“But now what?” Jamison wasn’t sure whether to be angry or irritated or appreciative. He decided to move forward for the time being. “What’s on them?”
“Foster told us the truth. Jensen and Gage and Cleary knew that Foster said over and over that he was so drunk he didn’t remember who was involved. When you listen to them and wrap Foster’s explanation around them, it’s clear that somebody took Foster out and convinced him what story he needed to give. Foster says that was Cleary. I don’t know about that but there’s no question in my mind that they knew about the tapes and they made them disappear. And then there’s the tape of the conversation in the car, the one Jensen said wasn’t recorded and the one Cleary said he thought didn’t exist. On that tape Foster admits to Harker that he lied. If a jury ever heard that tape …” O’Hara didn’t need to finish the sentence in order to explain the consequences.
“Anything else?” Jamison was subdued.
“Yeah, there’s something else. The other tape is of Christine being pushed by Gage on the identification of Harker. There’s no question it would be used to argue that Gage tainted her identification.
“There’s no way that Gage and Cleary wouldn’t have known what Harker’s lawyer would do with those tapes if he got his hands on them. So, they buried them. I’ve thought about this a lot, Matt. I’m not saying they thought Harker was innocent and they let him go down. I think they were convinced he was guilty. They had Sample’s alibi. They had Christine’s identification. They didn’t want Harker to get away with it so they made their case stronger by getting rid of the tapes. Why the hell they let Margaret Campos transcribe them is beyond me. I’m not saying it was right.
“I knew you’d just go storming into Gage’s office and he’d take a big dump on your career and nothing would happen. Now we got Jimmy Stack and we got the tapes.”
Ernie finished O’Hara’s thought. “And now we have a real pile of shit to deal with.”
Jamison nodded to O’Hara. He understood why O’Hara did it. O’Hara was right about what he would have done, and O’Hara was right that he would have gone to Gage and buried his career right then and there with nothing to show for it. He thought about all of it. Some of it made sense and yet none of it made sense. He got that there was a cover-up of Foster’s interrogation, but that wasn’t going to prove that Harker didn’t do it. If he was going to take the investigation to the end then there was only one way to do it and Jamison knew it. If you attack the king you have to kill the king. If you don’t kill the king, then he will kill you. Bill Gage would surely crush him like a bug. Gage would be fighting for survival and he was surrounded by people who not only would protect him, they would also protect themselves. And then there was Justice Jonathon Cleary, a judicial rocket. Gage and Cleary would both say he was protecting a vicious killer. They were protecting the community. What was he going to do, drag out Jimmy Stack?
“Bill, you have the file on Sample’s murder, right?”
“You want me to talk to the deputy that was first on the scene? He’s retired now but I don’t think he’s still local. I’m not even sure he’s still alive.”
“No. You talk to him and he’ll call Jensen. You guys all stick together. He’ll want to know why you’re fishing around on a second-rate murder case and wonder why you haven’t talked to Jensen. I want you to find the bartender. See what he has to say. I have a feeling.”
“A feeling about what?”
“A feeling about Clarence Foster and Mike Jensen.”
It wasn’t as hard as O’Hara had anticipated. The only thing that changed about Jack’s place was that now it was called Mikey’s. When O’Hara walked in there were a few customers sitting at the bar who looked like they were already dead and nobody told them, at least until they swiveled their heads to look at the black man who walked through the door. That was new. It wasn’t often that any black men even stuck their head in the door. Mikey’s was that kind of place and it didn’t need a sign out front to advertise who was welcome and who wasn’t.
O’Hara wrinkled his nose at the sour smell and then shifted his coat so that the gold badge on his belt glinted in the dim light. He walked over to the bartender who was making a desultory effort at wiping glasses and watching television. “I’m looking for Mike Rickman. Used to work here. You know where I might find him?”
The bartender began wiping the bar top with the same towel he’d been using to wipe glasses. “I’m Rickman.” O’Hara refrained from making a remark about health regulations and made a mental note not to order a drink.
“You also the owner?”
“Mikey, yeah that’s me. Place used to be Jack’s. That was my father. What can I do for you?”
“There was a murder in this place about eight years ago—”
Rickman interrupted. “You’ll have to be more specific than that.”
O’Hara pulled out a cigar and made a show of holding it while he heated the end slowly with a gold butane lighter before jamming it into his mouth.
Rickman shoved an ashtray across the bar. “Smoking isn’t allowed, Deputy. I’d think you knew that.”
O’Hara coughed. “Yeah, I guessed that from the cigarette butts on the floor.” Rickman shrugged and waited for O’Hara to tell him what he wanted.
O’Hara blew out a cloud of blue smoke, watching it slowly settle between him and Rickman before continuing. “About eight years ago, early December. Reports say you found a customer, Rick Sample, out in the alley. Somebody knifed him. Remember that?”
Rickman looked back at the customers sitting at the bar and raised his voice. “Like I said, you’ll have to be more specific. That was a busy month, holiday season and all.” The customers at the bar laughed.
O’Hara leaned in until his face was close to Rickman’s. “Cut the shit, Mikey. We can talk here on your turf or we can talk downtown on mine or we can just go outside and talk. Your choice.”
