Hundley dresses conservatively in a suit with her hair up and wearing glasses. She reminds me of those women you sometimes see in TV commercials who miraculously transform themselves into knockouts simply by letting down their hair and removing their glasses. I can’t be sure about this, of course, since every time I’ve seen Sergeant Hundley she has rigidly clung to the librarian look.
Richard starts with the Walter Timmerman murder in downtown Paterson, getting Hundley to describe the conditions that existed when she arrived on the scene. Walter died from one bullet to the forehead, and Hundley testifies that the gun had been pressed to his flesh as it was fired.
“So would you describe that as execution-style?” Richard asks.
“Usually we consider it execution-style when the bullet enters the back of the head, not the front.”
“So this was perhaps more personal?” Richard asks.
I object that the witness could not possibly know this, and Hatchet sustains.
Hundley then talks about the murder weapon, which was a .38-caliber revolver, but has never been found. Childs used a different gun to shoot Timmerman and Laurie; I assume the Luger he used in the latter case was better for distance.
Hundley goes on to describe the splatter of blood, brain matter, and skull fragments against a wall just behind Walter. I glance over and can see Steven cringing at the testimony, even though I had instructed him to be impassive. I know that Steven is upset at hearing how gruesomely his father died, but the jury might think that he is racked with guilt.
Hundley then talks about the specks of blood that were found in Steven’s car.
“Did you test that blood?” Richard asks.
“We did.”
“Whose blood was it?”
“Walter Timmerman’s.”
Richard spends some more time on this, and then shifts to the house in the aftermath of the explosion. Hundley testifies that the explosion came from the upstairs guest bedroom toward the center of the house, the bedroom that Steven used before he moved out.
“It was an extraordinarily powerful explosion,” she says, and then goes on to describe the extent of the damage. She concludes that “Diana Timmerman, who was in the den at the time, died instantly from massive head trauma.”
I could object a lot more than I do, since Hundley is testifying to some things more properly brought forth by others. For instance, she is not a coroner, and her description of the head trauma as the cause of death is inappropriate. But I know all of what she says is true and Richard can bring in witnesses to prove it, so I don’t want to be seen by the jury as attempting to impede the truth.
I need to make at least a few points in my cross-examination. “Sergeant Hundley, it’s a difficult subject to talk about, but you testified that Walter Timmerman’s blood, brain matter, and skull fragments splattered off the wall?”
“Yes.”
“It was something of a mess?”
“Yes.”
“So whoever did the shooting would have been sprayed by it, either directly or when it bounced off the wall?”
“Absolutely.”
“The blood that you found in the car… when was it left there?”
“It’s impossible to tell.”
“How old is the car?”
“I believe three years old.”
“So from what you are scientifically able to determine, it could have been left there any time in the last three years?”
“It’s possible.”
“Thank you. Who left the blood there?”
Hundley seems slightly taken aback by the question. “Well, it was Walter Timmerman’s blood.”
“Could it have been planted there by someone else?”
“There is no evidence of that,” she says, indignantly.
“Is there evidence against it? Is there anything in what you saw that says that’s not possible?”
“Of course it’s possible, but that proves nothing.”
I smile. “I agree that nothing has been proven.”
Hatchet intervenes even before Richard can object, and tells me to cut out the little digs and move on.
I do. “What about the brain matter and skull fragments that you found? Can you determine how long they had been in the car?”
“We didn’t find any brain matter or skull fragments in the car,” she says.
I feign surprise; over the years I have gotten to be a terrific surprise-feigner. “Only blood?”
“Yes.”
“If Steven Timmerman was splattered with blood, brain, and skull, how come he only transferred blood to the seat of the car?”
“That’s difficult to say.”
“I’m sure it is. Doesn’t it make it far more likely that Walter Timmerman, Steven’s father, had a cut that bled a little in Steven’s car sometime in the last three years? Isn’t it reasonable to assume that, considering the lack of brain and skull fragments in the car?”
“I don’t make assumptions, Mr. Carpenter. I just report the facts.”
I nod. “Just the facts… gotcha. Lieutenant Hundley, how many times have you cut yourself in the last three years after which you’ve bled, even a bit, from a little accident? Could be a paper cut, splinter, torn fingernail, shaving your legs, whatever.”
“I really wouldn’t know.”
“Then guess,” I say.
“Maybe four or five.”
I smile approvingly. “Then you’re very careful; in my case it’s a lot more. How many times have you had a little accident that caused you to lose brain matter or skull fragments?”
“Never.”
I nod. “Same here. So people bleed all the time, but they rarely get their heads blown up. Walter Timmerman could have left traces of blood in his son’s car at any time, but if he had left brain or skull in there, that would have been rather significant. Don’t you think?”
“That’s not for me to determine.”
