“This is really a very simple case. Murder cases are not always like that. They can often be very complicated, with a lot of cross-currents, and conflicting motivations, and evidence that is not always clear-cut. But that’s not what we have here.”
This is how Richard Wallace begins his opening statement to the jury. Richard is not a powerful or particularly eloquent speaker, but he brings an authenticity to the process that makes juries want to believe him.
“Steven Timmerman had a falling-out with his father, Walter Timmerman. That can happen between fathers and their sons, and usually differences can be worked out, but sometimes not. There was a unique economic component to these differences, though. You see, Walter Timmerman was worth almost half a billion dollars, and he was threatening to take Steven out of his will.
“Now, Steven’s job was making furniture, making it by hand, and while that may be a noble enterprise, one would have to make a lot of tables and chairs to earn half a billion dollars.
“So the evidence will show that Steven arranged a meeting with his father in downtown Paterson, an area that was foreign to both of them. We don’t know what he said to get his father to go there, but we do know that once they arrived, he killed him with one bullet through the head. Evidence will place Steven there, and will show that Walter’s blood was found in Steven’s car.
“But that didn’t accomplish what Steven wanted, because he was to find out that the will had already been changed. And the way it was structured, the only way Steven would get the money is if he outlived his stepmother, a stepmother whom the evidence will show he hated.
“Well, that was no problem for Steven. He argued with his stepmother at her house, and fifteen minutes after he left the house it blew up in a massive explosion and killed her. And the evidence will further show that Steven was an expert in the type of explosive that was used.
“So that left nothing standing between Steven and his father’s fortune. Nothing except you.”
When Richard finishes, it becomes my job to convince the jury that there are two sides to the story, that their natural instinct to call a vote and send Steven to prison for life is somewhat premature.
I’ve never quite been in this position before. My financial situation allows me to take only cases in which I think the client is worth defending, which means I think he or she is innocent. But it is always simply my belief that my cause is just; I could never be positive about it.
This time I am positive. I know Steven didn’t kill his father, because I know who did. Yet there is no way for me to tell this jury what I know; it is unlikely they will ever hear the name Jimmy Childs. Even if I revealed the circumstances behind Marcus’s encounter with Childs, it would not be admissible at trial, because it would correctly be ruled hearsay.
My allowing Childs to be killed that night altered this trial in a way I never dreamed possible, and in the process seriously imperiled my client. It is tremendously frustrating, and dramatically increases the pressure I feel to successfully defend Steven.
“Steven Timmerman has not killed anyone,” is how I start. “He has also never assaulted anyone, or robbed anyone, or defrauded anyone, or cheated on his tax returns, or gotten a speeding ticket. There is absolutely nothing in his background, nothing whatsoever, that makes it remotely conceivable that he could have done the horrible things that he is accused of.
“Money has never been important to Steven. He has never taken a dime of his father’s money, though he was given many an opportunity to do so. He declined a lucrative offer to work in his father’s company, choosing instead to follow his artistic instincts and make furniture.
“The truth is, Steven’s lack of interest in his fortune drove Walter Timmerman a bit crazy, and he kept taking Steven out of his will in a futile effort to control his son. Yes, Steven was taken out of his father’s will nine times, but it never worked, and each time he was put back in. It makes absolutely no sense to believe that this particular time he was driven to murder.
“Walter Timmerman was an extraordinary scientist, and his work has had an enormously beneficial effect on the state of our health, and the state of our justice system. It brought him wealth and acclaim, and all of it was well deserved.
“For much of the last year of his life, Walter Timmerman worked in secret, worked on a project so significant that he kept it from everyone around him. It is reasonable to assume that the work was of tremendous importance, and the evidence will show that the FBI was monitoring him closely.
“It is in that work that deadly dangers lurked, not in the supposed resentment of a son who never displayed any resentment whatsoever. Walter Timmerman feared for his life, and sought to protect himself. But the forces aligned against him were ultimately too great, and those forces had nothing to do with his son.
“Steven Timmerman has been made to look like a villain, and stands accused as a murderer. He has lost his father, and his stepmother, and he is in danger of losing his freedom. I hope and believe that after you hear all the facts of this case, and consider them carefully, you will make sure that does not happen. Thank you.”
As his first witness, Richard calls Alex Durant, the guard who was on duty the day the house exploded. He is as large as I remember him, and seems about to burst through the buttons of his suit. My guess is that it’s the suit he wore to his senior prom, minus the corsage.
Richard painstakingly takes Durant through the events of the morning, making him detail the procedures he and his associates went through to make sure no one dangerous made it to the house. He has logs that he refers to that show when various people arrived, including me.
“Once Steven went into the house, did you hear any conversations that he might have had?” Richard asks.
“Yes. I could hear him arguing with Mrs. Timmerman. He was screaming at her, and she was screaming back at him.”
“Do you know what it was about?”
