“I’m not quite tracking this,” Ernie said. “Why would Foster kill Sample?”
“Foster told us that ‘he did the right thing.’ My guess is that Foster decided to do a little jailhouse justice. He knew he’d screwed Harker,” Jamison answered.
Ernie snorted. “Guys like him don’t give a damn about that.”
“Well, my question is whether Foster talked to Jensen before or after he killed Sample.” O’Hara let his comment fall with a thud that momentarily stopped the conversation.
“What are you saying, Bill?” Jamison hadn’t connected the dots.
“What I’m saying is who had the motive? There’s always a motive. Sometimes it’s real simple and sometimes its complex but you look to the motive and that usually tells you where to start digging. If Jensen knew that Sample did it, then he had a motive to want to see Sample dead. Think about it. Stack told Foster that Harker hadn’t done it. And somebody told Jensen. My guess is it was Clarence Foster.
“Whether he intended it or not, Jensen would know that he let an innocent man go down and he’d pulled shit to do it. He’d buried the tapes; committed perjury. It was all going to go if anyone found out—his pension, his reputation. He could even go to the joint with all the rest of the assholes he’d sent there. So, Foster either went into that bar because he intended to see to it that Sample got what he deserved, or Jensen sent him into that bar to make sure Sample got what he deserved. Either way, Jensen covered it up and then he went looking for Stack to make sure the loose thread was taken care of.”
“Well, we aren’t going to know the answer to that until we talk to Jensen,” said Jamison.
“Or until we talk again to Clarence Foster,” O’Hara said in a low voice as he walked out the door.
O’Hara went into the interview at Corcoran Prison by himself. He hadn’t brought Jamison with him because he didn’t want to listen to the disapproval of how he was going to handle it—and with the way he intended to handle it he didn’t want any of Jamison’s fingerprints on this.
“You back again?” Foster sat, drumming his fingers on the metal table in the interview room. “I haven’t had this many visitors since they wrote about me in People magazine, Sexiest Man Alive and all that.” Foster gave O’Hara a smirk and leaned back in his chair. “Why don’t you bring a woman and maybe I can work up some of those conjugals. Or maybe you and I can work something out? You know what I mean? You get more flexible about your choices with only men around you all the time. You’re not bad lookin’ for an old guy. I’ve done worse.” Foster’s eyelids shrouded his eyes like a hood, making them look like black slits in his face as he laughed at his own humor.
O’Hara didn’t laugh in return. “Okay, Clarence, you’ve been fucking with us from the beginning. Now it’s time to tell the truth. I know you killed Rick Sample.” O’Hara had decided to get right to the point. He would deal with the fallout later. Right now, his need for answers took a priority over his concern about going after Foster. He knew he was rationalizing. O’Hara had never regarded his ability to justify his conduct as a character flaw.
“You don’t know shit, man.” Foster started to get up. “I want my lawyer. I got a right to my lawyer.”
Experienced cops read a lot by the look in a man’s eyes and O’Hara saw the look of a man that he wouldn’t turn his back on in the prison yard. There was only one way to talk to him and only one way for him to understand. “Fuck your lawyer, Clarence. I want answers and I want them right now. I know that you were out of the joint when Sample was killed.” O’Hara slammed his hand over Foster’s right hand with the curled snake. “And just so you know, Clarence, the bartender remembered that tattoo that you like to show off so if you think I can’t prove you did it you’re wrong.” O’Hara pushed down so hard on Foster’s hand that he could feel Foster’s pulse throb. O’Hara’s voice came out in a razor-edged whisper. “I know you did it but that’s not why I’m here. What I want to know is the rest of it.”
“I already said you don’t know shit. Fuck you.” Foster tried to pull his hand out from under O’Hara’s, but O’Hara was pressing down so hard the hand didn’t move.
“You know I’m not the man you want to say that to so let’s quit measuring one another’s dicks.”
