“Well that trip wasn’t worth shit.” O’Hara’s teeth clinched his unlit cigar tightly as he wheeled the county car past the Corcoran prison gate. He kept glancing over at Jamison, who had not said a word while they walked out of the prison and got into the car. He seemed to have an idea of what Jamison was thinking. Eventually it would come out.
“Gage never told me that my father was the one who made the deal for Foster to testify against Harker.”
“Maybe he forgot?”
“He didn’t forget. He didn’t want to hear me start making excuses about why I shouldn’t handle the case.”
“Does it make a real difference?” O’Hara was familiar with the sometimes arcane rules of ethics that lawyers used, although he was of the opinion that most lawyer’s ethics depended on the downside if they interpreted them too strictly. Jamison was an exception as far as he was concerned but he maintained his cynicism for the rest of the breed.
His question to Jamison was met with a silence that lingered for several miles through the flat farmland bordering the road. Finally, Jamison spoke. “It doesn’t really make a difference, I guess. It just makes me uncomfortable, but that’s my problem. Our problem is that if Foster isn’t going to talk to us, he’s going to have to talk at the hearing because Gifford isn’t going to be able to use Harker’s declaration to prove what Foster said was true. Foster will have to testify. We just don’t know what exactly he’s going to say and he’s right about one thing: we can’t make him talk to us.”
“What if the judge orders him to testify?”
“The only thing a judge can do is put him in jail if he refuses to talk and since Foster’s already there I don’t think that’s much of a threat. We’ll just have to wait and see if he’s going to talk or not.”
“Doesn’t make any difference.” O’Hara kept his eyes on the road. “Whatever Foster says is going to be jailhouse bullshit. Just because twenty-six years later a guy who’s in the joint decides to change his testimony isn’t going to persuade a judge, is it? Even judges got to see through that.”
“I don’t think a judge is going to be persuaded by a jailhouse conversion at this point.” Jamison was looking out the side window as he spoke. “But it might make a difference when it gets packaged together with Christine Farrow. I’m going to call Ernie and have him see if she’s available.” He pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number on speed dial.
The rest of the ride was silent. O’Hara kept looking over at Jamison, who was staring out the passenger window, lost in thought. All O’Hara knew were bits and pieces about Jamison, that his father had been a famous criminal defense lawyer and that he and his son had a distant and contentious relationship that somehow related to the father’s treatment of Jamison’s mother. O’Hara was fully aware that he was in no position to offer fatherly advice. He had utterly failed as a father himself. All he knew was that it wasn’t easy to be a good father, but he sensed that now wasn’t the time to offer that thought. He kept his eyes on the road as his mind pushed forward memories of the daughter that he had lost because of his own shortcomings, a realization that had begun to sharpen with age and the clarity of hindsight.
As the flat country passed in the blur of high speed at which O’Hara was traveling, Jamison’s mind tried to wrap itself around the fact that the man from whom he had tried so hard to distance himself was, in fact and in memory, now right in front of him again. As much as he tried to ignore it, resentment was clouding his mind—dead and buried and still his father’s hand was moving across Jamison’s life. He had spent most of his life trying to separate himself from what he was and what his father was, and now once again his father would have to be confronted.
Chapter 15
Christine Farrow wasn’t available that afternoon, but she was off from work the next day. She was a waitress at a coffee shop that Jamison was familiar with, a late-night hangout for cops that had drawn shifts in the part of the city that time and economics had left to decay. He had been there many times himself, meeting with his investigators and detectives as they dealt with whatever crime demanded their attention in the middle of the night.
Jamison spent the time going over her testimony at the trial as well as listening again to the tapes she made. He had twice gone down to see Gage to ask why he hadn’t told him about his father making the deal for Foster’s testimony, but Gage’s door stayed closed and his secretary said he wouldn’t be available. Jamison wasn’t sure if Gage’s lack of availability was deliberate or not. In the end, he decided that there wasn’t much he could say anyway other than Gage should have told him.
He debated about taking O’Hara with him when he went to see Christine Farrow. While he had deep respect for O’Hara’s ability as an investigator, there was a practical aspect—O’Hara scared most people. While he didn’t intend to, O’Hara was an intimidating presence. It was remarkably effective with interrogation but with victims it simply depended on the person. It wasn’t only his rumbling voice; his already coffee-colored complexion seemed to grow visibly darker as he focused intently. The exception was women. O’Hara was always good with women. For some reason that Jamison was unable to fathom, O’Hara would look at a woman and she had his undivided attention. Unfortunately, his charm wasn’t long-lasting as evidenced by two disastrous marriages. Ernie Garcia, on the other hand, was completely different.
Ernie had an affable personality that naturally set people at ease, even those he interrogated. He used it effectively. With his copper complexion and square face, he would smile and call somebody amigo, throwing them off with his combinations of Spanish and English. Built like a brick, Garcia lulled his suspects into letting their guard down, drawn in by what they perceived as his empathy or, at least, lack of rejection of them as human beings. O’Hara, however, simply beat down the barriers set up by his suspects.
