Jamison waited until the door to the back of the courtroom was shut and all the jurors gone. He already knew the answer but he had to ask. “Your Honor, in light of the jury’s guilty verdict of false imprisonment, the People request that the defendant be remanded to custody pending sentence.”
McGuiness started to stand but Wallace spoke before he could say anything. “Am I correct that there are no other charges pending?”
“No, Your Honor, there are no other charges pending.” Jamison knew that Wallace was asking about the murder charges he had said were under investigation.
“Then your motion is denied, Mr. Jamison. I see no need to do that given the verdict. Sentencing will be set for a week from today.” Wallace dropped his gavel against the top of the bench. The sharp rap of wood on wood punctuated his words as he rose. “Dr. St. Claire may remain free pending sentence. Court is adjourned.”
A few of the deputy DAs still at work stopped by Jamison’s office to offer support. None of them said anything about the verdict. They had all been there. He picked up the phone to call Beth Garrett. Her disappointment was palpable. He tried unsuccessfully to reassure her and said he would stop by soon to talk to her personally.
While Jamison was on the phone with her, O’Hara quietly stuck his head in, then slid into a chair and waited while Jamison finished the conversation.
Slowly he laid the phone back down in its cradle. The strain of the last few days and the struggle to accept the finality of the jury’s decision showed in fatigue lines drawn across his face. “Bill, I don’t know what more we could have done. Through this whole trial I’ve felt like a bug crawling across a barn floor getting shit dropped on me. I keep going over and over it in my mind. McGuiness clipped me and I couldn’t stop it.”
“McGuiness didn’t take you down.” O’Hara shook his head. “Think about it. St. Claire has been two steps ahead of everybody all along. He had an alibi prepared for this case. If we hadn’t broken part of his story it would have been a straight acquittal. What you got is more than anybody else would have gotten. Just remember, we got a murder case to make. This isn’t over.”
He heard everything that O’Hara said, but it didn’t change what Jamison already knew. “Bill, we don’t have a murder case. Without the Garrett case we can’t make the murder cases. She was our only surviving victim and she’s the MO link. Without her, all we have are three dead women and a lot of suspicion. To prove those murders we have to put Beth Garrett back on the stand and we have to do it after a jury has walked him out the door on everything she says happened. The only way we make those murders is to come up with something that directly ties him to them, and it has to be something that he can’t explain. We need hard evidence that puts him at the crime scenes and we don’t have it.
“Oh, but what we do have,” he added, his voice edged with irritation, “is the shitstorm we’re going to have to face with that evidence that looks like it was planted in St. Claire’s car. T. J. put that evidence there, and you and I both know it. We use that evidence and everything we’ve got will be made to look like a frame of Dr. Alex St. Claire. Like we’re trying to get even because we lost this case. That evidence in the car was the one independent link. There was no defense explanation for it and we can’t use it.”
“We can try.” O’Hara stood up abruptly. “T. J. will deny doing that and whose word is a jury going to take? You know St. Claire did those three women.”
“Bill, if Wallace or any other judge thinks that evidence was planted, he’s going to come after everybody. The first thing he’ll do is sanction us by telling the jury that planting evidence can be considered by them in deciding whether to believe our case. He could even dismiss our case. Then on top of that a jury is going to find out that another jury didn’t believe Beth Garrett and walked St. Claire out the door.”
“I thought an acquittal wouldn’t be admissible?”
“It isn’t.” Jamison coughed derisively. “But don’t think because it isn’t admissible that McGuiness won’t find a way to drop that little bomb in front of a jury. Another thing. If St. Claire walks on the murders, we can’t retry him because of double jeopardy.”
O’Hara pushed his chair against the desk. “So you’re saying we let him walk?”
“I’m saying that we need more evidence.” Jamison stood and grabbed his jacket. “I need to go home and get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ve got to start figuring out how to get Wallace to send St. Claire to prison on the false imprisonment. I’m not holding my breath on that.”
