“Yes. He sent me a DNA sample to test, and it turned out to be his own DNA.”
“Did you ask him why he did that?”
“Yes, but he never responded.”
I then get Jacoby to admit that Walter had been secretive about his research in recent months, and I let him off the stand. Maybe his answers will come in handy later, or maybe not.
I’m glad that today is such an insignificant court day, because my mind is very much focused on my meeting with Robinson tonight. It sure as hell is much more important than any of these witnesses.
All of this takes the entire morning, and after lunch Richard embarks on phase two, which involves calling witnesses to testify that Steven and the victims did not get along. The first witness he calls is an uncomfortable-looking Martha Wyndham.
“Ms. Wyndham, you worked for the Timmermans, did you not?” Richard asks.
“I did.”
“In what capacity?”
“I was Walter Timmerman’s executive assistant for six months until he died, at which point I began working for Diana Timmerman.”
Since two bosses died on her within six months, Martha Timmerman is not exactly a good-luck charm, but Richard neglects to point that out. Instead he asks, “You worked out of their home?”
She nods. “I did.”
“Do you know the defendant, Steven Timmerman?”
Martha looks over at Steven and says, “I do.”
“Did you have occasion to see Steven when he was in the company of Walter Timmerman, or Diana Timmerman, or both?”
“Many times.”
His questions force her to focus on those times when Steven argued with Walter, and she concedes that it happened fairly frequently. She glances occasionally at Steven, as if distressed that she has to be doing this to him.
She tries to repair the damage by saying, “Sometimes they got along very well. Walter could be difficult, especially with Steven. He had very specific expectations for him.”
“And if they were not met?” Richard asks.
“He expressed his displeasure in very strong terms.”
“And how did Steven respond?”
“He would get angry.”
“Would he ever storm out?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever see him throw things in anger?”
She glances at Steven again. “Yes, he broke a lamp against a wall once.”
Richard now gets Martha to turn to Steven’s relationship with Diana, and even though she tries to couch it, it is obvious their interactions were a disaster.
“Did Steven ever tell you that he hated his stepmother?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say about her effect on his father?”
“That she was destroying him, and that as smart as he was, he still couldn’t see through it.”
When it’s my turn, I ask Martha, “Do you have any knowledge as to whether these problems between Steven and his father, as well as his stepmother, started before your arrival?”
“Oh, yes, they all said that. It had been going on much longer than that.”
“Did Steven ever attack his father?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t believe so.”
“Did he ever attack his stepmother?”
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“Have you ever seen him commit or attempt to commit a violent act?”
“No.”
“Thank you, no further questions.”
The last witness for the day is Thomas Sykes, Timco’s CEO by day, and Diana Timmerman’s Hamilton Hotel lover by night. He doesn’t have much to say, simply confirming the stormy relationships that Steven had with his father and mother.
I could question Sykes about his affair with Diana Timmerman, but I’m not sure what it gets me at this point. Instead, I basically ask Sykes the same questions I asked Martha Wyndham, and get the same responses, most notably the one about never having seen Steven commit a violent act.
“I have no further questions for this witness, Your Honor, but I do reserve the right to call him back to the stand as part of the defense case.”
Hatchet is fine with that, and I let Sykes off the stand. I haven’t embarrassed him with a revelation of the affair, but I’m not above doing so later.
In court, there’s actually very little that I’m above.
WHY DO I GET MYSELF into these situations? I’m about to go into a meeting alone with a man whom the FBI and Laurie both think might try to kill me.
There’s something wrong with this picture. I’m a lawyer, the person who is supposed to get involved after the violence, not during. There were no self-defense classes in law school, and we were never taught how to deal with a dangerous criminal while wearing a wire. The only time the word “wire” came up was when we were told that international corporate clients might pay our fees by “wire” transfer.
But here I am, in an FBI van at a rest stop off the Palisades Interstate Parkway, having a wire taped to my chest. I’m sweating so much that I’m afraid it will electrocute me. Laurie is watching all of this with an impassive stare, which I am sure masks very significant worry, if not outright dread. The only confrontations I can handle are verbal. If you wanted to buy a foxhole, I could handle the closing for you, but you wouldn’t want me in there with you if things got dangerous.
My plan is not exactly well thought out. I want to get Robinson on record admitting that my theory about the synthetic DNA is correct. I don’t expect him to admit to any murders; I still don’t know if he committed or planned any. But I, and certainly Corvallis, would like to get him to implicate others.
Whether I accomplish this by threats or an inference that Robinson and I can turn this into a mutually profitable situation, I can’t yet say. I’m going to play it by ear and take the conversation in the direction I deem most fertile in the moment. That is an area in which I feel comfortable.
Corvallis will be in the van with four other agents, two of whom work the technical equipment, and Laurie. Other agents will be spread out on the grounds near the house, ready to move in if I am in danger. I also will have a small panic button attached to my belt, a signal for them to storm the house and save the lawyer.
