Violent Crimes Page 3

  A few minutes later, Amanda hung up and smiled. Her original motivations for practicing criminal defense had not been philosophical. Her mother had died giving birth to Amanda and she had been raised by her father, Frank Jaffe, and one of Oregon’s leading defense attorneys. As soon as Amanda was old enough to understand what her father did for a living, she wanted to follow in his footsteps. In junior high, Amanda’s girlfriends fantasized about boys and shopping while Amanda read legal thrillers, watched Perry Mason reruns, and daydreamed about trying murder cases.

  When Amanda was old enough to understand that Frank’s clients were usually guilty, she had asked him why he was so passionate about his job. Frank had explained that making sure that the American System of Justice was working the way it was supposed to was more important than any particular case. Frank believed that giving the worst defendants a fair trial assured others that they would be treated fairly if they were ever arrested for a crime. When people lost faith in their government, the result was revolution. He also told Amanda that she would represent innocent clients from time to time and that helping an innocent person stay out of prison was the most important thing she would ever do. Tom Beatty’s case reinforced her belief that she had chosen the right profession.

  Not long after they made junior partner at one of the older established Portland law firms, Dale Masterson and Mark Hamilton grew impatient with their slow climb up the firm’s ladder and formed their own firm. Masterson, Hamilton had grown swiftly by bonding with the young entrepreneurs who were turning high-tech start-ups into multimillion-dollar enterprises. But Masterson and Hamilton had been unwilling to put all of their eggs into one basket, and had used their contacts to pull in a number of coal mining and oil companies. Now Masterson, Hamilton, Rickman and Thomas leased three floors in a modern glass-and-steel, forty-story building in downtown Portland.

  Tom Beatty was in his cubicle on the twenty-first floor working up a witness list for one of the litigation partners when his phone rang.

  “I’ve got great news,” Amanda Jaffe said. “The district attorney isn’t going to pursue your case.”

  “What do you mean?” Tom asked.

  “I gave him our investigative reports and an affidavit from Dr. Fisher and he’s decided that you acted in self-defense. So you’re free and clear. The charges have been dropped.”

  “That’s . . . that’s great. Thank you, so much.”

  “Every once in a while the system gets it right. I’m just sorry you were arrested and spent a night in jail.”

  “That wasn’t so hard. And I do feel bad about hurting Roux but I—”

  “There’s no need to say anything more. You can put this incident behind you.”

  “You did a great job, Miss Jaffe. What do I owe you?”

  “Your retainer covered my work so we’re square. It was a pleasure meeting you. I appreciate your service to our country.”

  Tom hung up. Then he leaned back in his chair and took some deep breaths. He still felt bad about what he’d done to Harold Roux, but he was relieved that his ordeal was over. When he was calm again, Tom got up and walked down the hall and up the stairs. He wanted to tell Christine the good news in person.

  The partners’ offices were two floors above his cubicle. Tom climbed the stairs, opened the door, and entered the twenty-third floor hallway. Christine’s office was halfway between the stairwell and Dale Masterson’s huge corner office. Tom had taken several steps when the door to Masterson’s office opened and he saw Christine come out. Her head was down and she was walking swiftly. Her gait and the set of her shoulders made Tom think that his friend was upset.

  Christine flung open the door to her office, then slammed it shut seconds before Tom reached it. Tom debated whether he should disturb her. Brittney Vandervelden, Christine’s secretary, occupied a cubicle across the hall from Christine’s office. She was in her early thirties, a well-dressed redhead with a nice figure and a sharp mind. Tom did a lot of work with Christine, so he also saw a lot of Brittney. He’d thought about asking her out, but dating a coworker was usually a bad idea. And he had so much baggage that he hesitated anytime the idea of getting close to someone became a possibility.

  “Hey, Brit, I wanted to tell Christine something but she looked upset. Do you think I should wait?”

  “I would.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I don’t know, but it has something to do with Mr. Masterson. And don’t ask me what because I don’t know.”