O’Hara could see the side of Foster’s mouth twitch with pain. He lifted his hand. “Clarence, you go down for murder and you’re going to die in this place. You’ll have no chance to see the light of day. I’m going to give you a chance not to be carried out of here in a used body bag. I already know what you did, and I know that Detective Jensen knew it too, didn’t he? But nothing happened to you, no arrest, nothing. Now what did you do to buy your way out of a murder? You know what I want. Give it to me.”
Foster raised his head and opened his eyes. They looked like two black holes, absorbing all light—dead eyes. O’Hara knew he was watching a man who had died a long time ago and already released his soul. There was something about him that emanated not a lack of fear but a lack of caring about fear or anything else for that matter. O’Hara had seen too many men just like Foster, a shell who was filling air space. All he had left was some code that justified him holding his head up when he walked back and forth to his cell.
The words that came out of Foster chilled the room like they’d been buried in ice. “I did the right thing. Your boy Jensen, he’s no different than me. The only thing that keeps him from being in here just like me is that badge. And if you do your job maybe I’ll get to tell him myself.” Foster laid his hands flat on the table and flexed the snake until it took on its own life. “That little girl, Christine. She used to talk to me. She didn’t care what I was. That’s your answer. I told you I was too damn drunk to even know what was happening to her mama, let alone stop it. There’s not enough time for me to make much of my life right. I did the right thing for that little girl—and for me.” He stood up and banged on the door for the guard.
Chapter 47
As he rolled past the gate, O’Hara glanced at the side mirror. The walls of Corcoran Prison receded behind him, their massive size still filling the view. He wondered how many secrets that concrete carapace held and then shook off the thought. It wasn’t what he had done that worried him. It was what was going to happen next. He already knew what Jamison was going to say. He was right.
“Bill, you went too far. Foster wanted a lawyer …”
Ernie slipped in the office just in time to hear O’Hara respond. “Fuck Foster and his lawyer too. You wanted answers. You and I both know you aren’t interested in who killed Rick Sample. At this point it’s really hard to care. He deserved dyin’ the hard way. He just didn’t get it from a clean needle. The world has one less asshole. That’s a positive improvement.
“Besides, if this went down the way I think it did, not pulling out a Miranda card and reading Foster his rights isn’t going to make a damn bit of difference. If you want answers we needed to talk to Foster and if you want to prosecute somebody for the murder of Rick Sample, then we still needed Foster because you and I both know that Foster isn’t the guy in your gunsights. There are a whole lot of bigger fish than Foster. But now you crossed your own line, Matt. You know what happened and you’re smart enough to know who’s going to be in front of you. I told you not to do this. You going to take down Jensen? You going to take down Gage and Cleary too? You do and you know who’s going to be coming after you. Sometimes you just need to let shit go, Matt. You can still control this. Let it go. There’s no upside here for you. Let. It. Go.”
Jamison stayed quiet. He knew O’Hara was right. He also knew that he was edging close to the line now in everything he was doing, and if he was wrong, then he wasn’t going to be able to justify edging across that line, assuming that he could ever justify it. And if he was right he was still crossing a line and he couldn’t go back. It was a choice and he had to make it.
O’Hara changed the subject. “Foster’s last comment, about the little girl, Christine?”
&n
bsp; “Yeah?”
“That’s your answer. Even cons have their own morality code. You don’t hurt kids. That was Foster’s justification. The question is what was Jensen’s? There’s only one way to find the answer to that.” O’Hara exhaled heavily. “Matt, if you think Bill Gage is going to let you pull the governor’s chair out from under his ass or that Judge Cleary is going to let you steal his golden ring without a fight, then you are not just naive, you are stupid. Harker’s dead. Sample’s dead. And if this is still about your old man, well he’s dead too. This is about you now. You keep this up, there’s going to be blood on the floor and no matter what, a lot of it is going to be yours.”
Ernie hadn’t said a word. His face was an opaque brown mask. If O’Hara was in, then he was in. And if Matt was in then, they were all in. Jamison glanced over to read Ernie’s face. His lack of reaction telegraphed that as far as he was concerned O’Hara was right.
