Levy smiled. “And I’ve been to some of yours, Dr. Vinson. You don’t think highly of my criticisms.”
To Jamison it looked like both men were attempting to peer into the psyches of each other with little success. But who could tell. With the exception of Levy, his opinion of psychologists was they just stared at you, unblinking and impassive before they told you that it was your mother’s fault or your father’s fault or, occasionally, your fault. In Jamison’s opinion, they had a pretty good chance of being right given that they’d covered most of the possible causes. Right now, he wasn’t concerned about his opinions of psychology. He needed to make sure that what was going to happen was watched by people he trusted, and Dr. Levy was definitely one of those, not because he was a psychologist, but because he used psychology as a tool for understanding.
Vinson finally addressed the issue of whether he would attempt to draw from Christine’s memory in front of Jamison and Levy. In that respect, Dr. Levy understood the issue. He offered his office, which had an observation window that he used for teaching purposes. To the patient, it was a mirror. To those watching, it was a means of learning. Vinson agreed. He would do it. “Maybe, Aaron, you’ll see that I’m not a witch doctor.”
“And maybe you’ll see that I don’t hate witches.” The smile from both men was forced as they struggled to avoid more personal barbs. Jamison kept his distance. All he cared about was that they agreed to cooperate. He was no longer concerned about whether Christine’s statements could be used in court. No matter what she said, the only closure it would provide was whether Rick Harker or Rick Sample was a murderer. Jamison was satisfied that God could sort that out because there was nothing he could do now to either one of them.
Christine sat quietly in an overstuffed chair. The process had taken much less time than Jamison expected. O’Hara and Garcia stood behind him. Vinson nodded toward the mirrored window. He’d taken her through what Levy described as levels of hypnosis necessary to allow what probing Vincent planned to do. Levy whispered that Christine appeared now to be in a deep state of hypnosis, nearing what he called “the third stage.” What Vinson was doing was sometimes referred to as age regression. Levy explained that what Vinson claimed he could do was take a patient back to an earlier moment of the patient’s life and then slowly draw out the memories that had been buried, taking the patient past the stage where they were watching the memory and put them in the stage where they relived it. It was controversial and criticized by many experts like Dr. Levy, but there was no doubt that it had a somewhat unstable place in accepted treatments.
Christine’s eyes were closed and she appeared asleep, but they fluttered open as Vinson began taking her back. What startled Jamison was the way her voice became small and child-like. Levy had said that the literature described this phenomenon in regression therapy and he had seen it demonstrated. He was neither a believer nor an unbeliever. He was a skeptic with concerns about the danger of probing deeply suppressed trauma, but he also had concerns that whether the memory was accurate or not, it would become ingrained indelibly in the mind of the patient as accurate. It was the very concern that Jamison had when he listened to Christine testify and why hypnosis therapy was highly restricted if it was used as a forensic tool. Right now, that wasn’t Jamison’s concern. Christine was.
Jamison watched tensely as Christine was now removed from all of them as she responded to Dr. Vinson. His voice was subdued and gentle, reminding Christine that they had talked of this before. Vinson began asking about that night, pulling out shreds of memory leading up to what happened to her mother. It was like watching a human being sink into an abyss.
Christine pulled her body up in her chair, curling it into something resembling a fetal position while Vinson reached over and handed her what looked like a shapeless mass of gray fur. Jamison turned, the question written on his face. Levy answered. “Vinson told me he was going to give her a stuffed toy that she had that night. Apparently, she’s kept it all these years. He said it helps her to maintain a level of comfort as she talks about what happened. It isn’t uncommon to use different items associated with old memories as prompts. It’s a stuffed rabbit, or at least that’s what it used to be.” It was hard to tell what the toy was at this point. Jamison recalled that Gage had talked about the toy and that it was inseparable from Christine when she had testified. It struck him how the most innocuous things could trigger not only the best memories but the worst.