Once we are all set, and the various electronics are attached to me, I exit the van and get into my car. I wait ten minutes for the FBI people to go ahead and get in position, and then I drive to the house myself.
As I pull up to a house and property just a notch below that of Walter Timmerman’s, I don’t see the van or any agents. I hope that they are just good at concealment, because if they’re not there I could be in major trouble. I feel like Michael Corleone before his meeting in the restaurant with Solozzo, depending on the gun to have been planted in the bathroom.
I park, take a deep breath, and go to the front door, which is wide open. This doesn’t feel like a good sign, and it’s not the only one. Coming through the open door is a stench that is unlike anything I have ever experienced.
In every movie I have ever seen where this situation occurs, there is a dead body waiting to be discovered by the hero. The only thing missing here is the hero, because if it’s me then I’m miscast.
I turn and look around, hoping to see Corvallis or someone who will provide guidance. Seeing no one, I softly say, “The door is open and it smells awful.” I’m sure they can hear me in the van, but the communication is only one way, so they can’t answer me, and it does me no good.
I decide to go in, because not to do so is to leave and therefore make no progress. Besides, while the stench may mean a dead body, it also would mean the body has been dead for a while. Therefore, if someone murdered that body, he has had plenty of chance to leave already.
I walk through the foyer and living room, covering my nose with my sleeve and ridiculously calling out “hello!”-as if Robinson were going to come walking out saying, Andy, welcome. I was cooking us fried horse manure for dinner. Smells delicious, doesn’t it?
Whe
n I get to the kitchen, I come upon what is easily the most disgusting sight I have ever seen… the most disgusting sight anyone has ever seen. What used to be Charles Robinson sits at the kitchen table, but he is no longer human. It is as if his enormous body has melted from the inside out, and he is covered with disgusting blotches of ooze and blood. Much of it has dripped to the floor.
I once saw the decapitated, burned body of a corrupt cop, and I later saw his head wrapped in plastic. Those were disgusting sights, but compared with this they were like a field of daffodils.
I start to run from the kitchen, simultaneously pressing the panic button and screaming, “Get in here! Get in here!” The words don’t come out quite as clearly as I would like, because my vomit gets in the way.
When I reach the outside, I literally fall to the ground and gasp for air. Agents rush to me, no doubt thinking that I’m hurt, but I motion for them to go in. Corvallis then comes running to me with two agents and Laurie, and I gasp what has happened.
Laurie stays with me as everyone else goes inside. I’m still on the ground, gasping, trying to keep the remainder of my last twelve meals down. It is not my finest moment, but right now I can’t worry about that. I just have to get control and figure out how not to be haunted the rest of my life by what I’ve just seen.
Within fifteen minutes, there are so many vehicles at the Robinson house you’d think the Yankees were playing the Red Sox in the backyard. I’m sure every FBI agent in the tristate area has been summoned, and I can see a bunch of people with forensics equipment.
Corvallis comes out and greets one of the arriving men as “Doctor,” and he brings him into the house. If this guy can do anything for Robinson, I am going to make him my personal physician for life.
Crime scenes take forever, and as the closest thing to a witness, I know that I am going to have to wait around to be questioned. Two hours go by, during which Laurie and I stroll around the grounds. I tell her in detail what I saw, and the act of walking in the fresh air and being with her makes me feel considerably better.
Finally, Corvallis comes over to talk to me. “We need a statement,” he says.
I just nod my understanding.
“You okay?” he asks, showing more concern than I expected. “It is pretty rough in there.”
“What happened to him?” I ask.
“Let’s do the statement first, okay?”
“Okay.” This is the correct procedure; if he were to tell me anything that they learned, it could be viewed as prejudicing my statement.
I basically have little to say about the actual scene; all I did was walk in and discover the body. Everyone who followed saw exactly the same thing as I did, and I’m sure by now it has been memorialized by hundreds of pictures. But I do insist on including in the statement the reason that I was there in the first place; it will serve me well if I can ever get evidence of all this into the trial.
The statement is verbal and taped, and I promise to sign a transcript of it when they have it ready. I request that I see it before court tomorrow, and Corvallis says that will not be a problem. Then I renew my question to Corvallis. “What happened to Robinson?”
“It looks like iridium.”
That’s a little cryptic for me, so I ask him to elaborate.
“It’s a poison, a favorite in international circles. The KGB had a particular preference for it, but others have used it as well. You don’t want to know the details of what it does; you’ve gotten a firsthand look.”
“How long was he dead?”
“We don’t have a firm time on that yet. He was eating a meal, I assume the poison was in the food. The amount that would fit on the head of a pin would kill someone in forty-five seconds.”
“Not a pleasant forty-five seconds,” I say.
“Yeah. You guys okay getting home?” he says.
“Yes. You know I’m going to try to use all this at trial.”
He smiles. “And the relevance?” He is pointing out that I’m going to have a tough time connecting Robinson’s death to Steven’s trial in a way to get Hatchet to admit it.
“I’m working on it, but it’ll come in.”
“We may be on different pages on that,” he says, and then walks off.
