David Rosenfelt - New Tricks

I nod. “You got that right.”

“Who hired him?” he asks.

“I have no idea. But he was paid half a million dollars for three hits.”

“Three?”

“Timmerman, his wife, and their dog.”

“Their dog?” Corvallis asks, again not showing any surprise.

“Yes, a Bernese mountain dog puppy, the descendant of a recently deceased champion.”

“And Childs was definitely targeting the dog?” Corvallis asks.

“Yes. Any idea why that would be?”

“I’m afraid that’s something I can’t answer.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“At the end of the day, does that matter?”

Actually, it does. Especially to me and Waggy. But I’m clearly not going to get any more out of Corvallis, at least not until I have something more to trade, so I look to end the meeting.

“Well, this has been a true joy,” I say. “Hard to believe it’s ending so soon.”

I expect a sarcastic retort from Corvallis, but he surprises me. “Why did you have lunch with Charles Robinson?”

“I have lunch with a lot of people.”

“I’m only asking you about one of them,” he says.

“He’s trying to get custody of a dog.”

“The dog Childs was sent to kill?”

I nod. “The very one.”

“Did he say why?”

“He wants to train him to become a champion show dog.”

“What did you say?”

“I said no, and he said, ‘See you in court.’ Why are you interested in Robinson?”

Corvallis looks at Cindy, then back at me, and smiles. “This has been a true joy,” he says. “Hard to believe it’s ending so soon.”

As soon as I get back to the house, I meet with Sam Willis and Kevin, instructing them to find out as much as they can about Charles Robinson. If the FBI is interested in him for reasons having nothing to do with Waggy, then I am as well.

Waggy and Tara sit in on the meeting, but they seem preoccupied with gnawing on a pair of rawhide chewies. If Waggy is familiar with Robinson, he doesn’t let on.

The only time Waggy looks up is when he finishes the chewie. He sees that we’re busy talking and Tara is still chomping away on hers. Since nobody is paying any attention to him, he starts rolling around on his back, playing some kind of weird game that only he understands. Every once in a while he rolls over and jumps to his feet, as if something has interrupted him. Then he flips back on to his back to resume the game.

Life for Waggy is never boring.

“IS THE DEFENSE READY?” is Hatchet’s question for me. The presiding judge asks that at the opening of every trial, and I have answered “yes” every time. And every single one of those times I have been lying.

No defense team, at least when I’ve been in charge of it, has ever been ready. I always want more time, more information, and more exculpatory evidence. But I never have it, so I just always answer “yes.”

I have coached and prepared Steven as well as I can for what is about to take place, and he claims to be ready. But he isn’t. He’s going to watch and listen as the state of New Jersey, using all its power, attempts to take his life and liberty away. No sane person can be fully ready for that.

“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.