“That would be because I’ve been on the other side of some of his cases and he didn’t like the way I did things.” O’Hara’s face didn’t reveal anything.
“Well, I don’t always like the way you do things either, but I want you in there with me. Whatever issues he has with you, that’s his problem.”
Jamison walked up the wooden steps. The clean spot on the porch was the worn path where people walked to the door. He wasn’t sure about knocking and decided to walk on in. The inside of the house surprised him. The woodwork was well maintained. Somebody cared about the old craftsmanship and had made the effort to preserve it.
A voice came from behind Jamison. “You like the old wood finishes?”
Jamison turned around. Samuel Gifford looked like someone had put him together using every stereotype of an aging liberal lawyer. His hair was long and hung in gray strands starting from a receding hairline, only part of which was contained by the rubber band that brought the bulk of it into a ponytail. His face was creased and had a weathered look, but he didn’t look like a man who spent a lot of time outdoors. Jamison briefly thought that perhaps the pressure of his cases had taken as much toll on him as might have been caused by hours spent absorbing the relentless ravages of the sun.
“I restored this place myself. I also live here. Like to be near my clients—at least the ones that are out of custody.” Gifford paused before adding, “You know, I knew your father.”
“So did I.”
Immediately Gifford reacted to the sharpness of Jamison’s tone. “Did I miss something?”
“No more than he did.” Jamison regretted his response. It sounded churlish. He really didn’t care to discuss his father with Gifford. Roger Jamison had been a famous criminal defense lawyer, even at the national level. He just hadn’t been well known at home, and what had been known at home was something Jamison tried to put behind him. It was difficult sometimes with so many people remembering the great trial lawyer, not really knowing the man himself. But he recognized that someone like Gifford would probably have looked up to him.
“Look.” Jamison caught the expression on O’Hara’s face as he tried to restart the conversation. “I think you know Bill O’Hara, my investigator on this case?”
“Mr. O’Hara and I have met.” The tone was decidedly chilly. “I’m sorry that your office has decided to approach this case this way.”
“What way?” Jamison responded.
“He means by assigning me.” O’Hara’s gravelly voice broke into the conversation. “Maybe I should wait outside.”
Jamison shook his head. “Mr. O’Hara is my investigator and he’s as good as they get. You can say anything in front of him that you would say to me.” He wasn’t sure how the entire conversation had broken down so quickly. That was something he would take up later with Bill but he needed to get back on track. “Why don’t we sit down and talk a bit about Rick Harker and why you think he should get a hearing?”
Gifford walked over to a scarred conference table and took a seat, waving Jamison and O’Hara to chairs on the other side. “Because he’s innocent, Mr. Jamison.”
“Innocent? You mean you don’t think there’s enough evidence to prove he’s guilty? He went down that road when he was convicted. You and I both know you’ll have to do better than that.”
“I mean,” Gifford said quietly, “that he didn’t do it—innocent. Some people are, you know.”
“Some people are, just not Rick Harker. We have his prints. We have motive—he liked to slap women around. We have three identifications: Christine, Foster, and the neighbors. All you allegedly have is a jailhouse recantation from Clarence Foster and a statement from a misguided woman almost thirty years after the fact. Maybe we should start there. How did you get her to say that?”
Gifford gazed levelly across the table at Jamison. “I didn’t get her to say anything, Mr. Jamison. It might come as a surprise to you but Christine Farrow came to me. I didn’t seek her out and I didn’t influence what she had to say.” Gifford leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his neck, appraising the reaction. “I guess it does come as a surprise. Let’s start over, shall we?
“Christine has a therapist, Dr. Arnold Vinson. As it happens, Dr. Vinson and I know one another. He referred Christine to me. I talked to her and then I went and visited Harker at San Quentin prison. Then I went and visited Clarence Foster at Corcoran. And here we are.”
“Did you know Clarence Foster before?”
“My world is full of Clarence Fosters, Mr. Jamison. I didn’t know him personally but I know and have known plenty like him. Petty criminals who your office rolls over like road kill.”
