number, but I’m sure he’s not at home anyway. Richard and everybody he works with is going to have a tough week coming up, as everybody points the finger at everyone else for letting Thomas Sykes sit at home and blow his brains out. Richard was opposed to the move, but I’m sure he’ll still be in the line of fire.
My next call is to Pete Stanton. Sykes’s house is not in his jurisdiction, so he is not directly involved, but he promises to call around and see what he can find out.
He calls back in fifteen minutes. “Sykes called his lawyer at four AM and told him that he’d better get over there right away. The lawyer lives only ten minutes away, but Sykes was already dead. One bullet, gun pressed to the temple. Definitely appears to be a suicide.”
I thank Pete and hang up. Sykes’s taking his own life is not particularly hard to believe. He had to know he was facing virtually certain life in prison, so this would have represented the easy way out to him.
Sykes’s death doesn’t exactly leave me bemoaning the injustice of it all. I have no doubt that he was a murderer, and his departure will not leave a void that society must fill.
But I can’t say I’m happy about it. I wanted answers. If Walter Timmerman’s blood and brains splattered over Sykes, then he must have pulled the trigger. Why not Childs? Why hire Childs to blow up the house and kill Waggy, but not shoot Timmerman?
I also want to know what role Charles Robinson played in all this, and who killed him. If Sykes shot Walter, blew up Diana, and poisoned Robinson, he’s an unusually versatile murderer.
And did Sykes know about Walter’s work and kill for it, or was this all about his money? It seems like an unusual coincidence for Sykes to have gone on this murder spree just at the time that Walter was working secretly with synthetic DNA. Walter’s had all that money a long time; why kill him now?
I verbalize all of this to Laurie, who has been watching the coverage on television. She has no answers to my questions, but adds another little twist. “I don’t think Sykes killed himself,” she says.
“Why not?”
“Mostly it’s my instinct,” she says. “But I can try to explain it. If Sykes was thinking logically, he would have thought there was a decent chance to beat the charge. Steven beat the same charge, with much more evidence against him. Sykes had a lot of money and good lawyers. And he was a person of privilege, used to getting what he wanted. I don’t think he would have given up this fast.”
“Maybe he wasn’t thinking logically,” I say.
“Then he wouldn’t have called his lawyer. What did it gain him? He wasn’t hoping the lawyer would stop him, because it sounds like he died within minutes of making the call. But calling the lawyer made it look more like a suicide. If I’m right, that’s what the real killer wanted.”
“This is fascinating,” I say. “I hope you’re getting to the part where you tell me who the real killer is.”
She smiles. “I’m afraid you’ll have to tune in next week for that. But I will give you a clue.”
“Please do.”
“Look for someone who has a connection to all the main players involved… Timmerman, Sykes, and Robinson.”
It’s amazing how I can focus on a problem forever without getting anywhere, and then somebody says something that completely clears away the fog. Laurie’s right, I need to be looking for someone with a connection to the big three. And I just may know who that is.
“Robert Jacoby,” I say.
“The guy who runs the DNA lab?”
“Yes. He knew Walter and Sykes very well, they were his country-club buddies. What if he realized what Walter was doing when he sent in his own DNA? Our expert said he could have realized it was synthetic if he knew what he was looking for. Well, maybe he did.”
“And went after it for himself,” she says.
“Right. He would know exactly what to do with it, and how to profit from it. And he could have used Robinson in the same fashion Timmerman did, to connect with the people who would pay for it.”
“So why kill Robinson?”
“Maybe he went off the reservation and tried to screw his partner. I can’t answer that yet. But what if Sykes, Robinson, and Jacoby were in it together? When Sykes was going to go down for the murders, Jacoby thought Sykes would rat him out, so he killed him as well.”
“It’s all possible, Andy. But it’s also completely made up; we just created an entire conspiracy out of our own heads.”
I smile. “But we’ve got two pretty good heads.”
“Sykes could have killed himself.”
“I have to assume he didn’t. Otherwise I have nowhere to take this.”
“You don’t really have to take it anywhere, you know. You won the case.”
I think about that for a moment. The way I do my job, the way I’ve always done my job, is to think of it as a competition, a game. I won’t feel like I’ve won the game unless I’ve figured it out. Laurie already knows this about me, so I smile and say, “The game isn’t over yet.”
“And if you win the game it means a murderer gets caught,” she says.
“That’s what makes it a really great game.”
I CALL AGENT CORVALLIS and request a meeting. He doesn’t seem particularly enamored of the idea, and it takes a veiled threat that I will publicly discuss everything I know about Walter Timmerman’s work, and the FBI’s involvement in it, before he agrees. He says that he’ll be out of town tomorrow, but he’ll give me fifteen minutes the day after.
I file papers with the probate court with my decision to award Waggy to Steven. The court accepts it within forty-eight hours, and of course there is no reason not to. Diana Timmerman and Charles Robinson are no longer around to contest it, and Steven is the heir to the rest of his father’s fortune.
A delighted Steven picks Waggy up, and I see he’s already stopped at a pet store to get dog food, dishes, beds, and toys. I should mention that he’ll also need about a ton of doggy Ritalin, but I’ll let him find that out for himself.
As Steven and his new best friend prepare to leave, Tara looks on fairly impassively. Life for her is going to get more peaceful, but also more boring. I’m not sure how she feels about that, and it’s hard to tell based on her interaction with Waggy. They just sniff each other a little bit, and then Tara decides to lie down.
“Wags,” I say, “it’s been great having you. Feel free to visit anytime. My home is your home.”
I go to give him a hug, but he will have none of it, wriggling free and jumping into the backseat of the car. Waggy has never been much of a sentimentalist.
Steven has thanked me about four hundred times since the trial, but feels compelled to do so even more effusively this time. He adds a hug, not knowing I’m not a fan of guy hugs. Waggy and I have that in common.
“What are your plans for him?” I ask. “Are you going to show him?”
“No. Waggy and I talked about it,” he says. “We’ve decided he’s not going to be a champion. He’s just going to have fun and be a dog.”
I’m glad to hear that, although I’m pretty sure Waggy would find a way to have fun no matter what he did.
I remind Steven to be careful with Waggy, since we can’t be one hundred percent positive that whoever went after him won’t try it again. Hopefully it was Sykes. He promises to be alert, and they’re off to New York. Within a couple of weeks, Waggy will be making disparaging New Jersey jokes like all other New Yorkers.
Once Steven leaves, I head for the city myself, where I’m meeting with Corvallis at the FBI’s Midtown office. I park the car on West 49th Street in one of the ubiquitous rip-off parking lots. If Corvallis really gives me just fifteen minutes, then I’ll be paying about four bucks a minute.
Corvallis starts off the meeting by telling me why he shouldn’t be meeting with me. “You’ve made my life more difficult,” he says. “If not for you, Robinson might still be alive, and we could still be watching him. But hell, you’re just doing your job, and you’re not a bad guy, so…”
I put my hands to my eyes. “Stop it,” I say, “I promised I wouldn’t get emotional.”
He laughs. “All right, what the hell do you want?”