After thinking carefully about it, Jamison decided he would take Ernie to meet with Christine Farrow. Even though O’Hara had an ability to connect with women, Jamison had a sense that she was going to be fragile and he wanted somebody who would work his way in slowly. Ernie was that man. He told O’Hara to devote his attention to gathering all the reports at the sheriff’s office.
The county car moved to the edge of the street where Christine Farrow lived. There was no curb, only an end to the pitted asphalt where it slowly merged into beaten earth. Jamison imagined that all cities had their share of what some people called “the mean streets.” The term never held much meaning to Jamison before he had become a prosecutor.
Set back from the street, a collection of single-story apartments stretched out, simple stucco boxes that filled the space available, cheap housing built on cheap land. Jamison knew what was in those apartments without ever going inside. He had walked through the broken doors of such places in the past, serving search warrants or arrest warrants or, more frequently, surveying the carnage of a moment of mindless anger as he looked at a body on the floor.
In every community, including his, places like this were where violence churned in the city’s belly. As he and Ernie walked to the door, he couldn’t help thinking that Christine Farrow had not climbed more than a rung of the ladder from where she had lived as a child—maybe not even climbed that one rung.
Wires stuck out where a doorbell had once been. Someone had taped the ends of the exposed wire as an accommodation to their notion of safety. The door showed the grime of countless hands. Jamison waited as Ernie knocked. He didn’t say anything about who they were. Neither man had any illusions that people looking through slits in their curtains wouldn’t know immediately that they were “the man,” a collective reference to authority figures to be avoided. But in places like this, it was never wise to be seen as cooperating with authority.
When the door opened, a woman’s wary face peered out. Ernie showed his badge and quietly asked if they could come in. She nodded and backed away from the open door, taking a seat on a couch that had a pile of unfolded clothes at one end. The
re was one other chair near the edge of the couch.
“Ms. Farrow? I’m Ernie Garcia, an investigator with the district attorney’s office, and this is Matt Jamison, a prosecutor who has been assigned to the Harker case. We spoke on the phone?”
The woman looked back at both of them. “Yes, that lawyer, Gifford, said you would probably come to see me. It’s about what I said in that paper I signed, right?” Her voice held a soft drawl common to people whose families had migrated to the Valley during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, seeking better lives, many only finding a different meager way to exist.
“Yes, I’ve read your declaration. That’s what we’d like to talk about.” Jamison took the single chair and set a notebook on his knee. “Like Ernie—Investigator Garcia—said, I’m a prosecutor, a lawyer with the district attorney, who’s been assigned to look at the Harker case.”
The face of Christine Farrow told a whole story of her life without saying a word. Jamison could see that she had been pretty once, in the way that some women are who have their glory days in high school, when slender bodies and high cheek bones have the luxury of young skin and soft complexions. But time is often not kind to those women unless life is kind to them. And life had not been kind to Christine Farrow.
What could be imagined as once defined bone structure now only supported the tightly drawn canvas of a too-soon-aged face. What beauty she retained was provided by cheap makeup and the confidence she projected that came from the attention of men who shared the same luck she had drawn in life.
But it was her eyes that spoke to Jamison. Deep set and hidden below arched brows darkened by eyebrow pencil until what had been real was now only painted slashes from cheap makeup, the blue eyes betrayed the memories of a woman who had seen images of life that were best left unimagined. It was the vestige of the face of the child Jamison had seen in the photographs, and the eyes still reflected the absence of innocence, only now they also held a hardness shaped by the reality of life.
“I’ve read the declaration you’ve signed, and I’ve gone over the reports from this case, Ms. Farrow. I would like to talk to you if I could about your statement.” Jamison wanted to probe carefully.
“Call me Christine. That’s what everybody calls me.” She waited quietly before asking, “I guess this causes a problem, my saying that Rick Harker didn’t do it?” She didn’t seem to comprehend the magnitude of the understatement. “I feel bad, him spending all those years in prison but …” Her voice trailed off.
“It’s been a long time, Christine. Memories fade and sometimes things seem different when we think about events that happened long ago.” Jamison wanted to avoid any kind of confrontation that implied he didn’t believe her or might make her defensive. “What caused you to think you’d made a mistake in your testimony? It was a long time ago, twenty-six years.”
“I was only three when it happened, Mr. Jamison. People asked me a lot of questions. By the time I testified, everyone seemed so sure. It’s hard for me to explain. Even now, I can close my eyes and see it clearly. The memory of all of it, my mother, the trial, it’s like a movie in my mind. I can still remember sitting in that chair looking at all those people and the judge. Hardly a day in my life has gone by without me thinking about it. Then there were the dreams.”
“The dreams?” Jamison had a feeling this was coming. He had dealt with children who had been through traumatic experiences and often dreams would be part of it. But he also knew that dreams could confuse a child, could confuse even an adult, and there was a real risk that dreams could become part of what a child thought of as reality.
