I can’t wait.
They tell me I have to leave the room so Laurie “can rest,” though I’m not quite sure why my being there prevents her from resting. We haven’t exactly been doing any dancing, or playing one-on-one basketball. When I resist, they bring over the head ICU nurse to enforce the ruling that I must depart.
The woman is intimidating and physically imposing to the point that she might be able to take Marcus two out of three in arm wrestling. Suffice it to say that I am out of there and in my own room in short order.
A sniffling Kevin is waiting for me when I get back, and he informs me that we have received notice from the court that Charles Robinson has filed suit regarding the custody of Waggy. He has taken an interesting approach: Rather than pursuing custody himself, he is seeking to replace me as custodian. It would have the same practical effect as his winning custody, but it might ultimately be more palatable to the court.
In the short term, though, this new development will likely be an annoyance and major time waster for Hachet—not to mention me—pissing him off at a time when I can’t afford to do that. He directed me to resolve the matter and contact Robinson, but I’ve been preoccupied with more important matters.
Robinson’s suit is not something I can afford to focus on, so instead Kevin and I talk about the strange e-mail from the lab director about Timmerman’s submitting his own DNA for testing. The lab director was puzzled by it, and Kevin and I both have reacted more strongly than that. Timmerman as a murder victim elevates the mystery of it, and requires us looking into it immediately.
Kevin, after hearing what Sam had to say, has once again been one step ahead of me and gone back to the office for the photos from the murder scene and autopsy report. Timmerman took a bullet in the forehead, but his face should have been recognizable to someone close to him.
I call Richard Wallace and ask him who identified Timmerman’s body, since it is not in the discovery materials. He puts me on hold for a few minutes to find out, and returns with the answer.
“The wife. Diana Timmerman,” he says.
“She was the only one?” I ask.
“As far as I can tell. There would have been no reason to question her identification, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“Nope,” I say.
“You have reason to doubt her? His face was mostly intact.”
I don’t want to share with Richard the knowledge I have about the lab director’s e-mail. I don’t know if it helps our defense in any way, and if it does, I certainly wouldn’t want to tip our hand now. Now that I’m feeling better about Laurie’s prospects, I am able to focus more on the case, and feeling like I want to continue representing Steven.
I call Marcus in the hope of learning if he’s made any progress in finding the piece of garbage who shot Laurie. I do this with some reservation, since it will by definition require having a conversation with Marcus, a process that is always bewildering and frustrating.
He answers his cell phone on the first ring. “Yuh.”
“Marcus?”
“Yuh.”
“It’s Andy. Everything okay?”
He doesn’t answer, which doesn’t surprise me. Words are precious to Marcus, and he doesn’t want to waste a “yuh” on idle chitchat.
“Any luck on IDing the shooter?” I ask.
“Yuh.”
“Who is it?”
“Childs,” he says. Or maybe he says “Chiles,” or “Giles,” or any one of a thousand other names. Marcus on a cell phone is even worse than Marcus in person.
“Childs?” I ask. “Like children?”
“Yuh.”
“Do you know his first name?”
“Yuh.”
“What is it?”
“Jimmy.”
“Have you found him yet?”
“Unh.”
“Are you going to?”
“Yuh.”
Fascinating as the call is, I extricate myself from it and marvel for a few moments at the terror Marcus must have caused in the informant community to extract this information so quickly.
I then call Pete Stanton and ask him if the police have made any progress on identifying the shooter. Ordinarily he would give me a hard time before telling me anything, but he knows the depth of our shared desire to nail the bastard.
“Nothing yet, but we’ll get there,” he says.
“The name Jimmy Childs mean anything to you?” I ask.
Pete is silent for a few moments. “You get that from Marcus?”
“Let’s just say I got a tip through my crack investigating team.”
“Childs is bad news, Andy. He’s hired help and doesn’t come cheap. He’d get up from breakfast to slit your throat, without his coffee getting cold. Even Marcus might have his hands full.”
“Who does he usually work for?” I ask.
“Anybody with enough cash. But the last we had heard he was out of the country.”
“Out of the country where?” I ask.
“The Middle East was the rumor, but it wasn’t confirmed,” he says.
“A high-priced hit man comes six thousand miles to shoot Laurie?” It’s bewildering, frustrating, and very frightening.
“What the hell could that be about?” Pete wonders, out loud.
“Marcus will find out,” I say.
“Andy, listen to me on this. Tell Marcus to be very, very careful with this guy.”
“Maybe you’ll find him first. Don’t you police do stuff like that for a living?”
He thinks for a moment, weighing the possibilities. “My money’s on Marcus,” he says.
LAURIE IS NOT IN INTENSIVE CARE when I get there in the morning.
My first reaction is to panic, but then the nurse tells me that she was moved to a private room during the night. In fact, it’s the one next to mine, and I didn’t even know it.
I take the steps, three at a time, to her new room. When I enter she has her eyes wide open, and she gives me a half smile with the side of the face that she has full movement in.
“It’s about time you woke up,” I say, and I go to her and give her a hug. I do it gently, so as not to hurt her, but she hugs me back almost as hard as ever. It feels great.
“Andy, you look tired,” she says. “You haven’t been sleeping.” Her speech is still slightly distorted, but much better than I was expecting.
“I’ve been out partying every night.”
“Andy, please tell me what happened. I don’t remember anything.”
She doesn’t even recall what I’ve already told her, so I relate the details of the incident that I know, and I can see her racking her brain to recall that morning. She draws a blank. “I don’t even remember getting up that day,” she says.
I nod. “The doctor said that was likely, but that your short-term memory might return over time. What about longer-term memory?”
“I think I’m okay,” she says. “Test me.”
“Do you remember when you said you would worship and adore me forever?”
She smiles and manages a very slight shake of her head. “Nope. Drawing a blank.”
“Laurie, does the name Jimmy Childs mean anything to you?”
She thinks for a few moments. “Should it? Because if I should know it, I’m failing the test.”
“He’s the guy Marcus said was the shooter.”
“Marcus is after him?”
I nod. “Yes. He didn’t take too kindly to somebody shooting you.”
“Marcus will kill him, Andy.”
“I’ve heard worse ideas,” I say. “But Pete thinks Marcus might have his hands full.” I go on to tell her what Pete related about Child’s résumé. Laurie is as baffled as to who could be behind this as I am.
We’re interrupted by a team of therapists coming in to work with Laurie. Feeling incredibly relieved by her condition, I take the opportunity to go down to the Tara Foundation, to check out how things are going, and to find out from Willie Miller how Tara and Waggy
are doing.
I am delighted to find out that he has brought the two of them with him to the foundation, rather than leaving them alone at home. They like hanging out with the rescued dogs, especially Waggy, since it gives him an unlimited number of wrestling partners.
Tara seems a little out of sorts. This is probably the longest she’s gone without seeing me in a few years. I hardly ever take vacations, and if I do I bring her with me. I’m going to have to provide a ton of biscuits and some serious two-handed petting to get back in her good graces for this one.
Things at the foundation are going well. Willie and his wife, Sondra, have placed eleven dogs in homes this week. I feel guilty that I haven’t been helping out, and Willie feels guilty that he hasn’t visited Laurie, so we call ourselves even.
Willie of course wants to be brought up to date about everything, and I do so. He is not worried about Marcus’s ability to handle Jimmy Childs or anyone else on this planet. Willie holds a black belt in karate and is afraid of no one, but he once told me he couldn’t last ten seconds with Marcus.
“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.
IT’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.
DR. ROBERT JACOBY 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—”
New Tricks Page 8
