After her mother left with their daughter, everything else for O’Hara had been brief stopovers that simply turned into the silence of lack of contact. Now he realized, to his daughter he was just somebody that was out there, but she did not regard him as part of her. The sound of Christine’s voice reminded him of what he had lost and focused him like a laser on what Rick Harker had taken from the disembodied voice of the child on the tape.
All three remained quiet for a moment before Ernie Garcia broke in. “So why are we listening to this now?”
“Because,” Jamison said quietly, “Christine Farrow is now thirty years old and she says that Rick Harker wasn’t the man who murdered her mother. Our job is to get that straightened out and put Harker back into the darkest hole we can find.” The edge in his voice revealed how much the sound of the child’s words had affected him. “That little girl has lived with all of this virtually her entire life and still she has no end to it, no peace. We have to fix that. We have to make this right. We need to help Christine Farrow and put an end to this once and for all. And we have to do it in a way that doesn’t bring any more pain to her.”
Bill O’Hara and Ernie Garcia stared at Jamison. Both men nodded. Sometimes cases just didn’t end. They kept on going, squeezing the last drops of pain from everyone involved until nothing was left but a dry husk. They understood that they owed it to the child whose voice they had heard on the tape and to the damaged woman they could only imagine she had become to give her closure. And that meant slamming the cell door shut on Rick Harker once and for all. Each man understood what they had to do.
Chapter 10
Jamison ejected the tape from the recorder and placed it back in the manila envelope, carefully resealing the tab. “Okay, here’s what I think we’re going to have to do. We need to rebuild this case from the bottom up. I’m going to approach it like I’m the one trying it. You two need to start pulling the evidence together.
“Ernie, I want you to start figuring out where these witnesses are, assuming any of them are still alive. Find out where Christine Farrow lives. Go through the reports at the sheriff’s office. Make sure we have everything they have.” Ernie nodded. Sometimes there were reports in the sheriff’s files that weren’t in the DA files, incident reports and other minor investigative reports. “Also, I want you to talk to Bill and then give me a list of all of the physical evidence we have. I want to see it all so I know what we have to work with. I don’t think it’ll be necessary to put this case back on. I think we can beat back any claim by Harker, but we may have to show the judge that the evidence of guilt is overwhelming in case the judge starts asking questions.”
“Bill, I want you to make contact with Mike Jensen. You talk to him and get a feel for what went on with the case. We’re going to start with him. And I want you to find Clarence Foster.”
O’Hara finally asked the question that was likely also on Ernie’s mind. “Look, what’s all this stuff mean? I don’t understand. Just because Harker got this Clarence Foster to claim he lied and some defense attorney screwed with Christine’s head or her shrink did, does that mean Harker gets a new trial?”
“No, not if we can help it. What it means is that we’re going to basically have to prove that Clarence is lying and, unfortunately, we’re going to have to also prove that there’s no reason to accept Christine Farrow’s statement. Just because somebody comes in thirty years later and claims that they have new evidence, or a witness decided they were wrong, doesn’t mean the defendant gets a new trial. The defense still has to show that the evidence wasn’t available to them at the time and that it has sufficient credibility that it might result in a different outcome.
“So as for Clarence Foster, the fact that now he says he lied doesn’t mean all that much. The defense had the chance to cross-examine him at the time and the motive for him to lie was the same. They’re going to have to do a lot better, a whole helluva lot better, than dragging out Clarence Foster to say he had a prison revelation, if that’s the entire argument they have.
“But Christine Farrow’s different. She was a little kid. If Harker’s defense team can convince a judge that there is real reason to believe that she was mistaken and that her statement is credible, then we’re going to have a major problem. And if that happens we’re going to have to convince a judge that even if little Christine wasn’t credible at the time, that the evidence is so strong that it wouldn’t make any difference—that it didn’t make any difference. That’s why we have to be prepared to defend this case and that’s why we need to know it from the ground up.
“The district attorney made it clear that we pull out the stops on this. I don’t care how much time it takes. This case goes front burner. And that counts for me too.”
Jamison watched his two investigators to see if they had any more questions. Both men shook their heads. As usual Ernie stayed quiet while O’Hara said what was on his mind. O’Hara’s voice was flat and emotionless. “Matt, you know it’s going to be tough dealing with Christine Farrow. She’s damaged goods emotionally. I’ve seen this before. These witnesses start losing confidence about identifications and then somebody gets to them and makes them doubt themselves. Next thing you know, they start feeling guilty and then they think maybe they were wrong. I’ve had kids come back years after a molestation when they were little and say that they woke up one morning and knew they were wrong when they accused their uncle or their neighbor. And then there’s all this bullshit from her shrink. I’m going to look at this guy’s background and see what his story is. My guess is he’s the one that pushed her over the edge.”
“Maybe—probably. But first I need to know as much as possible about this case and Christine Farrow before I talk to her. Right now you guys get started. I’m going to go over and talk to the district attorney. Then I’m going to start reading all the rest of these reports. Let’s do it.”
