New Tricks by David Rosenfelt Page B

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,