New Tricks

by David Rosenfelt

  I’m not much for public hugging, but I make an exception in this case. We hold it for at least fifteen fantastic seconds, at which point she pulls back and looks me right in the eye. “Andy, I have missed you so much.”

  “Oh?” I ask. “Have you been away?”

  We make it home in less than thirty minutes. It’s about fifty feet from the garage to the front door, then another forty feet to the twelve steps leading upstairs, then another twenty feet or so to the bedroom. My plan is to navigate this distance and have Laurie in bed in less than twenty-eight seconds, which would represent a new record.

  Unfortunately, Tara and Waggy have other ideas. Tara goes nuts as soon as she sees Laurie, and Waggy goes nuts because he is nuts. Within a few seconds Laurie is on the floor rolling around, petting them and laughing. The look on her face is pure delight.

  “You look tired,” I say. “Ready to turn in?”

  “Tired? Let’s take them for a walk.”

  “A walk?” This is not going according to plan, so I shake my head. “No can do. I tried walking them this morning. They hate walks; they refused to go. We argued about it.”

  She smiles. “That’s a shame. A nice walk would have put me in the mood to make love with you. But if they don’t want to walk…”

  “Hey, they’re dogs,” I say. “We’ll just show them who’s boss. Let’s go.”

  I take Waggy and Laurie takes Tara, and we walk for about an hour through Eastside Park. By the time we get back we’re all a little tired and ready for bed, except for Waggy. Waggy wouldn’t get tired if we walked to New Zealand.

  Laurie and I are undressed and in bed within a few minutes of entering the house. She stretches out her arms. “You changed the sheets,” she says.

  “I change them every day,” I say. “Force of habit.”

  “You’re lying,” she says.

  I nod. “I also lie every day. It’s another habit.”

  She pulls me close to her. “Let me show you something you don’t do every day.”

  And she does. It would be nice if it could become a habit.

  While Laurie makes breakfast the next morning I tell her all I know about the Timmerman case. The depth of my knowledge is such that I would have time to relate the entire story even if she were making instant oatmeal, but she’s making pancakes. Her pancakes occupy a prominent spot on the list of things I miss when she is in Wisconsin.

  “So where will you start?” Laurie asks after hearing my spiel.

  “The father. He was the one with the money and the power.”

  She nods. “That’s what I would do.” Then: “You’re going to be a busy boy.”

  She’s verbalized what I already knew, and was feeling terrible about. I’m going to be consumed by a case while Laurie is making one of her rare visits. “I’m sorry; the timing is not great,” I say.

  She shrugs. “It is what it is. I can use the downtime, and there’s a lot of friends I can catch up with. Plus, I’ll be here to help if you need it.”

  “I could hire you on a temporary basis, maybe try it for ten years or so, see if it works out. Fifty bucks a week, but you’ll always have a place to sleep.” It’s a pathetic attempt to suggest she move back, but it’s as close as I’ll come to broaching the subject.

  She doesn’t take the bait. “That’s an incredibly appealing offer,” she says. “I’ll talk about it with my agent.”

  I head down to Timco Pharmaceuticals, the company Walter Timmerman founded and ran for the last twelve years. Company-naming was obviously not his strong suit.

  I usually find that calling ahead in these situations is not the best way to get people to speak to me, especially when I have no idea who those people are. I can be more insistent and obnoxious in person, or at least that’s what everybody tells me.

  Timco is located on Route 17 in Mahwah, in a building much smaller and less expensive than I would have expected. It looks like one of those mini medical center complexes that have sprung up everywhere. The entire thing looks like it could have fit in one of the bedrooms of Timmerman’s now exploded home.

  The small lobby is not exactly a beehive of activity, matching the feeling that the exterior gives off of a slow-moving environment. Not what one would expect from the cutting-edge company that Timmerman was said to run.

  The directory still lists Walter Timmerman as the chairman and chief executive officer, with Thomas Sykes next in line as chief operating officer, so when I approach the receptionist I give her my name and ask to speak to Sykes.

  “Is Mr. Sykes expecting you?”

  “Anything’s possible,” I say, “but only he can really answer that.”

  “What is it about?”

  “I’m representing Steven Timmerman.”

  She picks up the phone and relays my message to whoever answers. The response is obviously positive, because within moments a young woman comes out to lead me back to Sykes’s office.

  The main part of the building is surprisingly alive. It is one large laboratory, with what appears to be the most modern equipment, and a large staff of earnest people using them. If anyone is over thirty-five, they’re aging well. The average basketball team is older than this group.

  Sykes himself seems under forty, though he is clearly the elder statesman here. He smiles and shakes my hand, welcoming me to Timco, as if I am joining the team. I thank him and enter his modern, well-appointed office, which has a large painting of Walter Timmerman looking down from the wall, as if he were Chairman Mao.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” I say.

  “No problem. But I doubt I can help you much; I don’t know Steven very well. The truth is, I’m not sure I’d want to help you if I could.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, if Steven… if Steven did this…”

  “That, as we say in legal circles, is a big ‘if.’ ”

  Sykes nods vigorously. “I understand. Innocent until proven guilty. I get it.” He shrugs. “But I really don’t know him well at all.”