He watched as O’Hara and Garcia stood and walked out of his office. He knew what they would do. Both of them would go to O’Hara’s office and start mapping out their own plan for the investigation. Just because he had made the assignments and told them what they should do didn’t mean they would simply do what he said. They would decide what needed to be done and how best to do it. And they wouldn’t ask him before they did it. But whatever they did, he trusted their judgment. He had to.
Jamison stood up and took a deep breath. He needed to talk to Bill Gage. Before he read any more he needed to have a sense of where Gage was coming from. He looked at the loosely organized stacks of paper and the still unopened boxes of files. Regardless of how long ago this case had been tried, Jamison was confident that Gage’s memory would still be vivid. It was like that with trial lawyers. Small cases and repetitive crimes of violence were pushed to the dustbin of memory but big cases were always right there, constantly retrieved and relived—those were the cases that defined you as a lawyer. Those cases you never forgot.
Gage’s secretary, Sheila Barrow, saw him walking toward the door of the district attorney’s office. She raised her hand. “He’s on the phone. I think it’s the governor. As soon as he’s off I’ll call you.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Better that I call. It may be a while.” Sheila had been Gage’s secretary for over twenty years. She knew him better than his wife—certainly better than his current wife—and longer than both his marriages had collectively lasted. Jamison had always wondered if there was any truth to the office rumors that Sheila was more than Gage’s secretary. But there were always rumors and if there weren’t, then there would be rumors about why there were no rumors. He turned and started to walk back to his office when he heard her call his name. “He’s off the phone. Let me see if he has a minute.”
When Jamison walked through the door to Gage’s office, he could tell from the satisfied smile on his boss’s face that Gage must have been happy with the phone conversation. Gage was leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. “That was the governor
. Looks like the party is beginning to circle in on who they’re going to back for attorney general.” He waited for Jamison to ask.
“And I take it that would be you?”
Gage’s smile broadened. “Looks like it. But nothing’s final yet. What’s up?”
“Bill, I’ve been reading some of the files in the Harker case, but it’s going to take me a couple of days to read all of them. I wanted to quickly drill down a bit.”
Gage’s eyes narrowed momentarily before his expression loosened and he leaned forward, placing his hands on his desk and gave the trademark smile that greeted every constituent and every camera. “Okay. It’s been a while, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t give me that.” Jamison laughed. “You remember every day of this case. I haven’t talked to Christine Farrow yet. So, what should I be looking for here? It’ll just make it easier if I know what to look for before I read a couple thousand pages of old reports.”
“What’ve you read?”
“I looked at the interrogation of Clarence Foster first.”
Gage stifled a laugh. “Scared the hell out of him, didn’t I?”
“You scared the hell out of me and I was only reading it, but what’s the story about this Rick Sample? O’Hara’s going to go see Detective Jensen and I’ll talk to him of course, but originally it looks like they thought Sample did it. I listened to the tape that you and Cleary did of the little girl, Christine. She picked Harker, but I can smell it coming. She’s going to say it was somebody else and my bet is she’s going to say it was Sample.”
Gage was silent for a moment. “Rick Sample. That’s the direction that we went at the very beginning. The grandmother, what was her name?”
“Barbara Farrow.”
“Yeah, Barbara. She was a real piece of work. Is she still alive?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Well, she wouldn’t let us talk to Christine for maybe a few days or so. I don’t exactly remember but Grandma was the one who said Rick was Rick Sample. So that’s where Jensen went first and so did we. Christine didn’t say much at the scene, just that Rick did it, and then Barbara said Rick was Sample. But we also had the neighbors saying that they saw two men go into the house and the neighbors identified Foster and a mug shot of Sample. Eventually Clarence Foster admitted that he was one of the men and, after he had a little time to consider the logic of his position”—Gage laughed at the memory—“he gave up that the other one was Harker. By the time we got to talk to Christine, she identified Harker as the one who killed her mother. Problem was there were two Ricks and both their prints were in the house. One was Rick Sample and the other one was Rick Harker. Those two assholes, Harker and Sample, looked a lot alike. You’ve seen that, right?” Jamison nodded. “So the mistake by the neighbors was understandable. Her mom had a relationship with both men at various times so Christine knew them.
“Obviously the mother had a problem with her picker when it came to men. Neither one was a prize. But the girl was definite that it was Rick Harker who killed her mother. She called him ‘the bad Rick.’ He was bad all right, a real class one son of a bitch. The other thing was that Sample had an alibi that was ironclad as near as we could make out. He wasn’t even in Tenaya County at the time of the murder. We had Harker’s prints in the house, including on one of the beer cans that was on the counter. We squeezed Foster so hard that he popped like the pimple he was on society’s ass. Finally, he gave up Harker. It took a while, but he gave him up.
“At the trial Foster testified it was Harker and so did Christine. I’ll tell you one thing. When that little girl got on the stand and pointed at Rick Harker you could have heard a pin drop in that courtroom. I can still see her, holding that stuffed rabbit and looking lost in that witness chair. She was so little. I think she was about five by the time the trial started. I thought we were going to have trouble with her being permitted to testify, so little and all, but the one right decision Judge Stevenson made was to allow her to tell what happened.”