“Bed shaking. Mama crying.” Christine’s voice became louder, the fear was evident in it. “Rick is yelling at her. He was mean. Mama crying. I’m scared, so scared.” Tears were running down Christine’s face. Jamison could feel his stomach wrenching with nausea. The psychologists might talk about violence, but they had never really seen it. He had seen it in all of its shades of red and brown and black. They were making Christine see it again, but she had seen it for real and smelled it all. For her the memory was a nightmare that was real.
“Christine, you have your bunny. Hold on to your bunny. Did a man come into your room?”
“Rick, it was Rick. He’s breathing on me. He smells. He’s breathing on me. I’m so scared. ‘It will be all right Christine.’ He’s lying. I know he’s lying. Where’s my mama? Give me back Bunny.”
Vinson hesitated. Christine was holding the toy so tightly Jamison could see pieces of stuffing sticking out of worn gaps in the fur. “Did Rick take your bunny?”
“He has it. He told me to stop crying. His hands are sticky.”
“Why are his hands sticky, Christine?”
“I don’t know. It’s dark. I can’t see. Give me back Bunny.” Christine began to cry again.
Jamison nudged Levy. “Tell him to stop.”
“It isn’t that easy, Matt,” Levy said. “He’ll have to pull her back slowly.” Levy tapped very lightly on the window, giving the signal he had discussed with Vinson, who nodded that he understood. Christine kept talking as Vinson slowly calmed her, but he did ask who Rick was. All Christine said was, “Tommy’s daddy.”
The process had taken more than an hour, but Levy had told Jamison it would seem like minutes to Christine. Minutes that revisited a ruined life. Slowly Vinson began to pull Christine back, taking her through the years until she was ready. He didn’t ask her to remember what she had described. When it was over she looked like someone who had been ill for days.
Chapter 51
Jamison, O’Hara, Levy, and Vinson sat quietly in a small conference room arranged by Levy. Garcia had taken Christine home after she spent more time with Dr. Vinson. Jamison still wasn’t sure about the validity of memory under hypnosis, but he was sure that Christine believed it and he hadn’t seen anything indicating Vinson had influenced her answer. He asked the psychologist about the stuffed toy.
“She brought it with her after we first met. Apparently, she’s kept it all these years and I thought it would help with the therapy. People hold on to all kinds of strange things that they were attached to as children.” Vinson pulled it out of a paper bag that he had sitting next to his briefcase and laid it on the table. Closer examination drew out the features in what was an almost shapeless blob of stuffing. It was once a toy rabbit, that much could be made out, but it was so worn and dingy that it was hard to believe it hadn’t completely disintegrated with the passage of time. It didn’t look like it had ever been washed but it certainly looked like it wouldn’t survive washing now.
O’Hara picked up the toy with surprising gentleness. “She said Rick’s hands were sticky. My guess is they had blood on them. If he touched this toy, then there might be blood on it and maybe it’s his.”
Levy said, “That was almost thirty years ago.”
“If they can find DNA from some three-thousand-year-old mummy, who knows? We’ll have Andy look at it. If there’s anything there, he’ll find it.” O’Hara put it back in the bag Vinson had kept it in. “Don’t worry, he won’t damage it. At least not in a way that anybody would notice.”
&n
bsp; The sheriff’s lab was run by Andre Rhychkov. Andy, as he preferred to be called, was a first-generation Russian American. Other than his name, that was the only thing about him that would imply that he was anything other than an American wannabe surfer. His blond hair was cut in a sixties beach boy style that perpetually dropped over his forehead. He wore oversized Hawaiian shirts, jeans, and expensive sneakers with stains from whatever project he was working on. He loved his work and he loved telling people that he was a real forensic analyst, unlike what they saw on television. As soon as he saw O’Hara his eyes fixated on the brown paper bag that O’Hara sat on the disorganized pile of paper on his desk.
“Dude, what you got?” Andy knew O’Hara didn’t like to be called “dude” but it entertained him that he could get away with irritating O’Hara, who scared the hell out of almost everyone else. O’Hara ignored the greeting, primarily because he needed Andy’s help.