Jamison ignored the effort to provoke a reaction. “If there’s something here, Mr. Gifford, it would be in everyone’s interest if you would let me know it now. I notice you didn’t have a declaration from Clarence Foster, just your client. Do you have a statement from Foster that says he lied?”
“You’ll have to ask Foster.” Gifford slid down in his chair, appraising Jamison for a moment before saying anything else. “All right, it’s simple enough. Rick Harker said he was innocent. I hear that from almost all of my clients but I’m not naive enough to believe it. Except once in a while it has the ring of truth. I believe Rick Harker. I don’t know who killed Christine’s mother. I have my suspicions, but then I always have my suspicions. But I don’t think it was Rick Harker and neither does her daughter. That’s a pretty powerful piece of evidence when the victim’s daughter and primary eyewitness say the man who was accused is innocent.” Gifford waited for a reaction.
Jamison had been making short notes on a legal pad. He put his pen down. “It’s going to take more than that, counselor, and you know it. Clarence Foster was there to be cross-examined at trial by Harker’s lawyer and so was Christine. All you’re bringing up is that they should have said something different. That’s not enough. You need evidence that shows there’s a reason we should believe they made a mistake other than them just saying so twenty-six years later. And what I’m hearing is that you don’t have it. Do you.” The verbal punctuation at the end of Jamison’s statement wasn’t a question mark.
“Rick Harker’s trial lawyer was Alton Grady. He made a lot of mistakes. Check back on him, Mr. Jamison. You’re going to find that by the time Alton Grady defended Rick Harker, he was well past his prime.”
“Whether he was past his prime or not, Harker’s case was upheld on appeal and it’s been rattling around in the courts for over twenty-six years. If Grady was ineffective as a lawyer in his defense we would have heard it by now.” Jamison softened his tone. “Tell me something that has any legal value, Mr. Gifford, and I promise I’ll look at it. So far I haven’t heard it.”
Gifford pursed his lips; for a brief moment, he looked even older than he had looked when Jamison walked in the door. “I’ve been around a long time, Mr. Jamison, maybe too long. I’ve seen a lot in the legal system. Personally, I haven’t seen a lot of what I call justice come out of your office. Even though that’s what you call it. But I can tell you that I’ve learned that sometimes mistakes are made, and legal technicalities and interpretations don’t always ensure that justice is done. That’s supposed to be your job, isn’t it? To do justice?”
“So, is there any problem with me talking to Clarence Foster? I assume you don’t represent him too?”
Gifford looked at Jamison, appraising him without answering immediately. “No, I don’t represent Clarence.” He paused before continuing. “That was somebody else.” Gifford’s smile was enigmatic as he waited for the next question. “I have no problem with you talking to Clarence. But I doubt if he’ll even talk to you and if he does I doubt there will be much that you want to hear.”
“And why is that?”
“First of all, Foster’s in prison and he isn’t going to want to be seen cooperating with prosecutors. He already has a snitch jacket that followed him from the Harker case. As for anything else, you have to ask h
im, but I believe that he wasn’t telling the truth when he said Rick Harker was the one who killed Lisa Farrow.”
Jamison picked up his legal tablet and stood up. “You’re not giving me anything, Mr. Gifford.”
“Oh, but I am. I’m giving you Christine Farrow. Isn’t she the victim here?”
“The victim here is Lisa Farrow, who’s been dead for almost thirty years, years that were taken away from her by Rick Harker. I guess I’ll see you in court.”
Gifford stood up and extended his hand across the table. “I’ve been doing this a long time, Mr. Jamison. Over time I hope you learn that justice isn’t always found in law books. Sometimes it’s just up to the people who work in the system—either those like you who are inside and looking out or people like me who are outside looking in.”
Chapter 14
They were a block away from Gifford’s office before O’Hara said anything. “Well, that seemed to go well.” O’Hara didn’t add to his observation. The tone of his voice said everything.
“You have a point?” Jamison responded. “I thought you were worried that your presence might create a problem.”
