“Who killed my son?”
“We’re narrowing it down, but we have new information that will help us.”
“Whoever he is I hope he rots in hell. All this time and this never goes away. As for Detective Jensen, yes I met Detective Jensen.” Dolores sat straighter on the couch and there was no mistaking her body language as her face flushed. “He accused Rick of murdering that woman. My son wasn’t a murderer. He didn’t do that. I gave my son those tickets to make Jensen go away.” Ernie kept his face impassive. His speculation had been right. Dolores kept talking. “Besides, the man who killed that woman was convicted and now he’s dead too. I read all about it in the paper.” She looked over at Jamison. “And I read about you too. I kept up with you and what you’ve done. It was like reading about Roger.”
“Where did you get those tickets from?” Jamison interjected.
“You already know that, or you wouldn’t be here. They came from your father. He and I went to that Dodger game, and I kept them. Your father loved the Dodgers. I guess you know that. I kept everything that had to do with your father. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
The raw tension in her voice told Ernie that she was about to end everything right now and they needed a lot more. He needed to put oil in the water before it boiled. “Mrs. Sample, we’re not here because you gave those tickets to your son.” It was a lie but none of that showed on Ernie’s face as he slid around confrontation. “Do you know whether Detective Jensen ever talked to Roger about those tickets?”
Dolores Sample seemed to shrink, her face suddenly aging. “Roger didn’t know I gave those tickets to Rick. I was afraid, and I did it but your father didn’t know, at least until later. Rick told me that he heard the police were asking questions about him and that poor girl. He wanted me to tell the police I was with him, but I was afraid that would lead to Roger and besides, I was his mother. There had to be something that was solid proof. So, I gave him the ticket stubs if Rick needed something to make the police go away. Then Jensen came around and he started asking questions about those tickets. He knew Rick couldn’t afford those tickets and it all just started to go wrong. I had to tell Roger, and then Jensen went to Roger. I don’t know how he knew. But by then I knew Jensen wasn’t interested in the tickets. He didn’t want my son to be a suspect. He didn’t want anything to raise questions about Harker’s guilt. Don’t you see? Harker killed that woman, but my son was involved with her too. He would be somebody that Harker’s lawyer would try to blame. But those tickets meant he had an alibi. It was only to make sure that Harker couldn’t find some way to worm out of it. And Cleary made Roger keep quiet.”
“How?”
“Because Cleary knew about Roger and me. He told Roger that if he said anything about the tickets it would all come out about the two of us. Everything would come out. Jensen told him. Roger told me that Cleary was the one who got him to defend Foster, the one that was supposed to have been in the house with Harker. Roger was trying to protect all of us and your mother and you. It didn’t hurt anybody. Harker killed that girl. There were two witnesses. Rick was my son. But my son wasn’t a murderer.”
“You have a grandson named Tommy,” Jamison blurted out.
“Why would you ask that?” Dolores’s face was ashen.
“We’ll need to talk to him.”
The sharpness with which she responded caused Ernie’s antenna to go up. “I don’t have anything more to say to you. I want you to leave now. I don’t want Tommy dragged into this. He doesn’t have anything he can tell you because he was just a little boy when this happened. He’s made a different life for himself. Leave him alone. For your sake and your mother’s sake you need to leave this all alone. Nothing is going to come out of this that won’t hurt people who don’t deserve it.” Whether it was instinctive or just the situation, Ernie realized he needed to stop the conversation before Jamison dug himself a hole he couldn’t climb out of. And he did.
Chapter 49
Jamison had been surprised that Ernie abruptly stood up when Dolores Sample objected to him talking to Tommy. Ernie thanked Dolores and walked to the front door with Jamison following him. He’d deferred to Ernie’s decision because he trusted his judgment but as soon as they got in the car he wanted answers. When they got in the car, he asked one question. “Well?”
