“Glad to hear that,” I say. “Are you going to arrest him?”
“His lawyer has been notified and is going to bring him in tomorrow morning so that he can surrender himself and avoid the perp walk,” Richard says. “Money has its privileges.”
I can tell Richard is unhappy with this arrangement; he thinks Sykes should be publicly arrested just like Steven was. But obviously word came down for it to be handled that way, so there’s nothing he can do. For that reason I don’t voice my own complaint.
Steven’s heard enough of the call that I can’t keep it from him. “They got him?” he asks.
I nod. “Looks like it. He’s turning himself in tomorrow morning.”
Steven makes a fist in satisfaction. “Boy, I was hoping for that. I was afraid it wouldn’t happen, but I was really hoping.”
“This is not something you should talk about until it actually happens. It might get out to the media, but it shouldn’t come from you.”
Steven nods. “No problem.”
When Steven leaves, I tell Laurie the news about Sykes, and my hope that he will confess and fill in the blanks in my knowledge about all that has happened.
“What do you think the chances are of that?” Laurie asks.
“Zero.”
I WAKE UP IN THE MORNING and turn on the news. Thomas Sykes’s picture is on the screen, next to a talking anchorman who actually looks a little like him. I’m not surprised to see the photograph, until I realize that it is only seven AM, much earlier than I would have thought Sykes would turn himself in. Maybe he wanted to do it with as little fanfare as possible.
“Sykes’s body was found by his attorney, Lawrence Wilborn,” the anchorman says. “Our information is that Wilborn called nine-one-one immediately, but that Sykes was pronounced dead at the scene. The police are not commenting, but it is believed that the cause of death was a self-inflicted bullet to the head.”
I immediately call Richard, who does not answer either his office or cell phone. I don’t know his home 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.