Andy peered into the bag, snapping on a pair of latex gloves. He pulled out the stuffed toy with barely concealed distaste. “Dude, did you find this? It looks like roadkill that’s been run over by a truck.” He turned the stuffed toy over in his palm. “Guess it’s supposed to be a rabbit?”
“It belonged to a little girl whose mother was murdered. I have reason to suspect that it might have blood on it from the murderer.”
Andy handled the stuffed toy with a little more reverence. “How long ago, man? I don’t see anything on here that looks recent.”
“Twenty-six, twenty-seven years ago.”
Andy looked incredulous. “Dude, what do you think I am? I mean I hope you aren’t looking for a miracle. This thing looks like it’s been handled by everyone including Moses. And I know it wasn’t kept in that bag all that time. It may be impossible to find anything.” Andy saw the look of impatience on O’Hara’s face. “I can look. You got blood samples for me to compare if I find anything?”
“First tell us if you can find blood and do anything with it. The killer is supposed to have picked it up after he murdered a woman. I’m pretty sure he had blood on his hands.”
“Okay, it could be there but it’s going to be way degraded so don’t expect much and don’t expect it quick.” He examined it more closely. “How careful do I have to be with it? What’s the crime number for my report?”
“Do your best to avoid damaging it any more than you have to. It means a lot to somebody.” O’Hara hesitated. “Andy, this is a personal favor, understand? No crime number for right now. Just call me. I’ll owe you.”
“You already owe me, man. All you guys owe me but you never pay. I got Giants tickets I’m owed from last season.” He could see O’Hara’s jaw beginning to lock up. “Okay, I’ll call if I find anything. Do you know if the killer was bleeding or is it just the vic’s blood?”
“Don’t know. If he bled and it’s mixed with the victim’s, can you do it?”
Andy grinned. “If it’s there I’ll figure it out. It won’t be clean. I like challenges.”
“Yeah, so do I. Just remember to keep it between us.”
“So, now what?” Ernie asked O’Hara as they sat in a dark corner of Harrington’s, a local hangout that catered to cops. The bar kept the food simple, the beer cold, and the place dark, and that was good enough to keep it full. The rattle of dice could be heard in the background as leather dice cups slammed against table tops to determine who was going to pay.
“Not a lot of options,” O’Hara answered. “If Sample committed the murder, and it looks like he did, then we’re going to have to prove it decisively. We need hard evidence linkage. Jimmy Stack’s word isn’t going to hold up just because he says Sample told him he killed Lisa Farrow. Foster’s no help. Who knows whether he’s telling the truth. Any way you look at it he’s a lying asshole, but it seems pretty clear that he told Mike Jensen and Gage that he was so drunk he was blacked out. About all we can say is that he probably lied when he said Harker was the one—because those tapes show he was so drunk he can’t remember anything—and that he kept telling Jensen and Gage that. I think it’s pretty obvious that Foster killed Sample because he thought Sample killed that girl based on some weird convict code about Christine. If Sample killed that girl, then nobody is going to get too riled up about retribution, but if he didn’t that’s another story. It’s also clear that Sample’s alibi was phony and if Jamison’s old man didn’t help Dolores do it, he certainly knew it when the case went to trial. This is the worst kind of case.”
“You mean doing the right thing even though it’s not the result we want?” Ernie smiled with what could be confused for a grimace. “Yeah, that can get in the way of the result sometimes.” He puffed out his cheeks and blew out a stream of air. “Well, it won’t help you and me with career options but it will definitely crush Matt. Without something definite, Gage and Cleary will destroy him. He’s hell bent on getting to the truth, but even if we get there, I agree it needs to be solid. Gage and Cleary hiding the tapes isn’t going to prove Harker didn’t do it and they’ll just blame Jensen or say it was a mistake because there was so much evidence. Jamison will be out of a job and you and I will be working bad checks.”
O’Hara continued. “Jensen knew that Foster killed Sample and he covered it up. We can prove that. And I’m guessing he may have told Foster to do it. If he didn’t tell him to do it, he certainly didn’t have a problem with it. And the only reason for that is because he was afraid it would all come out about the tapes and him lying in court. Unless Andy can come up with blood on that mangy rabbit we got nothin’.”
