miserable,
and is treated with a complete lack of respect and dignity. Any ability to control any part of his own existence has been
taken away from him, and the desperation in his eyes is the same I have seen countless times with countless clients. I imagine
it’s sort of like being a Cubs fan.

What Steven doesn’t fully realize is that, compared with most of the inmates, he is living life in the fast lane. Because
he has not been convicted of anything, he is isolated from the other inmates in a cleaner area with relatively kindly guards.
Should he be convicted, he’ll look back on these days with a wistful nostalgia.

I decide to hit him right between the eyes with my first question. “Steven, where were you the night of your father’s murder?”

He doesn’t blink. “I was home until about seven o’clock, then I drove to Paterson.”

“Why did you do that?”

“My father called and asked me to. He said he had something to show me that I needed to see right away.”

“Did he say what it was?” I ask.

“No, but he sounded upset, and I was worried because my father never sounded upset. He was always in complete control of everything.”

“And you had no idea why?”

Steven shakes his head. “I assumed it had something to do with his work.”

“Why would you assume that?”

“He had just been very intense and secretive about it lately. But his calling me might have had nothing to do with that. He
certainly wasn’t doing any of the work in downtown Paterson.”

“Did you meet your father that night?”

Steven shakes his head. “No, I went to the restaurant he specified, I think it’s called Mario’s, but he never showed up. He
told me to wait outside, but after about an hour I went in and had a beer. I waited another hour after that, then tried to
reach him on his cell. When I couldn’t get him, I went home.”

This part of the story checks out. Steven got a parking ticket outside Mario’s, probably when he was in having his drink,
which is how the police and prosecution knew he was there. Walter Timmerman’s body was found about two blocks away.

“Why didn’t you tell any of this to the police?”

“They never asked; they never talked to me at all. Then they arrested that other guy, and I figured he had done it, so I didn’t
think to go to them with it. Is that somehow bad for me?”

“We’ll deal with it,” I say, even though we may not be able to. “Were you and your father close?”

“Yes and no. It was kind of day-to-day.”

“He took you out of his will.”

Steven surprises me by laughing. “About a hundred times, but he always put me back in so he’d have something he could threaten
me with.”

“But you didn’t care?” I ask.

“No, and it drove him crazy. I mean the money would have been nice, but having an actual, real-life father would have been
nicer. Once I enlisted in the marines, things were never the same between us.”

“He was opposed to that?”

“As opposed as a human being could be. Which I’m sure a shrink would say is why I joined.”

“And you became an expert in explosives.”

He nods. “Is that why they think I blew up the house?”

“It doesn’t help,” I say. “What did you and your mother argue about that day?”

“Stepmother.”

I nod and stand corrected. “Stepmother.”

“Waggy. She didn’t care about dogs at all, but he was a possession she wanted, because of who he was. A future champion.”

“Did you resolve anything?”

“No, I was hoping you would do that. I still am.”

“Do you have any idea who might have wanted your father and stepmother dead?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Steven, I need to show you a picture of your father’s body taken at the murder scene. It’s not going to be a pleasant thing
to look at, but it’s important.”

“Why?”

“Some information has come up about him experimenting with his own DNA. We have to make sure that he was really the victim.”

“No one identified the body?”

“Your stepmother.”

He nods. “Okay, let me see it.”

I can see him tense up as I take the photograph out of the envelope. I put it on the table and he looks at it for a few seconds,
then closes his eyes and pushes it away before reopening them.

“It’s him,” he says. “That’s my father.”

“You’re one hundred percent sure?” I ask. I’m disappointed, even though I thought it was very unlikely that Walter Timmerman
faked his death. But it would have been far easier to defend Steven from a charge of murdering someone if the victim was not
actually dead.

“I am completely and totally positive.”

We talk some more, and he asks me how Waggy is doing. It reminds me that Hatchet had been pressing me to find a solution to
the issue of at least temporary custody.

“Are you familiar with Charles Robinson?” I ask.

“Sure, he was a close friend of my father’s. We called him Uncle Charlie.”

“He’s trying to get Waggy,” I say. “How would you feel about that?”

“Charles shows dogs as a hobby, like my father did. I think they even co-owned a few dogs. He wouldn’t mistreat Waggy or anything,
but he’d put him into training.”

“Anything wrong with that?”

“Depends on your point of view,” he says, leaving no doubt what his point of view is.

When I leave the prison my gut feeling is that I’m somewhat relieved. He answered my questions head-on and did not give the
appearance of having something to hide.

Which is to say, my gut tells me that either Steven is telling the truth, or he isn’t.

