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