As he heard approaching footsteps, O’Hara stepped back from the door. His badge was hanging from the breast pocket of his coat. There was a pause as the footsteps stopped on the other side of the door. He wasn’t familiar with St. Claire’s voice but it was definitely a man’s voice that broke the silence. “Who did you say you were?”
“Bill O’Hara from the district attorney’s office. Is that you, Dr. St. Claire? Could you open the door, please? I have a deputy DA here with me and we want to ask you a few questions about the effects of certain drugs for a case we’re preparing for trial. Dr. Gupta said that we should ask you because you’re an expert.”
There was a long silence before the person inside said anything. “See me at my office tomorrow, please. I’m busy now and I don’t like to be bothered when I’m working.”
O’Hara moved closer to the door. “It will only take a minute. Just a few questions.” O’Hara didn’t like the situation. He couldn’t see St. Claire and he couldn’t see what St. Claire was doing on the other side of the door. Most of all he didn’t like the fact that St. Claire wouldn’t open the door to talk. This was how cops got killed. O’Hara made an instinctive step to the side.
All his senses began to tingle. There was something about the tone of voice, something that sounded like a man trying to keep himself calm but barely succeeding. O’Hara had seen and heard enough men in situations where they were cornered. There was an edge to their voices that told him they were about to do something stupid.
All of O’Hara’s senses told him that the stupid meter of the man on the other side of the door had gone into overdrive. He stepped away and moved his hand behind his back for his gun.
Moving quietly down the side of the house, Ernie could hear O’Hara’s voice and another voice, a man’s voice, but he couldn’t make out what the man was saying. The curtains were drawn. He couldn’t see much through the narrow gap where the curtains didn’t quite close. He moved as close as he could, stepping into the remains of a forgotten flower bed, the sun-dried remnants of plants making a cracking sound that he couldn’t avoid as he peered into the window.
A woman lay spread-eagle on the bed. She was completely naked. Ernie saw a camera mounted on a tripod at the foot of the bed. The woman’s bare legs and the upper part of her body were just visible through the gap in the curtains. Ernie wasn’t sure if it was Garrett, but he could see that her feet were tied to the corners of the bed. A thought flashed through his mind: Who else could it be?
He didn’t hesitate. Ernie stepped back and took a running leap at the window, hoping his shoulder and the gun would smash as much glass out of the way as possible before the rest of his body came through.
In the front of the house, O’Hara’s instincts were sending him electric jolts of warning. He raised his voice and edged his hand farther toward the small of his back. “Dr. St. Claire? I really need to talk to you. Open the door, please.” This time he put a little more authority into his voice, hoping that perhaps St. Claire, if it was St. Claire, would open the door at least enough so he could see him.
Ernie went through the window headfirst, smashing the glass with his gun and forearm. He didn’t feel the shards of glass left in the window frame as they cut into his back and the front of his legs and arms. He didn’t hear the cracking of glass exploding inward. The momentum of his jump took him straight into the room, the crashing glass and the screaming woman all joining in a burst of noise as he hit the wood floor.
Suddenly the noise of crashing glass, and the unmistakable sound of a screaming woman reverberated throughout the house. O’Hara snapped his head to the right, and when he heard the sound of running footsteps inside the house, he hit the front door full force with his shoulder, pushing the aging wood off its hinges along with what was left of the casing around the doorframe.
Jamison opened the car door when he saw O’Hara break through the front door. He could hear the crash of glass on the side of the house and now a shrieking woman. He didn’t know where O’Hara or Ernie were. He turned and grabbed at the radio mic, pushed the side switch on, and began yelling who he was. The tenor of his voice rose as he kept shouting. He had never paid attention to O’Hara before when he used the radio and now he didn’t know whether he was sending or receiving. The dispatcher asked him to identify himself. Jamison kept yelling that he was District Attorney Jamison and they needed help. Whether the press overheard or not was the last thing on his mind.
