Jensen’s head swiveled, and he gave Jamison a long look. “You related to Roger Jamison? Willie says you’re all right, so you must be worth at least the powder to blow you up—more than most lawyers.” He didn’t laugh when he made the observation even though Jamison gave him a tight smile in response. “What do you want to know?”
“Roger Jamison was my father.”
Jensen stared at him for what seemed like a minute. “Guess there’s some irony there, right? You working as a prosecutor and your old man doing what he did, defending people like this.” Jensen didn’t say anything else.
Jamison wasn’t going to discuss his father with Jensen. They had enough issues between them before he died. Maybe Jensen thought it was ironic that he was working to put people away because his father worked defending people. Jamison didn’t see it, but he wasn’t going to bite at the bait. He moved the conversation forward. “Well, I think the best place to start is what happened when you got to the crime scene. Then maybe some background on why this Rick Sample showed up early in your reports?”
There was a pronounced sigh from Jensen, who picked up his drink and took a sip. “You boys like a drink? This is going to take a while.” Jensen was clearly enjoying the thought of how the afternoon was going to pass. He coughed again into a handkerchief.
O’Hara shook his head. “Thanks, but we’re on the clock, Mike. Tell us what you remember from the beginning. It’ll give us a head start. Also, if you have any notes, I’d like to see them.”
Jensen’s eyes narrowed briefly. “I got notes. Keep ‘em from all my old cases, especially that one. I’ll look for them, but I remember it. Not something that you’d forget. I been to a lot of crime scenes, just like you, Willie, but nothing like that.
“It was a bad neighborhood, you know? It was bad then and I imagine it’s only gotten worse. I walked into that kitchen and I started gagging—not just from the smell but from what I saw. That poor woman got beaten first. The only decent thing Harker did was she was dead before he tried to destroy the evidence. I’ve never seen anything like that. She was burned. We couldn’t get any useful evidence because of the fire. If he raped her, he managed to get rid of that evidence with the fire. But we found his prints in the house.
“The little girl, Christine? She was in that house when it happened. That son of a bitch set a fire and left that little girl in there. I still can’t believe that judge let him live. Maybe if that judge had seen what I saw he would have let him die like the jury said he should. I’ll hate that bastard judge until the day I die.”
Jamison decided he needed to get Jensen back on track. “Detective Jensen, what’s the story with Rick Sample? What caused you to decide it wasn’t him?”
“The little girl’s grandma, Barbara. The two women who found Christine said she kept saying that Rick did it. The grandma said that Rick was Rick Sample. Apparently, the victim had lived with him for a short time and he had a little boy. I forget his name.”
“Tommy,” Jamison prodded quietly.
“Yeah, that’s right, Tommy. Anyway, that’s why we went after Sample, but that trail got cold real quick. It’s in one of my reports. Have you read all my stuff?”
Jamison shook his head. “I’ve read some of the preliminary stuff but the reports are all mixed up. It will take me a while to get it all sequenced. I wanted to talk to you so I could get a jump-start.”
Jensen nodded. “Yeah, I get it, old cases, right? The crime scene boys turned up Harker’s prints in the kitchen and that’s when we focused on him. We had an APB out on Sample but by the time we got to him we had circled around to Harker. Anyway, Sample had an alibi. We checked it out and couldn’t find a hole. When we talked to people who knew Lisa Farrow and then went back to the grandmother, we found out pretty quick that Lisa also had a relationship at one time with Harker. You ever look at the pictures of Sample and Harker? They look like they could be brothers. No wonder that little girl was confused. Evidently her mama liked a certain look in her men—dirtball.
“The neighbors had seen a black man and a white guy go into the house. They identified the black man as a guy named Clarence. It didn’t take long to establish it was Clarence Foster. I put out an all-points but he wasn’t hiding. One of our boys found him in a park, drunk. I brought him in and he denied everything. At the time, we were still working on Sample, but Foster claimed he didn’t know anything. I let him go so I could keep working the case without lawyers getting into it and I didn’t have the physical evidence to tie Foster in—yet.”