“And it’s equally significant that those things were not there, don’t you think?”
“That’s not for me to determine,” she repeats.
I nod. “Because you just report the facts.”
“That’s correct.”
“Is it a fact that you found clothing of Steven Timmerman’s that was covered with his father’s blood?”
“No.”
“Did you factually find any of that blood in Steven Timmerman’s house?”
“No.”
“Not in the drains, or the washing machine?”
“No.”
“And that’s a fact?”
“Yes.”
I turn to the scene at the house, though there is little fertile ground for me to cover. As part of my questioning, I ask if all the damage had been done by one explosion, and she tells me that if there were any additional explosions, she is unaware of it.
When I let her off the stand, Richard stands for what I assume will be a redirect examination.
Instead he says, “Your Honor, may we have a discussion in chambers?”
“YOUR HONOR, we believe we have located the murder weapon. I was informed of it moments ago.”
“How convenient for you,” Hatchet says. “Where did you find it?”
“In the defendant’s downtown loft, where he makes and sells his furniture.”
This is not making sense to me. “Richard, I’ve seen the reports of a previous search of the loft. It didn’t turn up then, but it suddenly appeared now?”
“My information on this is not complete; I just thought I should inform the court and defense immediately when this was brought to my attention. But there was apparently a secret, or at least a hidden, compartment in the leg of one of the tables the defendant made. The police discovered the gun in there.”
Hatchet obviously finds this as strange as I do. “What made them decide to do another search in the first place?”
Richard is himself looking uncomfortable with this. “There was an anonymous tip, I believe in the form of a phone call.”
I ask Hatchet if we can adjourn for the day, so that I can talk to my client about this while the tests are run. Richard backs up my request, since if the gun is shown to be what we all think it will be, he’ll want to introduce testimony to that effect immediately. Hatchet grants the request, and the jury is sent home until tomorrow.
I arrange to meet with Steven in an anteroom. In a normal situation, I might start by telling him that his loft was searched again, and I would be looking to gauge his reaction for any obvious worry. But once again this case is different; I know that Steven didn’t kill his father, Childs did. So it therefore isn’t possible that Steven hid the murder weapon.
“They think they found the murder weapon,” I say. “It was hidden inside a piece of furniture in your loft.”
He recoils as if shot. “That isn’t possible. Oh, my God. How is this happening?”
“Do you ever build hidden compartments into your furniture?”
He nods. “Sometimes, when people request it. But it’s not for hiding things generally, it’s often for storage.”
“Who would know about that?”
“Almost anyone who’s ever bought a piece of furniture from me.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down much,” I say.
“How bad is this?” he asks. “Is there any chance we can recover?”
“We’ll have a better idea about that tomorrow.”
When I finish meeting with Steven, I go back into the courtroom, where Kevin is waiting for me. Also there is Martha Wyndham, who tells me she was in court today. I left word for her to come over to the house after court, and I ask if she’d mind meeting me there. She’s fine with that.
I stop at the supermarket before going home, since the four hundred people who seem to be staying at my house have, if anything, started to eat even more than before. I’m not sure, but I think I saw Marcus gnawing on the garage the other day.
Martha beats me home, and Laurie has let her in. When I get there Martha is playing with a crazed Waggy. I could wait for Waggy to calm down before talking to her, but by then Steven would be up for parole.
“Waggy looks terrific,” Martha says.
I nod. “And he’s matured a lot.”
She starts to ask me some questions about the trial, and how I think it’s going. Since I don’t want to be honest about it, I fend off the questions, including the one about why court was adjourned early. I want to keep the information about the murder weapon quiet until tomorrow, though obviously I have only limited control of that.
I finally get the conversation around to where I want it, which is Charles Robinson. “Did you spend any time with him?”
“Some. Not a lot,” she says.
“What was his relationship like with Walter Timmerman?”
She thinks about it for a few moments. “They would have said they were friends. I would describe them as competitors, but with people like that, the line is blurry.”
“What do you mean?”
“They were both all about winning, so that’s what their friendship was about. They wanted to surround themselves with people who would challenge them, people whom they wanted to beat. I’m not sure they thought about it in those terms, but to them it would make perfect sense.”
“Did you ever hear them talking about Timmerman’s work?”
“No, when it came to work the only thing they had in common was it made both of them rich. Walter was a scientist; Robinson is some kind of international financier, or trader, or something.”
Martha has no real knowledge of Robinson or his activities, and the conversation shifts to her own life in light of the death of her employers. She’s saved some money over the years, she says, and her mother left her a decent amount when she died, so finding work immediately is not necessary. She renews her offer to help us with Steven’s case in any way she can, but there’s really nothing for her to do.
“By the way, did you hear a second explosion that day at the house?”