  “I’m more interested in learning about Walter Timmerman.”

  He smiles. “Walter, I knew.”

  “Good. Please tell me about him.”

  “What do you want to know?” he asks.

  “Everything. I’m looking to fill in the blanks, and right now blanks are all I have.”

  He nods agreeably. “Okay. Well, there’s Walter Timmerman professionally, and privately. Two very different people.”

  “Start with professionally,” I say.

  “One of a kind,” he says. “An amazing, amazing man.”

  “I’m going to need a little more specificity than that.”

  “He was collaborative, inquisitive, brilliant… all he cared about was the science and the idea. He treated everyone whose ability he respected as an equal, even though he had no equal.”

  “What exactly did he do?”

  This question sends him headlong into an extended scientific dissertation, of which I understand maybe ten percent. When I hear the word “biology,” I interrupt. “So he was a biologist?”

  “Are you a basketball fan?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Asking if Walter was a biologist would be like asking if Michael Jordan was a shooter. Of course he was, but he was so much more. Think of it this way. Usually you have chemists and microbiologists working side by side. Walter was the best of both; I like to say he lived at the intersection of Chemistry Boulevard and Microbiology Avenue. It was an incredible advantage for him in what he was doing.”

  “What was he doing? Particularly recently.”

  “Well, I can’t say exactly, because lately he wasn’t very talkative about his work, and whatever he did was in his lab at home. But for years he was studying the physical aspects of life; he understood it better than anyone who ever lived. He understood that the human body, any living organism, is a collection of chemicals.”

  “So you’re talking about his discoveries in DNA?”

  “That
was just scratching the surface.”

  We talk some more about Timmerman’s work, though Sykes keeps pointing out that in recent months he was utilizing his lab at home and keeping to himself. This doesn’t seem to fit in with the “collaborative” person Sykes described, but he doesn’t see the contradiction, so I don’t point it out.

  When it comes to the personal Walter Timmerman, Sykes is much less expansive. He professes to know little about Walter’s home life, but his sense is that Walter could be a demanding husband and father.

  “Had you met his wife?” I ask.

  “Twice, but just to say hello. At industry dinners. Walter hated events like that, but he was receiving awards at both, so he couldn’t get out of it.”

  “What was your impression of her?”

  He grins, but doesn’t look particularly happy. “She was a handful. Knew what she wanted, and how to get it. But Walter seemed crazy about her.”

  “With everything you know about Walter Timmerman, can you think of any reason someone would want him dead?”

  He thinks about it for a moment. “Walter Timmerman was a person who pushed at the limits of science and knowledge. So who might kill him? I guess someone with an interest in preserving those limits.”

  Then he shrugs. “Or not. Who knows?”

  I CALL KEVIN AT THE OFFICE, where he’s been wading through the discovery documents.

  As bad as they are, he doesn’t seem too distressed about it. Most of the incriminating facts in there are those that Richard has already alerted us to, so it’s not quite as awful as Kevin was fearing.

  But it’s bad.

  I decide not to go back to the office, since it might make me late for the arraignment. Hatchet wouldn’t look too fondly on that, and I certainly don’t want to get on Hatchet’s bad side at the beginning of a murder case. Or at any other time, for that matter.

  Kevin is not going to join me at the arraignment. There would be nothing for him to do there anyway, and we’re better off with him spending the time getting familiar with the facts of the case. Or at least those items that the prosecution considers facts. Hopefully we’ll have a different interpretation.

  My plan is to talk to Steven before the arraignment about some of the discovery information, but that plan is thwarted when a screwup results in him being brought over too late for us to meet. We only have about thirty seconds before the hearing starts, leaving me barely enough time to tell him what to expect, and how to behave.

  It is rare that an arraignment is eventful, and this one doesn’t break any new ground. Richard states the charges clearly and concisely, and tells Hatchet that the prosecution is current on providing discovery information.

  Hatchet asks how Steven pleads, and he answers “not guilty” in an understandably shaky voice. If I were facing two charges of murder in the first degree, I would barely be able to squeak.

  I request bail, pointing out that Steven has never before been accused of a crime. Richard takes the opposite viewpoint, pointing out the heinous nature of these particular crimes, and adding that a person of Steven’s means is a particular flight risk.

  Hatchet disdainfully denies bail, as I knew he would. I can see Steven flinch when he hears it, even though I had told him we had no chance to prevail and were basically going through the motions.

  Richard requests a trial date in two months, and is clearly surprised when I agree to it. Steven has begged me to, since he doesn’t want to spend one day longer than necessary in prison. He isn’t quite focusing on the fact that a loss at trial means he’ll never leave that prison. Besides, I can always request a delay if it seems we won’t be ready.

  It’s almost four o’clock, so my options are to go to the office or go home. Edna and Kevin are in the office, and Laurie is at home. It’s not exactly a decision to agonize over, so I ask Edna to have a messenger bring copies of the documents to my house.