With the short setting from the verdict to sentencing, Wallace had implicitly told Jamison what to expect, but he would still argue. He sat at the counsel table and could not stop his sideways glance sufficient to take in the tranquil face of Alex St. Claire. That composure agitated him even more.
When Judge Wallace asked for the position of the district attorney on sentencing, Jamison rose and argued for a felony commitment and then sat silently while first McGuiness and then Wallace picked through the wreckage of his case.
When Wallace asked if there was anything further before sentence was pronounced, Jamison asked if the matter of the murder cases could be addressed. Wallace started to rebuke him, assuming he was going to try to use the murder cases to argue that a felony sentence was appropriate. McGuiness jumped to his feet too, raising his voice.
Jamison stood silently until everybody stopped talking. “Your Honor, I know the court is aware of our investigation and our discussions regarding arresting Dr. St. Claire for murder. I am also aware that matter may be on the court’s mind. Therefore I believe it is appropriate that I indicate to the court that we will not be proceeding against Alex St. Claire at this time for reasons of insufficiency of the evidence and without prejudice to filing those charges in the future.”
Wallace gave Jamison an appreciative nod and started to speak. As Wallace explained his sentence, Jamison could feel himself deflating as the breath slowly drained from him. The judge reduced the felony charge of false imprisonment to a misdemeanor, only slightly more serious than a traffic ticket. He said it was evident that the jury rejected all the serious charges and that in his view what was left didn’t merit felony treatment. It was obvious to Jamison that the judge didn’t believe St. Claire had tied up Garrett against her will either, but that he accepted the jury’s finding of fact. His sentence was probation and credit for the time St. Claire had served when he had been in custody. In the end, his sentence was only the inconvenience of the trial.
Slowly rising from his seat at the counsel table, Alex St. Claire adjusted the cuffs of his shirt as if he had just sat through the boredom of a long meeting.
O’Hara sat in the front row of the courtroom, watching as he turned and left the courtroom. As he passed O’Hara, St. Claire inclined his head slightly. “Have a nice day, Investigator O’Hara. Perhaps we will meet again under more pleasant circumstances.” The words came out with the air of a man who was dismissing a servant.
All his life, O’Hara had chased down dangerous men. He silently acknowledged a commitment to himself. One way or the other, Alex St. Claire wasn’t going to make him stare again into the sightless eyes of another young woman.
Chapter 38
After the sentencing, Jamison dropped the file in his office. He didn’t talk to anyone. He needed to talk to Beth. They had spoken intermittently between the verdict and sentencing but he had not seen her. She had returned to teaching, saying it was the best therapy to “get on with my life.” He had spent much of his time trying to recover from the wreckage left to his caseload while the trial was in progress. But there was no question the trial had taken an emotional toll from which he hadn’t recovered.
Now as he drove up in front of the school where she taught, he tried to sort out what he would say to her. For a survivor of a violent crime, for any victim, a not guilty verdict was received as a rejection that they had been telling the truth, and, as repugnant as the idea was, that the jury didn’t care. Legally Jam
ison knew that wasn’t true. The verdict meant that the jury wasn’t absolutely sure what the truth was. But explaining that to Beth Garrett wasn’t going to assuage her pain. She wouldn’t accept some ivory tower legal concept. She would take it personally.
Jamison parked and walked toward the school entrance, stepping around children as they straggled into the parking lot. Some walked by themselves to the front of the school where buses awaited them. The younger children were herded out by their teachers. Jamison saw her helping several children board a bus.
She was silent for a moment as she examined his face. Then she asked, “Is it over?”
He smiled but he knew his expression was not reassuring. “Yes.”
“Nothing happened to Alex, did it?” She didn’t seem surprised or resigned.
Jamison followed her to her classroom. There was no place for him to sit. The tables and chairs were perfectly proportioned for someone who was six or seven years old, but not for an adult. Beth smiled as she recognized his discomfort. “They don’t put chairs in here for grown-ups.”