He dropped the mic when he saw Puccinelli’s car slide into the driveway. Pooch jumped out and moved toward the house before the car finished rocking. His gun was drawn and raised slightly in the air as he raced past Jamison still sitting in the car. The dispatcher’s disembodied voice was demanding to know who was on the radio and trying to get specifics of the situation, but the mic now dangled by its cord. Jamison was out the door and running toward the house too.
Elizabeth Garrett heard the sound of glass crashing but nothing made any sense. There was yelling and the sound of people running. For an instant she thought there was a man with a gun. He’s going to kill me! She thrashed at the restraints, trying to pull herself free but the man was pulling at her. She couldn’t understand him. She could only see a gun and the blood running down his arms.
Ernie fought the momentary disorientation and scrambled to gain a sense of the room. The screams from the bed drew his attention to his right. He felt shards of glass bite into his hand as he pushed himself up from the floor. The door was open. He couldn’t see anybody else, but he could hear the heavy pounding footsteps of someone running, the sound growing closer. O’Hara was yelling but Garrett’s screaming mixed all the sounds into mindless noise.
Ernie quickly regained his sense of the situation. Garrett was lying on the bed, her eyes wide, screaming hysterically. He struggled to untie her feet and then reached into his pants for a pocket knife and sliced at the bindings. As soon as he cut through one of the bindings, she began kicking at him like a drowning person pulling down her rescuer. He kept telling her he was a cop and to calm down, but the more he talked the more she resisted. Finally he threw his body on top of her to hold her down while he cut her wrists free and pulled her off the bed.
He looked back at the broken window and then at the open door to the bedroom before deciding to hold her down below the bed while he adjusted his focus on the door. He yelled to O’Hara that he had her. But he didn’t know if O’Hara could hear him. He also didn’t know if the person running toward them from the front of the house was O’Hara or St. Claire.
When he heard the sound of shattering glass and screaming, St. Claire ran for the back of the house. At almost the same moment, the front door crashed behind him. He ran toward the bedroom, yelling Elizabeth’s name. St. Claire looked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of a large black man holding a gun pointed in his direction, shouting at him to stop. He was almost to the bedroom doorway when he felt a crushing blow against his back as O’Hara tackled him, and then the air went out of his lungs as he hit the floor.
While he had his knee in St. Claire’s back, O’Hara pulled one arm behind St. Claire and shoved it up until he heard him scream in pain. O’Hara’s voice sounded like the snarl of a rampaging animal. “Shut the fuck up or I’ll break your arm.”
Seeing no weapon in St. Claire’s hands, O’Hara shoved the gun back in his pants and pulled at his belt, feeling for his cuffs, but nothing was there. He had either forgotten to slip them in his belt or they had dropped out in the chase. “Just lie still or you’re going to hurt even worse.” O’Hara pushed St. Claire’s arm up a little more to make his point, noting with satisfaction that he screamed again.
“I’m a doctor. You’re making a mistake! What the hell are you doing?”
O’Hara leaned down next to St. Claire’s ear. “You may be a doctor, but you’re the one who made the mistake, asshole. Now lie still.” He pushed his knee harder into St. Claire’s back.
Jamison followed Pooch through the broken front door, f
umbling for the gun that was starting to fall out of his pants. He pulled it out and held it in the air, keeping his eye on Puccinelli. He heard O’Hara roaring for St. Claire to stop. Then he heard a crash and the sound of a man being hit so hard that the air coming out of him made a whooshing sound. O’Hara’s voice sounded different than anything he had ever heard. There was a knife-edge to it that even scared him. He moved warily toward O’Hara. The adrenaline coursed through his body like an electric current.
When Jamison found O’Hara, he had one knee in St. Claire’s back with the doctor’s arm pulled behind him. Suddenly all the noises that had been almost unintelligible a moment before, began to separate. The woman was still screaming and Ernie was shouting that he had her. St. Claire was yelling to leave Garrett alone, that they didn’t understand, while O’Hara kept barking at St. Claire, “Shut the fuck up or I’ll break your arm.”
There was a flash of chrome steel as Puccinelli grabbed St. Claire’s other arm and ratcheted the handcuff. O’Hara pulled the arm down that he had pinned to St. Claire’s back so that Pooch could cuff that hand, allowing O’Hara to stand up while Pooch took control.