Jensen glanced at Jamison to see if he had picked at a nerve but there was no reaction. “Then we got Foster’s prints, so I pulled him back in. Anyway, that’s when we started squeezing Foster. We didn’t find Foster’s prints on any of the beer cans near the body because they were burned, but we had found them in the kitchen. Then we found Sample’s prints. Eventually we also found Harker’s prints, but since both men had a relationship with Lisa Farrow that didn’t surprise us. And Sample had a tight alibi. So, we had Foster and we had Harker’s prints. Foster weaseled around a lot but eventually he gave us Harker. Later on, we were able to talk to the little girl and she identified Harker. That was the nail in the coffin.”
“Did you arrest Harker?” O’Hara asked.
“Yeah, he was working construction. When we showed up he started running. Son of a bitch made the uniforms chase him. He got a little bruised up when they took him down. Had a few cuts on him that he might have gotten when he killed Lisa but they were also consistent with construction work. That part was hard to say. Later he said that he thought we were there because he had warrants for old traffic tickets and that’s why he ran.
“I interrogated him for almost six hours. All I got out of him was that he didn’t know what I was talking about. He started crying when we told him what had happened to Lisa Farrow and he asked about the little girl, but between his blubbering he said he didn’t do it. He’d lived with her for several months. He admitted he’d been in the house numerous times, including the day before, but he claimed he would never hurt her. He did have a prior arrest for hitting her. He said it was an argument and he got mad, but it was only once. With those guys, they always say it was only once, but guys who hit women? It’s never just once. But he knew Clarence Foster; that much he admitted. Said they sometimes got drunk together. I worked him every way I could, but he kept saying he didn’t do it and it was all a mistake. That’s all he ever said.
“Your boss, Gage, got the case I handed him, and it made him the DA. I guess it made Jonathon Cleary a judge. I hear he’s going up real high pretty soon. At least that’s the rumor. As for me, I got the satisfaction of seeing that asshole Harker convicted. I should have seen him choke to death at San Quentin, but Judge Stevenson didn’t have the stomach for that. Now here we are.
“So, what are you going to do, Willie, you and Jamison here? You going to put Harker back in his hole? I’ll help any way I can. Not much else to do anymore. No woman around to tell me what to do. Not that there’s much to do anyway.” Jensen held the drink up in his hand and motioned with it around the room. He pointed the drink at Jamison. “I hope you’ve learned that some of these guys are like fungus. Even when you think you’ve killed them there’s still little pieces hiding in dark cracks. Do us all a favor and shut him up once and for all. He’s been saying he’s innocent since the day I put the cuffs on him.”
“Well,” Jamison said, “they all say they’re innocent.”
“And they hire lawyers like your old man to get them off.” Jensen lit a cigarette and exhaled through his nose. “That why you became a lawyer?”
“I became a lawyer to make sure people like Harker get what they deserve.”
Jensen waved his cigarette around. “There’s real irony here, don’t you think?”
“I don’t see it that way.”
Jensen laughed. “Really? Maybe you will, Mr. Jamison. Maybe you will someday. What does the bible say? Sins of the father and all. Yeah, that’s it, sins of
the father.” His guttural laughter ground down into a hacking cough as he repeated, “Sins of the father.”
Detective Jensen was still coughing and choking on his own private sense of humor as they walked out the front door. O’Hara waited until they were in the car before saying anything. “Matt, don’t pay any attention to Jensen. He’s been drinking and it’s obvious he’s bitter about the judge letting Harker off with a life sentence. Your dad got a lot of people off and cops like Jensen don’t forgive that—ever.”
Jamison didn’t respond. There were a lot of things he hadn’t forgiven either when it came to his father.