  “Okay. When you get a chance, can you tell her my case was dismissed . . . ?”

  “That’s so great!” Brittney said, flashing a wide smile.

  “Yeah, I’m really relieved.”

  “Christine was pretty confident her friend would handle it.”

  “Miss Jaffe did a terrific job. She convinced the DA I acted in self-defense so he’s dropping the matter. I guess Christine can get her bail money back. You should tell her that too.”

  “I will. And I’m sure she’ll want to talk to you when she has some time.”

  Tom left Brittney’s cubicle, and frowned. Christine was normally intense, but she’d looked unusually upset. Tom wondered what was bothering her. Then he decided that it was none of his business.

  Brittney knew better than to interrupt her boss when she was in one of her moods, and she also knew how long it normally took for Christine to calm down. After a reasonable amount of time, she walked across the hall and tapped on the door to Christine’s office.

  “Yes,” Christine barked.

  Brittney walked in even though Christine’s tone told her that she was still seething over whatever had upset her.

  “I just thought you’d want to know: Tom’s case was dismissed.”

  Christine’s scowl morphed into a grin and she straightened up.

  “That’s fabulous. How did you find out?”

  “Tom came up to tell you but you’d just come back from your meeting with Mr. Masterson and it didn’t look like you wanted to be disturbed.”

  Christine’s smile disappeared, and she looked lost in thought.

  “Please ask Tom to come up,” she said.

  “Sure thing,” Brittney said as she backed out of the office and closed the door.

  “Boss wants to see you,” Brittney told Tom over the intercom.

  Four minutes later, Brittney looked up and saw Tom walk into Christine’s office and shut the door behind him.

  Twenty minutes later, Brittney heard loud voices coming from Christine’s office. She couldn’t make out the words, but Tom and her boss were definitely arguing. Ten minutes after that the door to Christine’s office swung open and Tom walked rapidly down the hall and disappeared into the stairwell.

  CHAPTER 8

  Two days after Tom Beatty’s case was dismissed, Alan Hotchkiss was writing a police report when Greg Nowicki walked up. Nowicki, a fitness freak, had a massive chest and a ridiculously thick neck. He worked narcotics cases, and in his younger days he’d gone undercover in the Desperado biker gang. The tight black T-shirts he liked to wear displayed bulging biceps covered by angry, threatening tattoos. Hotchkiss handled violent crimes, so they’d worked together on cases involving drug-related homicides.

  “I got something that might interest you,” Nowicki said. “You were bitching and moaning when Larry Frederick was thinking about dropping charges against some guy who was in a bar fight, right?”

  Hotchkiss looked up from his report.

  “Was his name Tom Beatty?” Nowicki asked.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I’ve got a longtime informant who’s trying to work off a beef by feeding me information. She says Beatty sells heroin and keeps his stash in his house. It’s on a cul-de-sac and backs on forest, so it’s private. She says she bought from him on four occasions. A few days ago, she went to his house, so I have golden info for a search warrant.”

  Hotchkiss pumped his fist. “I knew that asshole’s John Wayne shit was too good to be true. Who are his
contacts? Can we use him to bust his suppliers?”

  “This is where it gets real good. Beatty told my informant he gets his stuff from guys who served with him in Afghanistan and made contacts with drug lords while they were there. So this could be the start of a bigger investigation.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “I’m going to Judge Rodriguez for the warrant. Then we go in tonight. Wanna come along?”

  “You bet.”

  Hotchkiss rode shotgun in Nowicki’s unmarked car. A van with a SWAT team followed the detectives. Hotchkiss had briefed everyone on Beatty’s military background and they weren’t taking any chances. On the way to the bust, Hotchkiss read over the search warrant and the affidavit. Carol White claimed to have met Beatty for the first time near the Lookout on May 9 after another addict had pointed him out. She swore that she bought from Beatty after dark on the evenings of May 9, May 17, June 6, and three days ago, on July 5. On the last occasion, White said, she had seen Beatty on the street and approached him. Beatty did not have any drugs on him so he’d taken Carol to his house and had her wait outside while he went in and got her heroin. White swore that Beatty assured her that he always had a store of heroin in his home and asked her to tell her friends about him.

