Fractured Justice Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR FRACTURED JUSTICE

  “This authentic, intelligent and gripping novel of courtroom suspense dares to profoundly examine the elusiveness of truth—legally, psychologically, morally—in order to explore the meaning of justice for terrifying crimes. The reader is kept off-balance to the last pages and ruminating far beyond that.”

  —Joseph Wambaugh, bestselling author of The New Centurions, The Blue Knight, the Hollywood Station series, and numerous other crime novels

  PRAISE FOR JAMES A. ARDAIZ’S PREVIOUS BOOK HANDS THROUGH STONE

  “Hands Through Stone tells a frightening story with all the tension and color of a first-class mystery novel . . . a revealing insider’s view of the [Clarence Ray Allen] investigation.”

  —Denise Noe, CrimeMagazine.com

  “Ardaiz’s writing about police work is in depth . . . The final chapter was thought provoking and put a different perspective on the death penalty for me . . . had me thinking about the book long after I had finished it.”

  —TrueCrimeReader.com

  “Goes inside the room at Fran’s Market and gives not only the events on the infamous night but the feelings of the horror of the seasoned investigators. A must read for readers and writers of mystery books. Highly recommended!”

  —Terell Byrd, The Poison Pen

  “A fascinating and engrossing book. Ardaiz handles the story sensitively and with a gentleness one doesn’t expect from a hard-nosed prosecutor. I highly recommend reading it.”

  —Diana Bulls, Kings River Life

  FRACTURED JUSTICE

  A Matt Jamison Novel

  James A. Ardaiz

  Fractured Justice

  Copyright © 2017 by James A. Ardaiz. All rights reserved.

  Cover image: Shutterstock

  Published by Pace Press,

  an imprint of Linden Publishing

  2006 South Mary Street, Fresno, California 93721

  (559) 233-6633 / (800) 345-4447

  PacePress.com

  Pace Press and Colophon are trademarks of

  Linden Publishing, Inc.

  ISBN 978-1-61035-298-7

  135798642

  Printed in the United States of America

  on acid-free paper.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, places, characters, and incidents in this book are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.

  This book is dedicated to the law enforcement officers and prosecutors who spend their days and nights protecting us. And, as always, to my wife Pam, who has been supportive of my endeavors since the day she agreed to go out with me. To my friends who gave their time reading the manuscript and offering their thoughts: Lisa, Betty, Nancy, Patty, and Barbara most of all. Thank you. And to my friend Bud, who has always been there to support me and will now be there in spirit. I will miss you my friend.

  Prologue

  November, 2005

  Tenaya County, California

  The great Central Valley of California depresses the broad plain of the Golden State. Walled on the west by the mountains of the Coast Range that drop down into the Pacific and on the east by the ripping upward thrust of the granite blocks of the Sierras, for thousands of years the hills of the great Valley swayed with tall grass that once stretched like a rustling ocean as far as the eye could see. But now the once limitless grassy expanse only hugs the Valley rim.

  Today State Highway 99 bisects the Valley, and along the concrete ribbon cities cluster, each drawing its measure large or small from the passing parade of cars and trucks making their way through the searing heat of summer and the cold damp of winter. At night the city lights that blur the dark sky of the Valley quickly give way to country road blackness, illuminated only by the stars or the moon. The nights of the valley seldom conceal predators the way the side streets of the great cities that shroud them in darkness do. It is expected to be a quiet place, and most of the time it is, so that when violence breaks the quiet, it is explosive and shocks the senses.

  The man whispered quietly, his words soundless to the object of his attention. He paused briefly to ensure there was no one watching, then struggled slightly with the weight of the bundle he carried across the road next to the canal bank. The cold November moonlight caught the shimmering water of the canal, one of many that still crisscrossed the community. The coursing streams of water were open arteries drawing through them the lifeblood of a city making its inexorable transition from rural farm town to metropolitan mass.