Rickman tapped the countertop and lowered his voice. “I remember. What about it? Don’t tell me you guys are just following up on that now?” His tone wasn’t belligerent, but it was edged with a show of defiance.
O’Hara deliberately reached toward his back and made a point of adjusting his gun. Rickman’s eyes shifted with the movement as O’Hara responded. “Not exactly. The reports say that he was in the bar earlier and that there was another man with him. According to the reports, you weren’t sure of the description. I was wondering if you’d had enough time to think about that to give me a better description.”
Rickman leaned over, resting a heavily tattooed arm on the bar top. “I’m not telling you how to do your job, but I gave a description to the cop that came in.”
“My report says you told the officer the guy was one hundred sixty to one hundred seventy pounds, maybe white, maybe Hispanic, maybe black. Not much of a description unless I’m looking for a zebra.”
Rickman dropped his voice even further. “Look, the officer that was out here first was askin’ questions in front of my customers. Everybody’s got standards, you know? I wasn’t going to say anything in front of them. Most of my customers have done time. I don’t judge but I also know the rules. Anyway, later I told the detective what the guy looked like, gave him a full description.”
“The detective?”
“Yeah, the detective that followed up. He was a supervisor or something.”
O’Hara hesitated. “Do you remember the detective’s name?”
“Hell no.”
“Could it have been Jensen. Does that sound right?”
“Yeah, Jensen, maybe. Sounds right, but I’m not sure. I remember that he looked like he’d spent a lot of time himself in bars. You get to know the look, you know. Don’t you guys have reports? Should be there. Check the reports. But I gave him a description.”
“And that was?”
“It was a black guy, maybe late forties, early fifties. We don’t get many black dudes in here.” Rickman shrugged again. “Nothing personal. Everybody has the
ir own crowd, you know?” O’Hara nodded, tapping the ash off his cigar, missing the ashtray, his face impassive.
Rickman stared back, tensing slightly before relaxing his shoulders and continuing tersely. “Guy had a scruffy goatee getting’ gray. But he had the look, like he’d done time. He and the other guy knew each other, that’s for sure. They didn’t talk loud, but in this place it doesn’t take you long to see when things are getting intense and most of the time nobody gets loud before somebody gets hurt. I told them to take it outside and the guy gave me a real hard look. Then I guess they really took it outside.
“I didn’t hear nothin’ but when I took out the garbage there the guy was, spread out in the dumpster. I didn’t bother to check whether he was alive. I seen lots of dead guys and he was definitely dead. So, I called the cops. That’s it. It wasn’t the first time somebody walked out of here and settled a fight in the alley. Better than inside.”
O’Hara sucked his mustache into his mouth and thought about his next question. “You say you gave a description to the detective?”
“Yeah, just what I said, and he came back later and showed me some pictures. All black guys. But none of them were the guy. Hell, I told the detective that he had a tattoo on his right hand of a snake. I could tell it was a joint tattoo. Seen plenty of ‘em. His was actually pretty good. When I told them to take it outside he turned his hand so I could see the snake; kind of flexed his hand to make the snake move. Trying to scare me, I guess. Showing me your prison tats doesn’t mean shit to me. Everybody in here knows I keep a shotgun under the bar. Guess they never caught him ’cause nobody ever came back or showed me any more pictures. Anyway, you should ask the detective.”
O’Hara didn’t need to ask the detective. He’d seen that snake move before,
Chapter 45
Ernie yawned. He hated going to LA, driving in LA, and being in LA. And he hated the drive back too because it didn’t make any difference what time he left, there was still traffic moving like the 5 Freeway was a school zone. The 405 was worse. It was a parking lot. How people handled it was beyond him. He guessed they turned their radios up and just tuned out. Finally, he was approaching the 5 and 405 merge at the start of the highway over the Tehachapi Mountains—what everybody called the Grapevine.
Dodger Stadium had still been basically how he remembered it. His dad had taken him there a few times as a kid. Visiting it brought back those memories. Baseball was always better when you were a kid. He was old enough that he remembered when ball players actually signed a kid’s baseball and you took it home and treasured it instead of selling it on the internet.
It hadn’t been a productive day, at least not in the sense of getting anything that would help much. He’d taken the tickets that Jensen said he got from Sample and showed them to people in the Dodger office at the stadium. They were real. But that was about it. There were no records as to who bought them. But there was no doubt in his mind that Sample hadn’t bought them. They were expensive seats and guys like Rick Sample would have been in the nosebleed sections at best. He hoped that O’Hara had something better.
Jamison walked into his father’s home office. He hadn’t been in there in a long time. In fact, he couldn’t remember when he’d last been in it. When he was a kid, if his father was home his time in that office generally meant he was in trouble. The leather recliner was still where it had always been. The walls were covered with awards that reflected his father’s accomplishments as a lawyer, and the triple-arch bookcase held at least five crystal award clocks that had long ago stopped ticking but still sat as silent mementoes of some achievement that meant something at the time. That wasn’t what he was looking for.