Even a seasoned cop like O’Hara couldn’t help but look startled at what he saw in the bedroom. Ernie was on the other side of the bed, his gun hand extended across the mattress and blood soaking through the shredded sleeve of his shirt, while with his other arm he struggled to hold down a thrashing, naked woman, kicking and hitting him.
Jamison’s heart was racing and all at once he realized the gun was in his hand. O’Hara turned and saw him, then glanced at the gun. Jamison realized he had the gun pointed up at the ceiling with his thumb on the safety. Somehow he had hit the clip release and the clip was sticking slightly out of the butt of the automatic, which meant he wouldn’t have been able to fire if he wanted to.
He brought the gun down to his side and tapped the end of the clip to push it back in, hoping that nobody noticed his gaffe. Jamison caught O’Hara shaking his head as he observed him shove the gun back inside his belt. O’Hara nodded toward the bedroom. “Maybe you can help Ernie?”
As he stepped sideways past St. Claire both Jamison’s and St. Claire’s eyes locked. What Jamison saw for a brief instant wasn’t fear; it was a glacial disdain he would never forget. Jamison turned away and looked inside the bedroom.
Ernie was tearing the sheet off the bed to cover someone on the floor, pieces of glass scattering as he shook the spread. Jamison stepped around the bed, his footsteps grinding glass shards into the wooden floor.
Elizabeth Garrett looked up at him, her eyes focusing. She seemed to realize the men around her were there to help. Then she began to cry, a low keening sound that came from deep down inside her. Jamison knelt down to reassure her, pulling out his handkerchief and wiping at the smears of blood on her face and arms. There were other voices in the hallway. Moments later men in sheriff’s uniforms filled the house.
Jamison wanted to ask her what happened, but it was evident that she was in shock. Ernie talked quietly to her while Jamison went to the bedroom doorway to keep any unnecessary people out. He looked outside the door to see what O’Hara and Pooch had done with St. Claire. He saw no one but milling sheriffs officers until emergency medical people came rushing down the hallway. O’Hara, St. Claire, and Puccinelli weren’t in sight.
Twenty minutes later, Jamison stood outside the house with O’Hara and Garcia nearby. Ernie’s arms were a crisscross of sliced flesh painted with antiseptic, gauze patches administered by the ambulance crew covering the deeper cuts. The forensic crew crawled over the interior and the garage like ants gleaning the last small crumbs from an abandoned picnic table. Inside the garage there was a gurney with a stainless tray top just like the one in the morgue.
The walls of the garage were covered with soundproofing. There was a bench on the side with bottles of various chemicals with names Jamison didn’t recognize, but he spotted several gallons of bleach sitting on a shelf. A small refrigerator quietly purred in the corner, containing more chemicals and vials. There was nothing in St. Claire’s Lexus.
With a uniformed deputy standing nearby, St. Claire sat in the back seat of Puccinelli’s car, shifting slightly at the discomfort of the handcuffs that bound his wrists behind him. He stared in the direction of the knot of men who were gathered in a tight circle away from the rest of the deputies, the men who would control what would happen next to him.
As if on cue, the four men separated themselves from the commotion, gathering as men often do who have been through an adrenalin-charged moment together. Pooch pointed at the suspect in the car. “I got on the phone to the sheriff.” He looked a little apologetic when he said it. “I had to call my boss.” He shrugged. “So what now?”
O’Hara answered without hesitation. “We take this asshole downtown for interrogation. You put him in a room by himself first. Don’t take him near any telephones or through booking. Run him straight to the interrogation room and let him sit there. Leave the cuffs on. We’ll follow you.”
The first rule was to get a suspect off-balance. Let him feel helpless and not in control. Let him begin to debate with himself, ebbing and flowing between bravado and fear. That took time. They would let him sit and stew while they decided who would ask the questions.
Another deputy would sit in the back seat, guarding St. Claire while Puccinelli drove straight to the sheriff’s office. He pulled out just as the first television crew pulled up.