  A thin mist rose off the water’s surface, the liquid black and shiny against the canal bank, flickering like the scales of a snake. He had chosen this location precisely because of its isolation, a vestige of the past as yet not encroached by the city’s relentless need to remake itself.

  The only sounds were those of a city sleeping in the embrace of night, waiting for dawn. The movement of the zipper broke the silence as he opened the heavy plastic bag and gently slipped it down around the body of a motionless young woman. There was nothing to disturb the two of them, only the softly lapping water enhancing the moment. He felt a flicker of tenderness that caused him to caress her hair as he laid her down on the bank and knelt beside her. The moonlight framed her face. She was very nearly perfect to his eye, an alabaster statue for only him to admire, created at his hands. Soon he would have to share her but not now. For these few moments she still belonged to him alone.

  He gently drew back strands of hair from her face and looked into her eyes. He knew it wasn’t so, but he could feel her looking back at him, only at him. It was almost enough—to be all that a woman would ever have and to feel her final submission to him.

  He slipped his hand inside her blouse, sliding the edges open, drawing his gloved fingertips slowly down the cleft between her breasts. He placed his face close to hers, cradling her neck, her lips parting slightly at the movement. Suddenly he drew back; he would not allow himself to succumb to this temptation. He reached into his pocket, his fingers gripping tightly around the shaft that concealed a razor-edged blade. He felt the metallic hardness through his thin latex gloves as he pulled it out, the steel catching the glint of moonlight on the blade as he flicked it open. He drew his arm back. With one last stroke his creation would be complete. He let his anger build, drawn from deep within the dark place that was his alone, and then focused all of it in one violent downward slash.

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Matt Jamison hadn’t been able to get to bed until well after midnight. Yet even in sleep his churning brain held him in restlessness from weeks of frustration and days filled with one adrenaline surge after another, leads cresting and then sinking into an abyss of tangled conjecture and dead ends. With the discovery of a second sexually tinged murder, the siege of violence was creating dread in the community. As a prosecutor specializing in violent crimes, sexual assault, and murder, he knew he had a predator on the loose who had the stealth and cunning of a jungle cat, walking the streets without arousing terror until he struck.

  The sound of the phone shattered the early morning silence, pulling Jamison from the rest he so desperately needed. His eyes still closed, Jamison’s hand reached automatically toward the nightstand by the bed, his mind lifting its thinning veil of morning grogginess.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t bother to say hello. He saved hello for the daytime and the early evening when it might be a friend or a woman or both. Lately he hadn’t had time for friends and regrettably there were no women who would call him at this hour.

  It was the rumbling voice of his investigator, Bill O’Hara, uttering the word “Boss.” He knew who it was from the first word. Onl
y O’Hara called him “Boss.”

  Jamison held the phone, waiting for O’Hara to continue. There was no point interrupting the silence with a demand for information. O’Hara would speak when he was ready to speak.

  “I just got off the phone with the sheriff’s dispatcher. Detectives have asked for us to roll. We have another girl—maybe connected to the two other cases.”

  Jamison stopped him right there. “What does that mean, ‘maybe connected?’” He had no patience for ambiguity. All he could think of was that now they had a third woman probably dead, and so far nothing solid or even circumstantial to a build a case on any suspect.

  Jamison sat up in bed and reached for the light switch. No point in trying to keep the light from waking him. He was awake, his mind beginning to race.

  O’Hara’s voice took on the deferential tone that for him passed as respect. “Well, Boss, all I know is the on-scene detective said to tell us it looks like another one. Maybe it’s connected, maybe not. You want me to go or you want to send Ernie?” Jamison’s other investigator was Ernie Garcia. He had been working the murder case of the second young woman.

  “No, don’t wake Ernie. Pick me up in fifteen. I’ll be outside waiting.” Jamison hung up the phone without saying good-bye. O’Hara wouldn’t hear the good-bye anyway. He didn’t consider good-byes important and if Jamison had stayed on the line all he would have heard was a dial tone.