Durant shakes his head. “No.”
“Had you ever heard them argue before?”
“Yes,” Durant says, “it happened pretty often.”
Finally, Richard leads him to the moment of the explosion, and Durant says that he was in the guardhouse at the main gate at the time.
“How long after Steven Timmerman left did the explosion take place?” Richard asks.
“Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes,” Durant says.
“Did you have any conversation with him as he was leaving?”
Durant nods. “Yes. I had noticed that his right front tire was low, and I asked him if he wanted to wait a minute. We had a pump and could fill it for him.”
“And did he want to wait for that?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Did he say why?”
“He said he was in a hurry, and that he’d deal with it later when he had more time.”
“Thank you. No further questions.”
Durant has done us considerable damage, and he unfortunately has done so by telling the truth. It makes my job of shaking him that much harder. There is no sense going after him on the facts of the day as he’s described them, because he did so accurately.
“Mr. Durant,” I start, “how long did you work for Walter Timmerman?”
“About seven months.”
“Who did you replace?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who was the Timmerman’s head of security before you?”
“There wasn’t any.”
I feign surprise, though of course I knew what the answer was going to be. “So Mr. Timmerman had a sudden concern about security about seven months ago?”
“He said he would feel safer if people were watching the house.”
“How many people?”
“What do you mean?”
“How many people were employed, like yourself, to protect the Timmermans and their house?”
“Around ten.”
“And among them, these ten people protected the house twenty-four hours a day?”
&n
bsp; He nods. “Yes.”
“How long did the Timmermans live in that house, if you know?”
“I believe six years.”
“But suddenly, seven months ago, he didn’t feel safe?”
Richard objects that Durant could not know how Timmerman felt, and Hatchet sustains. That’s okay; my point has been made.
“When I showed up that day, why did you let me go up to the house?”
“Your name was on a list,” he says. “You had been approved to enter.”
“Had I not been approved, you wouldn’t have let me in?”
“That’s correct.”
“So I wasn’t considered a threat to the Timmerman’s safety?”
“Right.”
“And I assume you were being extra vigilant because Walter Timmerman had recently been murdered?”
Durant won’t concede the point. “I was always careful; that was my job.”
I nod. “Right. Your job was to only let people in who were approved, and who were not considered a threat by you or by the Timmermans. Correct?”
He knows where I’m going, but he can’t stop me from getting there. “Yeah.”
“Which is why you let Steven Timmerman in as well? He was on an approved list?”
“Yes.”
“So for the seven months that Walter Timmerman was so concerned with his safety that he built guardhouses and hired ten security people like yourself, Steven Timmerman was always approved to enter?”
“As far as I know.”
“You know pretty far, don’t you, Mr. Durant?”
Richard objects that I’m being argumentative, and Hatchet sustains, so I rephrase. “Mr. Durant, is there a higher authority than you regarding who was allowed access to that house? Someone else we should talk to, who is more knowledgeable about it than you?”
Durant looks over at Richard, hoping he’ll object, but he doesn’t. “No,” he says.
“So you’re the guy?”
“Yeah. I’m the guy.”
I turn the witness back to Richard for redirect. He gets Durant to remind the jurors that no one other than the people he already mentioned had gotten through the guards into the house. No sinister mad bombers, no serial killers. The implication is clear: It had to be Steven.
EACH NIGHT DURING A TRIAL, I do two things.
I rehash with Kevin what went on in court that day, and then we prepare for the next day’s witnesses.
In this case, our rehashing consists of telling Laurie what transpired. She is still doing physical therapy during the day, and therefore cannot attend the court sessions. In this fashion we’ve inadvertently stumbled on a good way to reflect on the day’s events, since she probes us with questions that make us consider and pay extra attention to some things we might have glossed over.
I’m slowly dealing with my guilt about “losing” Childs in the manner that we did. I am doing this by thinking of Childs not as the murderer, but as the murder weapon. He was sent to kill the Timmermans by someone else, and therefore that someone else is the person who had the motive. Childs was just doing a job; the key player in all this is the one that hired him. That is who we have to find.
We have made very little progress in coming up with ways to attack the evidence against Steven. This is of course frustrating; since I know with certainty that Steven is innocent, the evidence had to have been fabricated and planted. But it is also puzzling. I don’t understand why the actual killers went to such pains to frame him.
My belief, especially after my meeting with the FBI, is that Walter Timmerman was murdered because of something having to do with his work. It was therefore, as Tom Hagen would say, business and not personal. But someone who could afford Jimmy Childs was not someone likely to fear they would be suspected of the murder. They were doing it from a distance, and that doesn’t seem to fit with an elaborate frame-up.
“Whoever hired Jimmy Childs had to know a lot about Walter Timmerman’s life, not just his work,” I say. “For instance, he had to know all about Steven, about his knowledge of explosives, about his being written out of the will.”