Chapter 12
Ernie Garcia rolled to a quiet stop outside a well-shaded house on the south side of the city. The dark green paint on the front contrasted with the faded color on the side exposed to the sun. It wasn’t exactly a rest home. A cottage industry had grown up over the years where people took in older people who needed to be cared for. Most of these homes had five or six elderly residents and the board and care was paid for by the county or whatever responsible agency paid for those who couldn’t afford the more elaborate senior citizen’s homes in the northern part of the community. Ernie hated going in these places, and he had been in more than a few. It was the smell that got to him. Even the cleanest of them had an odor that reminded him of wet leaves that matted the ground in autumn. He couldn’t help thinking that maybe the occupants weren’t much different. The inevitability of life’s winter. But here was where Nancy Slavin lived, one of the women who had been a neighbor to Lisa Farrow, one of the women who had gone into that house.
A neatly dressed Asian woman in her early forties answered the door. Ernie had his badge out but he had called ahead. She led Ernie into the living room area where several people were watching an afternoon game show. One of them looked up when the woman said, “Nancy, this man is here to see you.” She helped Slavin out of a cushioned chair, walking her into a kitchen area before telling Garcia, “You can talk here, just keep your voice down so the residents can hear the game show. Otherwise they get mad.” She smiled and shrugged. “It’s their favorite, isn’t it, Nancy?”
Ernie sat down at the kitchen table and took out a notebook. “Mrs. Slavin, my name is Ernie Garcia and I’m an investigator with the district attorney’s office. I’d like to ask you some questions about the Richard Harker case and Christine Farrow. Do you remember that?”
Slavin’s eyes brightened with recognition. “Yes, I remember. I’ll never forget that. It was a terrible thing … that poor little girl and what that man did to her mama. Why are you talking about that now? It was over a long time ago.”
Ernie nodded. “Yes it was. But sometimes questions are asked a long time after these cases are supposed to be over. It’s my job to answer those questions. I won’t be long and you can get back to your show, okay?”
“Price Is Right. I always watch it.”
Ernie nodded again. “Well, can you tell me about what you remember that day when you and Mrs. Castillo found Christine?”
“Don’t like to think about it.”
“I understand. I know it’s difficult, but I need to know what you remember. Tell me about it.”
Slavin’s eyes lost some of their brightness as the memory clouded her face. “Maria and me, we would go over sometimes and talk to Lisa and visit Christine. She was such a beautiful little girl, Christine. That morning we walked over. We both could tell right away something was wrong. You can just sense it, you know? The curtains didn’t look right, like they had dirt on them,” Ernie nodded and kept listening. “The door was unlocked and we knocked and then opened the door. The first thing was the smell. I can’t describe it. It hit you in the face and I remember gagging. But we didn’t go back out. We stayed because we both knew something bad had happened. And then we saw Christine standing next to Lisa. Her mama was on the floor and it was so terrible I can’t even think about it. He burned that woman.” Slavin stopped talking and began wiping her eyes. “That little girl, Christine, she just had on panties and a T-shirt, but she was all black and dirty, holding that rabbit. She always dragged around that stuffed rabbit. We didn’t know why she was so dirty at first but later we could tell it was the smoke. She’d been in that house when the fire was set and there was smoke all over, soot you know, like a fireplace. And the smell. You could taste it. It was horrible. I grabbed Christine and Maria and I took her outside. Maria called the sheriff. Later they showed us some pictures, but we already knew one of them was Clarence. He was always in the neighborhood—another no-good. Never was no good. We told that to the sheriff.”
“When did you see Clarence? You mean Clarence Foster, right? Was he with another man?”
“Clarence, Clarence Foster. I just knew him then as Clarence—no good. He was never no good. He was there the day before. Both Marie and me saw him. He was with a white boy and I picked his picture out too. There was two of them in pictures. Looked almost alike. First time I guess I picked the wrong one but the next one they showed me, I guess I got that right. That was him.”
“Him?”
“Yes, him, the one what done it, you know. I identified him in court. He was the one with Clarence. Maria said it too. You should ask her. Do you know Christine? She must be all growed up now.”
Ernie patted Slavin’s hand. “I haven’t met Christine but I will. I spoke to Maria’s daughter. Her mom passed away in her sleep three years ago. I’m sorry.”