He’s probably right, but I’d know better if I knew what the hell page I was on.
ON THE WAY HOME I call Kevin and ask him to come over. That way, he, Laurie, and I can discuss at length the impact of tonight’s events on our case, and the strategy we should employ to make the most of it.
The potential benefits are obvious. Walter Timmerman’s work involved him with very rough people, so rough that the person he was in a form of partnership with was poisoned to death. This couldn’t help but create the credible thought in a jury’s mind that the perpetrator might have killed Walter as well.
Diana’s death is more problematic, in that we have no evidence she was involved with Walter’s work. However, the manner in which she died helps us. It also blew up Walter’s lab, and could easily have killed Waggy, both of which fit into our theory.
Unfortunately, while this all makes sense to us, it is unlikely to impress the jury, because the jury is very unlikely to ever hear about it. We have no real way to connect Robinson to Walter’s DNA work except our theory. We can’t even factually prove that Walter was working in the weeks before his death, no less on something momentous.
We are going to have to try to get Corvallis to testify. He’ll refuse; he already as much as said so tonight. But Hatchet can compel his testimony, albeit with assurances that he does not have to reveal classified, national security information. It’s by no means definite that we can get Hatchet to go along, since we have little to advance as an offer of proof.
But we’ll certainly try, and Kevin goes off to prepare a legal brief to present. Kevin is far better at this aspect of the law than I am, which is damning him with faint praise. The truth is, he’s pretty much the best at it of anyone I’ve ever been around.
Among the things about this that bother me, and one that has bothered me from the beginning, is why such a great effort was made to frame Steven. These were murders that seem to have been committed from a distance by powerful entities, and it’s hard to picture them as having been solved. For example, I would strongly doubt that an arrest will be made in the Robinson murder; nor do I believe that anyone will be framed for it. Why pick on Steven?
I also can’t quite pin down Robinson’s role in all this. It seems logical that he was Timmerman’s way to connect to the type of people who would pay huge dollars for the right to use the synthetic DNA, probably to make biofuels. But Robinson would have made a fortune as well, so it seems unlikely he would have killed Walter.
More to the point, why would anybody have murdered Walter? If his work was the golden goose, why kill it? The only thing that comes to mind is an entity that was threatened by that work, perhaps someone who did not want the energy status quo threatened. But we are light-years away from making that connection in the real world, and the trial is winding down.
I call Richard and inform him of what happened at Robinson’s house, and of my intention to try to get Corvallis to testify. The call is a courtesy similar to those he’s extended to me in the past, but it in no way has a negative impact on our position. If I sprang the issue on him in court, he would just ask for a delay to prepare a response, and Hatchet would undoubtedly give it to him.
“Have you decided what to do about Waggy?” Kevin asks.
“Nothing for the time being,” I say. “With Robinson gone the pressure is off, but if Waggy ‘shows up’ again, Hatchet could get on my back.”
Once Kevin leaves I sit down in the den and do what I frequently do during a trial. I take the discovery documents and reread them. There are often things that I find that I’ve missed in previous readings, but that’s not the main reason I do it. It keeps my mind alert to the details, so that if something comes up during court, I can remember it instantly and react.
> I usually do it in segments; each night I’ll read everything related to one particular area of evidence. Tonight I pore through everything about the night of Walter Timmerman’s murder, including the forensics on the scene, the phone call Walter made to Steven, the location of Steven’s car, et cetera.
Almost every time I do this I am bothered by the sensation that I am missing something, but in fact I rarely am. Tonight I have the same feeling, though the information is fairly dry and straightforward.
The Mets are playing the Dodgers on the West Coast tonight, and I turn on the game while I continue to read. The next thing I know Laurie is waking me, and a glance at the TV shows it to be the eighth inning. I slept through the first seven, and since fourteen runs have been scored, those seven innings couldn’t have been very quickly played. Unfortunately, the Dodgers scored eleven of the runs.
Laurie leads me into the bedroom, and within five minutes we’re both back asleep. She hasn’t even decided what to do, and already we’re an old married couple.
I get to court early and bring Steven up to date on everything that has transpired. Since he doesn’t have access to the media in his cell, he has not heard about Robinson’s death, and he is stunned.
When my meeting with Steven is over, an FBI agent, as promised, is waiting for me with a typed copy of my statement from last night for me to sign. I do so, and then make him wait while I have the court clerk make a Xerox of it for me.
Before the morning session begins, Richard informs me that he will be finishing his case today. That case is basically done, and the witnesses he calls will simply dot his I’s and cross his T’s.
His first witness is a prime example. A representative of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority named Helene Markowitz, she is merely there to testify that Steven’s car went through the Lincoln Tunnel at seven forty-five that evening, thirty minutes after he received the phone call from his father.
“How can you be so precise about the time?” Richard asks.
“He has an E-ZPass chip on his car, so that tolls are automatically paid by his credit card without his having to stop. It records the time he goes through the tollbooth.”
New Tricks ac-7 Page 20