“Instinct. There could be a number of reasons why she didn’t want us to talk to Rick Sample’s kid but it was the way she reacted that told me we needed to know more before we asked more questions. She’s feeding us bits and pieces, but if we want the whole truth out of Dolores Sample we will need to know a whole lot that we’re only guessing at. We can always come back to her. It isn’t like this has to be resolved today. Sometimes you have to pull the thread slowly.
“Whether Harker killed Lisa Farrow or Rick Sample did, they’re both dead and Foster’s in the joint. So, we’re not chasing down a suspect.” Ernie looked over at Jamison, who was staring at his notepad instead of Ernie. “Listen to me, Matt. Think about what we heard in there. She says that Cleary helped force cooperation from your father to get Foster to testify. I’m sorry, Matt, but she’s saying your father knew that Sample’s alibi was bullshit. What you’re doing is going to destroy careers, including your father’s, not to mention Cleary’s, Jensen’s, and Gage’s and who knows who else’s.”
Ernie hesitated to carefully frame what he thought was necessary to say next. “It isn’t going to be enough to just walk in and say we found out who really murdered Lisa Farrow. We have to prove it. And we have to prove how it happened or the ones who go down on this will be us. All we have right now is what Foster and Stack say but that doesn’t prove Harker didn’t do it. It just creates suspicion that Sample did it and that isn’t going to cut it. And another thing, Matt. It isn’t just our careers at risk here. It’s your father’s reputation also. If this becomes public, no matter what, you’re going to have to live with the fallout and you’d better be prepared for it.”
While Jamison was out with Ernie, O’Hara spent several hours at the sheriff’s office looking through electronic records and then paper records. It hadn’t taken him that long to find what he was looking for but only because he knew where to look. He had a very good idea how files were buried because he’d done it himself.
First, he looked up Foster’s arrest record. Those records were kept on a statewide data base. Foster’s record showed an arrest for burglary a week before the bar killing of Rick Sample. With Foster’s record, it wasn’t hard to figure out that he would have been in custody when Sample was killed. But he wasn’t. That meant that either he was simply arrested and then cut loose for lack of evidence or that some judge let him out. With Foster’s record that wasn’t likely. He pulled the records of the burglary. Foster’s fingerprints had been found inside and he had been identified with stolen property. It was a clear-cut case and the only question was how much time Foster would get. And with Foster’s record it would be time in the joint.
He dug deeper into the reports. One thing about law enforcement records, whether the records were there or they weren’t gave you answers either way. Whether the answers were helpful depended on whether you knew what questions to ask. O’Hara knew what questions to ask and where to look for the answers.
O’Hara walked down to Jamison’s office when Ernie let him know they were back. Ernie filled him in while Jamison sat, listening and drawing lines on his legal pad. He hadn’t said much after Ernie talked to him in the car and he didn’t add anything while Ernie related what Dolores said.
O’Hara took it all in and then explained what he’d found. “I looked up Foster’s record. He’d done a burglary that he got arrested for about a week prior to Sample’s murder. His prints were in the house he burgled, and they had a picture of him in a pawn shop trying to fence a diamond ring that was taken in the burglary. The case was dead bang. He was in the county jail looking at serious hard time. Stack was in there at the same time. So, I’m guessing that while they wer
e in custody together that Stack told him Sample had threatened him and admitted he killed Lisa. And that gave that scumbag Foster the keys to the city because now he had something to trade. Two things happened. The case had a notation on it that the DA had refused to file it and Foster was released from custody because no more charges were pending. The name that was on the file showing no charges filed by the DA was Mike Jensen.
“Jensen simply made a notation on the file that the DA refused to charge Foster. Both of you know that cases go to the DA and if they get filed the case goes forward. If the DA refuses to charge, then it just goes in the dead records file unless investigation continues. Unless somebody actually looked at the case they would never have any reason to suspect. My guess is that Foster contacted Jensen because he had something to sell. Whatever it was it bought Foster out of ten years hard time for burglary and got him out of custody. But the next question is the murder.