There was no need for Gage to explain. Jamison knew that children around five years of age were frequently not permitted to testify and children under five almost never. The reason had to do with their lack of understanding of the concept of the truth.
Gage seemed lost for a moment at the memory before shaking his head, his voice softening with a tinge of emotion. “You know, she would never talk or do anything without that damn stuffed rabbit. I remember it was pretty mangy by the time of the trial. Poor little kid. I really wanted to put Harker away for what he did.”
Gage’s voice resumed its usual gruffness. “Matt, you make sure Harker stays where he is.” He hesitated before continuing. “Does that help? It’s been a lot of years. Maybe if you show me an investigation report it will help me remember specifics. But we concluded very quickly that Sample was a dead end. Harker did it and he would have been executed a long time ago if that damned judge had any balls.”
Gage looked straight at Jamison. “You shut the door on this. Maybe someday you’ll be sitting in this chair. You’ll find out—a thousand memories and a thousand old cases come back at you. There’s always somebody wanting to pull at you—some bullshit. Forget that asshole Foster. He’ll say anything to save his sorry ass.” His voice trailed off as he turned his chair to the side. “Talk to Detective Jensen. He worked the case. He’s the one.”
Jamison stood up. He could tell he had used up his time. “Thanks, Bill. That helps. No problem. O’Hara and I’ll start to focus on Christine Farrow. She’s going to be the star witness. I hate to have to do this. I’m going to have to discredit her declaration. And you know, to do that I’m going to have to very carefully undermine her credibility. No choice there.”
A thoughtful expression crossed Gage’s face. “Sometimes, Matt, there are only hard choices. That goes with this job. Remember that.”
Chapter 11
The investigators were down a hallway at the far end of the floor below the offices of the senior prosecutors and the district attorney. Jamison ignored the elevator and took the stairs, a conscious decision that it was probably all the exercise he was going to get for a while.
The nameplate outside the door said, W.J. O’Hara. Even though everyone called him Bill, O’Hara’s given name was Willie Jefferson O’Hara. To call him Willie you had to be part of some cryptic intimate inner circle. Jamison had never considered going beyond calling him Bill, any more than he would consider sticking his hand inside an alligator’s cage because the owner said he was friendly.
O’Hara was sitting with his feet up on his desk. The office smelled like stale cigar smoke, a blue pall lingering near the ceiling. The still-wet chewed end of a cigar was mashed in an ashtray. All smoking was illegal in the county building, but the investigator’s row policed itself and no lawyer, no matter how senior, dared interfere. As Jamison had learned early on, when people said payback was a bitch, they had to have been thinking of disgruntled investigators who you needed a favor from. So, Jamison ignored the cigar smell that he detested.
“You able to get hold of Mike Jensen?”
“Yeah, he says he has plenty of time on his hands so for us to come on over. He asked what it was about and when I told him, the only thing that came out of his mouth were four-letter words. He remembers the case all right. You don’t forget shit like that—ever.”
Jensen’s house was in an older section of town. Time and urban sprawl had left the residential area behind and Jamison could see that here and there yards were beginning to show neglect. Jensen’s yard was fairly neat but little effort had been put into beautifying it. No flowers, mostly bushes and small shrubs that had been there for a long time. No woman’s touch.
A voice yelled at them to come inside before O’Hara had a chance to knock. Evidently Jensen had been watching for them. Jamison guessed that like a lot of older people, a visit was going to be the high point of his day—that and a chance to relive his glory days to somebody besides other old cops.
/> Jensen shook O’Hara’s hand and nodded at Jamison when O’Hara introduced him and said he was the attorney assigned to the Harker case. Jamison recognized the slight. He was used to it. Cops had an aversion to lawyers and often treated them like they had a communicable disease. Old cops were the worst. It took a long time to gain their trust and a very short time to lose it.
The retired detective walked over to a worn leather recliner and sat heavily. From the look of it, the chair had adapted to its owner’s shape. Jensen began coughing spasmodically and took almost a minute before he could talk. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. The smell of cigarettes permeated the room, giving it a stale odor. On a TV tray next to the chair was an overflowing ashtray and a glass that still showed remnants of condensation from a few melted ice cubes. Even from across the room Jamison could not only see the light brown color of the liquid in the glass but he could smell it—bourbon. It was still early afternoon.
“What can I do for you, Willie?” Jensen’s use of O’Hara’s given name instead of calling him Bill told Jamison that these two went way back. “I understand you want to talk about the Harker case? So that asshole is sticking his head up out of his hole again?”
The sound out of O’Hara was a cross between a laugh and a grunt, something that Jamison had heard cops make that seemed to be a kind of code noise that indicated to other cops that they were on the same page. “Like I said on the phone, Mike, the supreme court has sent Harker’s case back for a hearing because this Clarence Foster supposedly said that he had lied about his identification. But that kind of jailhouse bullshit happens all the time. The real issue, I guess, according to Matt here, is that the little girl, Christine Farrow, now claims that she made a mistake in her identification. So, the DA gave the case to Matt to handle. He says we need to put it back together to see what’s going on, and you were the best place to start.”
Shades of Truth Page 8
