New Tricks (27 page)

“Not knowing what the hell you are talking about, I’ll say yes.”

I proceed to tell her everything I know, and everything I suspect, about the Timmerman case. I’m glad to do so, because I’m
pretty far out on a limb here, and Cindy is really smart. If she thinks I’m way off base, she’ll tell me so and show me how.

She doesn’t. Instead she just says, “You could be right about this, Andy. I’ll call Corvallis; when do you want to meet?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is Saturday,” she says.

“Boy, you FBI people are really sharp. Cindy, I would like to get moving on this before the jury delivers a verdict.”

“Okay, I’ll call you back.”

When I get off the phone, I update Laurie on what she said, and my request for a meeting tomorrow.

“If you get the meeting, I want to go with you,” she says.

“Why?”

“You’re starting to get into potentially dangerous territory, and dealing with danger is not exactly your forte.”

“Danger is my middle name,” I say.

“Robert is your middle name.”

“No, I changed it while you were in Wisconsin. I thought Danger would be more appealing to chicks.”

“I knew there was something exciting about you, I just couldn’t place it.”

I finally agree to let Laurie come with me to the meeting, because she’s smart and I value her opinion. Also, because I really
hate saying no to Laurie. At least I think I would; I’ve never actually tried it.

Laurie tells me that she taught Waggy a trick, which she wants to show me. We go down to the basement, and she tells me to
get him excited, which I do by throwing a tennis ball. He is firmly into his nut-job routine when she demonstrates the trick.

She puts her hand toward the floor, palm-down, and says, “Quiet time, Waggy. Quiet time.”

He doesn’t even bother to look up, just continues to roll around with the ball, in wild excitement.

Laurie makes her voice even sterner. “Quiet time, Waggy. Quiet time.”

Waggy yelps a few times as the ball rolls away from him, and then leaps on it, grabbing it in his mouth and violently shaking
it and his head from side to side.

“It’s a great trick,” I say. “But you might want to perfect it before you do it on stage.”

“Do you want to watch a movie?” she asks, ignoring the dig.

“Did you teach Waggy to load a DVD also?”

“That’s for tomorrow,” she says.

We go back upstairs and watch
The Natural,
one of Laurie’s favorite movies. She’s not a big sports fan, but for some reason she loves sports movies. We watch the flick,
and drink some wine, and pet Tara. It is perhaps my favorite way to spend time, not counting the NFL.

When we’re finished we go upstairs and make love, which on second thought is my favorite way to spend time, including the
NFL.

Afterward Laurie looks at me, probably surprised that I haven’t fallen asleep within eight seconds. “What are you thinking?”
she asks.

“That I want you to move back here and marry me.” These are words that I’ve said a thousand times, but they’re usually in
my head, and never actually come out through my mouth. This time I involuntarily speak them, loud and clear, and even Tara
looks over in surprise.

“Excuse me?” Laurie asks, meaning she didn’t hear me the first time or she wants to give me an easy out to pretend I never
said it.

Since I have no way of retreating, I push ahead, rephrasing it as a question. “Will you move back here and marry me?”

Ten seconds that feel like ten years go by before she answers. “Is it all or nothing?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if I wanted to, could I choose one without the other?”

Is it possible she’s considering this? Or even taking it seriously? “I don’t know; I didn’t think it through. But let’s see…
you can choose one, but only if it’s the moving-back-here one.”

“Can I think about this?”

“Sure. I’ll go downstairs and have a sandwich.”

“I don’t mean think for a few minutes, Andy. I mean think it through.”

“Sure. No problem,” I say. “How long do you think it will take? Are we talking hours, or months?”

“Andy… ,” she admonishes.

“Okay, sorry. I don’t want to blow this. But if we meet with the FBI agent, can I introduce you as my fiancée?”

“No.”

“Laurie, he’s an FBI agent. We can’t just tell him that we’re sleeping together.”

“Then we’ll stop sleeping together,” she says.

“On the other hand, what business is it of his? What is he, the sex police? I’m sick of government intruding in the bedrooms
of private citizens like us.”

“Andy…”

“What?”

“I love you. And thank you for asking me to marry you. Nobody’s ever asked me that before.”

“I’ve tried to a bunch of times, but I could never quite get up the nerve. I always assumed you’d say no.”

“Maybe I will,” she says, softly.

“And maybe you won’t.”

C
INDY CALLS ME
at eight AM to tell me that Corvallis will see me this afternoon.

She will not be joining us, possibly because Corvallis knows we’ll be talking specifics, and she isn’t on the case. If she
is upset or offended about it, she hides it well. It is simply how the bureau functions. I promise her that I’ll tell her
everything that goes on.

Laurie still wants to go with me, and we agree that I will introduce her as my investigator, without mentioning that she is
a law enforcement officer in Wisconsin. That might complicate matters for Corvallis, so there’s no point even going there.

This time Corvallis is all business. He seems to understand from last time that he can’t push me around or intimidate me,
and he makes no effort to do so. He seems fine with Laurie being there, but he does not have any of his staff sit in with
us.

“You’ve got the floor,” he says.

“Okay. Part of what I’m going to say I know for a fact, and part is what I believe. Just so you’ll know, regardless of what
you do, I’m going to act as if what I believe is absolutely true. It’s the only way I can defend my client.”