“There isn’t a lot in the records, but Jensen was the supervising detective and the records show he put a photo ID spread in front of the bartender at Jack’s Place with no ID. But there’s no mention of the suspect having a snake tattoo or being a black male. The murder of Rick Sample went into the cold case file along with all the other bar killings that nobody has time to follow up on unless they have a solid lead. Without reports showing that the bartender gave any kind of useful lead or ID, there was nothing there. No reports were ever made even though Jensen was the lead detective and he had to have known Foster’s picture should have been in that photo spread. But it wasn’t and there’s only one reason for that—Mike Jensen. Bottom line: Jensen buried those files. Why is the big question.”
Jamison had been listening intently. “And do you have an answer to that question?”
“We’ll have to talk to Jensen about that.”
Jamison’s voice was calm. “And when we do, all hell’s going to break loose, so everybody needs to decide right now where they want to be. Look, both of you don’t have to stick with me on this. It’s my decision. I like to think I’m doing the right thing but that doesn’t make it the right thing. Besides, if I make a mistake on this the whole world is going to come down on me and whoever’s standing next to me.”
Ernie waited for O’Hara to respond. He did. “We both understood that before we started. I’m not going to walk away from you now. As much as I hate to admit it, you’re as close to family as I got at the moment, both of you. I already told you that I thought you should drop this but I’m sticking with your call.”
Jamison thought he detected a slight quiver of emotion. “Bill, is it possible your heart may actually be in the right place?”
O’Hara shoved an unlit cigar in his mouth before answering. “I prefer to believe that unlike you I don’t think with it. Anyway, you’re not going to find out for sure until I’m dead.”
“I told you before,” Ernie said. “I’m all in. Maybe not for the same reasons, but I need to know the answer if I want to sleep at night. I can handle any shit that comes at me. I’ve been with O’Hara long enough to know that.”
“I’ll just say that I told you two to do this and you didn’t question it.”
Ernie choked out a laugh. “Yeah, everyone will believe that.”
Chapter 50
Ernie sat in O’Hara’s office. Talking to Jamison was one thing but they both knew they needed a private cop discussion to keep things on track. “Okay, so how do we keep Matt from completely blowing his career to hell?” He kept eyeing O’Hara playing with his lighter while keeping his cigar unlit. Ernie couldn’t stand O’Hara’s cigars any more than Jamison, but he had accepted long ago that O’Hara didn’t care and if he didn’t smoke in front of you it was because he didn’t feel like it.
“There’s only one way and even that might not work,” O’Hara said as he touched the butane flame of his lighter to the tip of his cigar to warm it evenly. “What I want to know is why did you pull back on Dolores?”
“You caught that, did you?”
“I’ve been stuck with you as a partner longer than I’ve been married to any woman. So, what is it?”
“Instinct, I guess. There was just something about the way she reacted that told me there was a raw nerve that had something to do with Tommy. I came back to the office and pulled up some records. It wasn’t hard to do.”
“And?”
“And Dolores Sample isn’t Tommy Sample’s grandmother.”
O’Hara put his cigar in the ashtray and sat up. “Meaning?”
“Meaning she’s his mother.”
“His mother?” O’Hara inhaled deeply before asking his next question. “Who else is listed on the birth certificate?”
“You mean who’s the father? According to the birth certificate it was Michael Sample, same as Rick Sample. The only problem is Michael Sample was long since gone. I looked that up too. So, unless Michael Sample paid a nocturnal visit, he isn’t the father.”
“Don’t make me guess.”
“I don’t know the answer to that. I know what I think but there’s only one way to find out.”
“Does Matt know?”
“I didn’t say anything. I guess it will come to the surface soon enough, but it didn’t seem like something for casual conversation. For right now I figured I’d just say nothing.”
Both men sensed somebody quietly standing at the door. There was no telling how long Jamison had been there. If he heard anything, he didn’t react to the conversation. “I want to go talk to Christine Farrow.”