“My dad—”
O’Hara interrupted. “You need to let that go too. Ernie and I both know you’re a better man than he was. You don’t have to prove that to the world.”
Jamison gave an almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgment before finishing. “That isn’t it. I went through my father’s office. He kept a lot of stuff in his ego display case. It was right behind his desk, so you couldn’t see him without seeing all that stuff. One thing he kept was sports mementos, including baseballs and pictures of baseball stars. When he went to a game he liked to get a baseball or something like that signed. I guess it let people know that he was important. One of those baseballs was signed by Steve Garvey. You remember him, played first base for the Dodgers? Garvey didn’t just sign his name, he put a date on it—July 5, 1980—the day Lisa Farrow was murdered and the day that Sample said he was at the game. Those tickets that Sample had for an alibi? I’m pretty sure those were my dad’s tickets. My father helped put an innocent man in prison for twenty-six years and almost put him in the greenroom at Quentin. I don’t know why he would do that, but I have to make it right. I want to talk to Mike Jensen. I need to know why.”
O’Hara’s face registered his resignation about what was going to happen as he shook his head. He kept silent. He was in.
“Before we talk with Jensen, maybe we need to start with Dolores,” Ernie said, “or go back to Alton Grady.” Ernie was in.
Both men looked at Jamison. He stared back. They were all in.
Chapter 48
Jamison and Ernie picked up Lorie Grady on their way to see her father while O’Hara started pulling out the files surrounding Jensen’s investigation of the murder of Sample. Jamison thought it might be easier to talk to Alton Grady with Lorie there and he asked her to bring the original file on Dolores Sample. That was Lorie’s idea. She thought it might jog her father’s memory, seeing his old notes.
Her father was right in his usual spot, sitting near the window with the sun streaming in. When he heard his daughter’s voice there was a flicker of recognition, but he looked at Jamison and Ernie with confusion. Lorie reminded him that Matt was Roger Jamison’s son. The old man sat up a little straighter. “Roger, good man. Good lawyer. I was a lawyer too, you know.” He squinted at Jamison, his eyes slightly clouded by the encroachments of age. “You look like Roger.”
Lorie took the file on Dolores Sample and put it in her father’s lap, flipping it open to his notes with the lines drawing connections between Roger Jamison, Dolores Sample, and Detective Jensen. “Dad, this is part of your file on the Harker case. Do you remember this? Do you remember why you wrote this? Why were there lines between these people? Was there a connection between Roger Jamison and Dolores Sample? Why is there a line to Tommy Sample? Do you remember why you drew that line to Detective Jensen?”
Alton Grady’s face lost its vacant expression as he passed his hands over the notes he wrote almost three decades before. What came out were disconnected pieces of memory. “Roger was my friend. There was a woman. I talked to him. Told him people would find out. Detective Jensen knew.” There was a cloud of anger that crossed Grady’s face and then passed.
“What did he know?” asked Jamison. “Are you saying the detective knew about the woman? What did he know?” The burst of questions seemed to cause Grady to withdraw.
Lorie touched her father’s arm. “Dad, what did Jensen know? Did he know about Roger and the woman? That Roger was having an affair?”
“He knew. He was a bastard. I tried to warn Roger. Good man. Bad choices.” Grady’s eyes closed and his breathing shallowed as his mind moved to somewhere in the past where he was a trial lawyer who could command a courtroom.
Lorie shook her head. “That’s it. I’m surprised we got that much. There are good days and bad days but now there are mostly bad days. It’s happening so fast. I’m not sure what it all means but it sounds like my father was worried that Detective Jensen knew about Dolores Sample and would use that to leverage your father. I’m not clear why, though. Maybe because it would get your father to cooperate on Foster? Maybe to get something else out of your dad? My guess is that Jensen was threatening your father for some reason.”
Ernie flipped his notebook closed. “We need to go talk to Dolores. Not sure where that will get us. Last time she slammed the door in my face.