“He got under your skin as soon as he mentioned your father. It’s none of my business—”
“Don’t worry, it won’t work twice. But you’re right. It got to me. That was a mistake.” Jamison didn’t want to talk about his father. O’Hara was aware that they had not had a good relationship, but Jamison had never sat down with O’Hara and had a personal conversation about it. Neither man was inclined to let anybody get too far into their personal feelings. He changed the subject. “Anyway, Bill, what problem did you and Gifford have in the past?”
“The usual. Gifford defended a murder case—maybe you remember the Caro prosecution? It happened before you got into Major Crimes. Anyway, Gifford claimed that I did an illegal search that turned up a pistol—just happened to be the murder weapon. The judge found otherwise and Gifford’s client is now sitting at San Quentin on death row. Gifford made a lot of allegations about me—usual type of stuff. We also had another case and Gifford argued that I’d taken a coerced confession. Typical defense attorney crap.”
Jamison was well aware of O’Hara’s effectiveness in interrogation and that he pushed cases to the edge. “The gun search?”
“It was a consent search. You know Gifford just didn’t believe his client was stupid enough to consent to a search when the murder weapon was right where I needed to look. Anyway, that’s what I testified to—he consented. Search and seizure rules that you lawyers dream up are bullshit anyway. That was the murder weapon and Caro was the murderer. Case closed.” O’Hara glanced sideways as they drove back to the office. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do, catch murderers?”
“I appreciate, Bill, that you reject interpretations of the Constitution by the supreme court that slow down your investigations.” Jamison was laughing. “But those are the rules.”
“Yeah, well the judges who made up those rules don’t seem to understand that crooks don’t play by any rules.”
Jamison decided to let the line of conversation die. He wasn’t going to win a debate with O’Hara, who was outspoken in his contempt for anything that tied his hands in finding and arresting a suspect. There were no better investigators than O’Hara and Ernie Garcia, but O’Hara could be a bull in a china shop if he wasn’t monitored. Jamison knew that, and he also knew that O’Hara had a tendency to rationalize the means used to get to the result that he believed was justified. From personal experience that was a road they had been down in the past. Neither of them ever talked about it because it was better not to know the answers.
O’Hara reached toward the ashtray in the car and retrieved a half-chewed cigar, sticking it into his mouth and rolling it around without lighting it. “So, you want to go talk to Christine Farrow? You aren’t asking but I think maybe we need to start with Clarence Foster.”
Like a gray monolith, Corcoran State Prison thrust up from the parched alkaline dust of the Central Valley, separated from the outside world by a barrier of high-wire fencing that surrounded it. Its cement walls were a forty-minute drive for O’Hara and Jamison but it may as well have been at the end of the Earth for the over four thousand inmates inside. Over the years it held Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Senator Robert Kennedy, Juan Corona, who was convicted of murdering twenty-five people, and it still held Charles Manson, whose reputation seemed to fascinate generations born long after his grisly crimes.
The guard at the gate reviewed the list notifying him of official visitors before waving them through. Clarence Foster was supposed to be waiting for them in a private area. Nobody asked too many questions when they asked for him. To the prison officials it was routine. A lot of people in prison were subjects of ongoing investigations.
Even though he had been inside several prisons before, Jamison was aware that Corcoran was a maximum-security facility and like all such facilities, it had a policy that was made very clear to all who came inside—you entered at your own risk. But it also had a minimum-security housing area separated from the heavily guarded inmates in maximum security. That was where Clarence Foster was. He hadn’t achieved the distinction of being regarded as a major threat.
Jamison had gone through the transcripts of Foster’s statements given to Jensen and Gage, as well as his testimony at trial. Foster had made a show of resistance but eventually his role had been pulled out of him. Some men were like that, they played the game of trying to make it look like they were forced to give up what they had, but at the very beginning they knew that eventually they would give it up. Others made no game of it at all, and then there were the few, the very few, who would just look at their interrogators with dead eyes. It was obvious from the interrogation statements that he made that Foster hadn’t yet turned into one of those. By the time of the trial, Foster pointed his finger at the accused and said Harker was the one. Harker’s lawyer, Alton Grady, was no Clarence Darrow even in his prime, and he wasn’t in his prime when he defended Harker. Grady didn’t manage to leave a mark with his cross-examination. Foster walked out of court a free man, or at least free until the next time he had been arrested, which hadn’t taken long.