  As Jamison rolled out of bed and began dressing, he recalled his first day as a prosecutor when the district attorney, William Gage, sent him down the hall to meet the investigator. He had knocked on W. J. O’Hara’s door expecting to see some florid-complexioned stereotype of an Irish cop. What he saw was a chocolate-skinned black man staring back at him with an irritated expression. Jamison had stood there for an instant too long before speaking. “You’re O’Hara?”

  Anticipating Jamison’s question from his expression, all O’Hara said was, “What, don’t I look Irish? Who the hell are you and what the hell do you want?”

  That was his introduction to Willie Jefferson O’Hara. Known as Bill to most people and Willie to a select few, O’Hara had fifteen years of detective experience with ten in the sheriff’s crimes against persons and homicide units before, as he put it, he decided to ease things up and work for the DA. He explained that this was the only way he could keep “stick-up-their-ass suits” from screwing up his cases.

  After Jamison had introduced himself, the investigator’s eyes narrowed slightly before he nodded his head. “You’re the new deputy DA?” The tone of O’Hara’s voice sounded like he was talking about something left on his lawn by a dog in the neighborhood; then he told him to shut the door on the way out.

  After that, O’Hara would hold his hand out when Jamison had an investigation request and let him watch carefully while he slowly lifted the pile in his inbox and put the young prosecutor’s request at the bottom. Slowly though the two men built a relationship as Jamison’s cases got bigger. Finally over a year later, the day arrived when O’Hara took Jamison’s investigation request, looked him in the eye for a moment, and then placed it on the top of the pile. O’Hara never said a word.

  Jamison had grown used to O’Hara’s personality. When he was put in charge of the violent crimes unit, he requested O’Hara as his investigator. That was the day O’Hara started calling him “Boss.” For most people, when O’Hara called you “Boss” it slid off his tongue like the last vestige of a deep cough. The first time he said it in their new relationship he smiled, or at least what seemed to pass for a smile with him. Jamison couldn’t remember what O’Hara called him before that because he didn’t recall O’Hara actually ever using his given name.

  After hanging up the phone with Jamison, O’Hara sat on the edge of his bed and stretched his full six-foot frame, feeling every one of the aches he had so carefully acquired day by day over the years. He looked down at the growing bulge of his once flat stomach. Now it only flattened out when he stood and even that last defiance of age was disappearing.

  He stood up and put on his pants, which he had draped over a chair the night before to preserve some semblance of a crease, then slipped on the shoes by the side of the bed. He reached into the nightstand drawer and removed a leather holster with lamb wool on one side and strapped it around his right ankle. Then he reached for the Walther PPK sitting on the nightstand and slid the Walther into it, adjusting the ankle holster until it fit comfortably.

  He moved his ankle around to check the balance of the Walther on his right leg; it took a minute to adjust to the extra weight. O’Hara always carried a backup gun when he went into the field. As he explained, “That’s what cops do who want to come home at night.”

  He opened the briefcase by the side of his bed, looking inside to see the dull blue-black nine-millimeter automatic that was his authorized duty weapon. He slid the heavy automatic back into its belt clip on his right hip. He checked the briefcase for cuffs and extra ammo clips, then flicked it closed, grabbed a jacket, and headed for the door.

  When he was working on a case his social life ground to a halt; relationships were an obligation he didn’t make time for. His second wife had found that out and said good-bye long ago. His first wife walked out with their daughter for much the same reason. The more time passed, the more he regretted the empty space in his life. It seemed to him that the passage of time should do just the opposite, but he realized that while time dimmed some regrets there were others it burnished to a hard edge. The investigator now accepted that if his future held a long-term relationship, it would probably be with his work partner rather than with a woman. Not that he didn’t like women. In fact, he loved women. Women would say the same thing about him except that they would also say he loved his job a lot more and that he had a tendency to love too many women at the same time, a fact that O’Hara had not yet seen as a character flaw, but rather as he put it, “Something like a vine reaching out for new ground; it’s just part of its nature.”