They dropped Lorie off and drove past Dolores Sample’s home. There was a car in the driveway. Ernie took the lead and rang the doorbell. He instinctively stepped back and adjusted the gun on his hip even though he didn’t feel any threat.
For Jamison, it was an unnerving experience coming face-to-face with Dolores Sample. She didn’t look much like a femme fatale, which was an image he had built in his mind. He wasn’t sure what he expected. He was looking at the “other woman” but she looked more like somebody’s mother or grandmother. She was in her late sixties, but she had a figure that insinuated what she must have looked like when she was much younger. Her face was still youthful, although the edges around her eyes hinted at a depth of worldly experience. What he could tell was that this was a woman who was used to men looking at her and could read their faces before they said a word.
She stared directly at Jamison, ignoring Ernie. “So you finally decided to come yourself.” It wasn’t a question and it wasn’t a statement, more of an observation. Dolores opened the door and retreated into the entryway.
She arranged herself on the couch in the living room, moving a few too many decorator pillows aside, never removing her eyes from Jamison. “I met you once, you know. I’m sure you don’t remember. You were only six or seven and your father took you to a baseball game. I sat nearby. Roger wanted me to see you. He was very proud of you.” She intuited his reaction. “You find that strange that your father would want me to meet you?”
“Frankly, I find the whole thing hard for me to think about. My father, you, it’s difficult to process.”
“You look like him. In many respects Roger was the best thing that ever happened to me—and the worst.”
“Can I ask?” Jamison’s discomfort registered in the stiffness with which he sat on the chair across from her.
“Can you ask what? How we met? What was it like? How long were we together? Do you really need to know all of that? I doubt if that’s why you’re here.”
“It’s not, but I would like to know.” Jamison couldn’t restrain himself. Ernie watched with the unease of a person watching a personal moment between two people and knowing he wasn’t supposed to be there.
“You didn’t know your father very well, did you? I mean, you didn’t know him deep down, what kind of man he was, did you?”
“He was my father. I knew him.”
“Well, that’s an answer, isn’t it, Matt? I hope that doesn’t bother you, me calling you Matt. When we talked about you that’s what we called you. I feel like I know you. Everything you did in school, the difficulties with him that you had and the difficulties with you that he had. The short answer, and all the answer I’m going to give, is that your father and I were together
until he died—well over twenty years. I’m guessing that surprises you. It wasn’t an affair, Matt. Not for me and not for your father. I doubt if you can understand that. It happens. I worked in a restaurant when we met. He bought this house for me, sent me back to school, helped me become something different. But you should know that I always understood that he wasn’t going to leave your mother—or you. Your father was a great man to many people. For me it was enough.”
Jamison was surprised that he didn’t feel more anger. Perhaps it was the surreal nature of the conversation. It wasn’t why he was there, but it was also something that he couldn’t ignore.
Ernie intervened. “Mrs. Sample, we need to ask about how your son Rick had baseball tickets that he gave to the police as an alibi for where he was when a murder happened.”
It was evident from her lack of reaction that she knew exactly what Ernie was asking about. “Why is that important now? Rick’s dead. You never found the man who murdered him. He had his own problems; there was too much of his father in him for it to turn out much different. But he didn’t deserve to die in a filthy alley and be left there like trash.”
This was why Ernie was doing this and not O’Hara. Ernie could talk to people without them feeling threatened. He drew people out by a combination of deflection and empathy. “Mrs. Sample, we’re here because we’re investigating who killed your son, but we need to ask about those tickets in order to help us prove it.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it was all the truth she needed to know at the moment. Omission and stretching the truth were also interrogation tools in the hands of a skilled detective. And Ernie was certainly skilled.
Ernie decided to treat his speculation as a fact in order to see the reaction. “We know that you gave those tickets to your son. What we want to know is where did you get them and did you ever meet or talk to a detective Mike Jensen?”
Shades of Truth Page 31