“Alex St. Claire is out, Beth.” Jamison looked directly at her. “I couldn’t stop that. I wish I could tell you that you have nothing to be concerned about but I can’t. St. Claire is a dangerous man. He could be vindictive.”
She took a deep breath. “Alex will leave me alone, don’t you think?” Her eyes sought reassurance, a reassurance Jamison wasn’t sure he could give.
“If you see him at all, call me. I’ll make sure that somebody is there for you.”
There was hesitation reflected in her eyes. He knew what she was going to ask. They all asked it. “Do you believe me about what happened?”
He had thought about the answer to that question. The trial and the verdict had been a roller-coaster of belief, doubt, and questions. In the end he had argued she was a victim. But he couldn’t easily disregard the doubts that had recurred throughout the trial, and stubbornly lingered even now.
What he saw in front of him was a woman who wanted to be believed, who he wanted to believe, and who he had argued should be believed. Beth’s eyes searched his face. He knew what she wanted to hear. What he hoped she couldn’t tell was whether he believed it himself.
Beth reached across the space between them and placed her hand on his arm. Jamison felt the warmth of her hand as he absorbed the intimacy of the gesture. She was looking directly up at him. He had never really thought about how small and fragile she was. “It’s very important to me that you believe me.”
He hoped she would not perceive the moment of hesitation before he answered. During the trial, as he struggled with the conflicts in the evidence and the insidious creeping doubt that undermined his confidence in his case, Jamison had flashes of memory of when he was a boy and a singular moment when he stood in front of his mother with a clarity of vision that had stunned his adolescent mind.
His mother was a woman trapped by her dependent submission to an overpowering husband who was neither a good husband nor a good father. She had survived, he had come to realize in the stroke of an instant, because she rationalized her world and herself in order to keep a sense of dignity. At that one moment, even though he was a child and she was an adult, Jamison had realized that sometimes people create their own reality so they can cope with the world as they would have it, rather than the world as it really is. And he had known that such people need to be protected, not just from themselves but from the ones who saw that weakness and used it to their advantage. It was why he became a prosecutor.
As Elizabeth Garrett stood in front of him, asking him to believe her, the insight of his childhood gave him his answer. Whatever Elizabeth Garrett was and why didn’t make any difference to his answer. Regardless of what the truth was, regardless of his doubts, in Elizabeth Garrett’s world she was telling the truth. He looked down at her hand still on his arm, looked into her eyes and said what she wanted to hear. “I believe you.”
PART THREE
Chapter 39
O’Hara liked to tell himself that he was past being surprised by verdicts or sentences or being affected by them, but not this time. The sly smile of St. Claire stayed with him every waking moment.
He’d gone over and over each detail of the case in his mind. He couldn’t let it go. Nothing had come together. It was like pieces of a puzzle where parts from another puzzle had been mixed in. O’Hara didn’t like it when puzzles didn’t come together. The murder cases were still out there, and as long as St. Claire was still out there O’Hara knew he needed to be still out there. Eventually he would get him.
In the week since the sentencing, O’Hara kept an eye on Elizabeth Garrett’s school from his parked car down the street, waiting for her to go home. She usually stayed later than the other teachers but was gone by dusk. Now it was almost dark and she still hadn’t left. As he sipped at a cup of long cold coffee, he reached for his cell phone to call Ernie Garcia, who also agreed with him about St. Claire, and then put it down. There was no point in calling other than to let Ernie know nothing was happening.
Ernie was aware O’Hara was keeping an eye on things. Ernie had a family. He didn’t. Besides, O’Hara heard about the officer-involved-shooting call over the radio. He knew that Jamison would call Ernie out to investigate the police shooting because it was Ernie’s turn. O’Hara knew that was where Ernie and Jamison would be. He was tempted to go himself, but not just yet. Not until Garrett left the school.
O’Hara hadn’t said anything to Jamison about watching out for Elizabeth Garrett. He had his reasons and decided it was probably best to not share them. But O’Hara had been doing this line of work too long. He had only seen a few people like St. Claire, but he knew them. His instincts told him it was just a matter of time. Just a matter of time.