Ernie and Jamison pulled to the curb in a no parking area. That was one advantage to driving the undercover car. There was a cardboard placard in the glove box that read “District Attorney Investigator.” It was like parking a squad car in a tow-away zone. Nobody would touch it.
The coffee shop where Christine worked had seen better days, and that was assuming it ever had better days. They walked through the front door and were hit with air heavy with the smell of old grease and working men. A few tables held people talking and the sudden silence was noticeable as heads turned to look at them. In this neighborhood cops stood out like a match flaring in the dark. As far as the people at the tables were concerned, nothing good ever came from cops walking through the door. Heads turned away as if that would hide them from notice.
Christine Farrow was behind the counter pouring coffee. The expression on her face was louder than any words. She obviously didn’t want to see them, and she didn’t want to be seen with them. But her expression also carried the resignation that she knew it wasn’t a choice. She tilted her head toward an area with empty tables and walked over holding a coffeepot. She didn’t say anything, waiting for one of them to let her know what they wanted.
Jamison kept his voice subdued. “I need to talk to you.”
“The last time you talked to me you said I was lying.”
Jamison blanched. She wasn’t going to make this easy. He hadn’t expected her to. “I didn’t say you were lying. I said that it was possible you had been influenced by the process you went through. Look, Christine, we need to talk to you.”
While she kept her voice low, the tone was sharp. “Not here and not now. I get off at three o’clock. I don’t want to talk to you at all, but I definitely don’t want to talk to you here. You should have come to my house if you wanted to talk. All this will do is cause me more trouble.”
At 4:00 p.m. Ernie and Jamison parked outside Christine’s house. Little had changed, there were the same patches of dead grass like islands in the dirt, the same bunches of dried foliage that may or may not have once been flowers. Jamison felt a pang of guilt as he walked to the front door. This woman’s life had been nothing but struggles that he couldn’t even begin to relate to and nothing he was going to do would help her. Ernie knocked and waited.
Christine was still in her uniform from work, the splatters of coffee and various stains telling the story of the breakfasts and lunches she’d served. She left the door open and walked back to the couch tha
t more or less filled the small living room. “I don’t want to talk to you, either of you, anymore. I thought I was doing the right thing. All it did was bring it all back. What do you want now?”
“I want to talk to you about Rick Sample.”
“Why? That bastard is dead. Harker’s dead. I’ve got nothing left inside me that doesn’t hurt. I tried to do what I thought was the right thing, something that would help me get beyond this. My whole life this has been on me.” She began to cry and then to convulse as anguish overcame her.
“Christine, I’m sorry. We’ve kept working on this case and we want to make sure that we know who killed your mother. We’ve kept investigating and some things have turned up that have caused us to reopen the case. Your testimony is one of the reasons we’re doing that. You need closure and we need to know. I want to go over what you remember. I need to do that and you’re the only one who was there that can tell me.”
Christine raised her head. Her sunken eyes were rimmed with cheap mascara running down in streaks, but all Jamison could see at that moment was the plea for help reflected back—and despair. It made his gut churn. All this case had done was sow destruction in its path, and all that was left now was more destruction reaped by the one left behind. Now he was asking her to go back to the day that began the ruination of her life. Jamison stood up. “I’m sorry, Christine. I shouldn’t have come here. I won’t put you through any more.” He didn’t know what else to say. Ernie followed him to the door, the sound of Christine weeping following them.
“If I do this will that be the end? I can’t do it without help.”
Jamison turned. He wasn’t sure if what he felt was empathy or guilt or both. “Tell me what you want.”
“If Dr. Vinson will help me, I’ll do it.”
Vinson sat behind his desk measuring Jamison and the man sitting next to him, Dr. Aaron Levy. Jamison wanted someone present who could help him decipher what was going on. Vinson finally spoke, addressing Levy. “So, Dr. Levy, how are you? I’ve been to some of your lectures. You don’t think highly of my work.”
Shades of Truth Page 32
