David Rosenfelt - New Tricks

“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?”

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.”