He shifted uncomfortably in the seat, the butt of his nine-millimeter automatic digging into his kidney, another reason he didn’t wear the heavy automatic unless he had to. He preferred the less bulky Walther .380 in his ankle holster, but he was required to carry his department-issued nine-millimeter. The Walther was just a backup weapon, what some cops called a “throwaway.” Nobody was authorized to carry one, but he did anyway. Most cops did. You only needed the backup gun when the shit hit the fan or when you had some reason you couldn’t use the department-issued weapon—or didn’t want to.
O’Hara yawned. Once Elizabeth was in her car, he would follow her home from a cautious distance. If he didn’t see St. Claire, then that was fine. St. Claire’s car was still impounded, so he didn’t know what that asshole would be driving. He had tried to familiarize himself with the school neighborhood’s cars, so if a car looked like it didn’t belong there, he would be sure to spot it.
He knew he couldn’t keep this up much longer, watching evening after evening. O’Hara’s eyes strained as he scanned the school parking lot, looking to see if anything was different. Her car was the last one in the lot, caught now in the shadowed edge of a pool of illumination from the parking lot lights. Everyone else had gone home when it was still light, which was, as far as O’Hara was concerned, what Elizabeth should have done.
He reached for his coffee and then thought better of it. His bladder wasn’t what it used to be. There once was a time when he could sit on a stakeout for hours without needing to find a bathroom or a discreet tree. Not anymore. He could feel growing discomfort. Sooner or later he was going to have to take a leak.
He had hoped she would have come out already. St. Claire hadn’t been seen by anybody for nearly a week, nor had he shown up at the hospital. Supposedly he was taking a short leave “to get over the stress of the trial.” O’Hara had run by St. Claire’s home in town and the one in the country where they had found Elizabeth almost three months before. There were no signs of activity. Maybe St. Claire really was gone.
Or maybe his instincts were getting stale. O’Hara could feel the growing urgency in his bladder. Perhaps it was time to call up the doc for another prostate check. Lately he had been getting up
more than once in the middle of the night. He yawned again.
Finally, O’Hara saw Elizabeth walk across the parking lot. He barely caught the movement before he saw the figure approaching Garrett’s car from the side. O’Hara opened his car door. He had turned off the interior light, as he always did from old habit on a stakeout. As long as he was quiet he didn’t expect anyone to see him. He moved as quickly as he could, reaching down his leg to his ankle holster before moving toward the circle of light in the parking lot. The Walther .380 came up into his target line of sight with trained precision.
Chapter 40
The body lying in the parking lot of the convenience store was covered with a yellow plastic sheet. Jamison and Ernie Garcia stood nearby. The young man beneath the yellow shroud didn’t make much of a mound, his skinny legs sticking out at an odd angle from under the rumpled plastic cover. His first mistake had been walking out directly in front of a police officer who was responding to the silent alarm sent by the store clerk as he had handed over the cash in the register. His last mistake was turning toward the officer with a gun in his hand.
Police-shooting investigations rotated DA investigators and it was Ernie’s turn in the box. Jamison didn’t hear the radio traffic about the shooting in the parking lot at Elizabeth’s school and neither did Ernie.
Art Puccinelli was sitting in his office at the sheriff’s department when his sergeant assigned him the shooting call at the school. Realizing it was Elizabeth Garrett’s school, he was at the scene in less than fifteen minutes.
Puccinelli stared at the body lying on the asphalt, oblivious to the intense forensic team lights and officers trying to control the crime scene. He couldn’t honestly say that he felt any pang of sympathy. He punched in O’Hara’s number on his cell and waited for voice mail to answer. O’Hara seldom picked up his phone. He would look at the message and decide whether to call back. This time was no exception. Puccinelli left a message to call and included a quick comment about the shooting. He scrolled farther up his contact list and called Ernie, who picked up after two rings.
Fractured Justice Page 32
