Violent Crimes (4 page)

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.”

“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 ush
ered 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.

“What happened?” Amanda asked as soon as the guard left.

A good defense attorney never asked that question because of the limitations it put on the defense if a client confessed guilt. But the news of Christine's death had stunned Amanda and she had forgotten to act professionally.

Tom shook his head. He looked exhausted.

“I don't know. The police were all over my house when I came home. They took me to my bedroom. Christine . . .”

Tom paused and wet his lips. “She was lying on my bed. Her face . . .”

Tom shook his head again, and that gesture convinced Amanda that her client was innocent. She guessed that Tom had seen horrible sights as a soldier and would be this moved only by the unexpected, violent death of someone he knew and cared for.

“Why was Christine at your house?” Amanda asked.

“I don't know.”

“And she was murdered?”

When Tom looked up, anger animated his expression.

“She was beaten to death. Her face was pulp. When I get out of here, I will find the person responsible and make them wish they had never been born.”

“Tom, do not say anything like that to anyone but me. Do you understand?”

Tom's features hardened, and he did not respond. Amanda understood his anger and didn't press the point.

“Where were you before you came home?” she asked to change the subject.

Confusion replaced anger and Tom lost focus.

“Tom?”

“It was a setup.”

“What was a setup?”

Tom looked at Amanda. “Everything. It was around seven, I was reading, and the phone rang. The caller said he was Albert Roth. He said he was an associate at the firm and Randall Spaulding wanted me to come back to the office.”

“Who is Randall Spaulding?”

“He's a junior partner.”

“Do you know him?”

“I know who he is but I've never done any work for him.”

“What about Roth? Do you know him?”

“No, I'd never heard of him, but there are so many attorneys in the firm that I wasn't concerned.”

“What did they want you to do?”

“That's the thing. When I got to the office, Mr. Spaulding
wasn't there. I used the office directory and got his home number. He said he had no idea who Albert Roth was and denied he'd asked anyone to call me. Then I looked for Roth in the directory. No one by that name is listed.”

“So, whoever murdered Christine lured you downtown so they could put the body in your bedroom.”

“And plant heroin in my basement.”

“The police found heroin in your house?”

“I have never used or sold heroin, Miss Jaffe.”

Amanda had occasionally been conned by clients, but she was pretty good at spotting a lie. If she had to bet, she would bet that Beatty was telling the truth.

“Do you have any idea why someone would murder Christine and frame you?”

“No . . .” Tom paused. “Well, there was one thing. When you called me to tell me that my case had been dismissed, I went to Christine's office to tell her the good news. I walked up. The door to the stairwell is at one end of a long corridor and Christine's office is about midway. When I walked into the hall I saw Christine leaving Dale Masterson's office. She looked upset. Before I could get to her she shut her office door, so I didn't go in. Instead, I asked Brittney, Christine's secretary, to call me when she thought it would be a good time to talk to Christine.

“Later, Brittney called and told me to come up. Christine was happy that the case had been thrown out, but I could see something was worrying her. I asked her why she was upset. She told me that the firm was trying to get Global Mining as a client. She thought something funny was going on with the firm's books
and she wanted me to help her look into it. She said she thought someone high up in the firm was juggling figures to make the firm's bottom line look better than it was.”

Tom looked down. “I . . .”

“Yes.”

Tom reddened. “I told her I wouldn't help her.”

His eyes pleaded with Amanda for understanding. “I was afraid. I really needed my job, and I needed peace and quiet. I didn't want to get involved. I'd just been arrested; if you hadn't cleared everything up I could have been fired. So I said I wouldn't help and we had an argument. I felt awful, after she'd stood by me, but I . . . I just couldn't take the risk of losing my job.”

Tom looked down, ashamed. “Maybe if I'd been there for her like she was for me . . .”

“Do not beat yourself up,” Amanda said firmly. “Whoever killed Christine had a well-thought-out plan. I doubt there was anything you could have done to save her. What you have to concentrate on now is saving yourself, because the police won't look for Christine's killer as long as they're convinced that you murdered her.”

“Okay, but I don't know anything.”

“You said that Christine thought someone high up in the firm was doing something with the books. Did she tell you who she suspected?”

“No.”

“She was upset when she left Dale Masterson's office. Did she suspect him?”

“I cut her off before she gave me a name; I told her I didn't
want to know. Mr. Masterson is one of the most powerful partners, so it could have been him.

“Tom, I'm going to ask you a question, and I need a completely truthful answer. And remember, anything you tell me is confidential; your answer stays between us.”

Beatty looked directly at Amanda. “What do you want to know?”

“A prosecutor doesn't have to prove what motivated a criminal to commit a crime, but the first thought that will pop into the mind of a juror when a woman is found murdered in a man's bedroom is that a lovers' quarrel was the motive. What was your relationship with Christine?”

“Christine was my boss,” Tom stated emphatically. “She was also my friend, but there was never anything romantic between us.”

“Will the police be able to find witnesses who can make a case to a jury that you were romantically involved?”

“How would they do that?”

“If I was prosecuting you, I'd show the jury that Christine bailed you out when you were arrested. Why did you call her?”

Tom looked down at the tabletop. “I don't have friends here. I get up in the morning and go to work. Then I come home. Every once in a while I go to a movie or the Lookout to watch a game. The only people I know well are the people I work with and Christine is . . .
was
the partner I worked with the most.

“When I was arrested for the fight, they told me I could call a lawyer. I didn't want anyone at the firm to know I'd been arrested for fighting in a bar—I was scared I'd lose my job. But Christine . . . I thought she wouldn't judge me, that she'd listen to my
side, and she's a lawyer. I knew she didn't practice criminal law, but I hoped she'd know a lawyer who could help me.”

“So that's all there was to it. You never went out socially, say to dinner or a movie, with Christine?”

“Never.” Beatty paused. “We did have breakfast after she bailed me out. But all we did was talk about what happened, and that's the only time we ever ate together. We never dated.”

“Did you ever argue?”

“Just when I said I didn't want to get involved in her investigation of the firm's finances.”

“Could anyone have heard you argue? This is important, because she was killed soon after.”

“Brittney could have heard us.”

“That's Christine's secretary?”

Beatty nodded. “And there are other secretaries and paralegals who sit near her.” Beatty shrugged. “The walls aren't that thick. The partners on either side could have heard us.”

“Okay. I think that's enough for now. But we do have to discuss my fee. Defending a murder case is expensive . . .”

“I can cover it. My folks died in a car accident. Between the insurance and my inheritance . . . I have some money.”

“I'll need two hundred and fifty thousand to start.”

“I can do that.”

“All right. I'll get a better idea of what we'll need for experts and investigation when I have a better handle on the case.”

Beatty gave Amanda the name of the person who was managing his finances.

“Am I going to get out?” he asked while she was writing down the information.

“There's no automatic bail in a murder case. I'll set up a bail hearing when I've gone over the discovery, but you'll have to sit tight for a while. Will that be a problem?”

“I'll be okay. I trust you to do your best.”

“Thanks, Tom. Be assured that your case is my top priority.”