  Hotchkiss frowned. That didn’t sound right. Why would Beatty show a strung-out addict where he lived and kept his stash? Then again, if all criminals were geniuses the police would never make an arrest.

  Nowicki parked at the entrance to the cul-de-sac where they would not be visible from Beatty’s house.

  Just before they got out of the car, Hotchkiss looked at the affidavit again. Something was bothering him. He reread the dates when White claimed she’d made the buys, and frowned. Something was definitely wrong but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

  “I scoped this out earlier,” Nowicki told Hotchkiss. “There’s a front door and a back door that opens into a big backyard. I’m gonna send a team around the back. They go through the woods and enter through the back door. We’ll come in through the front.”

  “Sounds good,” Hotchkiss said as he checked his gun.

  Nowicki conferred with the head of the SWAT team. Then several men headed toward the woods. Nowicki gave them time to make the circular journey before leading the rest of the men toward the front of the house. Hotchkiss couldn’t see any lights. There was no garage and no car was parked out front. If they were lucky, Beatty would be out and they could search without incident, then bag him when he came home.

  Nowicki signaled everyone to stay back while he crab-walked toward the front porch, keeping below the windowsills in the front rooms. When he was alongside the front door, he signaled and Hotchkiss and the SWAT team members spread out along the wall on either side of the door. That’s when Hotchkiss figured out what was bothering him.

  “Greg,” he whispered. “There might be a problem with the affidavit for the search warrant. One of the dates—”

  “Not now,” Nowicki said as he leaned forward and knocked loudly.

  Hotchkiss realized that Nowicki was right. He had to concentrate, because he might be fighting for his life in the next few seconds.

  “Police—open up!” Nowicki shouted.

  There was no response. Nowicki nodded and two officers used a battering ram to smash the flimsy lock on the front door. Two other SWAT members moved inside.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” one of them shouted after a few minutes.

  Nowicki walked inside and flipped on a light switch. The front room was neat. The only thing out of place was a newspaper that had been dumped onto a coffee table.

  Hotchkiss heard a door open, and the members of the SWAT team who had approached the house through the woods announced their presence.

  “All right, guys,” Nowicki said, “I want a lookout to alert us when Beatty comes home. The rest of you spread out and search.”

  The house was small. Nowicki started in the kitchen while Hotchkiss walked down a short hall to the back of the house. The door to a small bathroom was open and the detective took a brief look inside before stopping in front of a closed door he assumed opened into Beatty’s bedroom. Hotchkiss wasn’t going to take any chances—Beatty could be lying in ambush in the dark. He gave a hand signal to one of the other officers while he waited beside the door. The officer turned the knob slowly before shoving the door into the bedroom. They waited. Nothing happened. Hotchkiss ducked inside and felt for a switch. The light came on. One of the men behind him whispered “Holy shit” at the same time the detective’s jaw dropped.

  “Until I’ve completed the autopsy I won’t draw an official conclusion about the cause of death, but I’d be shocked if she didn’t die from trauma as a result of a severe beating,” Dr. Sally Grace said. The assistant medical examiner was a slender woman with frizzy black hair. Hotchkiss liked her because she had a dry sense of humor and a keen intelligence, and made a dynamite witness.

  “Time of death?” Hotchkiss asked Grace. They were standing around Tom Beatty’s bed, staring down at a blond female in her early thirties who was dressed in a black business suit and a white silk blouse. She had been so badly battered that it was hard to look at her face.

  “She’s been dead for a while,” Grace said. “Not more than a day but not recently. And I don’t think she was killed here. There’s some blood on the covers but no spatter that’s consistent with her being pummeled in this room. Did you find any blood anywhere else in the house?”

  “No,” Nowicki answered.