Slavin nodded. “Guess she was one of the lucky ones.”
Ernie had a puzzled expression on his face. “Lucky?”
“Look around. We all gotta go sometime but it’s the waiting that’s the worst. Sleep is the best way to go I think. You’ll see. Can I go back to my show now?” Ernie walked her back to the front room. Nobody seemed to have noticed when she left and nobody seemed to notice when she returned. Ernie slipped his notebook back in his pocket and quietly shut the door as he left.
Chapter 13
You want to talk to Christine Farrow, now? Ernie got an address and a phone number.” O’Hara glanced over at Jamison as he roughly accelerated from Jensen’s home. O’Hara didn’t show much respect for county cars, primarily because they were bare bones with the only splurge being a big police interceptor engine. Usually it was the color. O’Hara said county purchasers looked at anything normal people would reject and picked that.
“Not yet. I think I want to talk to Harker’s lawyer first. I don’t really know him but I’ve been told he knows what he’s doing. What some people call a true believer.’ He spends a lot of his time taking low-percentage cases that nobody else will defend, either because it’s a loser or there’s no money. Usually because there’s no money.”
“Yeah, that’s a problem with you lawyers, isn’t it?” O’Hara waited to see if Jamison would respond to the dig.
Jamison didn’t bite. He called information to get the number and then got busy punching the keys on his cell phone.
“Law Office of Samuel Gifford.” The voice that answered didn’t preface the conversation with hello but it wasn’t unfriendly. Jamison immediately guessed that Gifford answered his own phone, which meant either his secretary was out or he didn’t have one. Probably the latter.
“This is Matt Jamison from the district attorney’s office calling about the Harker case. I would like to speak to Mr. Gifford.”
“Speaking. What would you like to talk about, Mr. Jamison? Sorry, I don’t have a secretary. With my clients it keeps expenses down.”
“Not a problem. I would like some background on the Harker case. I thought maybe you and I could talk. Tell me what you have and maybe we can talk it through?”
The snort of laughter at the other end of the line caused Jamison to pull the phone away from his ear. “You just have my client’s best interests at heart, right? So, Gage stuck you with the dirty end of the stick? I thought you were the golden boy over there? At least that’s the rumor.”
“Mr. Gage asked me to handle the writ. Do
you want to talk or not?” Jamison had dealt with enough defense lawyers to recognize the ones who operated on the principle that all prosecutors were really just one step up from fascists. It wasn’t much different than those prosecutors who thought that some defense lawyers were one step below gum stuck to their shoe. Jamison wasn’t one of them. He didn’t defend people, but he recognized it needed to be done, and while he kidded his few friends who were criminal defense lawyers, he recognized that they did their job like he did his. But he didn’t like getting stereotyped and he could hear the edge in Gifford’s voice—and his own.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to offend you,” Gifford’s voice was conciliatory. “This case sets my teeth on edge. You want to come by my office or you want me to come by yours?”
“How about I come by yours. You available now? I have my investigator with me.”
Jamison clicked off. “Bill, we’re going to Gifford’s office. It’s—”
“I know where it is. Been there before.” Despite his usual penchant for editorial comment, O’Hara didn’t explain. Jamison felt the car speed up.
The building address plate for Gifford’s law office looked more like it was holding up the building instead of the other way around. It had definitely seen better days. It was in an older part of town in an even older building. Actually, it looked like an old house. “Samuel Gifford, Esq. LAWYER” was painted on a sign hanging from the porch area. Underneath “LAWYER” was printed “ABOGADO,” Spanish for lawyer, and “Habla Español,” which meant Spanish was understood. Glancing around the neighborhood, Jamison imagined that many of Gifford’s clients would be Spanish speaking, and judging from the condition of Gifford’s office they would be poor.
“You want me to wait in the car?” O’Hara asked.
“No, you can come in. We can compare notes later.”
“Gifford and I have been around the block together before. He isn’t going to like seeing me.”
“And that would be because?”
Shades of Truth Page 9