There was a locked glass-enclosed display case behind his father’s desk. He’d never been allowed to do more than put his fingerprints on the glass. The shelves on one side held autographs of famous lawyers and judges. The other side held a sports memorabilia collection that meant more to a little boy who couldn’t have cared less who Oliver Wendell Holmes was. There was a 49ers football signed by Joe Montana, a Green Bay Packers helmet signed by Bart Starr, a photograph of his father standing with Johnny Unitas, signed photos of his father with golf greats from Arnold Palmer to Jack Nicholas, and what Jamison was really interested in, his baseball mementoes—all sitting prominently in front of signed photographs of baseball stars.
Jamison reached to the top of the case and felt around for the key. Something had clicked in the back of his brain when he’d been cross-examining Jimmy Stack but it didn’t register clearly at the time. Slowly but surely it had wormed its way to the front, a childhood memory sprung from the recesses where such things are kept. He stared at the mounted baseballs before picking up several of them, searching the autographs on them. He hadn’t been sure that any of them might be what he was looking for as he picked up one after another and set them back down, until he turned one of the baseballs over in his hand and stared at it for seconds that seemed to suspend time. He slipped the ball back into the case.
Jamison drove over to Lorie Grady’s house. This time he called ahead. He needed to know whether her father kept anything else related to what Jamison didn’t want to face. Their dinner had been an experience that kept popping up in his mind. She was vibrant, committed to what she did, interested in what he did, funny, and incredibly attractive. And she knew it. And she knew he knew it. What she thought of him was something he was less sure of, but he was sure that he wanted to see her again and again and he was pretty sure she would say yes. But his reasons for seeing her today were because of her father, not her. She answered the door before the chime of the doorbell faded. “You’ve found what you were looking for.” It wasn’t a question. How she seemed to know what he wanted before he said it still put him off-balance.
Jamison walked in and quickly turned. “I’d like to look again at your father’s files.”
“And here I thought it was all about me.”
She had a way of setting him back on his heels before she made him feel like he was completely in control, even though his rational mind told him he wasn’t.
“You want to know if there’s a file on Dolores Sample, don’t you?” Again, it wasn’t a question.
He was tempted to ask how she did that but all he said was, “Have you seen one?”
“I’ve looked at it.”
The veiled answer caused him to hesitate. “What does that mean?”
“It means that some things are better left to the erosion of mildew and time. How’s that for a poetic effort?” Lorie came close and put her hand on the side of his face. He could feel the heat. “There’s no point to this, let it go.”
“Everybody keeps telling me that, but nobody has convinced me, yet.”
“That’s because you aren’t listening. And if they’re telling you that it’s because they think you should listen.”
“And is that what you think too?”
“Is this more about your father or more about whether there was an injustice that you think you’re supposed to right?”
“Are you going to show me the file?”
Lorie watched as Jamison slowly read and then flipped one by one the several pages in a file with Dolores Sample’s name on it. Alton Grady may have been past his prime when he defended Rick Harker but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t tried. Apparently, Jamison’s mother wasn’t the only one who knew about Dolores and Roger Jamison. Grady’s notes showed that he had talked to Roger about it, but it was because he had warned Roger that his information was that both Jensen and Cleary knew about the relationship. The page also had lines connecting a lot of the principal players, but that was all there was—lines without notes.
Jamison put the file down without saying anything. Lorie reached over and put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Matt. I knew your father and mine were friends. I’m not sure why my father made a record of this. But it looks to me like he thought that Jensen or Cleary would have used that information to make sure your f
ather got Foster to cooperate.”
Jamison held her hand for a moment. “Your father was right but not for the reason he thought.”
Jamison drove back to his office in silence. The radio was off, and he had no desire to hear the news or music. What he wanted was the absence of sound. He had no way of knowing that both O’Hara and Garcia were also driving back in the same frame of mind.
Chapter 46
All three men converged on Jamison’s office at virtually the same time. It wasn’t planned. The realities of the case had reached a level of subconscious interaction that put everyone on the same plane of thought, and even time seemed to match their actions. Jamison was taking a seat behind his desk when Ernie walked in followed seconds later by O’Hara.
O’Hara didn’t wait for the others to speak. “Clarence Foster killed Rick Sample.”
Ernie’s head swiveled around. “Wait. What?”
“The bartender identified that snake tattoo on Foster’s hand and the description was a perfect match.”
“That wasn’t in the reports.”
O’Hara spit out a response. “No shit.” He immediately regretted the way it sounded. Ernie didn’t deserve that. He unloaded the rest of it. “Mike Jensen showed the bartender a photo spread but it didn’t include Foster. But the bartender told me he described a black guy, scraggly goatee, with the tattoo of a snake on the back of his right hand. Does that sound familiar? Jensen had to know it was Foster.”
Jamison hadn’t said a word, waiting for O’Hara to finish before he put a period on O’Hara’s explanation. “Jensen said he was the supervising detective when Sample was murdered. So, if he knew that Foster killed Sample why not bring him in?”
O’Hara exhaled heavily. “I’m going to guess that he did but I’m also going to guess that Foster told him that Sample had admitted to Stack that he killed Lisa Farrow.”
Shades of Truth Page 30
