Fractured Justice

James A. Ardaiz

Description

When investigators are called to a meticulously staged crime scene on a canal bank in rural Central California―the latest in a series of murders that have killed three young women in one month―they realize a dangerous serial killer is on the loose, someone who is highly adept at hiding his tracks. And before the murderer can be brought to justice, young assistant DA Matt Jamison will lose his illusions about what justice means.
As a fourth victim is abducted and investigators race against time, Jamison must cope with a sophisticated and elusive killer, a politically-minded sheriff eager to claim credit and spread blame, mounting pressure to win a high-profile trial, and his own conscience as part of the machinery of justice.
A gripping, fast-paced, and coldly realistic thriller that tracks a killer from the crime scene to the courtroom and to a devastating aftermath, Fractured Justice is a stunning debut crime novel from a former investigator, prosecutor, and judge who intimately knows the real world of attorneys, detectives, and men who kill.

Informations

• Publié par: Linden Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781610353212
• Langue: English

Extrait

A DVANCE P RAISE FOR F RACTURED J USTICE
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
P RAISE FOR J AMES A. A RDAIZ S P REVIOUS B OOK H ANDS T HROUGH S TONE
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
F RACTURED J USTICE
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 [phone] / [phone] 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.
P ART O NE
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. Only 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