  Still, while it didn’t appear that many women were amenable to his hours or his flexibility when it came to emotional attachment, he often pointed out, “It only took one—or two—or . . .” then he would laugh. He believed that eventually he would find someone and that would be it. But for now, the right one, wherever she was, would have to wait.

  Chapter 2

  Watching the bank of the canal safely from the veil of darkness, the man reached into his pocket and felt the smooth handle of the knife that within the last hours had once again found its purpose. Touching it made it feel alive, made him feel alive because of what he could do with it and what he had just done with it. Now he had watched the first officer arrive at the edge of the canal, just as he had watched the punctual early morning jogger who stumbled on the dirt path when the man’s eyes caught the pale figure lying bathed in the moonlight exactly as he had displayed her. She was, after all, his creation, and while he craved admiration for his handiwork, of necessity he had to accept it from a distance. The reaction of the first person who stumbled across his creation was his substitute for open adulation.

  He had waited patiently for the investigators to arrive and for his stage to be lit by the fluorescent footlights of criminal investigation. He enjoyed watching, just as an artist or a filmmaker enjoys the reaction of people admiring their artistic accomplishment. Then he would slip away knowing that tomorrow he would read his reviews carried on the terse explanations of detectives and reporters breathlessly describing his triumph.

  The investigation lights blazed with the sound of field generators rumbling in the background. He smiled once more. His stage was illuminated. Like a night predator watching other animals approach his kill, he lingered for a final few moments before slipping noiselessly away into the night. There was nothing left to see. Already he knew the play by heart and this was not the last line.

  At the same moment across town, Jamison waited at the curb for O’Hara. He pulled his leather jacket tighter around him, trying to warm hi
mself in the chill air, and began to pace. Six feet and almost an inch, he had carefully combed dark brown hair and deep-set greenish-blue eyes that at moments like this darted edgily around. Patience was not one of his virtues.

  He looked over at the briefcase sitting at the curb nearby, mentally inventorying its contents: two legal tablets, several pens, a candy bar, and a month-old package of beef jerky for “just in case.” It also held a nine-millimeter automatic nested in a leather belt holster, also for “just in case.” Jamison didn’t like to carry a gun but it was there. Other than the firing range he had only pulled it out once before. He remembered the way he had forced his hand to remain steady, the surging adrenaline pulsing through his entire body. Carrying a gun or going into dark places with arrest teams didn’t fit in with what they taught him in law school about being a lawyer, and it still didn’t.

  O’Hara pulled up in his Ford, which was supposed to be an undercover car, but even kids recognized it as a cop car because of its glaring blue paint. Except on official business, O’Hara would not set foot in this car. He preferred his maroon Cadillac, which he drove with considerably more respect than he drove his assigned county vehicle.

  Jamison threw his briefcase in the back and settled against the seat, welcoming the warmth of the heater.

  O’Hara reached toward the ashtray where a slightly smoked cigar sat tilted against the rim. Jamison knew it was a habit O’Hara had picked up working homicide scenes, especially where the bodies had been in the sun for a while. He preferred the cigar smell to the various odors he had worked around over the years.

  Jamison turned up his nose. “Bill, you aren’t going to smoke that damn thing, are you?”

  In a small gesture of grudging accommodation O’Hara rolled his window down part-way and blew out a stream of fetid smoke. He made sure to let a little of it drift toward the passenger side before he spoke. “Okay, the watch commander at the sheriff’s department called to say that Puccinelli, the night detective, wanted us out in the field as soon as possible. They got a young woman at the edge of a canal. He didn’t have much detail, but enough to say that it looked like the same MO as the others, Ventana and Johnson.” The mention of Maria Ventana and Mary Ann Johnson immediately replayed those crime scenes in Jamison’s mind. Even now he could close his eyes and see every detail. He hoped what was ahead of them wasn’t going to be as grisly as the others.