Clarence Foster was sitting in a metal chair when Jamison and O’Hara walked into a steel-doored room inside the administration offices of Corcoran. The grizzled African-American man wore the years heavily. His head was shaved and the facial hair that clung to his face was a mixture of gray and white stubble sticking to skin that hung loosely around his mouth. A loosely coiled snake tattoo slithered across his right hand and he consciously or unconsciously flexed it, giving the snake movement. Right away Jamison knew this wasn’t the same man that Gage broke. Foster had the dead stare that was often described as the look of a man who has been in combat—or prison—for a long period. Obviously, time had changed Foster and so had the gray walls of Corcoran.
Foster shifted his eyes up without moving his head and took in Jamison and O’Hara. Other than the slight gesture, Foster didn’t acknowledge them at all. He was used to waiting to be told what was going to happen to him next. Clarence Foster was an institutionalized man and for an institutionalized man, waiting was simply the routine of life.
Before Jamison said anything, O’Hara stuck his hand out and said, “Mr. Foster, how are you? I’m Bill O’Hara, an investigator with the Tenaya County District Attorney’s Office and this is Matt Jamison, a prosecutor in that office.”
“I know who you are.” Foster’s lips barely moved as he responded. He didn’t take O’Hara’s hand. He spoke with a quiet, almost conspiratorial voice. “Word gets around pretty quick inside. Guards said you wanted to talk about Harker. Is that it? Nothing to say to you. I told the lawyer what I had to say, the one with the ponytail. Long trip for nothing.” The abruptness of his words left no doubt that whatever cooperation he had provided to authorities in the past, it was over now.
Jamison put a copy of Harker’s declaration on the steel table.
Foster’s eyes shifted down and then back up, waiting, saying nothing. Finally, Jamison broke the silence. “Did you make this statement to Harker?”
“It says I did, don’t it?”
“I asked you whether you made that statement to Richard Harker.” Foster moved his head up, coal-black eyes staring directly at Jamison. “And I told you what I had to say.”
“Before you came to Corcoran you were at San Quentin, where Harker was?”
“You got my jacket,” Foster said, referring to the file kept on inmates. “You know where I been.” Foster smiled. “I’ve stayed at all the best places, including Q.”
“Did you talk to Harker while you were at Quentin?”
“Man, why you keep asking questions? I told you that I got nothing to say to you.”
He looked Jamison up and down. “Your name’s Jamison, that right? Your daddy Roger Jamison, right? The big-shot lawyer? You look like him. He’s your daddy, right? Heard he was dead.”
“That’s right, Roger Jamison was my father. Yes, he passed away several years ago.” Jamison didn’t intend to answer more than those questions from Foster. It was never a good idea to get friendly with witnesses or criminal suspects and he was not inclined to discuss his father with Foster.
“You thinking I didn’t know your daddy, right?” Foster squinted, focusing on Jamison’s face. “You don’t know, do you?” Foster started laughing as he got up and began turning toward the door where a guard was watching through the window. “Like I keep tellin’ you, I got nothing to say to you. I got to live in here now. Different rules. You can’t do nothin’ to me. Nobody can. Worst some judge can do is put me in jail and I’m already here.” As he reached the door he stopped. “I’ll tell you this ’cause you’ll find out soon enough anyway. Nobody told you how I got my deal, did they?”
Jamison didn’t answer.
“Your daddy was my lawyer.” Foster caught the raised eyebrow from Jamison. “That’s right. Big-shot lawyer Roger Jamison liked to get down in the mud once in a while, I guess. Made him feel better to get his hands dirty from someone like me instead of from all that dirty money he made defendin’ rich folks and drug dealers. He’s the one that made my deal to testify against Harker. Got me immunity too. He was a real good lawyer, your daddy.” Foster started laughing again. “That’s funny. Your daddy made my deal and now here we are. Old times, huh?” Foster was still laughing as he asked the guard to let him through the door.
Shades of Truth Page 10