“We can wait to see what Andy finds or we can go talk to Mike Jensen,” Ernie muttered. “I vote for talking to Mike. We’re not going to stop Matt from pushing this so we may as well do our job and take it back to him”
O’Hara took a sip of beer. “Maybe if we give Matt the answers we find, he’ll decide we’ll never get the answers he needs. But if we talk to Jensen, you know Jensen’s going to talk to Gage.”
“Maybe,” Ernie agreed. “But he also has reasons not to talk to Gage. First we have to ask.”
O’Hara and Ernie sat in the car. The drive to Jensen’s home had been mostly silent and they hadn’t said much once they parked. They were waiting because both knew any way it turned out the discussion with Jensen was going to be bad. After all, he was one of them.
As O’Hara walked past the window on the way to the front door of the home he caught the image of Jensen sitting in his chair. They locked eyes through the glass. Jensen wasn’t smiling, and neither was O’Hara. As he reached for the doorbell, they both heard Jensen yell, “It’s open.”
Jensen waved them over to the couch across from his chair. There was a glass filled with ice and from the color of the contents it was easy to guess it was straight bourbon. A newspaper was unfolded next to the drink. Jensen stayed silent, appraising the two men sitting across from him for a minute before speaking in a rasping voice grated raw by cigarettes. “I’m glad you came Willie, instead of bringing anybody else. I appreciate the courtesy.”
“What do you mean, Mike?”
Jensen picked up his glass and took a sip. “Don’t do that, Willie. Don’t work me.”
O’Hara didn’t respond, letting Jensen talk. “Margaret called me. You stay in touch with the old group, you know? She knew you were looking for something involving me and she knew it wasn’t good. You were always smooth with the ladies, Willie, but not that smooth. She still make those cookies? I haven’t seen her in a long time. Should have visited but I stay pretty much to myself now days. I didn’t tell you that I got lung cancer.” He tapped his hand on a pack of cigarettes sitting near him. “I’m not sure which is worse, going this way or with the .357 option. So far, I’m willing to wait it out.”
O’Hara let the last comment hang in the air for a moment. “I’m sorry to hear that, Mike. You getting treatment?”
“Nah. I’ve seen too many men end up just skin and bones fighting the inevitable. I got nothin’ to keep me going, not even a dog.
Now is just as good as later. Can’t stop the reaper, you know?” He took another sip from his glass, coughed harshly, and tapped out another cigarette. “Margaret said you got the tapes?” He stared hard at O’Hara, letting O’Hara and Garcia know he knew why they were there and he was ready.
O’Hara didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, we’ve got the tapes. I’m surprised, Mike, that you didn’t take care of that.”
“You’re right. It was a loose end. Got old I guess. Is that why you’re here? You think that makes a difference now?”
“Well you did lie.”
“Wasn’t the first time. But it was always for a good cause—well, almost always. Why does anybody care?”
“The kid cares.”
“Jamison? Why? Harker’s dead. Sample’s dead. The case is dead.”
“Not the Sample case.”
“Rick Sample was a scumbag. He ended up like a scumbag should—spread out in an oversize trash can. Nobody gave a shit then and nobody gives a shit now. Is that what this is all about? You here about some Saturday night bar killing?”
“I’m here because you knew about that bar killing and you knew Clarence Foster did it—you covered it up.” O’Hara hesitated. “Or did you do more Mike?”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning did you send Foster out to kill Rick Sample?”
“Now why would I do that?”
“You’d do it because you found out that Sample had admitted the killing to Jimmy Stack and if that came out, then everything you’d done would come out, the tapes, the perjury, everything. The capstone of your career, solving the Farrow murder, and it was all a lie. An innocent man sent to prison on perjured testimony and suppression of evidence. I know you covered up Sample’s murder. I pulled all the reports. I talked to the bartender from that night. He gave you Foster’s description. He remembered the snake tattoo on Foster’s hand. And I know you kicked the shit out of Jimmy Stack and told him to keep his mouth shut about what Sample told him.”
Shades of Truth Page 33