I continue, “Walter Timmerman was working to develop synthetic DNA, which is why you were watching him so carefully. The implications
of what he was doing were enormous, for reasons I don’t have to tell you.”

Corvallis doesn’t react at all to what I am saying; he just stares impassively and listens.

“He went to Charles Robinson, a friend of his, to help him benefit from his discovery. My assumption is that Robinson was
going to use his connections in the energy industry to capitalize on what could be an incredible new source of energy, one
that could have a real impact on the geopolitical balance in the world.

“I don’t know if Charles Robinson had Walter Timmerman killed. I doubt that he did, though it’s possible they had a falling-out;
perhaps one of them felt that he was being betrayed by the other. It’s also possible that another party, perhaps one with
an interest in maintaining the energy status quo, decided to remove Timmerman from the picture before he could complete his
work.

“Once Timmerman was dead, the killers for some reason wanted all evidence of his work destroyed, so no one else could get
it. That is why they blew up the house, and that is why they tried to kill the dog. Because the dog is a product of this invention”—I
can’t help but smile—“and has a high energy level of his own.

“So I’m not sure of Robinson’s role in the murders, though the fact that he wanted possession of the dog is incriminating.
He could well have planned to kill the dog, or at the very least see to it that his DNA was never tested. But the dog was
taken from him, and at this point his whereabouts are unknown.”

Corvallis speaks for the first time. “So what are you proposing?” he asks.

“I believe that whether or not Robinson is a murderer, he is at the center of this. I believe I can scare him with what I’ve
learned, and maybe shake him into admitting something that both of us can use.”

“How?”

“By meeting with him and confronting him. You can fit me with a wire, and you can be near the scene if things go bad.”

He turns to Laurie, who to this point has not said a word. “And you’d be there as well?”

She shakes her head. “No, Robinson would be more likely to deal if it’s just Andy. But I’ll be with you, nearby, just in case.”

He shakes his head. “We work alone.”

“Not this time you don’t,” I say. “Ms. Collins has my full confidence, which at this point I can’t quite say for you.”

He thinks for a few moments. “Okay… I’ll be in touch.”

“When?” I ask.

“I have people I need to clear this with.”

I nod. “And I have a client I need to defend, so put a rush on it.”

Laurie and I leave, and once we get in the car she says, “He’ll go for it.”

I nod. “I think so, too. And if I was wrong about my theory, he’d have thrown us out of the office.”

She nods her agreement.

“You were quiet in there,” I say. “What were you doing… thinking about what we talked about last night?”

“Andy…”

“Because there’s a lot to think about,” I say. “Flower girls, bridesmaids, showers, shit like that. I think I’m going to have
Tara give me away.”

“No one has to give the man away.”

“Oh.”

“Andy, are you going to keep bringing this up?”

“Probably.”

“Then I’m going to check into a hotel.”

“Bring what up?”

R
ICHARD CALLS A STRING OF WITNESSES
who are so boring, the jury has trouble staying awake.

First up is Patrolman Marty Harris, who gave Steven’s car a parking ticket on the street outside Mario’s restaurant in Paterson
on the night of the murder. The restaurant is located just two blocks from the exact spot where the murder took place, a fact
that Richard uses twenty minutes and two maps to demonstrate.

The ticket was written at nine thirty-seven, as noted by Patrolman Harris on his ticket. This fits in quite well with the
estimated time of death, which was around ten o’clock, a connection that Richard makes sure the jury understands.

When he turns him over to me after about an hour of tedium, there’s really nothing about what he said for me to question.
So I decide to question him about what he didn’t say.

“Patrolman Harris, where was Steven Timmerman while you were writing the ticket?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are most people who park in that space usually in the restaurant, since that’s the only place open on that street at night?”
I ask.

“I would assume so.”

“So you didn’t see Steven Timmerman, before or after writing the ticket?”

“No.”

“Did you see his father, Walter Timmerman?”

“No.”

“Mr. Wallace showed a map, pointing out where the car was parked and where the body was found. Are you familiar with that
area? Have you ever driven or walked by there?”

“Yes. Many times.”

“The body was found behind a convenience store. If I asked you to drive to that store tonight, could you find it?”

“Of course,” he says.

“Where would you park?”

I can see his mind racing as he contemplates the mistake that many witnesses make. He has said nothing wrong, but he believes
that his next truthful answer will hurt the prosecution’s side, so he tries to think of a way out. Of course, he should not
be trying to manipulate matters, he should just tell the truth.

Which ultimately he does. “I would park in front of the convenience store.”

“Not at Mario’s restaurant, two blocks away?” I ask.

“No.”

“Let me present you with a hypothetical. Suppose you were going to murder someone who was in your car, and you were planning
to commit the murder behind the convenience store. Obviously you wouldn’t want to be seen with that person, since that would
make you a likely suspect after the body was found. Would that make you more or less likely to part two blocks away and walk
with him?”

“I would park near the convenience store,” he says.

“Thank you. Me too.”

Next up is a clerk from the phone company named Nina Alvarez, who testifies about the phone call from Walter Timmerman to
Steven on the night of the murder. Steven had also told me about the call, but we could not find it in Walter’s records. The
explanation for that, as Ms. Alvarez quickly points out, is that it was not made from Timmerman’s private cell phone, but
rather from his business cell phone, listed under the account of Timco.