“Growing up, I dreamed sometimes about my mother. I try to remember her but all I have are a few pictures of her and me.” Christine pointed to the table at the end of the couch. It held two framed photographs, one of a woman who looked a lot like the woman sitting in front of Jamison, including carrying hard years on her face. Jamison hadn’t noticed the resemblance at first because all he had seen were pictures of Lisa Farrow on an autopsy table, and nobody looks their best laid out on a steel slab. The other photograph was of the same woman and a little girl, sitting on a porch. The little girl whose face Jamison had stared at from the file in her mother’s murder case. These were the images that Christine had of a woman who could only be a distant memory. Photographs that were a constant reminder of the best of her life and the worst.
“The last few years it seemed like the dreams started to come at night more and more often, and then it started to be dreams of the fire and of my mother—finding her. They were so real, you know? And they just got worse and worse, the images clearer and clearer. It was like watching a television show over and over again when at first you could only see blurry images and hear sounds, and then slowly each time it became more and more real. And I could see a man over and over. I don’t know how to explain it. But there was this fear that was overwhelming. I would wake up sweating so much the sheets were wet. It was all I could think about—just the images over and over again. And this feeling of guilt that I couldn’t understand. That’s when I was able to see Dr. Vinson. He’s the one who helped me.”
“Tell me about Dr. Vinson. How did he help you?”
“They told me I didn’t have to talk to you about that.” Christine wasn’t defensive. It was more of a question.
“Who told you that?” Jamison suspected that Gifford or maybe this Vinson had told her that she didn’t have to talk about sessions with a psychiatrist or a psychologist.
“That attorney, Mr. Gifford. He said that what Dr. Vinson and I talked about was between us and that I didn’t have to tell anybody. Is that right?”
“There are things called privileges, Christine. You may be talking about what we call the psychologist privilege, but all we want to know is the truth. Is that a problem?”
She looked down at her hands and began twisting at the T-shirt she was wearing. “Maybe I should talk to Dr. Vinson? It’s hard for me to talk about this, you know? I just want to do the right thing. I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have said that Rick Harker did it. I know that now.”
Jamison didn’t want to press the issue, but he needed to know. “Okay, for now, let’s just talk about what you remember. Is that all right?”
She nodded. “I want to help. All I can tell you is what I know happened.”
“So, tell us about that.”
She closed her eyes. Jamison felt both guilty and ashamed that he was making this woman relive a horror that most people could not even imagine. And now she was going to have to not only relive it in a courtroom, he was concealing the fact that he was going to be tearing her story apart. Jamison pushed down the guilt. He had to do what he had to do. As he watched her, he could see the pain pulling at the corners of her mouth as her lips trembled.
“A lot of it isn’t that clear in my mind. I heard voices in the kitchen, and then I heard my mama screaming and I could tell there was fighting. Then it was quiet. Then I smelled the smoke, you know? I didn’t know then exactly what it was but I somehow knew it wasn’t good. I waited a long time and then climbed out of bed. My mama was on the floor. I remember that. There was smoke under Mama. I remember pushing on her, but she didn’t wake up. Then I stayed there waiting for her to wake up. I remember the neighbors and the police when they came.”
Jamison waited for more, but Christine was silent. Tears were sliding down her cheeks. He felt guilty at even asking her to relive the memory, but this was something that he had to do and it would take time to build trust that he knew he would have to use as a tool to pry at every crack he could find. There was one more question he needed to ask, however. “Christine, you heard fighting. Did you hear voices?”
“I heard my mama saying, ‘Rick, no.’ I remember that. She just kept saying it over and over again. And I remember a man’s voice.”
“Did you recognize the voice?”
“No, they were yelling in the kitchen and when I try to remember all I can say is that when I think about it now,
it didn’t sound human. At the time it was just so angry and mean, like an animal, you know? That’s how I remember it when I hear it in my dreams—like an animal. There was a lot of yelling. All I can say is that I heard Mama’s voice and the other voice. It was a man. I can remember that.”
“Christine.” Jamison tried to keep his voice as comforting as he could. “Was there only one man or more than one?”
Tears were now streaming down Christine’s face as both Jamison and Ernie could see her reliving the moment in her mind before she answered. “I only remember one man. After the sounds stopped of my mother screaming, he came into my room. That’s what I kept seeing in my dreams. He was standing over my bed looking at me. Then I would wake up terrified. That’s what Dr. Vinson helped me to remember. If there was more than one man, I don’t know.”
She stopped talking for a moment. “When I close my eyes, I can still see him standing over my bed, leaning down close to my face and telling me to go to sleep. I remember his breath, the way he smelled. He was so close to me. Then he left me, and then later that’s when I saw light flickering and smelled the smoke. Then I found my mama, but he was gone.”
He hesitated before asking, knowing that this was the answer that he had to have. “Did you know who he was, that man?”
“It was Rick Sample. It was Tommy’s daddy. It was him. He’s the one who killed my mother.”
Chapter 16
Shades of Truth Page 11