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