Jamison, O’Hara, and Garcia were the last to leave the house. Ernie was in the back seat. His car was being driven back to the garage by a young deputy sheriff eager to create a role for himself in the action. O’Hara drove while Jamison, coming down from the adrenaline rush, struggled to organize his mind, trying to figure out what he would tell the DA. Gage took his call right away. Jamison didn’t waste any time. “We have Elizabeth Garrett and we have a suspect in custody.” He kept it short but he was still having trouble controlling the rapidity of his breathing. His body hadn’t flushed out the last rush of adrenaline and he could feel the nausea rising up as he began to come down from his body’s natural stimulant.
Gage let the words sink in before responding. “Yeah, I got the call from the sheriff himself. Bekin let me know that his office had taken down some doctor. Is that right? You got a doctor in custody? The girl? Is she okay?”
“Yes, sir, he’s a doctor and we have him in custody and yes, the girl’s okay. She’s pretty shaken up. But it was O’Hara and Ernie Garcia who took him down.” Jamison looked at O’Hara and shrugged. “Ernie went through a window and he grabbed Garrett. She was tied to a bed. O’Hara tackled the doctor, a guy named St. Claire. Detective Puccinelli was right behind and they both cuffed him up. We’ve got him on the way to the sheriff’s office now for interrogation, but I wanted to call you so you can call the girl’s parents. I’m on my way downtown now.”
“Bekin told me a little differently.” Gage’s voice didn’t conceal his cynicism about Bekin’s version.
“Yes, sir, but I’m telling you that’s what happened. I’m not making any public statements. The press was starting to show up at the scene so O’Hara and I left with Ernie. Detective Puccinelli has the suspect and is transporting him to the sheriff’s office. We’re only minutes behind him, but I wanted to talk to you first and let you know what was going on.”
Gage knew the politics of the situation. Bekin wouldn’t like the district attorney’s office taking credit for the bust, but it pleased Gage to know that Bekin would have to share the credit; he would have to play ball. Any way Gage looked at it, Bekin was going to have to come up with a consolidated version. The truth would be saved for police reports and the courtroom. The sound bite was for news at six. Whoever made the first press statement would control the version that would move across the city.
The district attorney turned his attention back to Jamison. “Matt? Good job. You tell O’Hara and Garcia I said the same about them. I’ll talk to you when you get to the o
ffice. There’ll be a press conference but . . .” Gage paused, measuring his words carefully. “You don’t have to be there for that. You have the interrogation. Call me when you get downtown.”
Before he finished hanging up the phone, Gage asked his secretary to get the Garretts on the phone, and after that to call his favorite crime reporter from the paper, and maybe one or two of his favorites at the local television stations. He looked at his reflection in the broad expanse of glass that opened up the city to him and slid the knot of his tie to his throat. There was no point in worrying about how much weight television cameras added to his face. He was long past being able to hide it. Gage heard his secretary’s voice as she stuck her head inside his door. “Mr. Gage, Sheriff Bekin is on the line and Mr. Garrett is holding.”
“Tell Bekin I’ll be with him in a moment. I’m on another call.”
Jamison rode quietly for the first few miles after they left the area. He needed to pull back emotionally from the event and regain some legal detachment. Intellectually he knew he’d lost that when he rushed into the house with a gun drawn, but now it was time to be a lawyer.
There was something nagging at him that he couldn’t identify until it finally dawned on him. He sucked in his breath so sharply that O’Hara’s eyes were drawn off the road, sliding to the right, his eyebrow raised like a question mark. O’Hara shook his head. “Okay, Matt, what is it?”
“St. Claire kept yelling we were making a mistake.”
O’Hara turned so suddenly that the car swerved. “You want to tell me what that’s supposed to mean? Every asshole we arrest says we’re making a mistake.”
“It means I want to know exactly what we have.”
O’Hara slid a fleck of wet cigar tobacco wrapper to the front of his mouth, popping his tongue against his lips, ejecting the soggy particle. He shook his head and gave Jamison a long withering look as Ernie shrugged slightly and rolled his eyes. “Do they actually teach you that shit in law school or does it just seep into you and rot your brain from the inside?”
Fractured Justice Page 10