New Tricks (25 page)

“It’s good that it’s hypothetical,” Kevin says, “because if you were really to kidnap him, you would be committing a felony
and could face prison time, to say nothing of the loss of your license to practice law.”

Everybody in the room knows I am serious about this, and everybody also knows that Kevin is right. Taking Waggy will not be
fun and games; it is a serious crime that I am considering.

On the other hand, two attempts have been made on Waggy’s young life, and he is now very possibly also in the control of the
man who has ordered those attempts. My desire not to break the law is strong, but not quite as strong as my desire to prevent
this dog from being killed.

“You’re certainly right about that,” I say. “So let’s leave it as a hypothetical, and let’s start by you describing the training
facility where Waggy is being kept. Take your time, and do it as completely as you can.”

Kevin describes the place in extraordinary detail. It is a large indoor facility about twenty yards from Potter’s house. It
has twenty holding areas, larger than normal dog runs but too small to be called rooms, and each has an entrance accessible
from outside. Unfortunately, he has no idea which one Waggy will be kept in.

Once Kevin is finished, I suggest that he leave. Kevin is far too dedicated to the law to participate in a crime, no matter
how worthy he considers its purpose. He seems grateful for the opportunity to get out now, but cautions me to be very careful.

Once Kevin is gone, I ask, “If I were to announce a change in this from hypothetical to real, would either of you want to
leave?” I’ve already talked to Laurie about this, and she has great reservations. She’s a police officer, but she’s a dog
lover, and at this moment I don’t know what she’ll decide.

“I’m staying,” she says.

“Marcus?” I ask.

He nods. “We get the dog.”

“Good. I thank you, and Waggy thanks you.”

We spend the next few hours planning the operation, and though it seems like a solid approach, I’m feeling very uncomfortable
about it. I’m going to be crossing a line I’ve never crossed before, and it is a very disconcerting feeling.

Laurie will have no active part in the kidnapping; it will just be Marcus and me. Getting in and out would ordinarily not
present a major problem, but it will be complicated by the dogs barking like crazy when we arrive on the scene. This will
no doubt be exacerbated by the fact that we will have to search room by room until we happen upon Waggy.

The plan is to bring Waggy back here, at least until we can figure out something else to do with him. I don’t want to involve
more people in this, so asking Willie to take him is out. For the time being he can stay inside, with quick walks out to a
small secluded yard on one side near the back of the house, and Marcus will stay around to ward off any intruders.

But first we have to get him, and we wait until cover of darkness to do so. It is Marcus’s idea to bring Tara with us; it’s
possible that her sense of smell will lead us to Waggy’s room, so that the operation can be done much more quickly.

The three of us get to the house at almost midnight. It is in an isolated area of Mahwah, and there is little doubt that Potter
chose this secluded setting so that there would not be neighbors for her barking dogs to annoy. Obviously, the lack of neighbors
works very much in our favor.

We all had different ideas for how to pull this off, but Laurie came up with the best one. We park about two hundred yards
away, and both put on gloves. Marcus gets out by himself and throws a few rocks close enough so that the dogs can hear them.
They start to bark in unison, and within two minutes lights go on in Pam Potter’s house.

From my vantage point at the car, I can see her go out to the dog compound and look around, trying to see what set them off.
When she can’t find any obvious disturbance, she goes back into her house. Within another minute, the lights go back off in
the house.

Tara and I start walking toward the compound, with Tara on a leash. I assume Marcus is executing the next part of the plan,
which is to place devices on the front and back doors of the house that will prevent those doors from being opened from the
inside. If Potter gets up again to check on what is happening with the dogs, she’ll find she can’t get out of her house. By
the time she realizes it and calls 911, we hope to be long gone with Waggy.

Marcus meets us about fifty yards from the house. “Did you lock her in?” I whisper.

“Yuh.”

“Let’s go.” We move toward the compound with the dogs in it. In the moonlight, it appears to be exactly as Kevin described
it.

“Tara, we need you to find Waggy. Find Waggy.” As I say it, I cringe with some embarrassment; I feel like Timmy talking to
Lassie. But Tara wags her tail, and we head for the dogs.

We’re about fifteen yards from the compound when the dogs sense our presence and start to bark. Tara leads us down a long
row of rooms, and I’m afraid she’s just checking out the place, not Waggy-hunting. But suddenly she stops, and there’s Waggy,
tail pounding and reveling in the excitement of it all.

Marcus takes out a device and breaks the lock, then steps in and slaps a leash on Waggy. As he does so, I can see the lights
go on in the house again. Within moments Potter is going to find out that she’s a prisoner, and will call 911. It suddenly
strikes me as a mistake that we didn’t cut the phone line; I assume that Marcus could have easily accomplished that.

Within seconds we’re running to the car, and we get in and drive away, with Marcus and me in the front seat, and Tara and
Waggy in the back. I’m exhilarated by what we have accomplished; there’s a Bonnie-and-Clyde feeling to it. The only problem
is that I want to be Clyde, but Marcus would be rather miscast for the role of Bonnie.

I listen intently for sirens all the way home, but there are none. When we get there, Laurie is waiting anxiously for us.
We update her on how flawlessly her plan went, and then Marcus and Waggy head down to their hiding place in the basement,
while Laurie, Tara, and I go upstairs to bed.

I lie in bed for an hour, unable to sleep. What we did tonight almost seems surreal. But it wasn’t. In fact, the justice system
has some very real terms for it, like “breaking and entering,” and “grand larceny.”

Laurie wakes up and sees me with my eyes open. “Can’t sleep?”

“No,” I say. “Not so far.”

“Does the fact that you’re now a felon have anything to do with it?”

“No. I’m just planning my next job. I’m thinking maybe a bank.”

