I called ahead and told him that I wanted to discuss Walter Timmerman, though I did not mention the strange e-mail that Sam found. Jacoby agreed, but alerted me that he regarded his interactions with Timmerman as confidential.
Crescent Hills Forensics Laboratory is located in Teaneck, not far from the campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University. The outside looks like a white spaceship, with a flat, oval, sweeping roof sitting atop a mostly glass building like a white sombrero. It seems to have been the work of a blindfolded architect who was given the mandate to make the building as modern as possible, so that clients would assume the work done inside was state of the art. He was obviously instructed not to be concerned if the building turned out to be embarrassingly ugly.
Jacoby’s office is a study in chrome and glass, with not a test tube or Bunsen burner to be found. He is dressed in a perfectly tailored suit that certainly never knew the indignity of spending a moment on a clothing store rack. This guy has his clothes custom-made as surely as I don’t. And if he’s going to roll up his sleeves and get to work, he’s going to have to take off his gold cuff links first.
I accept his offer of a glass of Swedish mineral water, and then ask him about his business relationship with Walter Timmerman. He smiles condescendingly and then shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Carpenter, but our communications are confidential.”
“I wasn’t asking about specifics,” I say, though I’m certainly planning to.
“The line is hard to draw,” he says, “so I prefer not to say anything. Even though Mr. Timmerman is deceased, our reputation is such that-”
This is getting me nowhere, so I interrupt. “Were you Mr. Timmerman’s personal physician?”
“No.”
“His lawyer?”
“Certainly not. But-”
“Are you a priest? A rabbi?”
“Mr. Carpenter, Walter Timmerman was a close, personal friend of mine, and I will honor his memory. You need to understand that you cannot come in here and bully me.”
“Noted,” I say, as I prepare to bully him. “Now, here’s what you need to understand. I have a few questions that I need answers for. It will be relatively painless for you. The alternative is that I serve you with a subpoena and force you to sit through a full-blown deposition, which will feel like a verbal rectal exam, conducted with a rusty spatula.”
He doesn’t say anything for a few moments, no doubt considering his options and visualizing the spatula. I decide to continue.
“Dr. Jacoby, why did Walter Timmerman send you his own DNA to be tested?”
He reacts to this with apparent shock. “How did you know about that?”
“It came up as part of the investigation.”
He sags slightly, which I take as a sign that he is going to drop his resistance to answering my questions. “I’m not sure why he sent me that. I asked him, but he never responded. I found it to be something of an affront, both professional and personally.”
“An affront in what way?”
“Well, it seemed to be a test of sorts, yet he couldn’t think we would do anything but pass it. Frankly, it was slightly bizarre.”
“Could he have just been wanting to get his own DNA on file?”
Jacoby shakes his head. “No, he had done that long ago, and he wouldn’t have forgotten that. This was a simple match of DNA in pristine condition. There is not a laboratory in the country that would have missed it.”
I have no more idea what to make of this than Jacoby. I could certainly be wasting my time on it as well; it likely has nothing whatsoever to do with Timmerman’s murder. “And the DNA was absolutely identical?” I ask.
“A perfect match.”
“You’re positive?”
He looks at me with clear disdain. “Mr. Carpenter, do you know anything about DNA?”
“I wouldn’t know it if it came in here and bit me on the ass.”
He frowns. “Well, my associates and I know plenty about it. But we were novices compared with Walter Timmerman. Think of us as watchmakers, with DNA as the watch. We understand watches, we can fix them, we know what makes them tick. But Walter Timmerman knew why they tick, he understood them at their core. He knew that the DNA he sent us was his, he knew it was uncontaminated, and he knew that we would find it as such. Why he sent it is a mystery we will probably never understand.”
“But he must have had a reason.”
“On that we can agree,” he says. “Walter Timmerman had a reason for everything he did.”
On the way back to the hospital, I try to make sense of what Jacoby told me. He was certainly telling the truth; the e-mail confirms that. But he was not able to shed any light on the mystery, and therefore I did not accomplish much of anything.
One of the most frustrating things about working on a case like this is that we are obligated to follow every investigative road, not knowing where it will lead. Very often we don’t find out that it has no relevance to our case until we get to the end of that road. Worse yet, sometimes the road has no end, and we just keep moving forward blindly and unproductively, wasting valuable time and resources.
There is no evidence, not a shred, that the DNA dustup between Walter Timmerman and Robert Jacoby had anything to do with his murder, or that of his wife. All it provides me with is a hunch, and a road to go down.
Which is better than nothing, but not by much.
LAURIE IS COMING HOME.
With special equipment, and her team of therapists, and me, and two squad cars that Pete Stanton is sending along for protection. It will be a glorious procession down Park Avenue in Paterson.
Laurie said that Dr. Norville is delighted with her progress, though it is hard for me to picture him delighted. She swears that he even smiled once. A little.
He told her that she has at least two months of therapy ahead of her, but that over time she should regain full movement and normal speech. She starts to cry as she tells me this; it has obviously been an incredibly emotional and trying experience for her.
I turn away and pretend to help her pack so she won’t see me tearing up as well. Crying is for girls; besides, I’ve been there, done that while Laurie was in a coma.
Laurie understands that she will not be able to work for at least the two months, and she has so notified the city manager in Findlay. Her second in command will fill in, no doubt adequately, since Findlay is not exactly Dodge City. Except for the aberrational murders that I went up there to investigate a couple of years ago, the closest Findlay has come to violence in the streets was when word got out that Brett Favre was going to the Jets.
“Andy, are you okay with my staying at your house through all this?” she asks.
I think for a moment, trying to search my memory to see if I’ve ever heard a stupider question. None comes to mind.
“Let’s try it for an hour or two and see if it works out,” I say.
“I’m serious,” she says. “It will cause some turmoil.” There are some sounds that she is still having trouble saying, and the oy sound is one of them. It sounds like turmill. I can see the frustration in her face as she hears herself.
“There is nothing that would give me more pleasure than you spending two months at our house.”
I’m sure she noticed that I said “our house,” but she doesn’t correct me. In my pathetic little world, that qualifies as a damn good sign.
Laurie is very shaky on her feet, so she doesn’t resist the hospital’s policy that patients must use a wheelchair on departure. They will let me do the pushing, and once we make final arrangements for the therapist’s equipment to arrive, we’re off.
I feel a hell of a lot better leaving than I did the night I arrived.
When we get home, Laurie wants to walk into the house under her own power, though she holds on to my arm as she does. I help her up the steps and into bed, and I can see that the effort has exhausted her.