“If you have the resources to pay Childs half a million dollars, then you have ways of finding out those things,” Laurie points out.
I nod. “Maybe. But I’ve been thinking of some Middle Eastern jillionaire. Don’t forget, twenty million dollars was wired to Timmerman a few weeks before he died. Yet this feels more intimate than that.”
“Charles Robinson has that kind of money, and he knows so much about Timmerman’s life that Steven called him Uncle Charlie,” Kevin says. “And the FBI is interested in him.”
I nod. “But we’re not close to connecting the dots.”
Nothing Sam and Kevin have come up with on Robinson has moved our case forward. He originally earned his fortune as an energy trader, sort of a one-man Enron. His reputation has long been as sort of a shady operator, but if the authorities were ever close to catching him at anything, we can find no evidence of it.
He made worldwide contacts that enabled him to be a facilitator of many things, most of them energy-related. The trading of energy across countries obviously involved huge fortunes, and Robinson has usually put himself in position to get a piece of it.
In recent years he has entered other businesses as well, everything from magazines to a retail clothing chain. But these seem to be secondary to his real business, and showing dogs and racing horses are just hobbies for him.
Kevin and I spend the rest of the evening preparing for tomorrow’s witnesses. These are the toughest days in a case like this. One witness after another will lay a solid foundation of apparent proof that Steven is guilty. We’ll put a few dents in it, but if we’re going to win, it’s going to be on the strength of our own case in chief.
I only wish we had a case in chief.
Richard’s first witness today is Captain John Antonaccio, the chief of ordnance at Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina. Antonaccio is the person under whom Steven trained in explosives when he was in the service.
Richard takes Antonaccio through his qualifications as an explosives expert. I offer to stipulate as to his expertise, but Richard asks Hatchet to let him detail it for the jury, and Hatchet reluctantly agrees.
To hear Antonaccio tell it, pretty much the only bomb in the last twenty years that he was not responsible for was Waterworld. His résumé is impressive, and he is clearly well aware of it.
Next Richard introduces a map of the Timmerman property, and a diagram of the house itself. He gets Antonaccio to show where the bomb went off, near the center of the house, and Antonaccio says that this is where an expert would have planted it, so as to cause maximum damage.
The demonstration is jarring to me, because it reminds me of something that I missed. I will not be able to bring it up on my cross-examination, because I haven’t learned enough about it to risk asking a question I don’t know the answer to. It’s a frustrating mistake on my part, and it’s not the first.
Eventually, Richard questions him about his time working with Steven. “Was he competent working with explosives?”
Antonaccio nods. “Very much so. One of my best students.”
“What qualities did he have that make you say that?”
“He was smart, he was careful, and he had a healthy respect for the materials he was dealing with.”
“Some people don’t respect the explosives?” Richard asks.
“You’d be amazed how many; they become complacent, overconfident. But Lieutenant Timmerman followed the correct procedures every time.”
Richard introduces a document stating that the explosive used at the house was Cintron 321. I don’t object, because I know that he could bring in an expert witness to say the same thing.
“Did Mr. Timmerman ever work with Cintron 321?” Richard would never call Steven “Lieutenant,” as Antonaccio does. To do so could inspire respect from the members of the jury; I’m surprised Richard hadn’t told Antonaccio not to do it as well.
“And the detonator that was used, which was set off remotely by a cell phone-to your knowledge he would have the requisite expertise for that as well?”
“It would be a piece of cake for him.”
Richard turns Antonaccio over to me. It’s been an excruciating two hours, but an effective time for the prosecution. The fact that Steven is an expert in the type of explosive that killed his stepmother is pure circumstantial evidence, but the type that juries eat with a spoon.
“Captain Antonaccio, you testified that you have been teaching the use of explosives for twenty-one years? Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“During that time, how many people have you trained?”
“I don’t have an exact number.”
“That’s good, because I don’t need one. Ballpark it.”
He thinks for a while and then says, “About three hundred a year.”
“So for twenty-one years, that would be more than six thousand?”
“I guess so.”
“Are you the only person in the marines who does what you do?” I ask.
“No. Of course not.”
“How many such instructors are there? And again, you can ballpark it.”
“Maybe a hundred.”
“So if we assume there have been a hundred for the last twenty-one years, and each person trains three hundred people a year, then in that time a total of…” I turn to Kevin, who has been using a calculator, and he hands me the calculator with the total on it. “… six hundred and thirty thousand people have been trained in the use of these explosives?”
Antonaccio is not pleased with the way this is going. “I can’t verify those numbers.”
“I understand,” I say. “Now, do the army and navy blow things up as well? Do they train people in explosives?”
“Of course.”
I shake my head slightly and smile at where this is going. “I won’t go through the numbers for them, because I’m not a math major. But it sounds like you can’t walk down the street without banging into someone who is an expert in explosives.”
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