“Good night, Andy.” “Good night, Bonnie.”

T
HEY’RE GROWING A STRANGE CROP
of college professors these days, and Dr. Stanley McCarty is as strange as they come. First of all, he looks like he’s about
seventeen years old, with hair halfway down to his shoulders. He is wearing jeans and sneakers, with a white buttondown shirt
that is buttoned all the way to the neck.

When Sam introduces him to me, he doesn’t make any gesture to shake hands, but instead says “hey” and walks past me into the
house. He goes to the large-screen TV on the wall in the den and spends about three minutes examining it, even seeming to
caress it. Then he says, “Very cool,” and comes back to Sam and me.

I’ve got a feeling that if I bring him in as an expert witness, Hatchet will hold him in contempt before he even opens his
mouth.

“So my man here says you need to talk to me,” McCarty says, and I have to assume that Sam has earned the designation “my man”
in record time.

“I do,” I say. “Thanks for coming over.”

“No prob.”

“You work with DNA?” I ask.

He smiles. “The whole world works with DNA.”

“But it’s your specialty?”

“Hey, I never thought of myself as having a specialty, but let’s go with genetics.”

“Did you know Walter Timmerman?” I ask.

“Met him once. Didn’t really know him, which is okay, because he didn’t know me, either.”

By this point in the conversation, Sam and I have made eye contact at least a dozen times. If malicious eye contact could
kill, Sam’s song-talking days would be over for good.

“I need to find out what Timmerman was working on when he died,” I say.

“You got his notes?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“What do you have?”

“Pretty much nothing.”

“Nothing?” he asks.

“Basically. At least no real facts.”

McCarty looks at Sam, as if I’m the lunatic in the room. He may be right. Then he turns back to me. “You see the problem here,
right?”

I nod as I hand him a copy of the e-mail that Robert Jacoby sent to Timmerman, expressing surprise that he had sent him his
own DNA to test. “Take a look at this.”

McCarty takes the e-mail and reads it. He’s either the slowest reader in America, or he’s reading it a number of times. Finally,
he nods. “Okay. What else?”

“The FBI had an entire task force assigned to Timmerman, all because of what he was working on. They said it was important
to national security.”

McCarty just nods, silently, so I go on. “And I believe that Timmerman was murdered because of that same work.”

“Keep talking,” he says.

“The same people that killed Timmerman are trying to kill his dog; somehow the dog represents a danger to them.”

“What kind of dog?”

“Bernese mountain dog.”

He nods. “I love those dogs; the markings are amazing. Can I see him?”

“He’s not here,” I lie. “At this point he’s missing.”

“That’s the dog I saw on television this morning? The one who was kidnapped?”

“Yes. Is any of this making any sense? Maybe ringing a bell?”

He’s still quiet for a few moments, hopefully thinking. “You know anything about DNA?”

“No.”

“You got a pen and a piece of paper?”

“In my desk.”

“I’ll get it,” says Sam, and he goes off to do that. He’s back quickly and hands the pen and paper to McCarty, who sits down
and starts writing on it. When he’s finished, he shows me a drawing of what I take to be a strand of DNA.

“This is nature,” he says. “Everything comes from this. You control this, you control the world.”

“How can you control DNA?” I ask, not understanding this at all.

“By creating it. Timmerman was creating synthetic DNA. There were rumors that he was, and now I’d bet anything on it.”

“Is that known to be possible?”

He nods. “Sure, everybody’s trying it, and some think they’re making good progress. But right now it’s just a theory. A damn
good one, but just a theory.”

“What could you do with it?”

“Anything you want. See, if you can create DNA, then you program it however you want. Then you inject it into a cell, and
once it gets inside, it’s like it boots itself up. Like a computer program, you know? Then it gets the cell to do whatever
it wants it to do. Whatever you want it to do.”

“Give me an example,” I say.

“You’re not getting it,” he says, and truer words were never spoken. “Everything is an example. You can duplicate life-forms,
or you can create completely new ones.”

“So it’s cloning?”

He smiles. “Cloning is yesterday’s news. If Timmerman pulled this off, it’s no wonder somebody killed him for it. Shit, I’d
kill him for it.”

It’s starting to dawn on me. “So Waggy… the Bernese…”

“Came from the lab” is how he finishes my sentence. “Did Timmerman own the dog’s father or mother?”

I nod. “Father. He was a champion.”

“So he took the father’s DNA…”

I interrupt. “Isn’t that cloning?”

He shakes his head. “No, because I’ll bet Timmerman didn’t use the father’s DNA. He copied it; he created new, synthetic DNA
just like it.”

“Why?”

“Just to prove to himself that he could. Like a test.”

“So why would someone then want to kill Waggy?”

“Maybe to keep anyone from knowing what Timmerman was doing,” he says. “There must be something about the DNA that identifies
it as synthetic.”

I nod. “Which is why Timmerman sent his own DNA in to be tested. It must have been a copy as well, and he wanted to see if
the lab would pick up on it.”

“Now you’re getting it,” he says, as I feel myself beaming at the approval. “But the lab missed it, because they didn’t know
what they were looking for. It’s completely understandable.”

“But if he proved he could synthetically produce his own DNA, why did he have to use the process to create the dog?”

“Because copying DNA is one thing, but creating a living thing with it is far more complicated. And to exactly copy a champion
show dog, that’s about as good as it gets.”

“So why would the FBI be watching Timmerman? What would they be afraid of?”

McCarty shakes his head as if disappointed. “Maybe you’re not getting it after all. This is the ticket to creating anything…
a new life-form, fuel, anything. For instance, you could create bacteria and viruses that we don’t know how to deal with;
you think the government might be interested in that?”

“Holy shit,” Sam says, an appropriate comment considering the circumstances.