“No, I don’t think so. But all I could really hear was myself screaming.” She grins with some embarrassment at the recollection, but I understand her reaction. It was a frightening, surreal moment.
Laurie invites Martha to stay for dinner, but I’m glad that she declines, since I need all available time to prepare for tomorrow’s witnesses. Martha offers to help out with Waggy if we need a break, but I decline that offer as well.
After dinner I receive a phone call from Richard Wallace. “Sorry to bother you at home, Andy, but the ballistics test came back and I thought you’d want to know the results.”
It’s typical of Richard that he would be giving me this heads-up. “Let me guess,” I say. “It’s the gun that shot Kennedy from the grassy knoll.”
He laughs. “Close. It’s the one that shot Timmerman from behind the Dumpster.”
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other. See you in court, counselor.”
HATCHET ALLOWS the murder weapon in as evidence, as I knew he would. Once the ruling is made, Richard calls Detective Roger Manning to the stand. Manning is the officer who led yesterday’s search at Steven’s loft, and he supervised the ballistics tests that were immediately done.
Manning testifies quite simply that the police received a call in the form of a computer-masked voice, alerting them to the location of the weapon, and that when they conducted a subsequent search, there it was.
He further says that the loft was locked when they arrived, and that they had locked it when they searched it the first time. There was no sign of forced entry, according to Manning.
Richard has him describe the manner in which the ballistics tests were performed, and he introduces photographs of the bullets, allowing Manning to show the jury exactly what he is talking about.
“So there is no doubt that this is the gun that killed Walter Timmerman?” Richard asks.
“No doubt whatsoever.”
Obviously I have no ability to challenge the scientific tests, so when Richard turns Manning over to me, I focus on other areas.
“Detective, were there any fingerprints on the gun other than Steven Timmerman’s?”
“There were no fingerprints on the gun at all.”
I do a double take, as if I am surprised. “Not even Steven’s?”
“No,” he says. “The gun was wiped clean.”
“So your view is that he hid the gun in his own loft, in his own furniture, but wiped it clean so that it couldn’t be traced back to him?”
“I can’t answer that,” he says.
“Can you think of any reason why he would do that?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
I nod agreeably. “Why don’t you spend some time thinking about it now? We’ll wait.”
Hatchet, it turns out, has no desire to wait, and he tells me to move on. So I do. “Detective, did you run a trace on the gun, in an attempt to find out its history?”
“Yes. It was not in any database.”
“So the gun’s only connection to Steven Timmerman is that it was hidden in his loft?”
“The only connection that we could find,” he says.
“Okay, for Steven to have done this, he would have had to shoot his father in downtown Paterson, drive an hour or so to his loft, and then hide the gun in the one place it could absolutely be traced back to him.”
“Your Honor, is there a question in there?” Richard asks.
“Would you like to try that as a question, Mr. Carpenter?” Hatchet asks. “That is the general procedure that we like to follow.”
I nod. “Thank you, Your Honor, I will. Detective,
if Steven Timmerman was going to wipe the gun clean, and if it couldn’t otherwise be traced to him, why not just leave it at the scene, or throw it into any garbage can between Paterson and New York? Or throw it into the Passaic River? Or leave it anywhere except in his own loft?”
“I can’t know what was in his mind.”
“Then can you read the anonymous caller’s mind? Did he say how he knew where the gun was?”
“No.”
“Or why he called now?”
“No.”
“But he knew which piece of furniture it was hidden in?”
“He said the leg on the large table.”
“Does it bother you at all that you found the gun this way?”
To Manning’s credit, he doesn’t duck the question. “It would not be my first choice.”
I nod. “Thank you for that. Would you say that the anonymous caller, whoever he might be, wants Steven Timmerman to be found guilty in this trial?”
“It would seem so,” Manning says.
“That’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“The person who wants Steven to spend the rest of his life in jail just happens to be the person whom Steven told exactly where he hid the gun.”
I check my cell phone messages when court adjourns, and there is one from Sam telling me that he has found the DNA expert to end all DNA experts. He’s a college professor, specializing in genetics. He teaches classes all day and does research at night, so he’s going to bring him to the house early Monday morning before court, and I should call him if that doesn’t work. It works fine, so I don’t bother calling.
When I get home, Laurie is on the phone talking and laughing with a friend from back in Findlay. That is happening with increasing frequency, and I can’t say I’m thrilled with it. Pretty soon she’s going to want to talk and laugh with those creeps face-to-face, which means she will leave here. That is a day I’m not looking forward to.
We decide to have pizza tonight, and because the smell of pizza always brings Marcus out into the light, I order five large pies. More accurately, I let Laurie do the ordering, since on her pie she always wants a long list of toppings, all of which are healthy. On the other side of the scale, Kevin can have no toppings at all, because every one ever invented sets off his allergies.
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