  “So I have to copy them?” she asks. I can feel her cringing through the phone. It’s standard procedure for her to have copied them when they arrived, but Edna evidently is trying a new approach.

  “Not by hand,” I say. “You can use the copying machine.”

  She reluctantly agrees to perform this heroic task, and I head home. When I get there, Laurie is cooking dinner, Tara is lying on the living room couch, and Waggy is jumping on her head. Laurie tells me that this particular head-jumping exercise has been going on for about an hour and a half, and if anything it has gained in intensity.

  “It’s amazing how much patience Tara has with him,” I say.

  Laurie smiles. “Saint Tara of Paterson.”

  “Waggy,” I say, “give it a rest.”

  “He’s just excited that they were talking about him on television today.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “It was on the news. They were talking about the Timmerman case, and they mentioned that you had custody of him. His father was apparently a legend in the dog show world.”

  I’m surprised and a little annoyed that the word has gotten out; I hope people don’t start coming around trying to get a look at him. I glance over at Waggy, who has jumped off Tara and is now smacking a tennis ball with his paw and then chasing it around the room. “I’m not so sure he’d be proud of his son.”

  We have dinner and then settle down to drink wine and watch a movie. It’s nights like these that give me a weird, certainly unwarranted feeling of continuity. As soon as Laurie arrives it’s as if she never left, and my remembering that she’ll soon be leaving again is both surprising and jarring.

  The movie we watch is called Peggy Sue Got Married, a Francis Ford Coppola film made in the 1980s about Kathleen Turner magically going back to high school and reliving those difficult years, with the benefit of knowing what life has in store for her.

  It’s something I occasionally think about. What would I do if I could start over, knowing everything that has happened since? I don’t really know, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t involve law school. And I’d make a fortune betting on sporting events of which I already know the outcome.

  When it’s over I ask Laurie what she would do differently now that she knows how things have worked out. My hope is that maybe she’ll say she wouldn’t have moved to Wisconsin.

  “Nothing,” she says. “Because I don’t want to know how things will work out. That’s not what the real world is about.”

  “I understand that. I’m just presenting a fake-world hypothetical. What if you could go back, knowing what was going to happen in your life? How would you change it? What would you do differently?”

  “I’d eat less chocolate.”

  “You’re not taking this seriously,” I say.

  She nods. “Correct. Because if I knew what was going to happen in my life, it wouldn’t be living. I take each day as it comes.”

  I shake my head in frustration, though I’m not sure why I keep pushing this. “Of course you take each day as it comes. Everybody does; there’s no choice. What I’m trying to do is get you to imagine knowing about the days before they come.”

  “Andy, would you like to know what is going to happen before it does?”

  “Of course.”

  “And it would change your behavior?” she asks.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay, let’s try it. If you keep talking about this, we’re not going to make love tonight, and I’m going to sleep in the guest bedroom.”

  “Can we drop this whole thing?” I ask. “I mean, it’s just a stupid movie.”

  “Maybe it works after all,” she says.

  I SET AN EARLY MEETING with Sam Willis to bring him on board.

  Sam has been my accountant for as long as I can remember, and has an office down the hall. In the last couple of years he has also taken on assignments as a key investigator for me, a task that he accomplishes without even leaving his desk.

  Sam has mastered cyberspace and can navigate it to find out pretty much anything. He is simply a genius at hack
ing into government agencies, corporations, or any other entity naive enough to think it is secure. If I need a phone record, or a bank statement, or a witness’s background, all I need to do is put Sam on the case. The fact that it’s not always strictly legal is not something that has kept either of us awake nights.

  I set the meeting at nine o’clock, because I’m due in Hatchet’s chambers at ten thirty to give him an update on what is happening with Waggy. It’s a meeting that was arranged before I took Steven on as a client, and I’m hoping the new situation will at least get me off the Waggy hook.

  I’m in the office at nine sharp, and Sam arrives ten minutes later. Sam always has a disheveled look about him, and it’s exaggerated in the summer, when he’s hot and sweaty. Today is a particularly stifling day, and he comes in looking much the worse for wear. Sam has often said he would rather the temperature were ten than eighty.

  “Hot out there,” I say after he has grabbed a cold soda.

  He nods. “You ain’t kidding. Summer in the city. Back of my neck gettin’ dirty and gritty.”

  Sam and I are practitioners of a juvenile hobby we call “song-talking,” during which we try to work song lyrics into our conversations. Sam is a master at it; if they gave out rankings in song-talking he would be a black belt.

  He’s opened with a Lovin’ Spoonful gambit. Fortunately, I am somewhat familiar with it, so hopefully I can compete. I nod sympathetically. “Isn’t it a pity. There doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city.”

  He doesn’t miss a beat, walking over to the window and looking down on the street. He shakes his head sadly. “All around the people looking half dead, walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head.”

  “You’re too good for me,” I say. “You ready to start the meeting?”

  “If we have to,” he says, with some resignation.

  “I need some help on a case.”

  He brightens immediately. “You do? Why didn’t you say so?”