In case you haven’t noticed, my gut isn’t that gutsy.

D
R
. R
OBERT
J
ACOBY
readily agrees to talk to me, but he warns he can’t talk to me.

I called ahead and told him that I wanted to discuss Walter Timmerman, though I did not mention the strange e-mail that Sam
found. Jacoby agreed, but alerted me that he regarded his interactions with Timmerman as confidential.

Crescent Hills Forensics Laboratory is located in Teaneck, not far from the campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University. The
outside looks like a white spaceship, with a flat, oval, sweeping roof sitting atop a mostly glass building like a white sombrero.
It seems to have been the work of a blindfolded architect who was given the mandate to make the building as modern as possible,
so that clients would assume the work done inside was state of the art. He was obviously instructed not to be concerned if
the building turned out to be embarrassingly ugly.

Jacoby’s office is a study in chrome and glass, with not a test tube or Bunsen burner to be found. He is dressed in a perfectly
tailored suit that certainly never knew the indignity of spending a moment on a clothing store rack. This guy has his clothes
custom-made as surely as I don’t. And if he’s going to roll up his sleeves and get to work, he’s going to have to take off
his gold cuff links first.

I accept his offer of a glass of Swedish mineral water, and then ask him about his business relationship with Walter Timmerman.
He smiles condescendingly and then shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Carpenter, but our communications are confidential.”

“I wasn’t asking about specifics,” I say, though I’m certainly planning to.

“The line is hard to draw,” he says, “so I prefer not to say anything. Even though Mr. Timmerman is deceased, our reputation
is such that—”

This is getting me nowhere, so I interrupt. “Were you Mr. Timmerman’s personal physician?”

“No.”

“His lawyer?”

“Certainly not. But—”

“Are you a priest? A rabbi?”

“Mr. Carpenter, Walter Timmerman was a close, personal friend of mine, and I will honor his memory. You need to understand
that you cannot come in here and bully me.”

“Noted,” I say, as I prepare to bully him. “Now, here’s what you need to understand. I have a few questions that I need answers
for. It will be relatively painless for you. The alternative is that I serve you with a subpoena and force you to sit through
a full-blown deposition, which will feel like a verbal rectal exam, conducted with a rusty spatula.”

He doesn’t say anything for a few moments, no doubt considering his options and visualizing the spatula. I decide to continue.

“Dr. Jacoby, why did Walter Timmerman send you his own DNA to be tested?”

He reacts to this with apparent shock. “How did you know about that?”

“It came up as part of the investigation.”

He sags slightly, which I take as a sign that he is going to drop his resistance to answering my questions. “I’m not sure
why he sent me that. I asked him, but he never responded. I found it to be something of an affront, both professional and
personally.”

“An affront in what way?”

“Well, it seemed to be a test of sorts, yet he couldn’t think we would do anything but pass it. Frankly, it was slightly bizarre.”

“Could he have just been wanting to get his own DNA on file?”

Jacoby shakes his head. “No, he had done that long ago, and he wouldn’t have forgotten that. This was a simple match of DNA
in pristine condition. There is not a laboratory in the country that would have missed it.”

I have no more idea what to make of this than Jacoby. I could certainly be wasting my time on it as well; it likely has nothing
whatsoever to do with Timmerman’s murder. “And the DNA was absolutely identical?” I ask.

“A perfect match.”

“You’re positive?”

He looks at me with clear disdain. “Mr. Carpenter, do you know anything about DNA?”

“I wouldn’t know it if it came in here and bit me on the ass.”

He frowns. “Well, my associates and I know plenty about it. But we were novices compared with Walter Timmerman. Think of us
as watchmakers, with DNA as the watch. We understand watches, we can fix them, we know what makes them tick. But Walter Timmerman
knew
why
they tick, he understood them at their core. He knew that the DNA he sent us was his, he knew it was uncontaminated, and
he knew that we would find it as such. Why he sent it is a mystery we will probably never understand.”

“But he must have had a reason.”

“On that we can agree,” he says. “Walter Timmerman had a reason for everything he did.”

On the way back to the hospital, I try to make sense of what Jacoby told me. He was certainly telling the truth; the e-mail
confirms that. But he was not able to shed any light on the mystery, and therefore I did not accomplish much of anything.

One of the most frustrating things about working on a case like this is that we are obligated to follow every investigative
road, not knowing where it will lead. Very often we don’t find out that it has no relevance to our case until we get to the
end of that road. Worse yet, sometimes the road has no end, and we just keep moving forward blindly and unproductively, wasting
valuable time and resources.