  “Then I’d say she was probably killed elsewhere and brought here.”

  Before Nowicki could say anything else his phone vibrated.

  “Someone’s headed this way,” he said when he disconnected.

  The lights in the front part of the house had been turned off. Hotchkiss switched off the light in the bedroom and moved into the living room. Moments later, a car parked out front. As soon as Tom Beatty got out, he was surrounded by police officers. Hotchkiss walked out the front door, with Nowicki close behind him.

  “What’s going on?” Beatty asked.

  Hotchkiss held up the search warrant. “We have a warrant to search your house, Mr. Beatty.”

  “For what?”

  “Heroin, sir.”

  “Heroin! You’re not serious?”

  “I’m very serious. We found your stash in the basement.”

  “What?!”

  “And we found something else that I’d like to show you. Can you follow me into your bedroom,” Hotchkiss said.

  Beatty followed the detective. When they reached the bedroom, Hotchkiss stepped aside. Beatty took one step into the room. Then his knees buckled.

  “Oh, God,” he moaned. “It’s Christine.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “If you keep this up, I’m gonna have to have a cardiologist on speed dial,” Mike Greene gasped when he caught his breath.

  He and Amanda were lying side by side in Amanda’s bed. They’d been so busy lately that they hadn’t been able to see each other, but one of Amanda’s trials had been set over and crime had taken a holiday for a few days so they were finally spending a night together.

  “Listen, old man,” Amanda said, “if you can’t keep up I’ll have to look elsewhere for sexual satisfaction.”

  “Who would you find who’d put up with you?” Mike answered.

  Amanda laughed. “Point taken,” she said. Then she rolled on top of Mike and started playing with his chest hair.

  “God, woman. You’re insatiable.”

  Before Amanda could reply, her phone rang.

  “Don’t answer it,” Mike whispered as he ran a hand down her back.

  “I’ve got to,” Amanda said as she sat up. “That’s my business phone, and that means a client is calling.”

  Mike sighed.

  “Amanda Jaffe,” Amanda said when she had the phone.

  “Miss Jaffe, this is Tom Beatty. I’m in jail. They’re saying I murdered Christine.”


  Prior to 1983, the Multnomah County jail looked the way a prison was supposed to look. Constructed of huge granite blocks, the foreboding fortress perched on Rocky Butte and shouted, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Then the Rocky Butte jail was torn down to make way for the I-205 freeway and the detention center was moved to the fourth through tenth floors of the Justice Center, a sixteen-story, state-of-the-art facility in the heart of downtown Portland that was across a park from the courthouse.

  Amanda barely noticed her surroundings as she walked through the Justice Center’s vaulted lobby and pushed past the glass doors that opened into the jail reception area. She’d been upset when the phone rang, interrupting her evening with Mike, but she’d lost any interest in sex the moment she learned that Christine Larson had been murdered.

  After showing her ID to the guard at the reception desk and going through a metal detector, Amanda entered the elevator that took her to a floor in the jail with contact visiting rooms. When the elevator door opened, Amanda found herself in a narrow hall with a thick metal door on one end. Next to the door, affixed to a pastel-yellow concrete wall, was an intercom. Amanda pressed a black button and announced her presence. Moments later, electronic locks snapped open and a uniformed guard ushered her into another narrow corridor that ran in front of three soundproofed visiting rooms. The upper half of the corridor wall of each contact visiting room was made of thick, shatter-proof glass that let the guards monitor the activity in the room. Each room was outfitted with two molded plastic chairs that stood on either side of a round table secured to the floor by metal bolts.

  The door to the contact visiting room was solid steel. The guard spoke into a radio and the locks on the door snapped open. Amanda took one of the chairs and placed a pad and pen on the table. Moments later, a second metal door at the back of the room opened and a guard led Tom Beatty inside.

  Amanda’s client looked terrible. He was dressed in an ill-fitting orange jumpsuit. His face was blank, his hair was uncombed, and there were deep circles under his eyes.